UChicago News

Amanda Woodward named dean of the Division of the Social Sciences

Wed, 04 Apr 2018 11:00 -0500

Amanda Woodward, the William S. Gray Distinguished Service Professor of Psychology, has been appointed dean of the Division of the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago.

Woodward, a leading scholar in the social development of infants and young children, has been serving as interim dean of the Division since July 2017. Her appointment as dean of the Division is effective April 4.

“Amanda has provided vital leadership, sustaining the momentum of the Division of the Social Sciences. We are confident that she will be an excellent leader for the Division in the years to come,” wrote President Robert J. Zimmer and Provost Daniel Diermeier in announcing her appointment.

Woodward in her research has pioneered the development of experimental methods to investigate social cognition in infants and young children. Her work has produced fundamental insights into infants’ social understanding and the processes that support conceptual development early in life. Her current research includes investigating the effects of culture and community in shaping children’s social learning strategies and the neural processes involved in early social-cognitive development.

“It is an honor to lead such an extraordinary community of scholars. I look forward to working together in many areas of research and an array of educational endeavors with faculty, students and staff to advance the social sciences at the University,” Woodward said.

Woodward has been a member of the University faculty since 1993. She was a founding member of the Center for Early Childhood Research and has served as director of the Infant Learning and Development Laboratory as well as chair of the Department of Psychology and deputy dean of faculty affairs for the Division.

Woodward was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014. Her research has been recognized by such awards as the Ann L. Brown Award for Excellence in Developmental Research, the American Psychological Association Boyd McCandless Award for an Early Career Contribution to Developmental Psychology and the John Merck Scholars Award. Woodward received her undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College and her doctoral degree from Stanford University.

Woodward succeeds David Nirenberg, the Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Distinguished Service Professor of Social Thought, History, and Romance Languages, who serves as executive vice provost at the University.

The selection of the new dean by Zimmer and Diermeier was informed by the recommendations of an elected faculty committee chaired by Kenneth Pomeranz, University Professor in the Department of History and the College.

Tanika Island Childress named CEO of the UChicago Charter School

Wed, 31 May 2017 16:04 -0500

Tanika Island Childress, a nationally distinguished educator and veteran leader at the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute, has been named CEO of the University of Chicago Charter School.

Island Childress will apply her wide-ranging expertise from more than two decades of teaching and leading to continuing the development of UChicago Charter as a model for fostering greater equity and excellence in urban education.

The appointment builds on Island Childress’s 16-year career at the Urban Education Institute, where she most recently served as director of the UChicago Urban Teacher Education Program. Earlier in her career, Island Childress served as the UChicago Charter School’s chief academic officer and director of the UChicago Charter North Kenwood/Oakland Campus, one of the highest-performing non-selective elementary schools in the city of Chicago.

During her tenure as director of the North Kenwood/Oakland Campus, Island Childress was recognized with a Community School Leadership Award in 2012 from the Federation of Community Schools and a Principal Achievement Award from the city of Chicago in 2013. She also has been recognized as a national leader in non-cognitive and academic development, serving as a member of the Aspen Institute’s Council of Distinguished Educators on Social, Emotional and Academic Development.

“I have big ambitions for UChicago Charter School students, which begin and end with my belief in their ability to learn, grow and succeed,” Island Childress said. “I hope to change the lives of many Chicago students by building on the UChicago Charter School’s strong culture of belief in students’ capabilities, and tradition of teacher learning and accountability grounded in research and data.”

Prior to joining UEI, Island Childress was an adjunct faculty member at Northwestern University’s Teaching Practicum and Field Experience Seminar. From 1997 to 2001, Island Childress was also the fourth-grade team leader for the Martin L. King Experimental Laboratory School in Evanston, Ill., where she took on the roles of Language Arts District Representative, School Literacy Committee member, Teachers as Readers Committee member and Sisterhood Project mentor.

“We are so fortunate to have Tanika’s depth of expertise at the helm of UChicago Charter School,” said Sian Beilock, executive vice provost of the University of Chicago and UChicago Charter School interim governing board chair. “Her vision, commitment and compassion will ensure we continue to help students across the South Side of Chicago realize their potential and achieve their goals, in school and in life.”

Island Childress’s appointment is part of UEI’s ambitious plan to improve schooling nationwide by conducting rigorous applied research, training exemplary teachers, operating a high-achieving public school, and designing school improvement tools and training for thousands of schools and classrooms across the United States.

The PreK-12 UChicago Charter School is designed to cultivate culturally aware critical thinkers and leaders, and prepare all of its students for college acceptance and graduation.

Its elementary model was recently the subject of a multi-year study that showed UChicago Charter is effectively addressing educational inequality and closing the achievement gap that has persisted between students of different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. The study’s findings were published this year in the book The Ambitious Elementary School. UChicago Charter’s Woodlawn campus received a Level 1 school quality rating from the Chicago Public Schools district last year and will open a new high school facility next year with state-of-the-art engineering science labs, a media arts space and a college resource center.

Island Childress has been serving as the interim CEO of the UChicago Charter School since February and will continue developing UChicago Charter as a model of excellence in fostering high school achievement, college attainment and young adult success.

“Tanika brings a unique lens and extremely rare combination of experiences to her new role,” said Sara Ray Stoelinga, the Sara Liston Spurlark Director of UEI. “As the former director of UChicago’s Urban Teacher Education Program, she has deep expertise in what it takes to train and retain high quality teachers within some of the nation’s most distressed communities and challenging classroom environments. She also has a wealth of experience in working directly with UChicago Charter School leaders, teachers, students and families. She is a highly respected and visionary leader who has changed—and will continue to change—students’ educational and life trajectories for the better.”

Island Childress received her bachelor’s degree in education with a concentration in psychology from National Louis University in Chicago. She also earned a master’s degree in literacy education from Loyola University and received a leadership fellowship through the Urban Education Institute.

Arne Duncan appointed distinguished senior fellow at Harris School of Public Policy

Fri, 03 Mar 2017 11:00 -0600

Arne Duncan, who served as U.S. Secretary of Education and chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools, has joined the University of Chicago as a distinguished senior fellow at the Harris School of Public Policy.

Duncan will participate in seminars, conferences and student-led initiatives at Harris Public Policy, bringing to the University his significant experience in education policy. His longstanding dedication to students and their families adds an important voice to work across the University to improve education through research, engagement with education practice and policy, and helping to train the next generation of education leaders.

“The University of Chicago is committed to bringing together scholars and practitioners to confront the challenges faced by educators in Chicago and cities around the world,” President Robert J. Zimmer said. “Arne Duncan, with his wealth of experience, brings important insights into the nation’s educational challenges, with a perspective informed by his understanding of Chicago’s South Side.”

Duncan also will serve as special advisor to the dean of Harris, helping to design, organize and host two events a year at the public policy school. In addition, he will provide advice to the dean in areas of public policy related to his expertise. The three-year appointment as a distinguished senior fellow took effect Jan. 1.

“The University of Chicago and Harris are internationally recognized leaders in education and outcomes-focused research, which are passion points for me,” Duncan said. “I am pleased to join the UChicago community, with its outstanding reputation for debate and inquiry—it certainly played an important role in shaping my education as a child.”

Duncan has deep ties to Chicago and the University. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and his father, Starkey Duncan Jr., was a professor of psychology at the University. His mother, Sue Duncan, founded an after-school tutoring program on the South Side, which Arne Duncan credited with helping to inspire his career in education.

Before being appointed Secretary of Education in 2008, Duncan served for more than seven years as chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools.

Duncan stepped down as education secretary at the end of 2015. He serves as managing partner of Emerson Collective, leading a comprehensive effort to develop job skills and opportunities for young people in Chicago.

The appointment of Duncan complements the University’s ongoing work in education-related research areas across campus. These efforts include the work of the Urban Education Institute, Urban Labs, the Thirty Million Words Initiative and many more.

At Harris, scholars have focused since the school’s founding on improving the lives of children and their educational achievements, including the multiple factors that can affect a child’s educational outcomes, from parenting interventions and access to sanitation to student loan debt and early childhood programs.

“Education policy has been an area of longstanding interest to Harris. The breadth and importance of his various activities in this policy sphere ensure that Arne’s addition to our community will help make Harris a preeminent place in the world for engagement with the various issues that make education at once among the most important and the most challenging of all policy areas,” said Kerwin Charles, interim dean at Harris and the Edwin and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor.

