HONORS & ...Other Things |
Two Leonore Rowe Williams Awards were given, one to Assistant Dean Orneice Dorsey Leslie of the School of Social Work and the other to Dr. E. Ann Matter of Religious Studies in SAS. This award was established by a bequest of the late Mrs. Williams, whose name is remembered also in the name of Williams Hall. |
Dr. Matter was cited for her outreach to new faculty as well as for her work in Women's Studies, and Ms. Leslie for eloquent and sustained advocacy for women and minorities on campus and in the community. |
The organization's newest award, named for the late Benjamin Franklin Professor Robert E. Davies and given for involvement in social change, was presented to Dr. Jeane Ann Grisso, associate professor of medicine, who has organized seminars and coursework, and led major funded research projects, in women's health issues, including those relating to health and violence.
Alice Paul Awards, named for the Penn alumna who founded the National Women's Party and wrote the Equal Rights Amendment, is given to undergraduate or graduate women in recognition of their outstanding service to women in the Penn community. Two teams, and three individual students won Alice Paul Awards this year. Hema Sarangapani won for her scholarship and for activites on behalf of organizations including thePenn Women's Center ; Karlene Burrell-McRae also was cited for work with the GIC; and Alex Gino won for her speaking and writing on behalf of the LGBT community. Four of the students--Jean Sinzdak, Pamela Murphy Laura Foster and Nsenga Burton--led organizations and projects exploring the intersection of race and gender, working equal pay issues in the area; and three PennNOW leaders, Erin Healy, Kimberly Junod and Angie Liou, spearheaded dialogue and public events on women's safety issues.
Tonight in New York City, the School of Arts and Sciences will present its Distinguished Alumni Award to Dr. P. Roy Vagelos, C'50, for his service to humanity, leadership in science, and generous support for young scientists at Penn.
"Like our founder Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Vagelos has had several extraordinary careers-as a scientist, as a business executive and as a philanthropist," said Dean Samuel Preston.
Dr. Vagelos has been widely honored for his scientific work--including his discovery of acyl--carrier protein and, in his role as CEO of Merck & Co. Inc., the concerted fight against River Blindness, a parasitic disease afflicting millions in the Third World, by setting up free distribution of the Merck discovery Mectizan. In 1992 he won the National Medal of Technology and in 1995, the National Academy of Sciences Chemistry in Service to Society Award.
Chairman of the Penn Trustees since 1994, Dr. Vagelos has made significant gifts to research and learning here. In the last few years, two gifts of $10 million each from Dr. Vagelos and his wife have made possible the Roy and Diana Vagelos Laboratories used by SAS, SEAS and the School of Medicine. He also made possible the Vagelos Scholars Program, a rigorous four-year course of study in molecular life sciences for undergraduates.
Previous recipients of the SAS Distinguished Alumni Award include Nobel Prize winner Michael Brown, novelist John Edgar Wideman, and William Shore, the founder of Share Our Strength.
The Morris Arboretum has earned the 1998 National Award for Sustainability in the Forests/Rangelands category for its Northeastern Pennsylvania Urban & Community Forestry Program. There will be 24 such awards given nationally, each chosen by President Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development and Renew America. According to Carol Browner, co-chair of the National Town Meeting for a Sustainable America, these awards "celebrate the ways in which Americans are working together to protect public health and the environment and to demonstrate that a healthy environment and a growing economy really do go hand-in-hand."
William Klein, who was director of the Morris Arboretum from 1977 to 1991, was honored recently with the Allerton Award for excellence in tropical horticulture by the National Tropical Board. Paul Meyer, current director of the Arboretum, said of Mr. Klein, "Bill revitalized the gardens from a neglected private estate to a world-class institution." Mr. Klein passed away in 1997; this award was accepted by his wife Janet on his behalf.
This year's recipients of the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching
by Graduate Students in the School of Arts and Sciences are Darren Glass,
mathematics; John Heon, English; Anna Ivy, English; Kendall Johnson, English;
Leah Kaplan-Samuels, Asian and Middle Eastern studies; Charlie McCormick,
folklore and folklife; Christine Moisset, Romance languages; Samira Sayeh,
Romance languages; Benjamin Smith, Romance languages; and Anneliese Taylor,
German. The awards will be presented by Dean Samuel Preston at a reception
to honor this year's teaching award winners on April 28, where the Abrams
and Kahn Awards will also be presented (Almanac
April 20).
Nine of the nation's 808 Fulbright Fellows for 1999 are from Penn. By discipline, the nine graduate students and the countries in which they will study are:
Penn's Director of Management Development, Dr. Annie McKee, is one of 34 in the nation named to American Council on Education Fellowships for 1999-2000.
ACE Fellows are nominated by the senior officers of universities to the program, established to provide in-depth leadership development for college and university faculty and administrators. She will make Penn her home base during the Fellowship year, but will work with several leaders around the country who are "actively grappling with issues related to institutional change."
Dr. McKee, who has been with Penn since 1993, took her present post with the Executive Vice President's Office in August 1998 after serving associate director of the Leadership Program at Wharton.
Sarah B. Zimbler, C '00, is one of the 65 students from 56 U.S. colleges named as a Truman Scholar for 1999. The Harry S Truman Scholarship Foundation, which is the federal memorial to the 33rd President of the United States, awards these $30,000 merit-based scholarships to college students who plan to pursue careers in government or elsewhere in public service, and wish to attend graduate or professional school to help prepare for their careers.
Ms. Zimbler's goal is education of the underprivileged, and she plans to continue her studies in education and public policy after she graduates from Penn next year. This is the third consecutive year in which a Penn student has been selected as a Truman Scholar, according to Assistant VPUL Terry Conn. In 1997, Jamal C. Harris received the honor, followed last year Rachel G. Skerritt.
WXPN scored again at the annual Gavin Awards ceremonies in New Orleans, with three new ones this year bringing their total to ten awards in the past five years. The station itself was named A3 Non Commercial Station of the Year, and Program Director Bruce Warren won two awards--a Gavin Award as Non Commercial Program Director/Operations Manager of the Year, and a special achievement award, the Gavin/Zimmermen Ear of the Year Award.
"WXPN and its team, as well as its listeners, should be proud of their dominating reputation in the field of music and broadcasting," said Gavin Senior Editor Kent Zimmerman. "They are the standard by which national radio is judged. Not only do they excel individually, but as a station--and especially in the Non Commercial public radio division--they are unparalleled." Gavin is a national radio music trade magazine headquartered in San Francisco.
In Yahoo's 1999 rankings of the 100 "most wired" campuses in the country, Penn is first among the Ivy League institutions, and 15th in the nation. (Princeton, at 22nd, is the only other Ivy in the top 15).
Like many surveys, the Yahoo ranking has been disputed on some campuses and some institutions have gone down or up dramatically in the three years since the listings began.
The survey counts "more than just boxes and wires," said Dr. James O'Donnell, Penn's vice provost for information systems and computing. "Case Western Reserve gets first place for good wires but also great library services.But they also look at how you use it."
Penn was at 27th place two years ago when the rankings began, and was not surveyed last year when a questionnaire went astray. As various institutions debate the criteria used for the survey, Dr. O'Donnell said the factors he thinks moved Penn upward include:
Almanac, Vol. 45, No. 30, April 27, 1999