ARHU Professor and Dean Emerita Bonnie Thornton Dill Awarded 2025 UMD President’s Medal

The pioneering feminist scholar receives the highest honor bestowed upon a member of the UMD community at Convocation on September 17.

With groundbreaking research linking gender, poverty, race and other areas of inequality, Bonnie Thornton Dill has reimagined the field of women’s studies at the University of Maryland and across the nation. In the process, she transformed the College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) through her visionary leadership, her persistence in diversifying the faculty and her focus on expanding the reach of the arts and humanities on campus. 

“The entire university community has richly benefited from Thornton Dill’s groundbreaking work in her more than 35 years at UMD,” says ARHU Dean Stephanie Shonekan. “She personifies the guiding principles of the University of Maryland—her work is driven by a quest for values-based excellence; it advances, proudly and boldly, the university’s commitments to diversity, inclusion, equity and access; impact and innovation have followed her career at every turn. She is entirely generous and collaborative and her work and life contribute mightily to the public good and the advancement of humanity.”

A pioneering scholar in the areas of Black and intersectional feminism, Thornton Dill arrived at the University of Maryland as a tenured professor in what is now the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS). “Her central role in guiding debates about power and inequality in women’s studies has affected the thinking of multiple generations of students and scholars … through foundational research articles,” say Professor and Chair Neda Atanasoski, Distinguished University Professor Ruth Enid Zambrana, and Professor Neel Ahuja, all of WGSS. 

In 2011, Thornton Dill became dean of ARHU, a role she held for 11 years. In this position, she oversaw 14 academic units, 700 faculty members and 200 staffers. She worked diligently to hire diverse, outstanding educators, scholars and artists, and championed their research and creative productivity. 

Thornton Dill has a career-long record of securing field-defining grants. As Dean, she was instrumental in securing a $2.8 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to create the African American History, Culture, and Digital Humanities initiative. She is also co-P.I. on a $3.5 million Mellon Foundation grant for Breaking the M.O.L.D. (Mellon/Maryland Opportunities for Leadership Development), which provides senior leadership training to faculty in the arts and humanities at UMD as well as the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Morgan State University.

In addition, she played a key role in creating and launching ARHU’s Arts for All initiative, an influential cross-campus effort uniting the university’s strengths in the arts, technology and social justice. 

Thornton Dill has served the broader university on many committees, including searches for senior leadership, campus-wide diversity and strategic planning initiatives, the Provost’s Task Force on Arts initiatives, and the President’s Commission on Community Policing. She was also a leader in the establishment of Frederick Douglass Square on campus.

“Her legacy is not only one of personal achievement, but of structural transformation—of building pathways, programs and policies that have empowered faculty, staff and students across the institution,” says Jordana Moore Saggese, professor of modern and contemporary art of the United States and director of the David C. Driskell Center.

Thornton Dill earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Rochester, and a master’s degree in human relations and Ph.D. in sociology from New York University. 

She “has been a true friend to many, building meaningful relationships with students, faculty and staff,” says Psyche Williams-Forson, professor and former chair of American Studies. “Her legacy is one of compassion, kindness and unwavering support for those around her. Undoubtedly, her contributions have made a lasting impact on this institution, and her legacy will continue to inspire generations of students, faculty and staff.” 

Photo by John T. Consoli