Luis Bettencourt named inaugural director of Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation

Thu, 23 Feb 2017 10:00 -0600

Luis M. Bettencourt, a leading researcher in urban science and complex systems, has been appointed the inaugural Pritzker Director of the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation at the University of Chicago.

Under Bettencourt’s leadership, the Mansueto Institute, which launched last year with the support of a $35 million gift from alumni Joe and Rika Mansueto, will enhance the University’s strengths in urban scholarship and education and accelerate work across campus on the processes that drive and shape cities. It was founded to foster innovative and interdisciplinary scholarship, develop new educational programs, and provide leadership on the local, national and international levels to meet the challenges that cities face.

“The University of Chicago is in an exceptional position to increase understanding and develop effective practices around the most complex questions facing cities,” said President Robert J. Zimmer. “Luis’s intellectual leadership will help build the Mansueto Institute into a hub for the University’s rich array of urban research, education and impact.”

The Mansueto Institute will work closely with urban-focused efforts across campus in the divisions and schools as well as entities such as UChicago Urban Labs, which develops and tests evidence-based urban policy; the Office of Civic Engagement, which collaborates with community partners in Chicago and beyond; and the Global Engagement Office, which works through University centers in China, Europe and India.

“Luis is incredibly curious and can convene people from across the sciences in ways that produce new and innovative understandings of cities and urbanization,” said Kathleen Cagney, professor of sociology and chair of the selection committee. “He thinks carefully about the fundamental principles of urban scholarship and how they can be applied in different contexts, particularly in cities across the globe.”

Bettencourt, whose appointment is effective July 1, 2017, also will be a professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolution and the College. He comes to the University from the Santa Fe Institute, a leading multidisciplinary research and education institute, where he is a professor of complex systems.

In his research, Bettencourt uses the growing availability of data worldwide on topics ranging from transportation to housing to understand cities in quantitative and predictive ways. He is dedicated to creating new urban theory to explain how cities thrive and the challenges they face, based on the integration of ideas from urban disciplines such as geography, economics and sociology with methodologies from the natural and computational sciences. He also focuses on understanding the role of innovation and technological change as a driver of economic growth and human development in cities, across the world and throughout history. One of his most influential research projects has helped explain the systematic association between the size of urban areas and higher rates of economic productivity and innovation, as well as higher costs of living and violent crime.

“The Mansueto Institute provides a truly novel opportunity to bring together researchers from an array of fields to understand not just the fundamentals of cities—in terms of concept and data—but also how such fundamentals can lead to new, innovative solutions to improve the lives and opportunities of their residents,” Bettencourt said. “The University of Chicago’s longstanding dedication to urban scholarship, and the sciences more broadly, provides an unmatched foundation for the institute.”

Bettencourt will lead the Mansueto Institute in supporting innovative urban research projects while providing rigorous training for the next generation of urban scholars and practitioners. His role will include making the institute a destination on campus for students, scholars and policymakers, with data and analytic tools that can be accessed virtually by researchers from around the world.

The Mansueto Institute will play a key role in the University’s comprehensive and integrative efforts to bridge urban scholarship, practice and engagement—an institutional commitment known as UChicago Urban.

Bettencourt holds a doctorate in theoretical physics from Imperial College London and held postdoctoral positions at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of Heidelberg and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He served on the 2015 President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology working group on technology and the future of cities, and was a Kavli Fellow for the National Academy of Sciences’ Frontiers in Science Symposium. His work has received extensive coverage in the media, including The New York Times, Scientific American, Wired and New Scientist.

UChicago faculty members receive named, distinguished service professorships

Wed, 17 Feb 2016 16:20 -0600

A total of 19 faculty members recently have received named professorships or have been named distinguished service professors. Graeme I. Bell, Philip Bohlman, Eric D. Isaacs and Konstantin Sonin have received distinguished service professorships; and Daniel Abebe, Sian Beilock, Diane Brentari, Kathryn A. Colby, Nicolas Dauphas, Justin Driver, Robert D. Gibbons, Melissa L. Gilliam, Gary Herrigel, Aziz Huq, Michèle Lowrie, David Meltzer, Andrey Rzhetsky, Amir Sufi and Gary Tubb have received named professorships.

Biological Sciences Division

Graeme I. Bell, the Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine and Human Genetics, has been named the Kovler Family Distinguished Service Professor.

Bell studies the genetics of diabetes mellitus and the biology of the insulin-secreting pancreatic beta-cell. He cloned and characterized many of the genes involved in the regulation of glucose metabolism, including insulin, glucagon, glucose transporters and others.

He has won many honors in the field, including the 2013 Banting Medal for Scientific Achievement from the American Diabetes Association for his pioneering work in understanding the role of genetics in the diagnosis and treatment of diabetes. In 2012, he received the Manpei Suzuki International Prize for Diabetes Research. Bell is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

As a core member of the University of Chicago Medicine’s diabetes genetics team, Bell works to personalize treatment based on a patient’s specific genetic defect. Many of these patients are children, and some can be treated with pills that compensate for the genetic defect, rather than with insulin shots. More than 1,500 patients and family members are now participating in genetic studies aimed at improving treatment through a better understanding of genetics.

Bell joined the UChicago faculty in 1986.

Kathryn A. Colby, Professor and Chair of Ophthalmology and Visual Science, has been named a Louis Block Professor.

Colby is an internationally renowned corneal surgeon, educator and researcher with expertise in a wide variety of corneal diseases, neoplastic diseases of the surface of the eye, and the implantation of artificial corneas. She has a longstanding interest in Fuchs’ corneal dystrophy, the most common cause for corneal transplantation in the United States and her studies in this area have run the gamut from basic science to clinical trials and novel surgical treatments to improve patient outcomes.

In addition, she has specific expertise in the management of ocular surface tumors, including conjunctival melanoma and squamous cell carcinoma. Colby spearheaded efforts to improve surgical techniques for a variety of implanted eye devices, including the Boston keratoprosthesis (artificial cornea) and the implantable miniature telescope, the only FDA-approved device to improve vision for patients with advanced macular degeneration.

Colby is an active teacher, who has trained hundreds of medical students, ophthalmology residents, clinical cornea and pediatric ophthalmology fellows, many of whom are leaders in ophthalmology. Colby was the founding director of the pediatric cornea service at Boston Children’s Hospital and is a member of the executive committee of the board of directors of the Cornea Society.

Colby joined the University of Chicago faculty in 2015.

Robert D. Gibbons, Professor of Medicine, Public Health Sciences and Psychiatry has been named the Blum-Riese Professor.

Gibbons is a nationally recognized authority on a range of statistical disciplines, including mental health statistics, environmental statistics, item-response theory and drug safety. Gibbons has led the Center for Health Statistics since it was established in 2010. From its beginning, the center has continuously earned federal funding and acclaim for its work applying complex statistical theory to inform public policy.

Gibbons has authored or co-authored nearly 300 peer-reviewed publications and six textbooks. In addition, he has served on several editorial boards, including the board of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Psychiatry.

Gibbons is a Pritzker Scholar, a fellow of the American Statistical Association and cofounder of its Mental Health Statistics section. He also is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute and the National Academy of Medicine. Gibbons has earned numerous important accolades, including lifetime achievement awards from the American Statistical Association, the American Public Health Association, and Harvard University, as well as two W. J. Youden Awards for outstanding contributions to statistics in chemistry.

He joined the UChicago faculty in 2010.

Melissa L. Gilliam, Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Pediatrics, has been named the Ellen H. Block Professor in Health and Justice.

Gilliam is section chief of family planning and contraceptive research at the University and serves as dean for diversity and inclusion for the University of Chicago Medicine and Biological Sciences Division.

As an authority on contraception and adolescent health, Gilliam addresses the gynecologic needs of girls and adolescents, especially youth of color, sexual minorities and young people at risk for poor sexual and reproductive health. Gilliam says her work focuses on “marginalized populations, reduction of health disparities through community-based interventions and efforts to increase diversity and improve health policy.” She heads the University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Innovation in Sexual and Reproductive Health, also known as Ci3. She cofounded the Game Changer Chicago Design Lab, which develops games and digital media interventions for youth.

In October of 2015, she was elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine, which honors those who have made major contributions to the fields of health and medicine and demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.

Gilliam joined the University of Chicago faculty in 2005.

David Meltzer, Professor of Medicine, Economics and Public Policy, has been named the Fanny L. Pritzker Professor.

Meltzer’s research explores problems in health economics and public policy with a focus on the theoretical foundations of medical cost-effectiveness analysis, and the cost and quality of hospital care. In his research, Meltzer uses economic analysis to address problems in health economics and public policy, focusing on the cost and quality of care, especially in teaching hospitals.

