Every year Arizona State University Faculty Women’s Association recognizes exceptional mentors across the university with the Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award. This year, social sciences faculty members Amber Wutich and Tracy Spinrad from The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences were selected for the honor.
Sustainability Scientist Amber Wutich joined the School of Human Evolution and Social Change as an assistant professor in 2007 after initially coming to ASU as a postdoctoral student in 2006. Today she serves as the President’s Professor of anthropology, the director of ASU’s Center for Global Health and the associate director of ASU’s Institute for Social Science Research.
Wutich, who has won several awards for being an outstanding educator and mentor, is an anthropologist with two decades of community-based fieldwork that explores how inequitable and unjust resource institutions impact well-being, especially under conditions of poverty. Her focus on cross-cultural trends has led her to direct the Global Ethnohydrology Study, a cross-cultural study of water knowledge and management, as well as co-author the book “Lazy, Crazy, and Disgusting: Stigma and the Undoing of Global Health.”
As a teacher, Wutich offers courses and workshops in content analysis, grounded theory, theme identification, systematic coding and research design. In her courses and in her role as a mentor, Wutich strives to create positive change by inspiring students to realize their full potential.