Professor Sunseri is given this award for his creation and instruction of Anthropology 2AC, the first American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) course in the Department of Anthropology. The course explores the implications of having non-written histories for American communities, positioning them in a real social and political context. Students work with Bay Area communities and other parts of California, by partaking in community-engaged activities including "mock-digs" and community mapping with students from K-12, and working with community members towards rights of sovereignty, land, and water for Native Californian communities. Professor Sunseri innovates community-engaged scholarship through the Anthropology department that is designed to create a lasting impact on the students enrolled and communities they work with and inhabit. Professor Leslea Hlusko - Integrative Biology 35AC
Since the Fall of 2005, Professor Hlusko has developed her American Cultures course Integrative Biology 35AC 'Human Biological Variation', the first course in the biological sciences to satisfy UC Berkeley's AC Requirement. She designed this course in order to expose the cultural and historical relevance of biology to both students who may never take another biology class in their lives and scientists who have intimate knowledge of their subject but do not discover its connection within larger contexts. The course is innovative in the way it teaches students how biological variation plays a role in day-to-day life- from interactions on the street to governmental policies on healthcare and food stamps, to how a doctor interacts with her patients. Professor Hlusko feels strongly that an understanding of the millions of years of human evolution goes a long way toward alleviating much of the anger, racism, and hostility that revolves around race, ethnicity, disability, disease, and sexual orientation (among other contemporary social and racial constructs).