Staff Reports: NewsBriefs

Five faculty members honored as 2004 Bass Chairs

The University welcomed five more faculty members to the ranks of the Bass Chairs, honoring them in an April 1 ceremony with the donors who endowed their respective professorships.

This year's new Bass Chairs in Trinity College of Arts and Sciences are: E. Blake Byrne Associate Professor of English Laurie Shannon, whose professorship was established by Blake Byrne, Trinity '57; Frances Hill Fox Professor in Humanities Bryan Gilliam, whose professorship was established by the late Frances Hill Fox, Women's College '31; and Alexander F. Hehmeyer Professor of Political Science Peter Feaver, whose professorship was established by an anonymous donor in memory of attorney and business executive Alexander Hehmeyer.

In the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Emily Klein earned the Lee Hill Snowdon Associate Professorship, established by the late Edward Snowdon in memory of his wife Lee Hill Snowdon, Women's College '41.

President Nan Keohane announced Wednesday that the University will award honorary degrees to former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, South African court justice Richard Goldstone, mathematician Phillip Griffiths and genetics researcher Oliver Smithies. The degrees will be awarded during the University's May 9 commencement exercises.

Albright became the nation's first female secretary of state when appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1997. Prior to that, she was a national security advisor to Clinton. She is currently a principal at The Albright Group LLC, a global strategy firm that she founded in Washington, D.C. She also serves on the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange. Albright is scheduled to deliver an address at this year's Commencement.

Goldstone served as a justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa from 1994 to 2003. Prior to that, he was the chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals from the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. He is currently the chancellor of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, a governor of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and president of World ORT, an international technical and technology training organization. Goldstone has visited and lectured at Duke Law numerous times.

Griffiths was provost and James B. Duke Professor of Mathematics at Duke from 1983 through 1991. Many credit him with charting the intellectual course that led to the University's rise over the past two decades into the top group of the nation's teaching and research universities. In 1991, he became the director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a position he held through 2003. He is currently a faculty member in the Institute's School of Mathematics and continues to lead the Millennium Science Initiative, which is aimed at nurturing scientific talent in the developing world.

Smithies is Excellence Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is credited with pioneering many fields of science, including technologies involving protein separation, genetic analysis and the process of targeting specific genes in mammalian cells by homologous recombination. He has worked closely with Duke faculty over the years, has been involved in numerous seminars at Duke and has mentored several Duke faculty in his field.

Teaching awards recipients announced

The winners of this year's teaching awards have been selected. The recipients will be honored at an April 21 ceremony at the Washington Duke Inn, along with the recipients of the Graduate School's Dean's Award for Excellence in Mentoring.

This year's recipients from Trinity College are: Alvin Crumbliss, professor of chemistry, who won the David and Janet Vaughn Brooks Award; Orin Starn, associate professor of cultural anthropology, who won the Robert B. Cox Award; Michael Munger, professor and chair of political science, who won the Howard D. Johnson Award; Christina Askounis, a lecturer for the University Writing Program, who won the Richard K. Lublin Award; and Derek Malone-France, Mellon Lecturing Fellow for the First Year Writing Program, who won the Duke University Award for Excellence in Teaching Writing.

The Graduate School's Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching went to Rebekah Long, a graduate student in English, and Gerald DiGiusto, a graduate student in political science.