History professor receives International Impact Award

Kathleen Donohue, Ph. D., a professor in the History, World Languages, and Cultures Department, received the International Impact Award. This award recognizes faculty who go above and beyond what is expected of individuals in engaging at the international level with teaching, scholarly activity, or service.  

In her time at CMU, Donohue has expanded partnerships, created study abroad opportunities, and organized international conferences. She was also recently invited to serve as the keynote speaker at the German Association for American Studies-Political Science Conference.  

Donohue’s faculty exchange experiences brought on the German institutions’, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität and Ruhr-Universität-Bochum, as university partners. Donohue also set out to fill a missing gap in university partnerships by finding a French partner. She spent weeks traveling across Europe evaluating several potential partnerships and brought on Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès. She has also recruited CMU faculty to spend time teaching and speaking at partner institutions, with half of the history faculty participating.  

Over her time at CMU, Donohue has organized a conference titled “From Watergate to Wikileaks” in Germany and brought together many American scholars and journalists. Donohue also created the International Graduate Historical Graduate Studies Conference which drew students from all over the world.  

Currently, Donohue serves on the Study Abroad committee and is working on a new initiative called the Study Abroad Summer Sequence to allow history students (graduate and undergraduate) three faculty-led study abroad courses within a single summer. In summer 2023, Donohue says, “I will be taking a group of CMU students to Germany on a faculty-led, study-abroad course, where they will spend three weeks in Frankfurt, Jena, and Berlin, immersing themselves in the history of Germany during the Cold War, when the nation was divided into a communist east and a capitalist west.” 

This story is brought to you by the  Office of Research and Graduate Studies.