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CLAS Awards
CLAS Faculty Win Recognition
Ralph Lewis, retired Connecticut state geologist and assistant professor in residence, Marine Sciences, won the Dr. Sigmund Abeles Science Advocate Award from the Connecticut Science Teachers Association. He was honored at a dinner and reception in New Haven.
David A. Kenny, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Psychology, has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is one of 212 new fellows from around the world to be elected in 2008.
Bill Simonsen, professor of public policy, was elected to the Executive Committee of the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management, the premier professional academic association for finance and budgeting.
Kentwood Wells, professor and department head of ecology and evolutionary biology, is the author of The Ecology and Behavior of Amphibians, which was chosen as the best single volume reference published this year in the biological and life sciences by the Association of American Publishers.
Robert Bifulco, associate professor of public policy, was honored by the American Education Research Association as one of the ten best reviewers of manuscripts for its journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.
Kathleen Segerson, professor of economics, is president-elect of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. She was also named a fellow of the organization. She has also been named a fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association.
Four members of the Physics Department were chosen as Outstanding Referees for 2008 by the American Physical Society, recognizing their exceptional work in reviewing manuscripts for publication in APS journals. They are: William Stwalley, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Physics and department head; Robin Côté, professor; Juha Javanainen, professor, and Susanne Yelin, associate professor. They were among 534 selected for recognition from more than 50,000 referees from 33 countries.
A book by Frank E. Musiek, professor of communication sciences and director of audiology research, was chosen for the Essential Speech, Language, and Hearing Bookshelf by clinical experts and medical librarians. It is the Handbook of (Central) Auditory Processing Disorder – Volume 1: Auditory Neuroscience and Diagnosis. Last year, Musiek, who is also professor of otolaryngology at the UConn Health Center, won the top award in his field, the James Jerger Career Award for Research in Audiology from the American Academy of Audiology.
Evarist Giné-Masdeu, professor of mathematics, was named the recipient of the 2008 Provost’s Research Excellence Award.
William F. Fitzgerald, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Marine Sciences, and Charles Yarish, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and marine sciences, were named new members of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering (CASE).
New members elected to the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences are David Benson, professor and department head, molecular and cell biology; Harry Frank, professor of chemistry and associate dean of CLAS; Evelyn Simien, associate professor of political science; and Steven Suib, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and department head.
Steven Wisensale, professor of human development and family studies, has been selected by the UConn Honors Program and Honors Council students as the Honors Council Faculty Member of the Year. The award distinguishes an honors faculty member for exemplary work in providing an exceptional educational experience for honors students.
John Davis, the Emliana Pasca Noether Chair in Modern Italian History, was named a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in London.
Faculty members awarded grants in the Provost’s Research Equipment Competition are James Cole, professor of molecular and cell biology (for a fluorescence detector for the analytical centrifuge); Senjie Lin, professor of marine sciences (for a cytobuoy and fast repetition rate fluorimeter); Joseph LoTurco, professor of physiology and neurobiology (for an intravital multiphoton imaging system), Steven Suib, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and department head (for a tandem mass spectrometer), and Adam Zweifach, associate professor of molecular and cell biology (for a flow cytometer). All were principal investigators on multi-disciplinary proposals.
Ronald L. Mallett, professor of physics, won the Alumni Fellow Award from Penn State University, where he received his bachelor’s master’s, and PhD degrees in physics. The Alumni Fellow Award is the highest award given by the Penn State Alumni Association. His primary research interests are in general relativity and gravitation, black holes, relativistic astrophysics, and quantum cosmology, and he is the author of Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality.
William Fitzgerald, professor of marine sciences, received a “Highly Cited Paper” citation from American Chemical Society Publications for his article, “The Case for Atmospheric Mercury Contamination in Remote Areas” published in Environmental Science & Technology. Highly Cited papers are among the top 1 percent of the most-cited papers during the past 10 years.
CLAS Students Collect Honors
Doctoral student Jang K. Kim in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology has won first place for a student oral presentation for his presentation at the World Aquaculture 2008 meeting in Busan, Korea.
Chemistry graduate student Jason Schmink has won the 2008-2009 Outstanding Teacher Assistant Award.
David Robinson, a PhD candidate in anthropology, was appointed as the first Maritime Heritage member of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council. Stellwagen on Massachusetts Bay is one of 14 sites in the National Marine Sanctuary system. Robinson works with undergaduate students at the Avery Point campus, documenting historic shipwrecks and teaching underwater archaeology.
Dawn Carone, a PhD candidate who works with adviser Rachel O’Neill, associate professor of molecular and cell biology, won a fellowship from the National Science Foundation’s East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes to conduct research in Australia. Carone will work in the laboratory of Dr. Marilyn Renfree at the University of Melbourne. She will examine marsupial species hybrids to determine the role that small RNAs play in centromere instability.
All but one of the 14 University Scholars chosen for 2008 are from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. University Scholars are juniors who are selected to create individualized plans of study for their last three semesters at UConn. The students and their majors are: Amanda Buckley, physiology and neurobiology; Heeren Makanji, molecular and cell biology; Charlayne McStay, chemistry; Shawn Miller, chemistry; Thomas Murawski, actuarial science; Anu Nellissery, physiology and neurobiology and molecular and cell biology; Amanda Ploch, political science and individualized major in human rights; Benjamin Plourde, biological sciences and physics; Victorial Price, psychology; Michael Sanders, ecology and evolutionary biology; Abena Sarfo-Mensah, psychology; Robert Slattery, economics and structural biology and biophysics; and Dongnhu Truong, psychology.
Phi Beta Kappa
Over 200 CLAS students have attained membership in Phi Beta Kappa for 2007-2008. View the list below.
Alumni Association Awards
CLAS faculty and alumni were well represented in the 2007 UConn Alumni Association awards.
The 2007 Distinguished Alumni Award went to Alan R. Bennett, CLAS ’69, managing partner in the Washington, DC law firm Ropes & Gray. Joshua E. Dunn, CLAS ’92, received the Connecticut Alumni Service Award. Four faculty received the association’s teaching and research awards. The Faculty Excellence in Research (Humanities and Social Sciences) award went to Richard Langlois, professor of economics. Kent Holsinger, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, was awarded for Faculty Excellence in Research (Sciences). Richard Hiskes, professor of political science, won the award for Faculty Excellence in Teaching at the undergraduate level. Michelle Williams, associate professor of psychology, won for Faculty Excellence in Teaching at the graduate level.
Staff Awards
Sally Neal, adviser in the CLAS Academic Services Center, has been chosen by students as outstanding adviser of the year.
Jennifer Murphy, undergraduate coordinator for the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, was chosen as the staff recipient of the 2008 Outstanding Undergraduate Student Advisement and Advocacy Award from the Office of the Provost.