IN THIS ISSUE: ENGINEERING | LAS | LIBRARY
engineering
John A. Katzenellenbogen, Swanlund professor of chemistry, will be awarded the 2008 Gustavus John Esselen Award for Chemistry in the Public Interest by the American Chemical Society on April 17 at Harvard University. The award honors Katzenellenbogen for his pioneering work in applying his studies of estrogen receptor structure to the diagnosis and treatment of certain cancers.
Scott R. White, professor of aeronautical engineering, has been honored with the Innovation Discovery Award for his work in self-healing materials technology. White was among 11 people recognized Feb. 27 during the annual Innovation Celebration that the Champaign County Economic Development Corp. and several UI groups sponsor. The awards are designed to encourage technological development in Champaign County.
liberal arts and sciences
Dennis Baron, professor of English and of linguistics, is the chief author of an amicus brief filed in support of the District of Columbia in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller. The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case March 18; a decision is expected later this spring. Last spring the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the district threw out the district’s gun- control law on the grounds that the Second Amendment bars gun control. The majority decision cited as part of its reasoning a linguistic argument interpreting the Second Amendment as precluding gun control. The brief, by Baron and two colleagues, “provides a linguistic analysis based on what the Second Amendment would have meant to the framers (and what it still means today),” Baron said.
An additional amicus brief before the court regarding the same case, contains work by David Bordua, professor emeritus of sociology. Two articles co-written by Bordua and two other sociologists dealt with statistical and logical problems in assessing causation in cases of policy intervention. The analysis refuted claims that a strict gun-control regime in the District of Columbia reduced murder rates.
Hua-Hua Chang, professor of psychology and of educational psychology, is a joint winner of the 2008 National Council on Measurement in Education award for an Outstanding Example of Application of Educational Measurement Technology to a Specific Problem. The problem tackled was to identify a design flaw in the computerized testing system that failed to generate reliable scores for thousands of GRE and GMAT test takers from 2000-2003. The award ceremony will be during the annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association and the National Council on Measurement in Education next week in New York City.
Chang also has been awarded a Fulbright Senior Specialist Award in Education at the Slavyansk-on-Kuban StatePedagogical Institute, Russia. His 35-day mission starts May 30. He will teach a short course, “Measurement of Latent Variables.”
Brent Roberts, professor of psychology, was awarded the 2008 Diener Mid-Career Award for Personality Psychology from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology.
library
Jim Hahn, professor of library administration and assistant orientation services librarian for the undergraduate library, has been selected to participate in the Association of College and Research Libraries Institute for Information Literacy Immersion Program this summer. The immersion program provides instruction librarians with the opportunity to work intensively for 4 days on all aspects of information literacy and provides librarians with intellectual tools and practical techniques to help build or enhance their instruction program.
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