Celebrating Amy Starecheski's Lenfest Award

We are proud to share that Amy Starecheski, Director of our Oral History Master of Arts Program (OHMA), has been awarded a Lenfest Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award.

Each year, this award recognizes the excellence of faculty as teachers and mentors of both undergraduate and graduate students inside and outside of the classroom. This award is an opportunity for the broader Columbia community to recognize Amy as we do—a talented teacher, mentor, and beacon in our community.

You may know Amy from one of her many transformative leadership roles in oral history, including Director of OHMA since 2019 and President of the Oral History Association (OHA) from 2021-2022.

As a leader, Amy has pushed oral history toward social justice, critical inquiry, and action against structural inequality. For example, Amy served as Co-Principal Investigator of an NEH grant to the OHA that aimed to provide fellowships to oral historians from historically marginalized communities and to fund research into the history and structure of the field. Between her organizational leadership, thought leadership, and practice, Amy is deeply respected for her contributions.

Despite her stature in the field, Amy is known to her students as an incredibly generous, dedicated, and inspiring mentor. Her intentionality shines through everything she does as a teacher—from her thoughtful syllabus design, to her creation of a classroom environment that is at once challenging and supportive, to the remarkably thoughtful feedback she provides to each student. Owing to her skill, Amy is regularly asked to teach in settings beyond OHMA.

Amy wears many hats at OHMA, including teaching the program’s fieldwork class, leading the internship program, developing orientation programming, and leading the thesis process. Remarkably, she also personally advises several theses per year. On top of that, Amy serves as the academic advisor for all OHMA students and career advisor for all alumni. Students and alumni find a champion in Amy, who takes care to understand their goals, furthers their growth, and connects them with opportunities.

If you have not had the pleasure of being taught by Amy, we recommend you check out the OHMA events calendar. Under Amy’s leadership, OHMA has developed a robust public programming series that attracts hundreds of attendees per year. Speakers include practitioners, activists, artists, alumni and others from the community Amy has cultivated (and on particularly lucky days, Amy herself).

We congratulate Amy on this well-deserved recognition and thank her for her commitment and inspiration.