Aida Tomeh Distinguished Service Award

The Aida Tomeh Distinguished Service Award is an annual award recognizing a member of the NCSA who has given outstanding service to the NCSA, either through a single exceptional activity, or through different activities over an extended period of time, or throughout his/her professional career. The award is named after Aida Tomeh who was a member of the faculty at Bowling Green State University from 1965 until her untimely death in 1984, following a long illness. Her undergraduate degree was from the American University in Beirut, and her PhD was from the University of Michigan (1962). Following Michigan, her faculty positions started at Bowling Green (1962), then Beirut University College (1963-1965), then back to Bowling Green, where she remained for the rest of her career. She was a regular organizer and presenter at professional meetings, on topics as far ranging as antique shopping to language maintenance among Arab Americans. Aida was especially committed to the NCSA, to which she devoted an extraordinary amount of time and energy. In addition to coordinating the mid-annual meetings of the Council, she served as Executive Secretary (1974-1977), Council Member-at-Large (1977-1980), and Chair of the Development Committee (1980-1984).

Nominations
will open August 12, 2024

The deadline for 2025 nominations is November 15, 2024

Have Questions?

Contact Tomeh Committee Chair

Jay Howard, Butler University

jrhoward@butler.edu

Congratulations to the 2024 Recipients

Debra Swanson  (Ohio Northern University) and

Fayyaz Husain  (Michigan State University)

The contributions of the past recipients of the Aida Tomeh Distinguished Service Award to NCSA is impressive and I am deeply honored, as the 2024 recipient of this award, to be included among so many people that I consider colleagues and friends. As a young professor, my first NCSA meeting was in 1996 in Cincinnati. I immediately felt at home among other sociologists who valued teaching and students, and those colleagues quickly became friends. I have had the privilege to serve in several leadership positions and, because of these relationships, NCSA really has become my professional home. Thank you to the committee and those who supported my nomination. Like Aida Tomeh, my friend Lissa Yogan’s life was too short. Lissa died of multiple myloma on March 11 of this year. Along with Kathy Rowell, I had been working with her on some research for our presentation on the NCSA 100 year anniversary. I will miss her. But NCSA will miss her – and her service –  too! I am nominating Lissa for the 2025 Tomeh award.

It was 1978 when I attended the first annual meetings of NCSA with Marv Olson, the past President of NCSA.  Since then, I have attended almost every meeting.  In all these years, at the NCSA meetings, I have met with numerous very famous, dedicated, and well-known teachers, researchers, and scholars.  They have been very inclusive and helped me at every step to become a good teacher and a researcher.   Never in my life, I ever thought that I will become the President of NCSA and then receive Aida Tomeh Distinguished Service Award. It is such an honor that makes me speechless.  Thank you very much to all the members of NCSA who are not only excellent sociologists but loving, caring, and inclusive human beings.  From the bottom of my heart thanks to those of you who nominated me and picked me for this honor. I am very sorry to miss our 100 years anniversary meetings. I am in Islamabad, Pakistan on 4 months of US Scholars Fulbright Fellowship, another honor because of my NCSA colleagues’ letters of recommendations.