Five professors have been promoted to the rank of University of New Mexico distinguished professor. Distinguished professors are individuals who have demonstrated outstanding achievements and are nationally and internationally renowned as scholars.
Interim Provost Viola Florez said, “The rank of Distinguished Professor is the highest faculty rank at the university. It is reserved for a very small number of individuals who have made major scholarly contributions to their fields. This year we had a very strong group of nominees, and we are proud of the accomplishments of each of them. The new awardees join a very select group of our faculty.”
The 2008-2009 inductees:
C. Jeffrey Brinker, professor, Chemical and Nuclear Engineering, School of Engineering, joined the UNM faculty in 1999, but his impact on UNM students and the department goes back to the inception of the Center for Microengineered Materials, around 1987.
Brinker helped develop the Nanoscience and Microsystems degree program at UNM.
He has brought in more than $7.9 million in extramural funding to UNM where he was listed as principal or co-principal investigator. He has received some of the highest honors in the materials research field and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Brinker is internationally acclaimed for his book on Sol-Gel Synthesis and for his many publications on materials synthesis.
Brinker’s publications and scholarly work includes a paper on evaporation induced self-assembly that is on the list of the most highly cited papers over the past decade. His tenure has had major impact on the center and the department, but also on nano-materials research and education statewide through the NSF EPSCOR program.
Patricia Crown, professor, Department of Anthropology, College of Arts & Sciences, joined the UNM faculty in 1993. Crown, the foremost Southwest archaeologist on the UNM campus, has an international reputation for her study of ceramics.
Crown recently presented her work on learning pottery making, which has garnered attention from archaeologists across the globe, at the Sixth World Archaeological Congress, a prestigious opportunity presented every four years to promote exchange of results from archaeological research.
Since promotion to full professor, she co-edited two books, and was an associate editor for and contributor to an encyclopedia on the archeology of prehistoric Native America. She co-organized four symposia, delivered seven invited conference papers, and as PI or co-PI, received funding for 16 research grants, 11 of those extramural, including the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
She developed a course, “Teaching Anthropology” for graduate students and received the Gunter-Starkey Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Suleiman Kassicieh, ASM Endowed Chair in Economic Development and Regents’ Professor of Management of Technology, Anderson School of Management, has been on faculty at UNM since 1981. He is the organizer of the Business Plan Competition at UNM, which focuses on technology entrepreneurship and links business students to their counterparts in engineering, medicine and science.
He has developed a local, national and international reputation in economic development based on technology. He is the founder of the Management of Technology Program at UNM, ranked 6th nationally by Linton.
He served as special editor for two IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management Issues. His research record includes numerous articles in journals of the “Financial Times Top 40 Business Publications.” Kassicieh has received research grants from Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories, Kauffman Foundation, WERC and others.
Barbara McCrady, professor of psychology in the College of Arts & Sciences, and director of the Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse, and Addictions, has been at UNM since 2007. McCrady’s area of focus is on the interrelationships between alcohol abuse/dependence and family function. Her premise has been that families are integrally involved in the development and maintenance of drinking, as well as the process of change.
She has been a driving force in the psychological and medical communities about the importance of family engagement in the treatment process. Through other treatment studies she showed that relationship-focused treatment led to both reduced drinking and fewer relapses. For this work, McCrady was awarded the distinguished NIH Merit Award for “enduring contribution to scientific knowledge,” acknowledging that she is a seminal force in shifting the nature of alcohol treatment from a purely medical focus to one that emphasized psychosocial factors.
Gerald Vizenor, professor, American Studies, in the College of Arts & Sciences, is a professor emeritus from the University of California, Berkeley. Vizenor has published more than 30 single-author books, has established an exceptional record of publication represented in fiction, poetry and cultural criticism.
His publications are required readings at colleges and universities here and abroad. He has contributed a critical vocabulary - in some instances coining terms for concepts that cross Native cultural studies. As series editor of the “American Indian and Critical Studies Series” at the University of Oklahoma, he guided the publication of more than 50 books in the series. Vizenor’s work elicits respect from Native American authors of his generation.
N. Scott Momaday considers Vizenor “the supreme ironist among American Indian writers in the 20th century.” He is the winner of the American Book Award and New York Fiction Collective Award, named to the University of Minnesota Teachers Hall of Fame, Honorary Doctor of Human Letters, Macalester College, Named Literary Laureate by the San Francisco Public Library, among many others.
For a complete list of UNM’s Distinguished Professors, visit:
http://www.unm.edu/~acadaffr/DistinguishedProfessors.html
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
Posted by kwentworth at July 24, 2008 04:35 PM