NEW YORK— The Association of American University Presses is proud to announce that Robbie Dircks, Associate Director and Chief Financial Officer of University of North Carolina Press, is the recipient of the 2008 AAUP Constituency Award. The award was established in 1991 to honor staff at member presses who have demonstrated active leadership and service to the Association and the university press community.
Dircks’s nomination was supported by a wide cross-section of his colleagues in the AAUP community, several of whom noted, in the words of one nomination letter, his ability to give “patient explanations of things we didn’t understand, delivered in such a way that we could understand them.” Presenting the Constituency Award at the AAUP Annual Meeting in Montréal, Douglas Armato, Director of University of Minnesota Press, described Dircks as an asset to the “official and unofficial cultures” of scholarly publishing, and said that “Robbie has been a source of counsel and advice on a wide range of problems and, when crisis isn’t looming, the person who would take the time to explain financial concepts or ways to make things work.”
Showing an uncommon level of dedication to the university press community, Dircks served on an AAUP committee or on the Board of Directors for ten consecutive years between 1997 and 2007. This has included a two-year term as AAUP Treasurer and membership on the nominating, business systems, and program committees. In this time Dircks has also led workshops on journals publishing and hosted the 2008 Financial Managers’ Meeting in Chapel Hill. He is the author of a paper on accounts receivable practices in the AAUP Business Handbook, and has worked as a consultant to several member presses.
Before joining University of North Carolina Press in 2002, Robbie Dircks spent seventeen years at the Johns Hopkins University Press, the last nine as Associate Director and CFO. Dircks received his B.A. from Loyola College and a Master of Administrative Science degree from Johns Hopkins University.
Recent winners of the AAUP Constituency Award include Paul Murphy, RAND Corporation (2007); Jennifer Crewe, Columbia University Press (2006); Susan Schott, University Press of Kansas (2005); and Patrick Carroll, Princeton University Press (2004).
Read more about the history of the Constituency Award and see its complete Honor Roll.