Mershon affiliate Amy Shuman, professor of English, is one of the winners of the 2014 Distinguished Diversity Enhancement Award.

For more than 30 years, Shuman enthusiastically has served a range of populations across campus and in the wider community — from international students and faculty of color to individuals with disabilities on campus and beyond — and has been a leader in some of Ohio State’s most significant diversity initiatives in that time.

"Amy has been a tireless, passionate and productive proponent of diversity, and her contributions represent the gamut of 'diversity' categories: gender, race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, class, sexuality, immigration status and disability," a nominator wrote.

Shuman is director of Disability Studies and is a nationally recognized scholar in the field who also advises Abilities, a disability-awareness student organization. She is widely praised for her 10-year tenure as director of the Center for Folklore Studies and the attention to intellectual and social diversity, "forcing spheres of comparison beyond the often Eurocentric world of folklore studies," as one nominator wrote.

Her research and outreach also extend to human rights advocacy and underrepresented populations. She has served as interim director for the Melton Center for Jewish Studies and is co-leader of the Humanities Institute’s Human Rights Working Group.

"In a word, Amy Shuman is a visionary," another nominator wrote. "She not only had the foresight and creativity to imagine a more inclusive university, but she has also put in the work to make it more of a reality."