News

Julie Zimmerman Holt, Ph.D., has been named the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville 2014 Paul Simon Outstanding Teacher-Scholar Award recipient. Holt is a professor in the Department of

Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences.

The highly competitive award is given annually to a faculty member who has a proven record of combining scholarship and teaching. It emphasizes SIUE’s commitment to the prospect that faculty members must be good scholars in order to be good teachers.

Holt is being honored for contributing to original research and creative activities, while integrating those contributions with her teaching practices. She has consistently demonstrated that these two aspects of the teacher-scholar model, which are linked in her publishing, her leadership of the SIUE archaeological field school and collaboration with students.

“Throughout her career at SIUE, Julie has remained highly active in all aspects of research, from original data collection and analysis to procuring funding, to disseminating her work in diverse venues,” said Jennifer Rehg, Ph.D., and chair of the Department of Anthropology. “Her students have been involved in or benefitted from every component of these activities. Not only has she maintained an active research agenda, but her contributions also have expanded in scope to address fundamental theoretical perspectives in her field.”

The Barnhart, Mo. native achieved a bachelor’s in anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis before earning both a master’s and a doctorate in anthropology from New York University. She studied European archaeology for a year before deciding Midwestern archaeology was more interesting.

“I love teaching and working with students, who are mostly from the area where I grew up,” said Holt, who joined the SIUE faculty in 2000. “I am interested in the prehistory of Western Illinois, particularly the American Bottom, the portion of the Mississippi River Valley that stretches from Alton to Chester, and the Illinois Valley.”

“I have observed that Dr. Holt has a particularly close relationship with students,” said Distinguished Research Professor Richard B. Brugam. “She also is a fine scholar doing ground-breaking work on pre-Columbian society in the American Bottoms.”

Kathryn Chapman is one of Holt’s many former students who have expressed appreciation for the professor’s impact on their education and careers. “Dr. Holt is an exemplary educator and continues to seek answer to questions within the field of archaeology,” Chapman said. “Her published works are useful to archaeology students. Her continued participation within the field has kept her well-informed and a great example of the professionalism her students should emulate.”

Holt’s specialty is zoo archaeology, specifically the archaeology of animal remains. “Animal remains obviously give information about the environment and human diet in prehistory,” she said. “However, they also can tell us about prehistoric socioeconomies and ancient belief systems.”

Cory Willmott, Ph.D., associate professor in the SIUE Department of Anthropology commented on her colleague’s contributions to the field of anthropology, noting, “Her article on pioneering methodology in zoo archeology was translated into Chinese and published in China by a curator at the National Museum of China. This shows that her scholarship transcends her topic specialization and contributes to the discipline as a whole.

“In addition, Dr. Holt made a major contribution to archaeological theory in her celebrated paper on Cahokia as a theater state. By thinking holistically through cultural anthropology theory, she cast a fresh new light on an old topic.”

Holt’s 2009 article, “Rethinking the Ramey State: Was Cahokia the Center of a Theater State,” was published in American Antiquity, one of archaeology’s preeminent journals.

A the time of her nomination for the Simon award, Holt had presented papers at conferences 18 times since 2000 and had been published 16 times in major archaeology journals or books, including American Antiquity, World Archaeology, Illinois Archaeology, Illinois Antiquity and Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology.

During 2010, Holt led a team of SIUE faculty to gain a National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation Grant, which included members of SIUE’s anthropology, biological sciences and chemistry departments. She was part of a team of investigators that, from 2008-2009, received an SIUE Multidisciplinary Research Team Grant. That same year, she received an SIUE University Research Grant.

Photo: SIUE’s Julie Zimmerman Holt at the archeological dig on campus.