1/22/2002, Honors & Other Things - Almanac, Vol. 48, No. 19

Honors and Other Things

ANA Awards: Dr. Lang and Dr. Aiken

Dr. Norma Lang, former dean of nursing, and professor of nursing, has been named the Jessie M. Scott recipient for 2002 by the American Nurses Association.

The Jessie M. Scott Award is given for the demonstration of the interdependent relationships among nursing education, nursing practice, and nursing research.

Dr. Linda Aiken, the Claire M. Fagin Leadership Professor of Nursing, professor of sociology and director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research, has been awarded the Barbara Thoman Curtis award by the American Nurses Association.

The Barbara Thoman Curtis Award is given for significant contributions to nursing practice and health policy through political and legislative activity.

Both awards will be presented at the 2002 ANA Convention in Philadelphia, in June.

Math Award: Dennis DeTurck

Dr. Dennis DeTurck, the Davidson Kennedy Professor of Mathematics, chair of the Math Department and faculty master of Stouffer College House, has received the Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics. The award, given by the Mathematical Association of Am-erica, honors college or university teachers who have been widely recognized as extraordinarily successful and whose teaching effectiveness has been shown to have had influence beyond their own institutions.

In part the citation reads: "A charismatic classroom teacher who inspires students at all levels to learn and to love the subject,(Dr.) DeTurck is also a talented innovator who has created a variety of programs to enhance teaching…" "Many of Professor DeTurck's innovative programs involve creative use of technology. He teaches a web-based course, Ideas in Mathematics, to Penn students, high school students around the country, and alumni. He was active in introducing substantial use of computers in all of Penn's calculus classes, in establishing ‘Maple Centers' in residence halls, where students can work on assignments cooperatively, and in promoting various uses of the internet such as on-line tutorials and late-at-night help from faculty and graduate students." Dr. DeTurck's research intrests center on systems of partial differential equations in differential geometry.

USSOCOM Medal: Dr. Lambertsen

Dr. Christian J. Lambertsen, emeritus professor of environmental medicine, and founder of the Institute for Environmental Medicine, has received the U.S. Special Operations Command Medal. This is the highest award the U.S. Special Operations Command confers upon a civilian.

The citation signed by USSOCOM Commander in Chief, General Charles R. Holland, USAF, read in part: "Dr. Christian J. Lambertsen has distinguished himself through significant and lasting research and development contributions to the Special Operations Community and the Department of Defense. He invented the first self-contained underwater circuit-breathing apparatus and became the first U.S. self-contained diver. He conceived and instituted military underwater operational functions with the office of Strategic Services, combining self-contained diving and one-man submersibles for the United States during World War II, and was the first to perform a deployment and recovery operation using a small submersible with a submerged, underway submarine. Dr. Lambertsen trained Coast Guard, Army engineers, and Navy underwater demolition team cadres for submerged operations methods, including composite fleet submarine and operational swimmers activity. He is recognized by the naval Special Warfare community as ‘The Father of U.S. Combat Swimming'."

APA President-Elect: Dr. O'Donnell

Dr. James O'Donnell, professor of classical studies and vice provost for information systems and computing, has been named the American Philological Association's (APA) President-Elect for 2002, he will succeed to President in 2003 and Past President in 2004.

Dr. O'Donnell has published widely on the cultural history of the late antique Mediterranean world and is known for his three-volume edition and commentary on Augustine's Confessions. He is presently completing a book entitled What Augustine Didn't Confess: an Antibiography.

The Association was founded in 1869, and is the principal learned society in North America for the study of ancient Greek and Roman languages, literatures and civilizations.

Endangered Languages: Dr. Bird

Dr. Steven Bird, associate director and senior researcher of the Linguistic Data Consortium, has been elected to a three-year term on the Committee on Endangered Languages. Dr. Bird's research focuses on formal and computational models for linguistic information, to support the description of the world's 6,800+ languages, that are endangered or unknown to science.

