IN THIS ISSUE: administration | ACES | engineering | law | LAS | native american house/american indian studies | public safety |
administration
UI President B. Joseph White was named to the Chicago 2016 Evaluation Committee working on Chicago’s potential bid to host the Olympic Games in 10 years. Patrick Ryan of Aon Corp. is chairman and CEO of Chicago 2016; Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich are co-chairs. About 50 people are on the Chicago 2016 group, including leaders of Chicago and Illinois business, industry and education.
agricultural, consumer and environmental sciences
Cleo D’Arcy, a professor of crop sciences, has been awarded the Excellence in Teaching Award from the American Phytopathological Society. The award recognizes excellence in teaching plant pathology. D’Arcy will receive the award at the society’s annual meeting being held jointly with the Canadian Phytopathological Society and the Mycological Society of America, July 29 – Aug. 2, in Québec City.
engineering
Mark Shannon, the James W. Bayne Professor and Willett Faculty Scholar in mechanical engineering and director of the Center for Advanced Materials for the Purification of Water with Systems at Illinois, became chair of the Instrumentation and Systems Development study section, a standing subcommittee of the National Institutes of Health Center for Scientific Review, on July 1. Shannon will serve as chair of the committee for the next year. It evaluates and scores the hundreds of research proposals received by the NIH annually on the quality of science and merit of the research. The scores help the NIH’s 20 institutes and seven centers determine which projects to fund.
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law
An article in the June 1 online edition of The American Lawyer, “The Law Professor as Public Intellectual,” listed the blog sites of Lawrence B. Sholum, the John E. Cribbett Professor, and Larry Ribstein, the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair, as top law blogs. Sholum’s Legal Theory Blog (www.lsolum.blogspot.com) and Ribstein’s Ideoblog (www.Ideoblog.org) are frequently referenced by legal scholars, law professionals and reporters, and are among the most popular blog sites in the legal academy, combining for nearly 10,000 visitors daily.
liberal arts and sciences
Peter Beak, the Eiszner Chair in Chemistry, was awarded the Silver Medal from the Royal Society of Chemistry for his seminal contributions to organolithium chemistry, organic reaction mechanisms, and asummetric synthesis. As part of the award, Beak was the RSC Merck Lecturer at the University of Oxford and three other universities and research centers.
Frances Gateward, a professor in the African American Studies and Research Program, the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies, and the Unit for Cinema Studies, has been awarded an overseas research grant from the Korean Film Council in Seoul. Her winning project, “A Critical Filmography of World Cinema – Korea,” was one of only three to be selected in the international competition. The volume she produces as a result of her research grant will be her second book-length project on the national cinema of Korea. Her anthology “Seoul Searching: Culture and Identity in Contemporary Korean Cinema” is forthcoming from SUNY Press. The Critical Filmographies of World Cinema series recounts national film histories through the various countries’ films and is being published by caboose, a publisher in Montreal specializing in books about film.
Jonathan Sweedler, the Lycan Professor of Chemistry and director of the UI Biotechnology Center, was awarded the 2007 Pittsburgh Analytical Chemistry Award by the Society of Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh and the 2007 Theopilus Redwood Lectureship by the Analytical Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry. The Pittsburgh award recognizes his pioneering work in bioanalytical chemistry, in particular his development of methods to detect extraordinarily small quantities of neurotransmitters. The lectureship is given annually at one of the RSC’s major national meetings by one of the world’s leading analytical chemists and was founded in 1972 to commemorate the society’s formation in 1874.
Andrzej Wieckowski, a professor of chemistry, was named a fellow of the Electrochemical Society. About 20 fellows are named each year with the selection made primarily on the basis of technical contributions in addition to involvement in the society’s activities. Wieckowski is the North American editor for Electrochimica Acta, the journal of the International Society of Electrochemistry, has pioneered the method of electrochemical NMR spectroscopy, and significantly advanced the field of electrochemical surface science.
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native american house/american indian studies
Debbie Reese, assistant professor of American Indian studies, recently was appointed to serve another term as a member of the Committee on Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English for the National Council of Teachers of English. The committee tasks include investigating and making recommendations to counteract racism and bias in written and visual teaching materials for English and language arts classrooms, and providing guidance and serving as a resource in eliminating racism and racial bias in teaching methods and the administration of programs in language arts and English classrooms.
public safety
Tony Carpenter was honored as the UI’s Police Officer of the Year during the Public Safety Division’s annual awards ceremony May 4 at the Urbana Civic Center. Other honors presented at the ceremony:
- Lifesaving Award: Officer Joe McCullough
- Director of Public Safety Recognition Awards: Sgts. Joan Fiesta and Aaron Fredrick; officers Doug Beckman, Troy Chew, Aaron Landers, Tony Micele, Gene Moore, Rob Murphy, Todd Short, Michelle Standifer and Eric Vogt; Robert Wilczynski, assistant director of residential life, Housing Division.
- Carol Bailey Civilian Employee Award: Angela Marriott, public safety telecommunicator
- Marksmanship Awards: first place – Lt. David Nelson; second place – Officer William Smoot Jr. and Officer Jody Huffman (tie); third place – Officer Tim Harper
- Cecil Coleman Award: Jim Coleman, research professor in the Coordinated Science Lab, and of electrical and computer engineering
- Division commendations: Officers Gene Moore and Rob Murphy; Gregor Vacketta, systems administrator II, Public Safety; Sgt. Joan Fiesta; Pat Connolly, Police Training Institute, and Clark McPhail, professor emeritus of sociology
- Merit Awards: Officers Curt Bolding, Bruce Rolando, Jon Whittington, Rob Benoit (2), Chris Hawk, Eric Helms, Gene Moore, Michelle Standifer (2) and Brian Tison
- Student Patrol Officer of the Year: Brandon Stanley
Several officers and civilian employees also were recognized with five-, 15-, 20- and 40-year service awards.
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