Two faculty members honored with Dickson Emeriti Professorship Awards

Dickson recipients with Chancellor Blumenthal
Lewis Watts, left, and Chip Lord, right, with Chancellor George Blumenthal, center. (Photo by Carolyn Lagattuta)

Two UCSC faculty members have been honored with emeriti professorships for the 2016–17 academic year.

Chip Lord, professor emeritus of film and digital media, and Lewis Watts, professor emeritus of art, were each awarded Edward A. Dickson Emeriti Professorships in recognition of their outstanding achievements in scholarship and teaching.

The awards are given annually and funded by an endowment from the estate of former UC Regent Edward A. Dickson. The professorships make it possible for the university to retain the invaluable services of highly accomplished, retired faculty members for the benefit of its students.

Lord came to UCSC in 1988 and was chair of the Film and Digital Media Department from 2003–07. He retired in 2010. Prior to joining UC Santa Cruz, he was a member of the Ant Farm, a groundbreaking, experimental art and architecture collective he founded in 1968 with fellow architect Doug Michels.

Watts joined UC Santa Cruz in 2001 after spending 25 years at UC Berkeley. His research and artwork center on the photography of African American cultural landscapes, where people live, how they occupy and use space, and the traces they leave behind.