Phi Beta Kappa chapter presents its first Excellence in Teaching Award to longtime FSU classics professor Nancy de Grummond

A Florida State University classics professor whose decades of archaeological work on a remote hilltop in Italy have greatly increased understanding of the ancient Etruscan culture is being recognized by one of her university’s premier honor societies.

Nancy Thomson de Grummond, the M. Lynette Thompson Professor of Classics, has been presented with the Excellence in Teaching Award by Alpha of Florida, the Florida State University chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. This is the first year that the honor society has given the award.

“As a student who has taken several courses with Professor de Grummond and worked with her on an undergraduate research project, I can personally say that she is committed to teaching,” said Robin Watson, a senior from St. Petersburg who is double-majoring in classical archaeology and philosophy. “Not only does she have an incredible grasp of the material, but she is able to communicate the ideas clearly and in a way that is understandable.

“When I think of Dr. de Grummond, I think of someone who is willing to go the extra mile when it comes to helping her students succeed,” said Watson, who also serves as Alpha of Florida’s student secretary. “She is a lovely person and truly a boon to FSU.”

De Grummond will receive the award in person at Alpha of Florida’s Fall 2010 initiation ceremony, scheduled for 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 5, at the FSU Alumni Center, 1030 W. Tennessee St. in Tallahassee. Florida State University President Eric J. Barron will speak at the ceremony; he and his wife, Molly Barron, will host a reception afterward at the President’s House next door.

De Grummond is a leading scholar on the religious practices of the Etruscans, a people whose culture profoundly influenced the ancient Romans and Greeks. Her book “Etruscan Myth, Sacred History, and Legend,” the first comprehensive account of Etruscan mythology, was published in 2006. She also co-wrote another book, “The Religion of the Etruscans,” with fellow Etruscan scholar Erika Simon; that book was published the same year.

Nearly every summer since 1983, de Grummond has taken groups of Florida State students into Italy’s Tuscany region to participate in archaeological digs at Cetamura del Chianti, a site once inhabited by the Etruscans and ancient Romans. She and her students have unearthed numerous artifacts that dramatically reshape current knowledge of the religious practices and daily lives of a long-gone people.

“The Etruscans are fascinating to me in part because they left so few clues behind,” de Grummond said in a 2006 interview. “We know a great deal about the ancient Greeks and Romans because so many of their texts were preserved. However, almost nothing of Etruscan literature has survived.

“For a classical scholar, this poses a wonderful challenge. Much of what we now know about these people comes from digging into the ground and making sense of bits and pieces of pottery and other artifacts.”

Click here and here to read previous stories about de Grummond’s archaeological digs at Cetamura.

Of the Excellence in Teaching Award, de Grummond was quick to shift the credit to her students, who she says have helped tremendously with her research.

“The six students currently in my undergraduate research group are volunteers who meet with me once a week to work on deciphering an Etruscan code writing — symbols referred to as sigla — that is little understood. These students all went to Cetamura with me last summer and studied the specimens I have excavated there of this type of writing. Then we attended a conference at the University of Milan, where they all gave papers.”

In February, the Department of Classics will host its annual Langford Seminar & Conference. This year’s conference will focus on the subject of writing in the ancient world and will headline de Grummond and her students’ research on Etruscan sigla. The researchers have also formed an alliance with David Gaitros, a research associate in the Department of Computer Science, who is helping them to develop a database.

“This is the real story, these phenomenal students who begged me to help with my research — and this is how it all ended up,” de Grummond said.

The six students she refers to are Alex Segers, who is writing his undergraduate honors thesis on the Etruscan pentaculum; Megan Murphy, who has just entered graduate school in Classics; and four other undergraduates, Jane Gagne, Robin Watson, Aaron Brown and Cassidy Phelps.

Alpha of Florida plans to honor an FSU faculty member with an Excellence in Teaching Award every year. The society’s student members plan to purchase a plaque that will hang in Strozier Library; each year, the name of another FSU faculty recipient will be inscribed.

Established in 1776, the Phi Beta Kappa Society is the nation’s oldest and most widely known academic honor society. Invitation to membership in Phi Beta Kappa is a reflection of outstanding achievement; the society currently has more than half a million members and chapters at 280 American colleges and universities.