Katharine Shepherd, Levitt Family Green and Gold Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Education and Social Service, was named the 2018–2019 recipent of the President’s Distinguished University Citizenship and Service Award.

Professor Shepherd’s longstanding contributions to the College of Education and Social Service and the university community at large have had profound impact at UVM. Her university-level service includes longstanding membership on the Institutional Review Board, serving as Associate Chair for the Committee on Human Research in the Behavioral Sciences, and chairing numerous search committees for key leadership positions at the university. In the College of Education and Social Service she motivates colleagues through her leadership and collaborative mentoring.

Professor Shepherd's substantive service has helped to transform university curriculum, bringing the original UVM Diversity Curriculum requirement to fruition, and ensuring integration and assessment of the diversity requirements within the university's General Education curriculum. She has been tenacious, sitting on seven diversity­related curriculum committees over the past sixteen years, and serving in a primary leadership role on three.

As co-chair of the General Education Diversity Assessment Committee since its inception in the Spring of 2016, she first led the committee through indirect assessments of the Diversity learning outcomes, and then a major direct assessment involving faculty ratings of student work artifacts. The lessons learned through this process have been invaluable in determining future directions for the Diversity requirement and its assessment.

Dedicated to the university and its educational mission for all students, Professor Shepherd leads by example and has generated many initiatives of her own. Her internal compass is always aligned with mission and the greater good.