UMass Amherst News
Come together
The campus community convenes to honor 12 professors at the Faculty Convocation.
From Memorial Hall, the procession to the Faculty Convocation on September 16 wound past pond and chain-link fence to the splendid Neoclassical plum- and peach-walled Bowker Auditorium of Stockbridge Hall. Led by Professor George R. Richason Jr. ’37, Bearer of the Mace, professors, administrators, banner bearers, the Chancellor, the Provost, and other campus notables filed in to the accompaniment of the Minuteman Marching Band, perched in the balcony, under the direction of George Parks. As part of his original composition, “Trumpet Fanfare,” Professor Emeritus Walter Chesnut ’04Hon sustained a long, long note on a long, long post horn, before Provost Charlena Seymour opened the ceremony with a thankful, “It didn’t rain on our parade!”
Chancellor Lombardi, sporting some academic bling—the chancelllor’s medallion, a shining chain of silver disks—delivered a state-of-the-campus address in typical rat-a-tat style. The state of the campus is “remarkably good,” he said. Describing the “strange and wonderful cyclical process” of support for state universities, he spoke of “waves of public enthusiasm and energy” giving way to financial crises, which in turn give way to “blossoming again in the shine of the legislature’s support.” In 2002, the university faced one of its most severe crises ever, from which it has made a “heartening” recovery. Even more heartening, Lombardi noted, was a new focus on “the core business of our enterprise,” a concerted effort to bring “nationally competitive quality” to everything the campus does. The transformation is happening on several fronts. There’s the physical: All over campus, “New Dirt” projects are underway, renovating the infrastructure and creating “new labs, libraries, and teaching places”—as well as a bit of mud underfoot. Some of the transformation is coming about through the 250 Plan, which will add 250 members to the faculty. And some relies on the intangible—vision, brainpower—that manifests itself in research and the post-graduation success of its students.
The Chancellor’s mention of vision provided a segue into the convocation’s main event, the presentation of the Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Research and Creative Activity to 12 nationally acclaimed faculty members:
Priscilla Clarkson, Exercise Science, researches exercise-induced muscle damage and repair in humans, as well as sports nutrition. Her work has been the subject of hundreds of presentations and scholarly articles; this year she received the American College of Sports Medicine’s Honor Award. Ronald Hambleton, Educational Policy Research and Administration, described during the ceremony as “probably the most dedicated and well-respected psychometrician in the world,” has done pioneering work in such areas of the field of mental measurement as standard-setting and item response theory. Rachel Keen, Psychology, is a recognized leader in the study of child development. Her innovative research into the perceptual motor and cognitive development in infants is just one of four areas of inquiry she has pursued in her career. This spring she was given the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the Society for Research in Child Development.
James Kurose, Computer Science, has done groundbreaking work in the field of computer networks, a subfield of computer science that has made possible the World Wide Web. He is also interested in system and pedagogical aspects of instructional technology and has received awards for being an outstanding teacher. Derek Lovley, Microbiology, who has a long record of scientific discovery, is perhaps best known for his work on Geobacter, which has revolutionized how environmental contamination by petroleum-based and radioactive materials is ameliorated. Among the dozens of articles of his which have appeared in peer-review journals are seven in the journalsScience and Nature.
John J. McCarthy, Linguistics, has played an instrumental role in the formation of optimality theory and was one of two key developers of the highly influential theory of prosodic morphology. The goal of John McCarthy’s research is to discover the universal principles that govern the sound structure of human languages. A particular focus is the idea that the differences between languages are the result of assigning different priorities to conflicting constraints. Murugappan Muthukumar, Polymer Science and Engineering, is involved in several areas of research including how polymers crystallize, an area of research that lends itself to a range of applications and is furthering understanding of such biochemical questions as “the protein-folding problem.” Considered by many of his peers to be the most influential theorist of the past two decades, this spring he was the recipient of the prestigious Humboldt Senior Scientist Award. Anna Nagurney, Finance and Operations Management, is the School of Management’s director of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks. Her work on knowledge supernetworks has had tremendous impact in industry and the public sector. In 2003 she was selected as a fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center; she has just begun a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. Max Page, Art, teaches and writes about the design, development, and politics of cities and architecture, as well as the uses of the past. He was awarded the Spiro Kostof Award from the Society of Architectural Historians for his book The Creative Destruction of Manhattan, 1900–1940 and received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2003. Thomas Russell, Science and Engineering, was cited in the ceremony for being, in a colleague’s words, “one of the two or three world leaders in the field of polymer surfaces and interfaces.” His research has resulted in ten patents and hundreds of scholarly articles. Kalidas Shetty, Food Science, ws named one of five National Academy of Sciences Jefferson Science Fellows in 2004; in that role he provides policymakers in the U.S. Department of State with cutting-edge scientific and technical expertise. His work in food biotechnology may ultimately provide dietary approaches to manage oxidation-linked chronic and infectious diseases. James Tate, English, has written more than 25 books of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize winningSelected Poems
in 1992 and Worshipful Company of Fletchers, the 1994 winner of the National Book Award for poetry. In 2004, he was elected for membership in The American Academy of Arts and Letters, considered the highest formal recognition of artistic merit in this country.
more:
2005 Faculty Convocation Photo Gallery