 In 1998, Eck and Dorothy Austin became the first same-sex couple to be masters (now called faculty deans) of Lowell House, one of the twelve undergraduate residences at Harvard.In 1995, Eck was the recipient of the University of Louisville and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary Grawemeyer Award in Religion.In 1996, Prof. Eck was appointed to a U.S. State Department Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad, a twenty-member commission charged with advising the Secretary of State on enhancing and protecting religious freedom in the overall context of human rights.