By Bri Brands 

Teresa Mangum, professor emeritus in the Department of English and the Department of Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies (GWSS), is the 2025 recipient of the Francis March Award from the Association of Departments of English (ADE), a part of the Modern Language Association Academic Program Services (MAPS). 

The Francis March Award is granted to individuals as a recognition of their contribution to English studies. Awardees are recognized for their reputation in the field, their efforts to support English and the humanities, and their contributions to strengthening the professional community. 

Mangum said she was genuinely stunned to have won the award.  

"This award is unusual because it's focused not just on your scholarly accomplishments, but also the way that, locally and nationally, you're understood to be a transformational leader, " Mangum said. "It just took my breath away that I would get this particular award." 

After earning her PhD from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Mangum taught at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI for two years before joining the English faculty at the University of Iowa in 1990.  

She also has a dual appointment with the Department of Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies, and has served as Interim Associate Dean of International Studies, and director of the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. 

What sets Mangum apart from some humanities scholars, she said, are her interests in collaboration, cross-disciplinary subjects, and public scholarship.  

Mangum turned her interest in how people and animals connect into an English class project that helped the local animal shelter. Working with the director of the animal shelter, Mangum designed a course that taught students about literature by telling the animal's stories. That class received an award from the Humane Society of the United States. 

"Students would write short autobiographies of each dog they walked, and within two weeks, adoption rates [in that shelter] went up 30 percent," Mangum said. "People would read these adorable little stories where students had to think about plot, character, and animal emotions." 

Mangum's work is driven by innovative, collaborative, community-based forms of teaching and research, she said. 

"I try to see places where my fascination with literature, and how literature and the arts work together, and where that scholarly interest can intersect with public issues," she said. 

Mangum is the first Department of English faculty member to earn this accolade in almost 40 years. Other awardees include former department chairs John C. Gerber and Richard Lloyd-Jones in 1984 and 1987, respectively.  

Though Gerber and Lloyd-Jones had retired by the time Mangum joined the faculty, she is grateful for their contributions to the characteristics and culture of the English department. 

"This department is legendary for being one of the most congenial and supportive departments in the country," Mangum said. "There's a kind of ethos in the department that people like Professor Gerber and Professor Lloyd-Jones contributed to that every chair in the English department has maintained, and it's made it a pleasure to be in the department."