Huret, MA ’69, discusses Faculty Excellence Award

Bob Huret and his wife, Emerson Trustee Judy Huret, MA '69, are pictured at the entrance of a garden at Emerson Los Angeles that was named in their honor in February. (Photo by Michelle Kwong '15)

Faculty members Sam Binkley and Robert Todd have been named recipients of this year’s Judy and Bob Huret Faculty Excellence Award, which supports tenured faculty research, creative projects, and innovative pedagogies.

“My commitment to Emerson is first and foremost to the faculty,” said Emerson Trustee Judy Huret, MA ’69, who makes the generous award possible. “If we didn’t have great faculty, we wouldn’t attract great students.

“Our product, really, is to graduate students who shape the world based on their experiences at Emerson,” said Huret, a Trustee since 2001 who obtained her master’s degree from Emerson in Communication Sciences and Disorders.

Huret, vice chairperson of investment firm Huret, Rothenberg and Co., has enjoyed a successful career that has encompassed management consulting, private investing, and work in the field of communication disorders, including clinical therapy.

The Judy and Bob Huret Faculty Excellence Award is a re-imagined version of the Huret Faculty Development Award. The former award provided non-tenured faculty with funds to complete creative and scholarly work toward attaining tenure. The new award is targeted toward tenured faculty—specifically associate professors—who are working on career advancement.

“Our goal is to encourage more senior faculty to move toward full professorships, which would be more akin with other colleges,” Huret said.

Binkley, an associate professor in the Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies, who focuses on sociology and cultural studies, is using his award to write his third book, Anti-Racism as a Way of Life: Diversity and Multiculturalism as Conduct and Counter-Conduct. Based on three articles under review, the book will investigate how the questions of race, either as racism or anti-racism, create specific forms of self-inquiry.

Todd, an associate professor and associate chair in the Visual and Media Arts Department, will use his award to begin production on his feature-length film, Matter. With many award-winning short films in his portfolio, this award allows Todd to create a film that, according to Todd, “sets up analogies between the intricacies of organic life and those of complex inorganic elemental structures (such as ice, sand/stone formations, natural and man-made sources of fire, and air currents)” that will be shown on film.

“The deans and I are very grateful for Judy and Bob’s longstanding support of our faculty and their scholarship, research, and creative work,” said Michaele Whelan, chief academic officer. “We see their new award as pivotal to faculty career advancement at Emerson. The potential impact of this Faculty Excellence Award over time is transformational.”

Huret has provided generous gifts to Emerson College over the years, including funding toward the Harry L. Huret and Ellen Marr Spector Gallery in 1999. She and her husband, Bob, recently had an entry garden at the new Emerson College Los Angeles named in their honor.

Judy Huret recalls enrolling at Emerson as a graduate student in the late 1960s.

“I’ll never forget how the head of the [Communication Disorders] department sat down with me on these child-sized chairs in the Thayer Lindsley nursery to look at me eye-to-eye,” she said. “It was quintessential Emerson. It was a personalized, intimate, meaningful interaction.

“I was exposed to world-class faculty in the classroom, and my internship was of such high quality,” Huret continued. “I felt it was incredible and I wanted to make that opportunity happen for others.”

Faculty may find more information on internal grant programs through the Office of Research and Creative Scholarship website.