Serving with Sincerity: USU English Professor Receives 2021 Faculty University Service Award

As the state’s land-grant institution, Utah State University is tasked to focus its efforts in the areas of teaching, research and service. And while Distinguished Professor of English Joyce Kinkead is known for her excellence in all three areas, this year, she has been honored with the 2021 Faculty University Service Award.

Kinkead’s notable career has seen her play many roles. One she is known best for includes her time overseeing the undergraduate research program from 2000-2011, as the associate vice president for research. Kinkead brought about many advances in the program, including Research on Capitol Hill, an annual event where USU and University of Utah students present their research to Utah policymakers.

Recognized nationally and locally as a teacher and researcher, Kinkead has never forgotten the responsibility and opportunity to serve USU. She follows a philosophy of servant leadership, the main goals of which are to build better organizations, enrich individual lives and create a more caring world.

“I have had a number of opportunities to be involved in service while here at the university – and that’s the best word to describe it – opportunities,” Kinkead said.

Kinkead’s selfless dedication to helping others allows her to share in the many successes of both her colleagues and her students. As a first-generation student herself, enriching the student experience and supporting students has been important to her work, illustrated when she has given her time to conduct pre-med interviews and mentor Truman Scholar applicants, or in working to create university-wide programs such as Undergraduate Teaching Fellows, Writing Fellows and Undergraduate Research Fellows. Kinkead’s efforts in these areas have prepared both faculty and students for prestigious scholarships and awards. As a result, the university has seen an increase in Carnegie/CASE Professor of the Year Awards and Goldwater, Truman, Fulbright, Rhodes and other awards.

“Joyce is remarkable and unique in terms of the amount that she has given back to both students and colleagues,” said Jeannie Thomas, former head of the Department of English. “She is truly an academic star, yet she is the only one among the many academic stars I’ve known who uses her star power so generously to support and lift the students and colleagues around her.”

When she was hired at USU in 1982, Kinkead became involved in campus life and has since served on or chaired numerous committees. In fact, it was the appointment to serve on a committee on writing during her first year on campus –which she saw as a welcome opportunity to meet colleagues from different areas of study – that would influence both the trajectory of her career and her impact on the campus community.

Kinkead realized that serving on committees would not only allow her to form beneficial relationships, but would also lead her to truly become part of the Aggie community. Since then, she has made continued efforts to volunteer in all aspects of university life. Kinkead’s experience on dozens of committees in her nearly 40 years at USU has provided her opportunities to better the institution at all levels, from the administration to the students.

Her sentiment on service is at the core of what she believes improves the university. When asked at a Research Office function for Doctoral Student Fellows for one piece of advice she would offer to these future faculty, it took only a minute for her response.

“Serve on committees,” Kinkead said. “They will provide networking opportunities, build relationships and improve the institution. I stand by that advice. It has served me well.”

An English professor, Kinkead believes that stories are important. Her career is based on stories, and she said she could have never predicted that service on committees would involve their own fascinating stories. In 2020, Kinkead was invited to co-chair the university’s Year of the Woman initiative by President Noelle Cockett. The initiative recognized the significant voting rights anniversaries of 1870, 1920 and 1965, and allowed Kinkead, with the help of an undergraduate research student, to unearth a multitude of stories about Aggie women over its 130 years of history. She relished uncovering and recovering stories about women such as Vendla Berntson, the first student to enroll in the Agricultural College of Utah (now USU) in 1890, and Aggie Mignon Barker Richmond, the first African-American woman to graduate from a college in Utah.

The Year of the Woman included dozens of projects throughout the university system funded by grants dedicated to the initiative. A website was created, and more than 70 events were produced or scheduled. Permanent signage on USU buildings, now named in honor of USU women from the past, was also overseen by Kinkead and her efforts.

“Joyce’s amazing contribution to the Year of the Woman celebration has been the capstone of her service that will leave a lasting legacy to Utah State University,” said Sydney Peterson, co-chair of Year of the Woman and secretary of the Board of Trustees and the Utah State University Foundation Board. “Over a highly productive and successful 40-year career, she has helped make USU a better place. I cannot think of anyone more deserving of receiving the Faculty University Service Award for 2021.”

Kinkead has received multiple fellowships and awards during her time at USU. In 2018, she received the D. Wynne Thorne Career Research Award, the university’s highest research honor, and was also named a Distinguished Professor by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. In 2013, she was designated as the Researcher of the Year by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of English. That same year, she was named the Utah Professor of the Year by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education and Carnegie Foundation. She initiated USU’s nominations for the Carnegie Professor award in 1995. Since then, 14 Utah State professors have been honored. She is also a fellow for the Council on Undergraduate Research, the first and only humanist to receive the prestigious fellowship.

After receiving a master’s in English from the University of Central Missouri, Kinkead went on to earn a doctorate from Texas A&M, with emphases in composition and rhetoric and American literature. Before coming to Utah State in 1982, she was an assistant professor of English at Pittsburg State University in Kansas.

As for service, Kinkead said a university is like a little city and that the people among that little city have a responsibility as citizens to make sure they are involved and participating.

“It would be so easy to sit in our silos and do our jobs of teaching and research,” Kinkead said. “But it’s really incumbent on faculty to get out there and serve, and USU faculty do that in spades.”