PULLMAN, Wash. – Robert Ackerman will receive the 2016 Washington State University Emeritus Society Legacy of Excellence Award and deliver the associated address, “Digging in Alaska and Beyond,” followed by a reception, at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, March 23, in Todd 120.
He will be among those honored during WSU’s annual Showcase Celebrating Excellence Recognition Banquet on Friday, March 25. Reservations for the banquet are being accepted through March 18 at the Showcase website at http://formtool.wsu.edu/events/Signup/index.castle?formid=1.
The award is given for sustained contributions to academia, continued service to the university, community and mankind, and personal accomplishments in retirement that serve as a role model for other retirees. Learn more about the award, including past winners, at https://emeritussociety.wsu.edu/legacy-of-excellence-award/.
Ackerman joined the WSU Pullman faculty after completing his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1961 and served until his retirement in 2007. His career included anthropological research in Russia, Japan, Korea and China at Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic sites.
His studies focused on early evidence for the movement of hunter-gatherers into coastal and interior regions of northeast Asia and Alaska, late Pleistocene and early Holocene cultural adaptation, and further definition of the cultural phases of Arctic and subarctic prehistory.
Since his retirement, Ackerman has published seven articles, co-edited two published monographs and given presentations at the Alaska Anthropological Association and the American Anthropological Association. Learn more about him at http://libarts.wsu.edu/anthro/faculty/rackerman.html.
In addition to the banquet, Showcase includes the Distinguished Faculty Address (March 24), the Academic Showcase display of research, scholarship and creative work (March 25) and other events. Find a schedule at https://showcase.wsu.edu/schedule/.