Tuesday, February 16, 1999 Volume 45 Number 21

  Higginbotham Memorial Service

The University's memorial service for the Hon. A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., is open to the University community on Wednesday, February 24, from 4 to 6 p.m. in Harrison Auditorium at the University Museum.

The ceremony is presented by an honorary committee of some three dozen members including Trustees Chairman Roy Vagelos; President Judith Rodin and her predecessors Sheldon Hackney and Martin Meyerson; and representatives of the bar, the bench, and the city, state and nation. Judge Higginbotham, a Penn trustee for more than 30 years, died December 8 at the age of 70. (See Almanac January 12).

Four in SAS Chairs:

Drs. Christianson, Farrell, Mailath, Urban

Dean Samuel H. Preston has announced appointments to four endowed term chairs in the Arts and Sciences--three of them to new Edmund J. and Louise Kahn chairs, and one to the Class of 1965 Endowed Term Chair.

The Kahn Professors

SAS now has three Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Term Chairs--one in the Humanities, one in the Natural Sciences and one in the Social Sciences, established through a bequest by Mr. and Mrs. Kahn--Mr. Kahn a 1925 Wharton graduate who had a highly successful career in the oil and natural gas industry, and his wife a Smith College graduate who worked for Newsweek and owned an interior design firm. The couple were also supporters of Van Pelt Library, the Modern Languages College House, and other projects in scholarship and the humanities. The first holders of the three Kahn chairs:

• Dr. David W. Christianson, the new Kahn Professor in the Natural Sciences, joined Penn as an assistant professor in 1988 and has been a full professor since 1997. A Harvard alumnus who also took his Ph.D. there, he is well known for his work in biological chemistry, focusing on the relationship between structure and function of metalloenzymes, interactions between proteins and other molecules, and alternative applications of enzyme catalysis. He has been named an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow, a Searle Scholar and a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar.
• Dr. Joseph Farrell, the Kahn Professor in the Humanities, is a professor of classics who has been at Penn for 15 years, teaching Latin and Greek literature with emphases on poetry and on Roman culture and society, comparative literature and cultural studies. He has published numerous articles and several books, including Latin Language and Latin Culture and Vergils' Georgics and the Traditions of Ancient Epic. Under technology grants from the NEH and the Pew Charitable Trusts, he has also contributed to the advancement of teaching in the field. An alumnus of Bowdoin College who took his Ph.D. from North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dr. Farrell joined Penn as assistant professor in 1985 and became a full professor last year.
• Dr. George J. Mailath, the Kahn Professor in the Social Sciences is a specialist in game theory, mathematical economics, and micro-economic theory who joined Penn in 1985 as an assistant professor and has been a full professor here since 1995. After receiving his B.Ec. from the Australian National University, he took his M.A. and Ph.D. at Princeton. He has been full professor since 1995. In addition to publishing numerous articles in his field, he has served as the associate editor of the Journal of Economic Theory and the International Economic Review, and on the editorial boards of Economic Theory, International Economic Review, and Games and Economic Behavior. His honors include an Econometric Society Fellowship.

The Class of 1965 Chair

Dr. Gregory P. Urban of anthropology is the new Class of 1965 Professor in SAS.

Dr. Urban, who took his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from Chicago, joined Penn in 1994 after 14 years at the University of Texas, where among other honors he won the school's Excellence in Teaching Award in 1984 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1993. Known for his work in cultural and linguistic anthropology, he is the author of several major books including Native South American Discourse; Semiotics, Self, and Society; Nation-States and Indians in Latin America; and Natural Histories of Discourse. His most recent book, Metaphysical Community: The Interplay of the Senses and the Intellect, won the American Ethnological Society Senior Book Prize. This year he is a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford.

The Class of 1965 Endowed Term Chair is one of five created by the Class in 1990--an unprecedented 25-year class gift that funded a chair for each of the four undergraduate schools and one in honor of the College for Women. SAS's 1965 Chair was held first by Dr. Malcolm Campbell of History of Art and more recently by Dr. Eugene Wolf of Music.

Seminars on Publishing

The University of Pennsylvania Press offers two seminars next week on publishing, free and open to the University community:

February 24, Getting Published

"Are you preparing your first manuscript or revising your dissertation with an eye toward publication? What happens between submission and publication date?" ask the staff at the University of Pennsylvania Press. "We will take you through all the steps of publication, from selection of peer reviewers, through copyediting, to decisions about printrun and pricing. Learn how to enhance your chances at publication, and how to become an informed partner in the publishing process."

 

February 25, A Career in Publishing

A seminar for both undergraduate and graduate students to help them learn the breadth of the publishing profession. Staff at the University of Pennsylvania Press discuss landing a job, career trajectories, and what aspect of the publishing business is best suited for particular interests and backgrounds.

Both sessions are at the Press, 4200 Pine Street, 4-6 p.m.; for more information call 898-1671.

The Commencement Hotline

For information on the 243rd Commencement, the Office of the Secretary has set up its traditional a 24-hour Commencement Information Hotline: 573-GRAD. There is also a web site at www.upenn.edu/commencement which contains information on the 1999 ceremony as well as a history of Commencement exercises at Penn.