Retiring Faculty

James Brow, Anthropology

Brow, professor of anthropology and Asian Studies, taught at the university for 30 years and served as chair of the Department of Anthropology from 1995 to 2005. His research focused on social and economic development in South Asia and Sri Lanka. Brow also served as acting director of the South Asia Institute from 2004 to 2007. He authored and edited numerous articles and books, including “Agrarian Change in Sri Lanka,” “Demons and Development,” “Vedda Villages of Anuradhapura” and “The Shuswap of Canada.”

Leslie B. Cohen, Psychology

Cohen, professor of psychology, taught at the university for 30 years. He conducted research on perception, memory and cognition of infants. He served as director of the Children’s Research Laboratory from 1982 to 2004, where he spearheaded “Habit X,” a multipurpose software program for testing infant perception and cognition that is currently being used by more than 150 infant research laboratories around the world. During his tenure, he took on many leadership roles including chair of the Developmental Psychology Program from 1982 to 1983 and president of the International Society on Infant Studies from 2006 to 2008. He also served as a faculty affiliate of the Artificial Intelligence Lab in the Department of Computer Science, and the Center for Perceptual Systems. His books include “Infant Perception: From Sensation to Cognition” and “Handbook of Infant Perception.” In addition to his many scholarly publications, he is the founding editor of the research journal Infancy.

Robin Doughty, Geography and the Environment

 

Doughty, professor of geography and the environment, taught at the university for 39 years. He published nine books, several dozen articles, reviews and poetry about wildlife conservation and environmental change, particularly in Texas. His books include “Making a Home in Texas,” “Return of the Whooping Crane,” “The Mockingbird,” “Eucalyptus: A Cultural and Natural History” and “Wildlife and Man in Texas,” for which he received the Tullis. B. Ellis Award. He was elected to the Texas Institute of Letters and was recognized for exemplary teaching. Several graduate students whom he guided published their research as trade books.

Michael Gagarin, Classics

Gagarin, the James R. Dougherty Jr. Centennial Professor in Classics, taught at the university for 37 years. His research focused on Greek law, literature and philosophy. He served as department chair from 1990 to 1994, and as acting department chair from 2004 to 2005. Among his many leadership roles, he served as president of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South and of the American Philological Association in 2002. He is the author of numerous books including “Early Greek Law,” “Antiphon the Athenian” and “Writing Greek Law,” and was editor-in-chief of the seven-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome.

Knud Lambrecht, French and Italian

 

Lambrecht, professor of French and Italian, retired after 24 years of teaching at the university where he researched French and Romance linguistics. Among his many awards, he received the Summer Research Award in 1998 and the Faculty Research Award in 1994 from the University of Texas Research Institute. Lambrecht also received the President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award in 1996 and was nominated for the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award in 2004. He is the author of several scholarly publications including “The Pragmatics of Syntax in Spoken French” and “Information Structure and Sentence Form.”

Charles Rossman, English

Rossman, professor of English, retired after 42 years of teaching at the university. He directed the Plan II Honors Program from 1977 to 1981 and served as a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers. His research interests included modern British literature, 19th and 20th century European novels and contemporary Latin American fiction. He received several teaching awards including the Chad Oliver Plan II Teaching Award in 1999, the Texas Excellence Teaching Award in 1986 and the President’s Associate’s Teaching Excellence Award in 1984. He was also selected as a finalist for the Friar’s Teaching Award, the university’s largest undergraduate teaching honor, in 1982 and 2002.

Herman Van Olphen, Asian Studies

Van Olphen, professor of Asian Studies, began teaching at the university in 1968. A former director of the Hindi Urdu Flagship program, he spearheaded the development of the university’s Hindi language program. He directed the Liberal Arts Media Center from 1974 to 1998 and served as chair of the Department of Oriental and African Languages and Literatures from 1984 to 1991. He was involved in establishing and then enhancing the guidelines of the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages, which are the accepted standard for evaluating proficiency in Hindi. As chair of the American Institute of Indian Studies Advanced Language Programs in India for almost a decade, he was responsible for the overall structure and evaluation of the programs.