He is a national leader in the study of the relatively new specialty of hospital medicine. He heads the Hospitalist Scholars Program at UChicago, which provides training in this field and examines the economic forces that have fueled growth of this specialty. Meltzer also pioneered the development of the Comprehensive Care Physician model, in which physicians provide inpatient and outpatient care for patients who are at an increased risk for hospitalization. The model is designed to leverage the power of the doctor–patient relationship and improve outcomes while controlling costs.

Meltzer also directs the Center for Health and the Social Sciences, and chairs the Committee on Clinical and Translational Science. Meltzer also is director of the University of Chicago Urban Health Lab. In October of 2015, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Meltzer joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1996.

Andrey Rzhetsky, Professor of Medicine, has been named the Edna K. Papazian Professor.

Rzhetsky is a pioneer in the development of novel computational strategies that shed light on the complex genetic, molecular and environmental interactions involved in human health and disease.

His research utilizes powerful approaches to extract insights from big data. To harvest as much information as possible, his group runs data-mining projects that involve mathematical modeling and analysis of disparate datasets, such as electronic medical records, scientific texts and high-throughput experimental data. His models require dynamic collaboration with a range of experts in disease phenotypes, genetics, statistical modeling, epidemiology and the sociology of science. Rzhetsky also developed in invented the first automated literature extraction program for the prediction of molecular interactions.

Rzhetsky is the director of the Conte Center for Computational Neuropsychiatric Genomics, and is a senior fellow of both the Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology and the Computation Institute.

He serves as associate editor for numerous high-profile journals, including Nature Scientific Reports and PLoS Computational Biology.

Rzhetsky joined the UChicago faculty in 2007.

Humanities Division

Philip Bohlman, the Mary Werkman Distinguished Service Professor of Music and in the College, has been named the Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History.

An ethnomusicologist, Bohlman studies a wide range of topics related to music and modernity, with a focus on Jewish music and the politics of religion and race in the music of the Middle East and South Asia. His other research interests include Song Loves the Masses (2016) a translation of the musical writings of the 18th-century philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder and the Eurovision Song Contest.

Bohlman is the author of Revival and Reconciliation: Sacred Music in the Making of European Modernity (2013), Focus: Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe (2011), Jewish Music and Modernity (2008), and World Music: A Very Short Introduction (2002). He also edited The Cambridge History of World Music (2013).

An active performer as well as a scholar, Bohlman is the artistic director of the New Budapest Orpheum Society. The eight-member Jewish cabaret troupe is the ensemble-in-residence of the Division of the Humanities at the University.

The group’s recent projects include As Dreams Fall Apart (2014), a CD that draws on music from Yiddish and German-Jewish films from the 1920s to the post-Holocaust generation of the 1950s, and for which the ensemble received a 2016 Grammy Award nomination. Bohlman and the New Budapest Orpheum Society were the recipients of the 2011 Noah Greenberg Award for Historical Performance from the American Musicological Society.

Bohlman joined the UChicago faculty in 1987.

Diane Brentari, Professor of Linguistics and in the College, has been named the Mary Werkman Professor.

Brentari, PhD’90, studies sign languages from around the world to better understand their similarities and differences and to illuminate the properties that all languages share. Her work has included projects on phonetics, phonology, morphology and prosody. She has developed the Prosodic Model of sign language phonology.

Currently, her work addresses cross-linguistic variation, particularly the differences and similarities among sign languages. She is also interested in the emergence of language, and is engaged in studies of the cognitive, social and cultural aspects of gesture, homesign systems and well-established sign languages.

Brentari is the author of Sign Languages: A Cambridge Language Survey (2010) and A Prosodic Model of Sign Language Phonology (1998), and editor of Foreign Vocabulary in Sign Languages: A Cross-linguistic Investigation of Word Formation (2001) and Morphology and its Relation to Syntax and Phonology (1998).

She is the director of the Sign Language Linguistics Laboratory and co-director of the Center for the Study of Gesture, Sign, and Language.

Brentari joined the UChicago faculty in 2011.

Michèle Lowrie, Professor of Classics and in the College, has been named the Andrew W. Mellon Professor.

A literary scholar with interests in ideology and forms of expression, Michèle Lowrie traces the history of political concepts and their transmission by figurative means. Her research focuses on Roman literature and political thought and ancient Rome’s continued resonance in modernity.

Her current projects include: the emergence of security as a concept in the wake of the collapse of the Roman Republic; the Roman tradition of representing civil war, in collaboration with Barbara Vinken; the exemplum and exceptional politics from Cicero to Augustus; “Thinking through Tropes,” a faculty seminar funded by the Neubauer Collegium that examines the representational methods for structuring traditions; and transformations in the public sphere between Cicero and Horace.

Lowrie has written two monographs and numerous articles, as well as edited four volumes. She is a recipient of the Burkhardt Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, a visiting research professorship at the Warburg-Haus in Hamburg, a fellowship from the Research Center for Cultural Theory and Theory of the Political Imaginary at the University of Konstanz, and fellowships from the Center for Advanced Studies at Ludwig-Maximilian’s University in Munich. Lowrie is currently in residence at the American Academy in Berlin as the Dirk Ippen Berlin Prize Fellow. Her sabbatical has received additional funding from the Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship.

Lowrie, who will become deputy dean for the Division of the Humanities on July 1, joined the UChicago faculty in 2009.

Gary Tubb, Professor of South Asian Languages and Civilizations and in the College, has been named the first Anupama and Guru Ramakrishnan Professor.

A leading Sanskrit scholar, Tubb examines the tradition’s poetics, grammatical forms and commentarial traditions. In addition to his scholarship of Sanskrit language and literature, Tubb studies the literary, religious and philosophical traditions of India.

Tubb is the author of Scholastic Sanskrit: A Handbook for Students (2007). He is an editor and primary contributor in the book Innovations and Turning Points: Toward a History of Kavya Literature (2014). Another book, On Poets and Pots: Essays on Sanskrit Poetry, Poetics and Philosophy, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Alongside his teaching and research, Tubb is the faculty director of the University of Chicago Center in Delhi.

He joined the UChicago faculty in 2007.

Physical Sciences Division

Nicolas Dauphas, Professor of Geophysical Sciences and in the College and the Enrico Fermi Institute, has been named a Louis Block Professor.

A leading isotope geochemist, Dauphas draws upon the analytical and modeling methods of his training as an engineer to develop novel strategies for solving important scientific questions using naturally occurring isotope variations. He founded and directs UChicago’s Origins Laboratory to examine questions pertaining to the early evolution of the Earth and what meteorites reveal about the formation of planets, asteroids and comets.

His research has included an examination of how the rapid formation of Mars makes it more akin to a planetary embryo than a fully grown planet, and the discovery of microscopic remnants in a meteorite of a nearby supernova that exploded before the solar system was formed.

Just last year, a paper Dauphas published was named an Editors’ Choice by Science Magazine. The paper addressed a longstanding problem regarding the origin of Earth’s depletion in silicon and the origin of Earth’s core density deficit. His research bridges the gap between planetary sciences and astrophysics, as attested by his invitation to deliver the 2015 Spitzer lecture in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University.

Dauphas has received the American Geophysical Union’s Macelwane Medal, the European Association for Geochemistry’s Houtermans Medal, and the Meteoritical Society’s Nier Prize. He also is an American Geophysical Union fellow and a David and Lucile Packard Foundation fellow.

Dauphas joined the UChicago faculty in 2004.

Eric D. Isaacs, Provost and Professor of Physics and in the College, has been named the Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor.

Isaacs’ distinguished research career as a condensed matter physicist has focused on quantum materials. His early research in developing synchrotron X-ray scattering techniques continues to play an important role in nanoscale scientific research.

Isaacs served as director of Argonne National Laboratory from 2009 to 2014. Under his leadership, Argonne researchers focused on solving the grand scientific and engineering challenges of our time—particularly the vital national priority of developing game-changing sustainable energy technologies. During that period he also played key roles in the creation of the Institute for Molecular Engineering and expanding the impact of the Computation Institute—two joint efforts of the University and Argonne.

From 2003 to 2008 he served as founding director of Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials.

Isaacs has authored or co-authored more than 150 scientific papers and presentations. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and has served on multiple national scientific advisory committees, including the Department of Energy’s Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee.

Isaacs joined the UChicago faculty in 2004 and became University provost in 2014.

Social Sciences Division

Sian Beilock, Vice Provost for Academic Initiatives and Professor of Psychology and in the College, has been named the Stella M. Rowley Professor.

