Deanna Wood, associate professor and reference librarian, has been awarded the Georgina M. Smith Award by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). The award distinguishes individuals who provide exceptional leadership in improving the lives of academic women or in advancing collective bargaining, and through that work has improved the profession in general.
Wood has worked to advance the art of collective bargaining, advocating for gender equity and anti-discrimination in faculty contract language and succeeding in gaining a strong paid parental leave policy for faculty.
Wood has been a reference librarian at UNH’s Dimond Library since 1990, and she is currently president of the AAUP-UNH faculty union. She also serves on the National Council of the AAUP and is secretary on the AAUP Collective Bargaining Congress Executive Committee.
“For more than two decades, Deanna Wood has been a tireless advocate to the faculty, making sure they know their rights and responsibilities under the collective bargaining agreement, and to the administration,” says David Richman, professor of theatre and member of the UNH-AAUP executive committee. “She is the embodiment of resilience and vigilance, and UNH faculty know that they can call upon her knowledge, energy and commitment. No one on our university faculty has done so much for so long in looking after faculty interests.”
Wood will be honored at the National AAUP Conference in Washington, DC, in June. The award was established in 1979, to honor the memory of AAUP leader Georgina M. Smith, professor of mathematics at Rutgers University. Smith was a committed feminist and a strong supporter of her local faculty union.
—Peter Welch
