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HSS Honors and Awards

Featured Faculty Research Honor

Michael Alvarez sitting in a library smiling
Alvarez Wins Career Achievement Award in Political Methodology

The Society for Political Methodology honored R. Michael Alvarez, Flintridge Foundation Professor of Political and Computational Social Science, with its Career Achievement Award for his research into modeling election dynamics and his service to the profession. The award is the society’s highest honor and recognizes the “foundational, distinguished and sustained contributions to the field and the Society made by the recipients over their careers.” The Society for Political Methodology cites Alvarez for his “foundational contributions to the study of public opinion, voting behavior, election administration, and computational modeling,” his leadership “in promoting transparency and rigor in political science,” and his “commitment to supporting junior scholars.”

Featured Teaching or Mentoring Award

Group of eight students and their instructor standing in front of Dabney's north entrance
Postdoctoral Scholar Teaching Fellow Anna Stielau Honored with HSS Brass Division Award for Teaching

Former Weisman Postdoctoral Scholar Teaching Fellow in Visual Culture Anna Stielau (2023–2025) received an HSS Brass Division Award for Teaching in December 2024. Since joining HSS in fall 2023, Stielau’s courses on visual culture, race, and activism have bolstered the division’s visual culture offerings and, in the process, contributed to the development of the visual literacy, thinking and writing skills, and social conscience of the Caltech students. The student course evaluations reflect a common feeling that Stielau has helped change how those in her classes “see” the world, indicating that what is discussed and imparted in the classroom inspires a new sense of agency and responsibility beyond it.
Left: Stielau (back row, center) with the students in her fall 2024 Representation Matters? class

Student Prizes

eight headshots of the 2025 prizewinners
Announcing the 2025 HSS Student Prizewinners

The Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences is proud to present its prize recipients for the 2024–2025 academic year.