Home >  John Rassias >

Grants and Honors

Selected Grants

  • Awarded grant from the EXXON Education Foundation for experimentation in language instruction (1968-70). Received a supplementary grant to continue research and to disseminate findings to the widest possible audience.
  • In 1975, invited to participate in the EXXON/IMPACT Program for dissemination of the intensive language model developed, described by EXXON as "an educational innovation of demonstrated merit." Under this grant fifty–eight colleges and universities sent representatives to Dartmouth over a three-year period to be trained in methodology and program design. Thirty-eight candidates were awarded seed money to implement the methods at their home institutions. The remaining twenty candidates established the program at their institutions without financial support from EXXON.
  • Awarded grant from the Sloan Foundation to develop a video language laboratory and a prototype series of videotapes for instruction in language and literature (1975-76).
  • Awarded grant (January 1980) from the EXXON Education Foundation to convoke all college and university teachers I had trained under their auspices for the purpose of organizing future efforts and dissemination tactics to reach as many college/university, high school and elementary schools as possible.
  • Awarded six-year grant by the Charles A. Dana Foundation to lead Dartmouth colleagues and Visiting Scholars from throughout the United States in a Collaborative \ effort to improve the instruction of language and culture, to codify cultural signs, and to develop computer-assisted and video materials. (1987-1992)
  • Awarded grant (1993-1998) from The New York Times Foundation, The Chase Manhattan Foundation, and The Francis Gould Foundation for work in French immersion language acquisition with the Frederick Douglass Academy. (New York City)
  • Awarded grant from Corporate and University Relations, CITIBANK, for seminar in francophone literature and teaching methodologies for Historically Black Colleges and Universities. (summer 1998)

Selected Honors

  • In 1968, Professor Rassias was selected by the Student Government at Dartmouth as the first Arthur Wilson Outstanding Teacher Award. In 1971, he was further honored as one of ten teachers in the United States to receive the E. Harris Harbison Award for Gifted Teaching by the Danforth Foundation. He has also been cited by the government of France with its Palmes Academiques for "originality in instruction and the success of the enterprise." (1978)
  • He received numerous awards for teaching, along with eight honorary doctoral degrees from the following: University of Bridgeport (Connecticut), Alma College (Michigan), Washington University (Missouri), Plymouth State College (New Hampshire), University of Detroit (Michigan), Hampden-Sydney (Virginia), Moravian College (Pennsylvania), and Pine Manor College (Massachusetts).
  • He received the Endowed Chair, William R. Kenan Professor (1977)
  • He was elected to honorary membership in the Alpha Chapter (Dartmouth College) of Phi Beta Kappa. (1990) He was a recipient of Dartmouth College's Inaugural President's Medal for Outstanding Leadership and Achievement in 1991. Also from Dartmouth, he received the Robert A. Fish Memorial Prize in Outstanding Teaching awarded by the Dean of the Faculty. (1997)
  • In 1978, Professor Rassias was the only language teacher appointed to President Jimmy Carter's Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies. He was a member of the team that authored the draft for the final report on language calling for the development of a national policy with guidelines for reviving foreign language study in the section entitled "No Longer Foreign; No Longer Alien," in the Report to the President, Strength Through Wisdom, November, 1979.
  • He was appointed (nationwide competition) to the Robert Foster Cherry Chair at Baylor University in their "Great Teachers Program," 1994. (Declined)
  • In 1994, he was appointed to the Commission of the Modern Language Association of America on the study of service in the profession. In 1995, he was also elected to the Division of the Teaching of Literature of the Modern Language Association, which he chaired in 1998.