Beilock, whose research focuses on topics at the intersection of cognitive science and education, explores the cognitive and neural substrates of skill learning as well as the mechanisms by which performance breaks down in high-stress or high-pressure situations.

Beilock is one of the world’s leading experts on the brain science behind “choking under pressure” and the many factors influencing all types of performance: from test-taking to public speaking to one’s golf swing. In her laboratory, the Human Performance Lab, Beilock employs a wide range of methods such as measures of performance, physiological measures of stress, and neuroimaging techniques. She also conducts studies in the classroom with students from early elementary school through college.

She has authored two books: How The Body Knows Its Mind: The Surprising Power of the Physical Environment to Influence How You Think and Feel (2015) and Choke: What The Secrets Of The Brain Reveals About Getting It Right When You Have To (2010).

Beilock joined the UChicago faculty in 2005.

University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Amir Sufi, the Chicago Board of Trade Professor, has been named the first Bruce Lindsay Professor of Economics and Public Policy.

In his research, Sufi focuses on finance and macroeconomics. His recent research on household debt and the economy has been profiled in The Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He also has presented this work to policymakers at the Federal Reserve, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs, and the White House Council of Economic Advisors. This research forms the basis of his book co-authored with Atif Mian: House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again, which was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2014.

Sufi also is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and he serves as an associate editor for the American Economic Review and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. His articles have been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Finance and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Sufi graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University with a bachelor’s degree in economics. As a PhD student in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he received the Solow Endowment Prize for Graduate Student Excellence in Teaching and Research.

He joined the UChicago faculty in 2005.

The College

Gary Herrigel, Professor of Political Science and in the College, has been named the Paul Klapper Professor.

Herrigel’s research interests include comparative political economy and alternative forms of governance in economic process and regulation throughout the developed and developing world. A common thread in his work has been an interest in the changing boundaries of firms and the political arrangements that govern them in Europe (particularly Germany), the United States and Japan.

Herrigel’s most recent book, Manufacturing Possibilities: Creative Action and Industrial Recomposition in the U.S., Germany and Japan, applies pragmatist theories of creative social action to contemporary industrial transformation processes.

Currently, he is completing a book on recursivity and governance in the globalization of German manufacturing. He also is beginning a project to explore the intersection of public and private governance architectures in environmental, health and safety regulation in the Norwegian offshore oil industry.

In the face of pessimism regarding the future of manufacturing in developed countries, Herrigel aims to understand and identify possibilities for continued growth and employment by conceiving of contemporary manufacturing in a globally interactive way.

In addition to the books Herrigel has authored and co-edited, he has written numerous articles and book chapters and has edited a special issue of the journal Enterprise and Society.

Herrigel joined the UChicago faculty in 1989.

Harris School of Public Policy Studies

Konstantin Sonin, Professor of Public Policy, has been named the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor.

A prominent scholar of Russian, Sonin’s research interests include political economics, development and economic theory and political economy. In recent years Sonin has focused on applying behavioral microeconomic concepts to an array of social and political phenomena, including corruption, dictatorship and the inequitable distribution of property.

His academic work has earned him three medals from the Global Development Network, best economist awards from the Russian Academy of Science in 2002-03, and the 2008 Ovsievich Memorial Prize in Mathematical Economics, given annually to a distinguished Russian scholar under 40.

Sonin’s papers have been published in leading academic journals of economics such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies and political science such as the American Political Science Review and American Journal of Political Science.

Sonin joined the UChicago faculty in 2015.

University of Chicago Law School

Daniel Abebe, Professor of Law, has been named the Harold J. and Marion F. Green Professor of Law.

Abebe’s research interests focus primarily on the relationship between the constitutional law of U.S. foreign relations, public international law and international politics; international courts and the structure of international organizations; and cyber warfare and presidential power.

He has taught foreign relations law, public international law, conflict of laws, international trade law, legal issues in international transactions, and refugee and asylum law, among other courses and seminars.

He is a contributor to a forthcoming book Why Comparative International Law Needs International Relations Theory, (Oxford University Press 2016) and two of his papers, “Cyber War, International Politics and Institutional Design” and “International Human Rights Law in Africa: Are Courts Effective,” will be published in the University of Chicago Law Review and the Virginia Journal of International Law respectively.

Abebe’s articles have appeared in the Chicago Journal of International Law, the Vanderbilt Law Review, the Stanford Journal of International Law, the Supreme Court Review, and the Michigan Journal of International Law.

Abebe clerked for Judge Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

He joined the UChicago Law School faculty in 2008.

Justin Driver, Professor of Law, has been named the Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law.

Driver’s principal teaching and research interests include constitutional law, constitutional theory, education law and the intersection of race with legal institutions.

His writing has appeared in publications such as the University of Chicago Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, Supreme Court Review, Harvard Law Review, and the New Republic.

His paper, “The Constitutional Conservatism of the Warren Court” (published in the California Law Review), was awarded the 2012 William Nelson Cromwell Article prize for the best article in American legal history published by an early career scholar.

Driver served as a law clerk to Judge Merrick B. Garland, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Justice Stephen Breyer of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Driver joined the University of Chicago Law School faculty in 2014.

Aziz Huq, Professor of Law, has been named the Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law.

Huq’s teaching and research interests include constitutional law, criminal procedure, federal courts and legislation. His scholarship concerns the intersection of institutional design and individual rights and liberties.

He has been published in both leading law reviews and peer-reviewed journals. His recent research articles have won the Association of American Law Schools’ Junior Scholars Paper Competition Award in Criminal Law and have been selected for the Harvard/Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum. His co-edited volume “Assessing Constitutional Performance” is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press this year.

Prior to UChicago, Huq litigated cases in both the U.S. Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court. He also was a senior consultant analyst for the International Crisis Group, researching constitutional design and implementation in Pakistan, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka.

He clerked for Judge Robert D. Sack of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Huq joined the UChicago faculty in 2009.

Liz Thompson appointed chair of University of Chicago Charter School board

Thu, 27 Aug 2015 10:15 -0500

University of Chicago Trustee Liz Thompson has been appointed governing board chair of the University of Chicago Charter School.

As chair, Thompson will lead the UChicago Charter School’s 21-member governing board, which oversees the school’s four South Side campuses. Her appointment was effective Aug. 20.

“The University of Chicago Charter School is an important resource for our nearby neighborhoods, with educational outcomes and college acceptance rates that have made it a national model of urban school success,” said President Robert J. Zimmer. “Liz Thompson brings an exemplary background in youth development and education issues, and she has the skill to work with the school leadership to help advance the ambitious vision for the Charter School.”

Thompson has served on the governing board since 2010. The board includes faculty and leaders from the University of Chicago and the Urban Education Institute, parents from each of the school’s campuses, and community, business and philanthropic leaders.

“I’m honored to have this opportunity to help guide the progress of a school that is delivering such impressive results for its students and is so committed to ensuring that every one of them not only earns a college degree, but becomes a critical thinker and leader in the process,” Thompson said. “The work the UChicago Charter School is doing is rewarding for me personally, but it’s also meaningful for the entirety of the South Side, and for what we want to accomplish for urban schools nationwide.”

Thompson brings to the role extensive experience in nonprofit organizations and expertise in youth development and education. In 1993, she was named founding executive director of City Year Chicago, the local chapter of a national service organization that served as a template for the AmeriCorps Program. She then led Family Star in Denver, Colo., one of the only Early Head Start Montessori programs in the nation. Thompson served on several local boards in Denver and San Diego, Calif., where she developed a greater understanding of youth and education issues and expanded her philanthropic activities. Prior to her work with nonprofits, she spent ten years with Ameritech Corporation.

“Liz is as inspirational as she is impressive,” said Sara Ray Stoelinga, the Sara Liston Spurlark Director of the Urban Education Institute. “She connects with our students and staff in a way that energizes us to work harder, and she brings to the governing board the kind of perspective, expertise and vision that will drive us forward. We are so fortunate to have someone of her stature as our partner in our work, on behalf of the 1,900 students at the Charter School.”

Thompson is a member of the University of Chicago Board of Trustees and its Women’s Board, is a director for the Museum of Science and Industry, and serves as co-chair of Purdue University’s Minority Engineering Program Advisory Panel. She is an alumna of the Non-Profit Leadership Program of Denver and the Leadership Greater Chicago Program, where she is also a member of the board of directors.

She lives outside Chicago with her husband, Donald Thompson, and their two children. She holds a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University.

