President of Chicago Distribution Receives Award for Service to Scholarly Publishing
NEW YORK, NY—The Association of American University Presses (AAUP) is proud to announce that Don Collins, President, Chicago Distribution Services at the University of Chicago Press, is the recipient of the 2011 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.
The award was announced in Baltimore at the 2011 AAUP Annual Meeting. Greg Britton, Editorial Director, Johns Hopkins University Press, presented the award, describing Collins as “enormously generous and wise, persistent and inventive, determined and boundlessly energetic.” In his nomination letters, Collins was also recognized for his improvement on best business practices, his encouragement of inter-press cooperation, his understanding and leadership in digital publishing, and his generosity as a mentor both for colleagues and for smaller presses.
Collins has been at the University of Chicago Press for 25 years, but his university publishing career stretches back even further. In 1969, he began at University of Texas Press as Assistant Business Manager. From there, he moved to the fledgling Texas A&M University Press, where he stayed for ten years before moving north to Chicago. While at Chicago, Collins began the distribution business that has now grown to include close to 100 academic and university press clients.
Collins’s long commitment to the AAUP is equally expansive. He gave his first Annual Meeting presentation in 1975, and has been part of the program almost every year since. Collins was also one of the founders and developers of the popular AAUP “Finances for Non-Financial People” workshops. He has served on several AAUP committees (Business Systems, Nominating, and Annual Meeting), as well as on the Board of Directors as Treasurer Elect and Treasurer from 1989-1991.
Recent winners of the AAUP Constituency Award include Will Powers, Minnesota Historical Society Press (2010); Tony Crouch, University of California Press (2009); Robbie Dircks, University of North Carolina Press (2008); and Paul Murphy, RAND Corporation (2007).
Read more about the history of the Constituency Award and see its complete Honor Roll.