Dr. Melinda Gann Hall receives Lifetime Achievement Award, emerita status

May 21, 2024 - Karessa Weir

Political Science Professor Melinda Gann Hall is receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association this fall, on the heels of attaining Professor Emerita status at Michigan State University. 

She also is among the select group of faculty at MSU who have received the Distinguished Faculty Award and is the recipient of the 2016 Career Achievement Award from the State Politics and Policy Section of the American Political Science Association. 

Hall is a nationally recognized authority on judicial politics and state politics, with particular interests in state supreme courts and judicial elections.  Among numerous other awards for her research, Hall’s book, Attacking Judges: How Campaign Advertising Influences State Supreme Court Elections, won the 2015 C. Herman Pritchett Award for best book from the Law and Courts Section of the APSA. She also has received several major grants from the National Science Foundation and earned a highly coveted Fulbright Distinguished Chair (the Fulbright Scotland Visiting Professorship) in 2017. 

“We’re so excited that Melinda’s unmatched contributions to the field have been recognized with this well-deserved award. She is a key reason why MSU Political Science has had—and will continue to have—such a strong reputation as a top program for research on and teaching about Public Law,” said PLS Chair Dr. Jeffrey Conroy-Krutz. 

 

Hall joined the faculty at MSU in 1996 and served in many capacities, including Director of Graduate Studies and mentor for the Political Science Scholars program. She was also founder and first coordinator of the Pre-Law Mentoring Program, sponsored by the College of Law and the College of Social Science. This program began at the college level in 2015 but was expanded to the entire university in 2018. She retired at the end of Spring Semester 2024.