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The Becky Houck Award for Excellence in Advising presented to Dr. Martin Monto at All-College Celebration, February 24, 2016

“This annual Award is named in honor of our beloved CAS faculty colleague, Becky Houck. The Award honors and recognizes an individual who has committed a large part of his or her faculty work to mentoring and advising students — something that doesn’t typically show up on a vitae.   Like past recipients, this year’s award winner exemplifies Becky’s indefatigable spirit and love for helping prepare undergraduate students to live a life of integrity, compassion, and service. Please join me in congratulating Dr. Martin Monto of the Sociology Department as this year’s Becky Houck Award recipient.

Several former students note:

“Dr. Monto helps students find direction and often assists them to creatively pursue double majors or to customize their programs to individual goals and interests. “

“His creativity in advising serves the mission of the University in developing the whole person, which is only successful if we take the time to learn their individual goals and needs. In this regard, Dr. Monto is a rock star.”

“I transferred into the major late from Engineering. Not only did Dr. Monto help me to draw up a plan of classes to help me graduate on time, he also made it possible for me to add a minor in Education and take extra classes my senior year!   After I graduated, my sister (then a sophomore at UP) was having difficulty scheduling classes without much assistance from her assigned advisor. All it took was a single email to Dr. Monto and he immediately took my sister under his supervision as an academic advisor. Professor Monto eased much of my sister’s stress and she actually graduated on time.”

Over the last many years Martin has been a long-term mentor on advising issues for other faculty members in his own department, in CAS, and across the university. Here are several peer comments:

“I regularly discuss advising issues with Monto and routinely solicit his advice on how to best help and mentor students during advising sessions.   . . . I have worked with him to become a better advisor using methods that he has developed over the past two decades.”

“Several years ago, Martin served on the College’s first Advising Consortium. As a member of the consortium, he took an active role in building the initial advising website for the College of Arts and Sciences. He also helped to design and lead an early session focused on advising at the University of Portland on Faculty Development Day. “Dr. Monto has spearheaded several surveys of graduating seniors, each time taking the data received seriously and implementing changes [to the major that would] that help students improve internship experiences and better prepare them for graduate studies.

Martin has been a faculty model in helping further develop the advisor’s role from “course scheduler” to “mentor” or even “life coach.” In his role as mentor to undergraduates, Martin’s good influence reaches beyond simple scheduling and career advice, as he has also sponsored undergraduate research, even publishing an award-winning article with a former student, for which he received the Hugo Beigel Award for Scholarly Excellence for the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.

An extension of Martin’s advising / mentoring role to students is clearly evident in his taking the lead on the Green Dot initiative, a university-wide mentoring effort to educate students about violence. Through traditional and non-traditional advising, Martin’s efforts as a respected faculty advisor to students inspires students to live the kind of life of service to one another that represents the highest goal of the College’s educational mission.

I am very pleased to present this year’s 2016 Becky Houck Award for Excellence in Advising to Dr. Martin Monto.”

-Dean Micheal F. Andrews