Bolton-Johnson Prize: Dr. Alvear

Dr. Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, associate professor of history and director of the Latin American Cultures Program, has been awarded the Bolton-Johnson prize, by the Conference on Latin American History, an affiliate of the American Hispanic Association. The prize honors Dr. Alvear's book Dulcinea in the Factory: Myths, Morals, Men and Women in Colombia's Industrial Experiment, 1905-1960.

ASME Award: Dr. Ayyaswamy

Dr. Portonovo S. Ayyaswamy, professor of mechanical engineering and applied mechanics, received the 2001 American Society of Mechanical Engineers International (ASME) Heat Transfer Memorial Award--Science. The award is conferred upon an individual for outstanding contributions to the field of heat transfer through teaching, research, practice or design. His contributions include the identification of new mechanisms associated with drag/transport of moving droplets experiencing phase-change, polarity effects on arc-plasma heat transfer and oscillatory enhancement of non-Newtonian fluid flows. He is the co-author of a well-known monograph entitled Transport Phenomena with Drops and Bubbles (Springer, 1997).

Four Physical Society Fellows

The American Physical Society has named four physics faculty as Fellows. They are: Dr. Mirjam Cvetic, Class of 1965 Endowed Term Professor; Dr. Paul Heiney, professor of physics; Dr. Randall Kamien, the William Smith Term Associate Professor; and Dr. Eugene Mele, professor of physics.

Honorary Director for Life: Dr. Striker

Dr. Cecil L. Striker, professor of the history of art, has been elected Honorary Director for Life of the American Research Institute in Turkey. He has been associated with the Institute since its founding in 1965 and was president of the organization from 1977-1984.

School Reform: Mike Masch

Michael Masch, vice president for budget and management analysis, has been appointed to the new governing body for Philadelphia's public schools, a five-member School Reform Commission. Mr. Masch has served on the school board for nearly two year and was the budget director under former mayor Edward Rendell. The School Reform Commission replaces the city's Board of Education.

Grad Student Award: Ms. Gurmankin

Andrea D. Gurmankin, a gradaute student in the master of bioethics program and a student in the doctoral program in psychology, was awarded the Graduate Student Paper Award by the Association for Politics and Life Sciences. Her paper, Risk Information Provided to Prospective Oocyte Donors, investigates the quality of risk information provided to prospective egg donors via preliminary phone calls made by in-vitro fertilization programs that advertise in college newspapers. The study was recently published in the American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB).

"Andy's study is path-breaking research--controversial because it involves deception, but important because it is the first look at what really happens when vulnerable women become part of the egg recruitment world." stated Dr. Glenn McGee, associate director of education at the Center for Bioethics and editor-in-chief of AJOB.

Volleyball Ivy League Champions

The Women's Volleyball team won their first Ivy League Championship since 1990 with an 11-3 record. The team also won a one-match playoff against Brown to win the right to represent the Ancient Eight at the NCAA Tournament. Their head coach Kerry Major was named AVCA Northeast Region Coach of the Year.

Football Honor

Jeff Hatch, a senior in SAS, and lineman on the Quakers football team has been chosen as an All-American by the American Football Coaches Association and the Associated Press. This is in addition to his unanimous first-team All-Ivy selection earlier in the season. Mr. Hatch was also selected to play in the 64th annual Blue-Grey All-Star Football Classic. He is the first Quaker to play in the post-season classic since 1998.

Knowledge@Wharton Web Site No. 1

Inc. magazine has ranked the Knowledge@Wharton web site number 1 among business-school webzines in its January 2002 issue. The magazine looked at web sites run by 50 leading U.S. business schools and then asked a panel of CEOs to evaluate the top four. The CEOs put Knowledge@Wharton at the top of the list.

The article called Knowledge@Wharton "a trailblazer" and also commended the site for "timely, topical and insightful business writing."

The site was launched in 1999 and has approximately 130,000 users representing 180 countries.