Marita Houlihan Award Recipients
This award recognizes those who have displayed imaginative activity, outstanding personal enterprise, and creative contributions to the field through research, writing, or program development.
2011 Award Recipient – Dr. Joan Rosalie Dassin
Dr. Joan Rosalie Dassin has been the Executive Director at the Ford Foundation International Fellowships Fund (IFF) since its founding in 2001. She is currently responsible for design, policy planning, and implementation for the Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program (IFP), a graduate-level fellowship program that has provided opportunities for advanced study to more than 4,300 emerging leaders from marginalized groups and communities in nearly two dozen countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
Dr. Dassin has served three times as a Fulbright scholar in Brazil and is a recognized expert in higher education and international exchange policy, having published extensively on the Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program and on wider issues such as brain drain, promoting access and equity in international higher education, and on training new leadership for developing countries. She was a major contributor to Origins, Journeys and Returns: Social Justice in International Higher Education, published by the Social Science Research Council in 2009, and has also written and edited books and articles on human rights and cultural expression in Latin America. She received the Best Article Prize from the Latin American Studies Association in 1982.
Dr. Dassin served as the Ford Foundation Regional Director for Latin America from 1992-1996 and as the Ford Foundation Representative in Brazil from 1988-1992. From 1983-1988, Dr. Dassin served as Staff Associate for Latin America at the Social Science Research Council. From 1974-1983, she taught English and Latin American Studies at Amherst College and at Columbia and Fordham Universities.
Joan Dassin received her PhD in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University in 1974. In 1969 she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and received her B.A. in English from Brandeis University.
Previous Recipients
- Rosemarie Arens, U.S. State Department in Lima, Peru
- Bruce Sillner, SUNY-New Paltz
- Ellen Mashiko, Japan-United States Education Commission
- Marty Etchison Babcock, University of North Carolina
- Rebecca Zeigler Mano, US Embassy – Harare, Zimbabwe
- Gary Althen, University of Iowa
- Janet M. and Milton J. Bennett, Intercultural Communication Institute
- Edward S. Blankenship, California State University-Long Beach
- Alice Chandler, SUNY College-New Paltz
- Todd M. Davis, Institute of International Education
- Hans de Wit, University of Amsterdam
- Stephen Dunnett, SUNY at Buffalo
- Rene Greenwald, IIE-Mexico
- G. James Haas, Indiana University/Purdue University
- Linda Heaney, Linden Educational Services
- Ann Helm, City University of New York-Staten Island
- Axel Market, University of Tuebingen
- Ivy McQuiddy, University of Texas-Austin
- Josef Mestenhauser, University of Minnesota
- Terry O'Donnell, Commission on English Language Program Accreditation
- Jody Olsen, Peace Corps
- Mary E. Peterson, NAFSA
- Norman Peterson, Georgetown University
- Cassandra Pyle, CIES
- Kay Thomas, University of Minnesota-Minneapolis
- Kevin Scheiffer, Experiment in International Living
- Gene Smith, University of Colorado-Boulder
- Ralph Smuckler, Michigan State University
- Caroline Atsuko Matano Yang, U.S.-Japan Educational Commission