Thompson succeeds Margot Pritzker, who has led the governing board since 2011. During Pritzker’s leadership of the board, UChicago Charter School has made marked progress toward its goal of 100 percent college graduation for its students, achieving four consecutive years of 100 percent college acceptance, as well as a college persistence rate that is second among all high schools in the Chicago area. Pritzker also has spearheaded a successful fundraising effort to build a new campus for the Charter School’s Woodlawn secondary program, which is expected to break ground in 2016.

Neil Guterman reappointed as dean of the School of Social Service Administration

Tue, 26 May 2015 13:49 -0500

Neil Guterman, the Mose and Sylvia Firestone Professor at the School of Social Service Administration, has been reappointed as dean, President Robert J. Zimmer and Provost Eric D. Isaacs announced. His second five-year term will begin July 1.

Guterman is an internationally recognized expert on issues related to child abuse and violence prevention. As dean, he has developed new initiatives in global social welfare and urban research and practice. He recruited new faculty representing multiple areas of expertise, including several with international social welfare experience, and established new educational exchange programs in India, China and Hong Kong.

“We are confident that Neil’s ongoing leadership will continue and enhance the legacy of SSA as a leader in the fields of social work and social welfare, training scholars, practitioners and leaders who have shaped these fields nationally and internationally,” Zimmer and Isaacs wrote in a message announcing Guterman’s reappointment as dean.

Guterman said it is a great honor to serve as SSA dean, and he is proud of elevating interdisciplinary scholarship that tackles some of the most complicated social problems, like violence, poverty, homelessness and HIV risk. Programs at the University, such as Crime Lab, the Chicago Center for Youth Violence Prevention, the Employment Instability and Family Well-Being and Social Policy Network, and the STI/HIV Intervention Network have been either established or expanded under his leadership.

“We’ve partnered strongly across the University to advance its urban engagement agenda,” said Guterman. “We’ve always had deep connections to the city of Chicago through our field and research partnerships. We’re also now more globally engaged with a new program concentration, educational exchanges and research studies in international social welfare,” he added.

Guterman joined the UChicago faculty as a professor in 2006, and was first appointed dean at SSA in 2010. As director of the Beatrice Cummings Mayer Program in Violence Prevention at SSA, he established the nation’s first violence prevention training program in a school of social work. He is the author of Stopping Child Maltreatment Before It Starts: Emerging Horizons in Early Home Visitation Services (2001), and numerous research articles on child abuse prevention, at-risk families and children’s exposure to community violence.

Guterman said SSA’s international work holds great potential in the coming years.

“China is looking to leading universities around the world to help them to develop their social work systems and the way they train professionals to lead those systems,” said Guterman. “We are one of the leading universities providing expert guidance as they establish their social work education system. It’s a historic moment for that country, and we’re excited to be playing a key role in fostering the birth of modern social work in China.” Guterman wants to continue to expand SSA’s global engagement and has recruited faculty with international social welfare expertise.

Guterman said he also wants to encourage development of preventive approaches for social problems and to expand the study of evidence-based solutions.

“In the next five years, we will also devote ourselves to improving the educational quality and support for our students, strengthening our lead role in educating the best-trained social welfare professionals in the world,” said Guterman. “We want to bring in the best and brightest and prepare them for careers of service. The work they take on is very challenging, and we want to well equip them and provide as much support as we can.”

Guterman earned his PhD in social work and psychology from the University of Michigan, a master’s degree in social work in clinical practice with families and children from the University of Michigan, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Camille Ann Brewer named executive director for Black Metropolis Research Consortium

Wed, 18 Mar 2015 14:21 -0500

Camille Ann Brewer has been named executive director of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium, a Chicago-based association of libraries, universities and other archival institutions that document African American and African diasporic culture, history and politics, with a specific focus on materials relating to Chicago.

“Our mission is to make accessible the holdings of our 11 BMRC member institutions to those who wish to conduct primary source research,” said Brewer. As the new executive director, Brewer brings 20 years of professional experience in the field of cultural heritage management. Her management expertise comes from experience in a range of areas, including museum and private fine art collections, artists’ papers and libraries.

For 15 years, Brewer operated her own business, CAB Fine Art, providing fine art advising and collection management services for individual, nonprofit and corporate clients. She also has worked on projects with the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Research for Arts and Culture at the National Center for Creative Aging, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Detroit Children’s Museum and the estate of Max Roach.

Brewer earned a BFA from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. She has a master’s degree in Library and Information Science from Valdosta State University and an MFA from the University of Michigan. Before she began her appointment as executive director of the BMRC, Brewer was an adjunct professor at Chicago State University, teaching weaving in the art department.

The University of Chicago has been the consortium’s host institution since 2006, when Danielle Allen, former professor of classics, political science, social thought and dean of Humanities, founded the BMRC. The Office of the Provost serves a fiduciary role for the organization, as it secures funding to assist its member institutions in making collections accessible.

The consortium has received generous support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Council on Library and Information Resources and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which on Friday, March 13 announced renewed funding for its summer fellowship program.

Sian Beilock, vice provost for academic initiatives and professor of psychology, and Jacqueline Stewart, professor of cinema and media studies and the BMRC’s faculty adviser, support the organization’s goals and initiatives. Stewart serves as principal investigator on grant proposals. Susan Boone, director of administration and operations in the Office of the Provost, is a BMRC board member and treasurer.

“Chicago’s South Side plays an important role in African American history and culture,” said Provost Eric D. Isaacs. “The University of Chicago is proud to serve as the host to the Black Metropolis Research Consortium. We are delighted that Camille is leading this effort.”

Leroy E. Kennedy, BMRC board president, welcomes new leadership for the BMRC. “We are excited about Camille’s plans for engaging the community along with our member institutions and taking the BMRC to next level of public programming.”

As Brewer forges relationships with the consortium’s member institutions, she also is focusing the BMRC’s energies on its successful summer fellowship program. Since the program’s inception, 55 scholars have taken advantage of the opportunity to work with the consortium members’ repositories.

The BMRC will welcome 15 new fellows this summer based on its 2015 thematic cohorts. The Great Migration will be the subject of the first cohort. This year is the centennial of the beginning of the Great Migration, when millions of African Americans migrated from the rural South to cities in the North, Midwest and West. “Without the Great Migration, the Black Metropolis, as we know and understand it, would not exist,” said Brewer. “Therefore, we plan to begin this next cycle of fellowships investigating this important and pivotal aspect of Chicago’s history,” she added.

The second theme for 2015 is journalism, publishing and writing. This year is the 75th anniversary of Ebony magazine, the 110th anniversary of The Chicago Defender and the 65th anniversary of Gwendolyn Brooks receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

The thematic cohorts for the summer fellowships in 2016 will focus on politics and on the medical arts. In 2017, the first cohort will explore the impact of Chicago gospel music on American pop, jazz and other musical genres, with the second cohort focusing on architecture, design and urban planning.

Sara Stoelinga appointed director of UChicago Urban Education Institute

Thu, 12 Mar 2015 13:00 -0500

The University of Chicago Urban Education Institute has a new leader, following the appointment of Sara Ray Stoelinga as the Sara Liston Spurlark Director. Stoelinga will oversee all aspects of UEI, which combines research, practice and policy to improve pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade education for children in urban schools across the country.

Stoelinga succeeds Prof. Timothy Knowles, who has been appointed Pritzker Director of UChicago Urban Labs, a new initiative that complements UEI in producing rigorous research to inform policy on a broad set of urban issues. Knowles also will serve as chairman of UEI, providing institutional oversight and supporting Stoelinga in her role as director.

“UEI is fortunate to have Sara take the helm,” said Knowles, the John Dewey Clinical Professor in the Committee on Education. “She was instrumental in the conceptualization of UEI and is a gifted leader. UEI’s work to improve the quality of schooling nationwide will be in excellent hands.”

“Sara has been instrumental to UEI’s success, and as the director she will deepen UEI’s influence on schooling and educational outcomes across the country,” said Provost Eric D. Isaacs.

Stoelinga is an accomplished leader, scholar and teacher. She has served in a broad range of roles at UEI, most recently as senior director and clinical professor in the Committee on Education. For the last four years, she has co-led all aspects of UEI, including the Consortium on Chicago School Research, the UChicago Charter School, the UChicago Urban Teacher Education Program and UChicago Impact, for which she serves as board chair.

“I am inspired each and every day by my colleagues at UEI—by their focus on the mission, and by how deeply they believe that students can achieve at high levels,” said Stoelinga. “UEI’s mission of creating knowledge to produce reliably excellent urban schooling is among the most critical levers we have to reduce social inequality, better society, and transform the lives and trajectories of young people growing up in urban communities.”

