Petroni, a Deloitte & Touche/Michael Licata Endowed Professor of Accounting, returned to MSU 21 years ago, and Tuesday night she was one of 10 professors to receive a Distinguished Faculty Award during the MSU Awards Convocation 2011.

The awards are presented annually to faculty who display a sustained record of scholarly excellence in research or creative activities, instruction and outreach.

President Lou Anna K. Simon presented recipients of the award with certificates and a $3,000 stipend.

“Behind me are the stories we’re going to tell that make (this university) special,” Simon said during the ceremony.

The other nine recipients of the award included Adesoji Adelaja, William Atchison, James Galligan, Erik Goodman, Venkatesh Kodur, Timothy Levine, Robert Pennock, Ann Marie Ryan and Harold Schock.

Goodman also was an undergraduate student at MSU when he started working in the field he was honored for Tuesday. Goodman, director of the BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action, was a junior in the 1960s when he first was introduced to computers, he said.

Now, he uses them to study evolution both in nature and digital organisms, he said.

Since Goodman’s work involves collaborating with scholars in departments including engineering and biology, he values the multidisciplinary spirit that MSU fosters among its faculty, he said.

“One of the things MSU really facilitates is collaboration across disciplines,” Goodman said. “I’ve heard complaints at other places that it’s difficult to work on multidisciplinary things because there are no rewards for people that do that.”

Ryan said she also values the diversity of the research on campus. As a professor of organizational psychology, she’s been able to work with companies as large as Google, Procter & Gamble Co. and Ford Motor Co. doing studies about fairness in hiring practices and diversity in the workplace.

Ryan said she was surprised and humbled when she learned she had earned one of the awards.

“There’s so many great people at MSU doing fantastic research across campus,” Ryan said. “I wish I had time to do more of it.”

Other awards, such as Teacher-Scholar Awards and Distinguished Academic Staff Awards, also were presented at the convocation.

After both winning Teacher-Scholar Awards, Eric Aronoff, assistant professor in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, and Yael Aronoff, assistant professor of international relations, became the first married couple to win the award simultaneously, Yael Aronoff said.

“Either of us would have been happy for each other, but when we found out that we were both getting it, of course it was especially exciting,” she said.

And for Petroni, the connection she made with MSU as an undergraduate continues to influence her work as a faculty member, she said.

“It’s really kind of strange because my office is right next door to professors I’ve had as an undergraduate,” Petroni said. “It’s kind of like returning home.”