CEU's 2022 Excellence Awards

CEU Excellence Awards / In recognition of the achievements of our faculty and staff

CEU prides itself on having some of the most dedicated faculty and supportive staff. This year’s awardees exemplify that through their contributions within and beyond CEU. 

Congratulations to the winner of the CEU Teaching Excellence Award 2022:

Prem Kumar Rajaram
Prof. Rajaram (Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology) is being honored for his highly respected teaching style, which combines intellectual rigor, the promotion of critical inquiry, attention to diversity, care in doctoral supervision, and a deep respect for individual students. He is known across CEU and Europe for his devotion to teaching and support for students from marginalized backgrounds—notably, through contributions to CEU's Roma access programs and the Open Learning Initiative (OLIve), which he co-founded in 2016. His teaching and program management have informed his well-recognized research on refugees, critical pedagogies, and access to higher education, as evidenced through the April 2022 launch of his coedited volume, "Opening up the University: Teaching and Learning with Refugees."

Congratulations to the winner of the CEU Research Excellence Award 2022:

Erin Kristin Jenne
Prof. Jenne (Department of International Relations) published 8 peer-reviewed book chapters and journal articles this academic year, all in high quality outlets, on topics ranging from populism, national identity, diaspora politics and foreign policy to great powers. Her research output builds on CEU resources and strengthened collaborative research networks across departments and between students and faculty, while still making strong contributions to her fields of international relations, nationalism and security studies. Her publications showcase a range of methodological skills—from quantitative techniques to positivist qualitative case research to discourse analytic work.

Congratulations to the winner of the CEU Staff Excellence Award 2022:

Zoltan Cseszneg
One of CEU's many "unsung heroes" who combines his expert knowledge with a service-minded attitude to improve technical operations for all. Zoltan is driven to find solutions to problems while making those issues and their resolutions accessible as well as understandable to everyone.

Congratulations to the winners of the CEU Community Service Excellence Award 2022:

Andrea Boródi
From the moment Andrea Borodi joined CEU, she has been responsible for handling our core COVID-19 communication channel, Covidinfo@ceu.edu. She has done this with the utmost care, responsibility, energy, and approachability. Throughout the stressful pandemic times, she demonstrated her excellent organizational and management skills as a team player upon whom everyone can rely. With outstanding empathy and a clear focus on CEU's priorities for our community's wellbeing, she has played a significant role in making CEU a safe and enjoyable workplace during this extremely challenging period.

Shwetha Nair
Shwetha Nair's approach to handling one of the most devastating crises our region and community have faced, namely the war in Ukraine, has been outstanding. Her swift reaction and inexhaustible effort made it possible for community members to mobilize and offer support for Ukraine and to each other during the beginning of the conflict. Furthermore, her efforts in managing multiple related projects like CEU's support initiatives for Ukrainian students, including the Donation Drive and coordinating our efforts with the Student Union have made an outsized impact.