August
Sociology Professor Wins 2013 Feminist Mentor Award
Sociologists for Women in Society has awarded Christine Williams, professor and chair of sociology, the 2013 Feminist Mentoring Award. Go to the Department of Sociology website for more about the award.
French and Italian Professor Wins ISSNAF Award for Research in Italian Culture
Paola Bonifazio, assistant professor of French and Italian, has been awarded the 2013 Italian Scientists and Scholars of North American Foundation (ISSNAF) Award for the Humanities for her manuscript, tentatively titled “Sponsored films: Publicizing Modernization in Cold War Italy (1948-1958).”
The award is a part of the annual theme, “2013: Year of Italian Culture in the US,” and acknowledges the worthiest unpublished manuscript of a volume in English dealing with an aspect of relationships between Italy and North America.
The purpose of the ISSNAF Board of Trustees is to acknowledge the research of young Italian scholars in North America, whose commitment to their discipline of study is innovative and honors their country of origin.
For more information, visit the ISSNAF website.
July
Middle Eastern Studies Professors Receive NEH Grant to Update Biblical Hebrew Dictionary
Middle Eastern Studies Professors Jo Ann Hackett and John Huehnergard have been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to update and expand the most comprehensive and widely-used English dictionary of Biblical Hebrew.
The $280,000 grant will allow Hackett and Huehnergard and a team of researchers to update a century-old dictionary titled, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament of Francis Brown, S.R. Driver, and C.A. Briggs, and make it accessible as an open source work.
The result of the project will be a free online resource that will greatly benefit students, scholars and clergy. The website, Semitica Electronica, will include a “Mapping Semitic Languages” project, which will present historical maps and sample texts for all the Semitic languages throughout recorded history. It will also include an electronic database for modern Arabic dialects.
This project will be supported by Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services. For more details, visit the Department of Middle Eastern Studies website.
June
Psychology Professor Wins Hogg Foundation Grant to Study Mental Health
Andreana Haley, assistant professor of psychology at The University of Texas at Austin, has received a grant from the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health for her research on the cognitive effects of the herpes simplex 1 virus.
Haley was awarded a grant of $19,250 to investigate whether stress, depression and anxiety may worsen cognitive vulnerability for people who are carriers of the herpes simplex 1 virus. This study is particularly relevant to minority communities, where the virus is acquired earlier in life and prevalence rates are higher: 50 percent for non-Hispanic whites, 68 percent for African Americans and 81 percent for Mexican Americans.
Haley was among 10 researchers selected from a pool of 38 applicants from 17 universities across Texas. The foundation awarded the two-year grants, totaling $192,130, to tenure-track assistant professors exploring different aspects of mental health in Texas.
The goals of the Hogg grants are to increase the pool of junior faculty doing quality mental health research and to encourage the disbursement of research findings through presentations at state and national conferences and meetings.
“These projects directly address the need for ethnically and racially appropriate mental health care and the importance of integrated health care, a key priority for the foundation,” says Octavio N. Martinez, Jr., executive director of the Hogg Foundation.
The Hogg Foundation advances recovery and wellness in Texas by funding mental health services, policy analysis, research and public education. The foundation was created in 1940 by the children of former Texas Gov. James S. Hogg and is part of the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement at The University of Texas at Austin.
May
Liberal Arts Career Services Director Ranked Among Top 10 Most Visionary Leaders
Kate Brooks, director of Liberal Arts Career Services, is listed among the top 10 most visionary and forward-thinking leaders in career services and recruiting, according to the 2013 Career Services Insights Survey. Go to this website for more details. Go to her website for more about her work.
Labor Economist Daniel Hamermesh Receives Mincer Award
Daniel Hamermesh, professor of economics at The University of Texas at Austin, has received the Jacob Mincer Award for Lifetime Contributions to the Field of Labor Economics.
The award was presented at the Society of Labor Economists’ annual meeting in Boston, Massachusetts on May 3, 2013. The Mincer award was established in 2004 and is now awarded once every two years.
Hamermesh was recognized for his many contributions to labor economics including his research and publications. As a leading scholar of labor demand, he published a series of important papers that culminated in his classic 1993 book, “Labor Demand.” He contributed to the study of time allocation and has almost single-handedly developed research on beauty and the labor market. His 2011 book, “Beauty Pays,” demonstrates how society favors beautiful people.
Hamermesh has written instructive papers on production of economic research, covering topics such as co-authorship, the life cycle of academic productivity and earnings, the selection of economists for honors, and even journal refereeing. These papers not only teach us about economists, but about economic science. He has written professional advice for economists, sharing papers about teaching, publishing, and working with the media, and a guide for young economists that is widely distributed to new colleagues at universities throughout the world.
Hamermesh is the Sue Killam Professor in the Foundation of Economics at The University of Texas at Austin and Professor of Economics, Royal Holloway University of London, and is a past president of the Society of Labor Economics.
Economics Professor Wins National Health Care Research Award
Eugenio Miravete, associate professor in the Department of Economics at The University of Texas at Austin, has been awarded the 19th Annual Health Care Research Award from the National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM).