A UChicago graduate, Stoelinga earned her bachelor’s degree and PhD in sociology. She has written and spoken extensively on urban schooling, publishing numerous articles and two books focused on teacher leadership. She has taught with the Urban Teacher Education Program, in the College and in the Graham School. Recently she developed a series of courses on urban schooling for College students enrolled in UChicago Careeers in Education Professions, and this year conceptualized and taught one of the University’s first MOOCs on the history of public schooling and school reform in the United States.

UEI achieves its mission through four primary components:

The UChicago Consortium on Chicago School Research leads UEI’s applied research effort, informing practice, policy and the public about schooling in Chicago.
The UChicago Urban Teacher Education Program prepares exemplary teachers for Chicago Public Schools while empirically testing a model for urban teacher preparation and support.
The UChicago Charter School educates 1,900 primarily African American students from Chicago’s South Side, with a singular dedication to ensuring every student completes college. UChicago Charter had 100 percent of seniors admitted to college the past three years and the highest college enrollment rate of non-selective schools in the city of Chicago in 2014.
UChicago Impact provides pre-K–12 schools, school systems and states with the highest-quality, research-based diagnostic tools and training designed to produce reliably excellent schooling.

UChicago faculty members receive named, distinguished service professorships

Tue, 11 Nov 2014 14:00 -0600

Eleven UChicago faculty members—Andrew Cleland, Michael Greenstone, M. Todd Henderson, Ali Hortacsu, Wayne Hu, Jeffrey Hubbell, Jonathan Masur, John H. R. Maunsell, Larry Norman, David Rubin and Melody Swartz—have received named professorships, while five UChicago scholars—Victor Friedman, Lenore Grenoble, Chuan He, Ralph Weichselbaum and Luigi Zingales—have been named distinguished service professors.

Biological Sciences Division

John H. R. Maunsell has been named the Albert D. Lasker Professor in Neurobiology.

An internationally recognized neuroscientist, Maunsell has made fundamental contributions toward understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of vision and perception. Known for elegant, rigorous and technically demanding physiological experiments, he recently has focused on understanding how behavioral and cognitive factors, such as attention and learning, influence the way neurons process information in the visual circuits of the brain.

Since 2007, Maunsell has served as editor-in-chief of The Journal of Neuroscience, one of the top peer-reviewed journals in its field and primary publication of the Society for Neuroscience, the largest neuroscientist organization in the world.

Maunsell’s honors include election to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and appointment as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

Maunsell joined the University of Chicago faculty in 2014.

David T. Rubin, section chief of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition and co-director of the Digestive Diseases Center, has been appointed the Joseph B. Kirsner Professor in Medicine.

A nationally recognized authority on digestive diseases and investigational therapies, Rubin studies novel therapies for Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, colon cancer prevention and clinical medical ethics. He is the principal investigator for multiple clinical research projects and trials of novel therapies, including the first Food and Drug Administration-authorized study of fecal microbiota transplantation for ulcerative colitis.

Rubin is a fellow of the American Gastroenterological Association, the American College of Gastroenterology, and American College of Physicians and an active national leader in the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America.

Rubin has earned many honors and awards in his field, including the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Clinical Research in 2003 and 2013 from the American College of Gastroenterology, and the Rosenthal Award in 2012 from the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America. He is an associate editor for the journals Digestive Diseases & Sciences and Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

Rubin earned his medical degree with honors from the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine.

Ralph R. Weichselbaum, chairman of Radiation and Cellular Oncology and co-director of the Ludwig Center, has been named the Daniel K. Ludwig Distinguished Service Professor.

A nationally recognized authority on the effects of radiation and on radiation therapy for cancer, Weichselbaum has been a leader in research into the ability of certain types of tumors to resist the lethal effects of radiation, the combination of radiation therapy with chemo- or immune-therapy, and the use of precisely targeted high-dose radiotherapy for patients with a limited number of metastases.

Weichselbaum is a member of many scientific and medical societies, including the prestigious Institute of Medicine, and has served on national committees for the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, the American College of Radiology, the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology, and the Radiation Research Society. He serves on the editorial boards of several influential journals and on the advisory board of biotech companies.

Weichselbaum came to the University of Chicago in 1984 as professor and chairman of Radiation and Cellular Oncology.

Humanities Division

Victor A. Friedman, PhD’75, a linguist working on languages of the Balkans and Caucasus, has been named the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities. He is also director of the University’s Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies.

Friedman’s publications include more than a dozen books and edited works, as well as more than 300 scholarly articles and book reviews. In addition to his research on the Balkan languages, he has published extensively on Lak grammar, as well as on Georgian, and he has done field work in Daghestan in addition to more than 40 years of field work in the Balkans. His main research interests are grammatical categories, contact linguistics as well as sociolinguistic issues related to standardization, ideology and identity.

Friedman is president of the U.S. National Committee of the International Association for Southeast European Studies. He is a member of the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Academy of Sciences of Albania, the Academy of Arts and Sciences of Kosova, Matica Srpska and has been awarded the “1300 Years of Bulgaria” jubilee medal. During the Yugoslav Wars of Succession he worked for the United Nations as a senior policy analyst in Macedonia and consulted for other international organizations.

He has taught at UChicago since 1993.

Lenore Grenoble, an expert on Slavic linguistics and language contact and attrition, has been named the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor in Linguistics and the College.

She specializes in Slavic and Arctic Indigenous languages, and is currently conducting fieldwork on Evenki (Tungusic) in Siberia, Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic, Inuit) in Greenland, and Wolof (Niger-Congo) in Senegal. Her research focuses on the study of contact linguistics and language shift, discourse and conversation analysis, deixis and issues in the study of language endangerment, attrition and revitalization.

She is the author of numerous articles and books, including Deixis and Information Packaging in Russian and Language Policy in the Former Soviet Union and co-author of Saving Languages: An Introduction to Language Revitalization and a reference grammar for Evenki. Grenoble has co-edited multiple volumes such as Endangered Languages; Language Documentation: Practices and Values and, most recently, Language Typology and Historical Contingency.

Grenoble has taken an active role in promoting indigenous language vitality as coordinator of the Arctic Council’s Arctic Indigenous Languages Vitality project.

She joined the UChicago faculty in 2007.

Larry F. Norman has been named the Frank. L. Sulzberger Professor in Romance Languages and Literatures, Theater and Performance Studies and the College. He is currently chair of Romance Languages and Literatures.

Norman’s research focuses on French and European literature of the 17th and 18th centuries, and theater across the ages. His interests include theater history, book history, intellectual and cultural history, literary criticism and theory, and the relation between the visual arts and literature.

He is the author of The Public Mirror: Molière and the Social Commerce of Depiction, and The Shock of the Ancient: Literature and History in Early Modern France, which received the Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies from the Modern Language Association in 2012.

Norman was the University’s inaugural Deputy Provost for the Arts and held that position for two terms. His tenure was marked by the development of major new arts facilities, programs and initiatives. These include the planning, construction, programming and operation of the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts; the creation of the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry; and the launch of the Arts and Public Life initiative and its Arts Incubator in the Washington Park community.

He joined the UChicago faculty in 1995.

Physical Sciences Division

Chuan He, who brings a chemist’s perspective to biological problems, has been named the John T. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor in Chemistry. He’s research contribution spans a broad range in epigenetic, RNA biology, chemistry, biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, structural biology and microbiology.

With colleagues at UChicago, He’s group is mostly known for the discovery of reversible modification on RNA that significantly affects gene expression regulation analogous to similar effects on DNA. His laboratory also is known for developing enabling technologies to label and sequence recently discovered chemical modifications in mammalian DNA that are particularly important for cell differentiation and development. A particular modification is also highly abundant in the brain. He’s work also has shed light on the roles of metals in biological systems, identified bacterial regulators of virulence and antibiotic resistance, and illuminated mechanisms of DNA repair. He continues to work on understanding how the addition and removal of methyl groups on genetic material and RNA affect genetic regulation.

He, who directs the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, joined the UChicago faculty in 2002. He holds a joint professorship with Peking University, and guest professorship at several other universities. The recipient of numerous honors, last year he was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

Wayne Hu, whose research focuses on understanding structure formation in the universe, has been named the Horace B. Horton Professor in astronomy & astrophysics.

Early in his career, Hu gained recognition for his theoretical work on the temperature differences of the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the Big Bang. His work has provided important insights on how to use the CMB temperature differences to test cosmological theories and to determine cosmological parameters.

