Timothy Luke wins American Political Science Association's career achievement award
The American Political Science Association recently honored Virginia Tech’s Timothy Luke with its 2014 career achievement award, recognizing him for a long and successful career as a writer, teacher, and activist.
Luke, University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and chair of the Department of Political Science, in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, received the Charles A. McCoy Career Achievement Award at the national organization’s annual meeting in August in Washington, D.C.
The award is presented annually by ASPA’s New Political Science Section, founded in 1992 to help make the study of politics more relevant. Since its first presentation in 2001, the award has gone to distinguished academicians at a wide range of institutions, including Dartmouth College, Rutgers University, Bryn Mawr College, and New York University.
A Virginia Tech faculty member since 1981, Luke was instrumental in establishing the university’s doctoral program in Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought. The interdisciplinary program encourages critical engagement among the social sciences, humanities, and arts.
Luke also serves the university as program chair and graduate director for government and international affairs in the School of Public and International Affairs in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies, and director of the governance and globalization track in its Planning, Governance, and Globalization doctoral program.
The key organizer of the Virginia Tech Cyberschool and founder of the Center for Digital Discourse and Culture, he created the nation’s first entirely online Master of Arts degree program in political science. He served as executive director of the Institute for Distance and Distributed Learning, where he helped develop its VTOnline interface, a new instructional funding model, and organizational practices that now anchor many eLearning programs in Technology-enhanced Learning and Online Strategies.
His research interests include environmental policy and green politics; governance and globalization; modern political and social theory; politics of information society; and public culture. He teaches courses in the history of political thought, contemporary political theory, and comparative and international politics.
Luke is a member of the university’s Academy of Teaching Excellence, having been awarded the William E. Wine Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching. He also has won the XCaliber Award, presented annually by Technology-enhanced Learning and Online Strategies, the E-Learning Design Award from the Online Academy at the University of Kansas, and three certificates for outstanding teaching in political science from Pi Sigma Alpha, APSA’s national honor society.
Luke has written or co-authored 13 books and has contributed scores of book chapters and sections. He has been published in a broad range of scholarly journals in the fields of political science, sociology, geography, international affairs, cultural studies, and critical theory.
This work is the basis for his recognition as a significant figure in North American critical theory circles with scholars at the University of California, Los Angeles, The New School in New York, University of Texas, Harvard University, and London School of Economics. He co-edited a book on the 2007 Virginia Tech tragedy and is the book line editor for Telos Press Publications, which publishes works on European and North American critical theory.
A frequent speaker at regional, national, and international conferences, Luke is active in the American Political Science Association, International Studies Association, and Western Political Science Association, for which he helped launch the Environmental Political Theory Section in 2002.
Luke holds a Ph.D. and a master's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, and a master's degree and bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona.
