PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 21, No. 7, Oct. 4, 2001

Campus recognizes achievements for international affairs
By Melissa Mitchell News Bureau Staff Writer
(217) 333 -5491; melissa@illinois.edu

Photo by Bill Wiegand International Honors Mariana Tax Choldin, the C. Walter and Gerda B. Mortenson Distinguished Professor of International Library Programs, received the campus's first Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement.

A UI alumna and UI faculty member are the recipients of new awards established by the campus to recognize outstanding achievements in international affairs.

Nobuko Matsubara, the president of the Japan Association for Employment of Persons With Disabilities, is the recipient of the inaugural Madhuri and Jagdish N. Sheth International Alumni Award for Exceptional Achievement. She was honored during an awards ceremony on campus Sept. 12.

Also honored was Marianna Tax Choldin, the C. Walter and Gerda B. Mortenson Distinguished Professor of International Library Programs, who received the campus’s first Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement.

The Sheth award recognizes alumni who were citizens of another country at the time of their enrollment at the UI, and who have achieved international or national prominence in business, government, academia and other fields. The award is made possible through a gift from the Sheths, longtime friends of the university who came to the community in 1969 when Jagdish joined the marketing faculty in the College of Commerce and Business Administration. The Sheths, who moved from the area in 1983, now live in Atlanta, where Jagdish is the Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing at Emory University.

Matsubara graduated from Tokyo University in 1964 and that same year became a civil servant in the Ministry of Labor in Japan. She earned a master’s degree in labor and industrial science from the UI in 1969.

Returning to the Ministry of Labor, she gradually rose through the ranks to become director-general of the Women’s Bureau in the Ministry. In 1995, Matsubara was named director-general of the Labor Standards Bureau within the Ministry. Her next promotion within the Ministry, in 1996, was to the position of director-general of the Labor Relations Bureau. In 1997, she was promoted to the prestigious post of administrative vice minister of labor. With the 2000 merger of the Health and Labor ministries, Matsubara assumed her current position.

Considered a pioneer for her efforts to promote the advancement of women in her country, Matsubara also has been applauded for her own ability to shatter the glass ceiling that had long been in place in the realm of government and civil service.

Choldin is a longtime UI professor respected for her teaching, research and service in international affairs in library matters. She joined the faculty of the Slavic and East European Library in 1969, and directed the library from 1982 to 1989.

Known for her research on censorship in Russia, the Soviet Union and the post-Communist World, Choldin has written some 30 articles and book chapters, and is the author or editor of five books on censorship, intellectual freedom and Slavic and East European Studies. Among them is her 1985 book, "A Fence Around the Empire: Russian Censorship of Western Ideas Under the Tsars." She has received numerous awards and honors for her scholarship; most notably, the Pushkin Gold Medal for Contributions to Culture, awarded in 2000 by the Government of the Russian Federation. Choldin is one of only three recipients of the award.

Choldin became the founding director of the Mortenson Center for International Library Programs in 1991; the center seeks to strengthen international ties among libraries and librarians, regardless of geographic location or access to technology.