Hu focuses his research on how structures such as galaxies and clusters of galaxies were seeded at the Big Bang and how they related to dark matter—an unknown force that causes the explanation of the universe to accelerate. Hu also uses gravitational lensing (and effect that distorts images of galaxies) to study the physics of dark energy at large scales.

Hu co-leads the dark energy portion of UChicago’s Physics Frontier Center, a $17 million effort funded by the National Science Foundation. He also is a member of the South Pole Telescope and Dark Energy Survey collaborations, and a senior member of UChicago’s Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics. A member of the UChicago faculty since 2000, his many honors include elected membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Social Sciences Division

Michael Greenstone has been named the first Milton Friedman Professor in Economics.

His research focuses largely on the costs and benefits of environmental quality and energy policy. Over the years, Greenstone has worked extensively on the Clean Air Act and examined its impacts on air quality, manufacturing activity, housing prices and infant mortality. He is currently engaged in a large-scale project to estimate the costs of climate change around the world.

Greenstone now heads the interdisciplinary Energy Policy Institute at Chicago (EPIC). Prior to rejoining the faculty at Chicago, where he began his career as an assistant professor, he served as the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2006 to 2014. He is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and editor of The Journal of Political Economy. From 2009 to 2010, he was the chief economist for the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisors and has been a member of the EPA Science Advisory Board’s Environmental Economics Advisory Committee.

Greenstone joined the UChicago faculty in July.

Ali Hortacsu has been named the Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor.

Hortacsu’s research focuses primarily on how supply actually equals demand and he develops mathematical and statistical methods to model, analyze, and optimize real-world market clearing mechanisms. His methods have been used in many contexts, including government securities auctions, central bank refinancing operations, and wholesale electricity markets.

Hortacsu has written or coauthored some of the first academic papers in leading academic journals on online auctions, online dating/matchmaking, and online consumer search behavior. A fellow of the Econometric Society, and research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Hortacsu is the co-editor of the Journal of Political Economy. He was elected an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow in 2006, and was a recipient of an NSF CAREER grant.

Hortacsu joined the UChicago faculty in 2001.

University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Luigi Zingales has been named the Robert C. McCormack Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance.

His research has covered corporate governance, financial development, political economy, the economic effects of culture and the best interventions to cope with the aftermath of the financial crisis. He developed the Financial Trust Index, designed to monitor the degree of trust Americans have in their financial system, with Paola Sapienza of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

Zingales’ recent works include “The Values of Corporate Culture,” written with Luigi Guiso, of the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance, and Sapienza and forthcoming in the Journal of Financial Economics, and “Liquidity and Inefficient Investment,” written with Oliver Hart and forthcoming in the Journal of the European Economic Association. He also has two working papers, “Diagnosing the Italian Disease,” written with Bruno Pellegrino of UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, and “Monnet’s Error,” written with Guiso and Sapienza.

Previous works have been published in the Review of Financial Studies, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Finance, American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Financial Economics and Quarterly Journal of Economics, among others. He has published three books—Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists, with Raghuram Rajan, also of Chicago Booth, A Capitalism for the People and Europa o No.

Zingales also serves as American Finance Association president, Control Committee and of the Nominating Committee of Eni Spa board members and American Academy of Arts and Sciences member, and is founding director of the Center for Economic Analysis of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. He joined Booth in 1992, and has been the Robert C. McCormack Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance since 2006.

University of Chicago Law School

M. Todd Henderson has been named the first Michael J. Marks Professor.

Henderson’s research interests include corporate law, securities and financial regulation, and law and economics.

With an engineering degree cum laude from Princeton University in 1993, Henderson worked for several years designing and building dams in California before matriculating at the University of Chicago Law School. He was an editor of the Law Review, and captained the law school’s all-university champion intramural football team.

Upon graduating magna cum laude in 1998, Henderson was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as clerk to the Hon. Dennis Jacobs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He practiced appellate litigation at Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, D.C., and was an engagement manager at McKinsey & Company in Boston, where he specialized in counseling telecommunications and high-tech clients on business and regulatory strategy.

Henderson joined the UChicago faculty in 2005.

Jonathan Masur has been named the John P. Wilson Professor of Law.

Masur’s research and teaching interests include patent law, administrative law, legislation, behavioral law and economics, and criminal law.

Masur clerked for Judge Richard Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and for Chief Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

Masur taught at the Law School as a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law before joining the faculty as an assistant professor in 2007. He served as deputy dean from 2012 to 2014 and as the Herbert and Marjorie Fried Teaching Scholar from 2011 to 2013.

Institute for Molecular Engineering

Andrew N. Cleland, who specializes in quantum computing, quantum communication and quantum sensors, has been appointed the first John A. MacLean Sr. Professor for Molecular Engineering Innovation and Enterprise.

Cleland led the team that built the first quantum machine—a device whose motion can only be described with the peculiar laws of quantum mechanics. That feat earned Cleland’s team “Breakthrough of the Year 2010” honors from Science magazine. The same work was named a top-ten discovery of 2010 by Physics World.

He also has been developing a quantum computer based on superconducting quantum circuits. Such a computer would be able to process many complete sets of input data at the same time—far exceeding the parallel processing capabilities of modern classical computers.

In the quantum-communication arena, Cleland seeks to provide a means for the completely secure transmission of information, without relying on conventional encryption methods, instead relying on the principles of quantum mechanics.

A member of the UChicago faculty since July, Cleland formerly served as a professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and as associate director of the California Nanosystems Institute at UCSB. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Physical Society.

Jeffrey A. Hubbell, who develops a variety of biomaterial and molecular therapeutics, especially for regenerative medicine and immunological interventions, has been appointed the first Barry L. MacLean Professor for Molecular Engineering Innovation and Enterprise.

Hubbell is an entrepreneurial chemical and biological engineer who has founded three companies based on his academic research: Kuros Biosurgery in Zurich, Switzerland; Anokion in Lausanne, Switzerland; and Focal Inc., of Lexington, Mass. Along with his associates, he holds 88 U.S. patents. Recently he has been designing biomolecules and biomaterials to turn on immune responses to fight infection and cancer, and on the other hand, specifically turn off immune responses in auto-immune diseases such as Type 1 diabetes. He coined the term “immune-modulatory materials” to describe this newly emerging field of research.

Hubbell formerly served as the Merck-Serono Chair in Drug Delivery and acting dean of the School of Life Sciences at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, where he also had served as founding director of the Institute of Bioengineering. He joined the UChicago faculty in July.

He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and an elected fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Melody A. Swartz, who studies how lymphatic vessels and their transport functions contribute to immunity and cancer, has been appointed the William B. Ogden Professor in Molecular Engineering.

Biomedical scientists typically regard the fluid drainage function of the lymphatic system as mostly important for maintaining tissue fluid balance. Cell transport functions, which regulate immunity, are considered separately. Swartz’s team has revealed new immune functions of lymphatic endothelial cells that are strongly linked to the transport functions of lymphatic vessels.

Her team also is trying to target lymphatic vessels for improved cancer immunotherapy because this is one aspect of the tumor microenvironment that seems to contribute to therapeutic failure. With these new insights, she is attempting to build a new picture of the lymphatic function in which the fluid and cell transport functions of the lymphatic vessels are intrinsically involved in regulating immune responses.

Schwartz previously held joint appointments as a professor of bioengineering and cancer research at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lusanne and served as director of its Institute of Bioengineering. A 2012 MacArthur Fellow, Schwartz also has received an Arnold and Mabel Beckman Young Investigator Award, and the Wenner Prize, Switzerland’s largest prize for cancer research. She joined the UChicago faculty in July.

Gift to Career Advancement program benefits students interested in education professions

Tue, 28 Jan 2014 11:29 -0600

University trustee Charles Ashby Lewis and Penny Bender Sebring have endowed UChicago Careers in Education Professions with a named directorship, investing in students who pursue careers in education.

“Chuck and Penny are deeply committed to improving teachers, classrooms and schools, and have long advocated for the inclusion of these professional tracks in our Career Advancement programming,” said John W. Boyer, dean of the College at a reception announcing the creation of the Lewis-Sebring Director for the education professions program. “We are grateful for their leadership and their support,” he said.

UChicago Careers in Education Professions began in 2012 as a program within Career Advancement for students in the College, graduate students and alumni. Nahida Teliani leads the popular program, now as the Lewis-Sebring Director.