Miravete was honored for his study titled “Sinking, Swimming or Learning to Swim in Medicare Part D,” which was published in the Oct. 2012 issue of American Economic Review.
The study provides evidence that Medicare Part D participants quickly adapt and learn to reduce rates of overspending within the system, despite substantial controversy about individuals’ ability to choose complicated drug insurance products.
NIHCM is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to improving the effectiveness, efficiency, and quality of America’s health care system. The organization sponsors the award “to encourage outstanding work from researchers furthering innovation in healthcare policy and management.”
City University of New York Awards History Professor with Honorary Doctorate
The College of Staten Island at City University of New York will award Toyin Falola, professor in the departments of history and African and African American studies, with an honorary doctorate at the CUNY convocation ceremony on May 30, 2013.
Among his many awards, Falola is the recipient of the Jean Holloway Award for Teaching Excellence, the Texas Exes Teaching Award and the Ibn Khaldun Distinguished Award for Research Excellence.
Falola, the Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor in History, has authored numerous books and publications, including “Key Events in African History: A Reference Guide, Nationalism and African Intellectuals” and “Tradition and Change in Africa and African Writers and Readers.”
April
Six Liberal Arts Employees Win 2013 President’s Staff Awards
The Office of the Vice President for University Operations has named six College of Liberal Arts employees as recipients of the 2013 President’s Staff Award for their outstanding contributions to the continuing success of the university.
The 2013 recipients are:
- Cynthia Gladstone, senior academic advisor, Student Programs
- Jessica Godbey Mahoney, executive assistant, Student Affairs
- Christopher McNett, administrative associate, Department of Anthropology
- Teresa Winfield, publishing tech III, Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies
- Allegra Azulay, program coordinator, Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies
- Leslie Crooks, senior administrative associate, Department of Linguistics
The recipients from the College of Liberal Arts are among the 30 university employees and two supervisors who will receive certificates and an honorarium of $1,500 at The President’s Staff Awards on April 23, in the LBJ Auditorium. Go to this website for more about the award.
February
History Professor Participates in Black History Month Program at White House
Juliet Walker, professor in the departments of History and African and African Diaspora Studies, participated in a Black History Month program titled “At the Crossroads of Freedom and Equality: The Emancipation Proclamation and the March on Washington,” on Feb. 19 at the White House. The program was sponsored by the White House and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.
Sociology Professor Wins 2013 Outstanding Adviser Award
Sheldon Ekland-Olson, director of the academic program in the School of Human Ecology and professor of sociology, received the 2013 Outstanding Adviser Award from the Graduate School. The award includes a $3000 prize, which is presented at the Graduate School/University Co-op Awards Banquet in the spring.
January
Eleven Professors Win Humanities Research Awards
In an effort to support research in the humanities, the College of Liberal Arts has awarded 11 tenured and tenure-track faculty with $15,000 Humanities Research Awards.
Established in 2009, the annual award was created by Dean Randy Diehl in response to a shortage of external grants for humanities research. The funding, which is paid out over the course of three years, allows professors to complete their research projects and present their works to the academic community through conferences and other venues.
The 2012-13 recipients are:
Marc Bizer, associate professor in the Department of French and Italian, for “The Impossible Choice: Toward a New Definition of the Tragic and Tragedy in France, 1100-1700”
Juliet Hooker, associate professor in the Department of Government, for “Hybrid Traditions: Race in U.S. African-American and Latin American Political Thought”
Michael Johnson, assistant professor in the Department of French and Italian, for “Town & Gown: Public Culture & the University in Paris and Orleans 1200-1250”
Randolph Lewis, associate professor in the Department of American Studies, for “The Culture of Surveillance: Affect, Power, and Technology”
Marc Pierce, assistant professor in the Department of Germanic Studies, for “Towards a New History of Germanic Linguistics in North America”
Nancy Stalker, associate professor in the Department of Asian Studies, for “Budding Fortunes: Ikebana, Identity, and Globalization in Modern Japan”
Circe Sturm, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology, for “Race, Sovereignty, and Civil Rights: The Cherokee Freedmen and the Ongoing Struggle for Tribal Citizenship”
Cynthia Talbot, associate professor in the Department of History, for “Noble Lineages in the Making: Writing Warrior Histories in Mughal India, 1590-1690”
Lisa Thompson, associate professor in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies, for “Performances of Black Cultural Trauma and Memory”
Jeffrey Walker, professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition, for “The Rhetoric of the Ant: Joseph Rhakendytes’ Synopsis of Rhetoric and Ptochoprodromos 4”
Hannah Wojciehowski, professor in the Department of English, for “Archaeologies of Censorship: Michel Foucault’s 1968”
The 2009 recipients will present their works at the inaugural Humanities Research Award Symposium on Friday, March 22, in the Texas Union, Texas Governors’ Room at the Texas Union. The first panel begins at 9:00 a.m.
Learn more about the award, past recipients and how to apply.
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