Top Notch

Professor Hemanth Gundavaram, associate dean for academic and faculty affairs and director of Northeastern Law’s Immigrant Justice Clinic, received the university’s 2025 John Portz Faculty Excellence Award in May. The award, presented annually by students in the John Martinson Honors Program, recognizes exceptional teaching, mentorship and impact on the honors community. It is named for John Portz, a longtime Northeastern faculty member and former director of the university honors program. Through his immigration studio course, part of the Inside the Honors Studio series, Gundavaram mentors undergraduate honors students as they build legal skills while contributing directly to real-world asylum cases.