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| Delia Graff, left, associate professor of philosophy, her daughter Clarissa Graff Fara, 6 months, and Robert Appel '53, right, enjoy a moment at the Faculty Awards Recognition Ceremony held March 10 in the Statler Ballroom. Graff was one of three faculty members to receive a Robert and Helen Appel Fellowship for Humanists and Social Scientists at the dinner. Robert Barker/University Photography |
Twelve distinguished Cornell faculty members were honored during a special dinner and recognition ceremony on campus March 10. The dinner was held in the Statler Hotel Ballroom, and President Jeffrey Lehman and Provost Biddy Martin introduced the awards and the recipients and made the presentations to the winners.
The awards presented were: the Robert and Helen Appel Fellowships for Humanists and Social Scientists, the Kendall S. Carpenter Memorial Advising Awards, the Robert A. and Donna B. Paul Award for Excellence in Advising in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellowships.
Lehman honored the recipients and the donors who created the awards in his remarks, explaining that his pleasure in welcoming those in attendance "comes from being a direct beneficiary of the great teaching and great advising that takes place at Cornell ... Coming back to the hill after all these years has been made even more meaningful for me by the discovery that some of my own professors are still teaching and advising Cornell undergraduates."
"By honoring the great teachers and mentors of Cornell in the 21st century, we are also honoring a tradition that goes back to our university's roots," Lehman said. "Andrew D. White selected his first faculty with great care ... he knew what he was looking for: individuals who had 'the power of discovering truth and the power of imparting it,' traits that White believed were 'almost invariably found together.'"
"At the heart of a first-class university is its faculty," Martin said, "and in my years as provost I am constantly being reminded of the excellence and dedication of Cornell's faculty, even as I beat back the raiding parties from other universities that would steal these superlative faculty from us."
The following are the descriptions of the awards and this year's winners, excerpted from Lehman's and Martin's remarks:
This year's honorees for the Appel fellowships were: Mary Pat Brady, Department of English; Delia Graff, Department of Philosophy; and Jose Paz-Soldan, Department of Romance Studies.
According to Martin, Brady received the Modern Language Association Award for best book in Chicano/Latino literature in 2003, and her research interests include cultural studies and American multi-ethnic literature. Graff, who joined the faculty in 2001, focuses on the semantics of attitude ascriptions and the semantics of names and descriptions. Soldan won the Bolivian National Book Award in 2003 for his novel El Delirio de Turing, which is among six novels he has published. Soldan was not in attendance at the ceremony, as he currently is directing the Cornell Abroad program in Spain, Martin said.
This year's winners of the Carpenter advising awards were: William W. Goldsmith, Department of City and Regional Planning; Harold F. Hintz, Department of Animal Science; Carole A. Bisogni, Division of Nutritional Sciences; and Alan D. Mathios, Department of Policy Analysis and Management.
Goldsmith has been a member of the Cornell faculty since 1968 and is a specialist on theories and policies of city planning, urbanization and regional economic development, Martin said. He was chairman of the department in the 1980s and has served as director of graduate studies and of the undergraduate program in urban and regional studies as well as of the study-abroad program in Rome. Goldsmith also founded the Cornell Program on International Studies in Planning. Harold "Skip" Hintz is professor of animal nutrition and joined the Cornell faculty in 1967 and has advised students for many years. Bisogni is a specialist in community nutrition and served as associate director for academic affairs in the department for more than a decade and was instrumental in developing the human biology, health and society major in Human Ecology. She also serves as faculty adviser to the women's swimming and diving team. Mathios has served as associate chair and director of undergraduate studies for his department and is currently the associate dean of the College of Human Ecology. He is committed to student development, and his research focuses on government tax policy and its impact on smoking onset and cessation.
This year's recipients of the Paul award were: Szonya Szelenyi, Department of Sociology; and Michael Koch, Department of English.
Szelenyi was an associate professor of sociology but has since left Cornell, Martin said. She had served as director of undergraduate studies in the college. Koch, a senior lecturer in the English department, edits Epoch, the department's award-winning, internationally distributed literary magazine.
This year's winners were: T. Michael Duncan, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering; C. Richard Johnson Jr., School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Peter J. Katzenstein, Department of Government.
Duncan arrived at Cornell in 1990 following a decade with AT&T Bell Laboratories' engineering research department. He has been associate director of his school for the past 10 years and is known for his interest in keeping material fresh and relevant to students while ensuring that it is grounded in scientific fundamentals of chemistry, physics and math. He has been the recipient of numerous teaching awards. Johnson's primary research interest has been in adaptive filter design for communications, Martin said. He began teaching at Cornell in 1981 and has been not only a leader in electrical and computer engineering, but a mentor who changes undergraduate students' lives for the better, she said. He also has received numerous teaching awards over the years. Katzenstein has taught in the Department of Government for more than three decades, and his research and teaching are at the intersection of the fields of international relations and comparative politics. He is also dedicated to graduate and undergraduate students and has received several academic honors and fellowships, including the Stephen and Margery Russell Distinguished Teaching Award.
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