When receiving awards, SF State history professor Paul Longmore is never sure how to react.
But in 2006, Longmore is just one of five candidates throughout the California State University system who has been selected to receive the prestigious Wang Family Excellence Award.

According to Cal Poly Pomona’s Faculty Affairs Web site, The Wang (pronounced “wong”) Family Excellence Award was “established in 1998 to recognize and celebrate those CSU faculty and administrators who, through extraordinary commitment and dedication, have distinguished themselves by exemplary contributions and achievements in their academic disciplines or appropriate areas of university assignment.”

Although every campus is allowed five nominees each year, Longmore was the only one nominated by SF State. He will be presented the award at the CSU Trustees’ meeting May 16.

“I’m really honored to think the university would nominate me. It’s very flattering,” said Longmore, who has been teaching history at SF State for 13 years. He is also the director of SF State’s Institute of Disability, which he said is the only department of its kind in the world.

Winners of the Wang Family Excellence Award get a one-time $20,000 prize. Besides the cash, Longmore said he mostly gets recognition since very few of these awards are given out.

But according to Marilyn Verhey, dean of faculty affairs, recognition is not something Longmore gives much importance to.

“He’s the most down to earth, witty, un-assuming person,” said Verhey, who was partially responsible for Longmore’s nomination.

Verhey added that she is excited and happy Longmore has been selected to receive the Wang award, but is not surprised at all because Longmore fits all of the criteria of the award.

She said Longmore has made “absolutely outstanding achievement in all three areas of faculty work: teaching, being a scholar, and service to the campus and community.”

Verhey credits Longmore for inventing the field of disability studies through Institute of Disability. According to the Institute of Disability Web site, the Institute “promotes interdisciplinary education, training, research and service in disability-related areas. The Institute develops partnerships with programs that serve the disability community on the campus, locally and statewide, nationally and internationally.”

Longmore has written many books relating to the disability field, analyzing disability in the social and cultural context and also explains the history of disabilities.

“Very few courses in the world exist that deal with the history of disability,” Longmore said.
Longmore and the Institute of Disability work very closely with SF State’s Disability Programs and Resource Center, the department that deals with physical accessibility issues for disabled people.

Working together, they make sure all individuals are provided “full and equal access.”

This access is personally important for Longmore, who has disability himself and rides a powered wheelchair. To Longmore, having a disability is the least of his problems.

“It doesn’t bother me at all. In fact, I’m proud about that.”