“I am humbled that my job title now bears the names of two people I hold in the highest regard,” Teliani said, thanking the couple for their guidance and direction as the education professions program has taken off. It helps students prepare for careers in teaching, administration, research and policy, and currently it serves hundreds of students across all academic disciplines.

In the program’s first year, Teliani has matched students with internships in places as varied as the U.S. Department of Education and the Boys and Girls Club of San Francisco. She has arranged treks across the city of Chicago and around the country to education policy centers, schools and research centers. She has advised hundreds of students on their career paths. And she has seen the first year of program graduates begin careers in education.

“We are continually cultivating an environment where the future educational leaders of America can thrive,” Teliani said.

The Lewis-Sebring Family Foundation has been dedicated to many aspects of education reform, policy, research and training. Penny Sebring is a senior research associate at the University of Chicago and founding co-director of the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research. She also serves on the Board of Directors for the Chicago Public Education Fund and is a member of the Visiting Committee to the Division of Social Sciences.

In addition to his role as a University Trustee, Charles Lewis is highly involved with the University’s Urban Education Institute and is a member of the Governing Board of the University’s Charter School. He is a member of the visiting committees to the Division of the Social Sciences and to the College.

Beyond supporting and advising the Careers in Education Professions program, the couple contributes to the University’s Metcalf internship program to allow students to pursue substantive internships.

Fourth-year John Lim worked as an intern at the New York City Department of Education through the Metcalf internship program during the summer of 2013, and said his exposure to real-world education policy and experts was vital to his preparation for a career in education. “This has truly been a transformative experience for me,” Lim said.

In another sign of the early successes of the program, 30 percent of graduating seniors had lined up job placements by the end of Fall Quarter. Lim is among them and will start his career with two years of classroom experience with Teach for America.

Dan Gaylin named president of NORC at the University of Chicago

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 11:31 -0600

The Board of Trustees of NORC at the University of Chicago has announced the appointment of Dan Gaylin as president and chief executive officer of the independent research organization.

“We concluded that Dan is the most capable and qualified person to lead NORC at the University of Chicago,” said Edward O. Laumann, chairman and director of the NORC Board of Trustees and the George H. Mead Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology and the College at the University of Chicago. “He understands the organization, its people, the issues that motivate the work we do, and the research challenges that confront this nation and the world in times of political, economic and social change. We have great confidence in his capacity to lead NORC in the years ahead.”

Gaylin has been with NORC for nearly 13 years, most recently holding the position of Executive Vice President for Research Programs. Earlier this year, following the appointment of former President John Thompson as director of the U.S. Census Bureau, Gaylin held the role of acting president.

“It is truly an honor to be selected to lead NORC,” said Gaylin. “Providing the best possible data and analysis upon which critical decisions are made is of the utmost importance in helping inform policies that establish the direction of this nation and the world. That has been the central mission of NORC for more than 70 years. I am deeply committed to working with all of the talented staff at NORC in continuing the excellence, innovation and collegiality that are the hallmarks of all that we do, while simultaneously exploring new ways we can best fulfill our mission in these changing times.”

NORC Trustee John Mark Hansen, who chaired the search committee, said the decision to name Gaylin president and CEO followed an exhaustive national search and is effective immediately. “NORC has a tradition of excellence that began in our earliest days and will continue into the future,” said Hansen, the Charles L. Hutchinson Distinguished Service Professor in Political Science at UChicago. “Dan Gaylin has the depth of knowledge and the management skills needed to lead such a complex organization, and despite a very impressive array of candidates from research organizations, academia and government, he was simply the right person for the job.”

Established in 1941, and with a staff of more than 1,500 people, NORC at the University of Chicago conducts research analysis, program evaluations, technical assistance and data collection across a wide range of subjects, including education, early childhood, substance abuse, mental health, criminal justice, economics, population studies, public health, health care and international development.

Key funding agencies include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, USAID, the Federal Reserve Board, and many others. In the U.S., NORC conducts many of the largest and most important national surveys including the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth, the Survey of Consumer Finances, and the National Immunization Survey. It is home to the General Social Survey, a comprehensive study of the views of Americans on a wide array of social issues and the second-most cited social sciences resource in the country after the U.S. Census. In addition, NORC conducts issues-based research funded by many philanthropic foundations and other nonprofit organizations, and partners with the Associated Press via the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. In addition to its headquarters in downtown Chicago, NORC has offices in Bethesda, Md.; Boston; Atlanta; San Francisco; and on the UChicago campus. NORC also has extensive domestic and international field operations, conducting research in 24 countries around the globe.

Gaylin has more than 25 years of experience spanning government, think tanks and private research organizations. He is a nationally recognized expert in health policy and program evaluation and has numerous publications in leading peer-reviewed journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and Health Affairs. Prior to joining NORC, Gaylin served as director of research and planning in the Office of Health Policy at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Earlier he was vice president at the consulting firm The Lewin Group and a research associate and program manager at the Urban Institute.

He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and holds an MPA with focuses in health policy and quantitative analysis from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

International educator Robin Appleby named next director of Laboratory Schools

Wed, 18 Sep 2013 09:00 -0500

Robin Appleby, an educator who has led high-achieving schools on three continents, has been appointed director of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, effective July 1, 2014.

Appleby currently oversees four campuses of the Global Education Management Systems American Academies, with a combined enrollment of 5,000 students. As executive principal, Appleby is responsible for supporting and supervising school leadership, monitoring curriculum and ensuring standards for values-based education for an international student body.

Since 2009, she also has served as superintendent/CEO of GEMS Dubai American Academy, an American/International Baccalaureate K-12 school with a student body of 2,300 students, representing 100 nationalities. In addition, she currently sits on the board of trustees of the Council of International Schools.

Appleby previously served as high school principal at the American School of the Hague; director of the upper school at Hathaway Brown School, an independent girls’ secondary school in Shaker Heights, Ohio; and senior dean at the Nichols School, an independent day school in Buffalo, N.Y. Her career began as a college writing instructor and then as an English teacher at the Nichols School.

David Greene, executive vice president of the University of Chicago, and John Rogers Jr., chairman of the Laboratory Schools Board of Directors, cited Appleby’s breadth of experience in a message to the Lab Schools community announcing the appointment.

“Robin has led increasingly complex and diverse school communities during her career, bringing them together through a commitment to high-quality education and strong, respectful communities,” they wrote. “Her global outlook and her focus on teaching excellence and an outstanding student experience make her a wonderful choice to lead the Lab Schools.”

American philosopher and educator John Dewey founded the Laboratory Schools in 1896 to test and demonstrate his educational theories. Since then, Lab has continued to be an integral part of the University of Chicago, now serving more than 1,830 students from nursery school through 12th grade.

As director, Appleby will oversee the nursery school, kindergarten, primary school, lower school, middle school and high school, stewarding their unique cultures, supporting their faculties, and encouraging creativity, innovation and ambition. She will be responsible for developing the human and financial resources the Schools need to continue to excel, and promote a community that engages alumni, families, the University and the City of Chicago.

“The Laboratory Schools represent a unique opportunity for an educator, in the U.S. and around the world. From their beginning under John Dewey to the remarkable educational programs that have inspired and shaped Earl Shapiro Hall and the new Arts Hall, the Laboratory Schools have continued to demonstrate new ways to provide each child an education that is both challenging and nurturing,” she said. “In particular, the Schools’ setting within the University of Chicago provides a rich and rare opportunity to tap the intellectual and physical resources of a higher education leader, and promote new collaborations.”

Appleby was selected after an international search that began in January. The search committee held numerous meetings with faculty, parents, students, alumni, administrators, and conducted a survey of the Laboratory Schools community.

“This is an exciting moment in the life of the Laboratory Schools. The search provided us with an opportunity to reflect on what is most important to us as a community and to think ambitiously about our future,” said Emily Buss, the Mark and Barbara Fried Professor of Law and a member of the Laboratory Schools board, who chaired the committee. “I am grateful for the deep commitment of my fellow committee members, and delighted that the work of the whole community has yielded such an outstanding appointment.”

Janice Moy, a sixth-grade humanities teacher at the Laboratory Schools who served on the committee, said that the wide variety of voices that informed the search kept returning to the same themes.

“We were looking for someone who has a deep respect for Lab’s progressive tradition, and who also has the leadership and vision necessary to guide the Schools as we grapple with the idea of what ‘progressive’ means in the 21st century,” Moy said. “Robin’s diversity of experience and her enthusiasm for working in complex environments give us confidence that she is the right person to take Lab into the future while still holding on to its essence—that is, all those things that make Lab uniquely Lab.”

Appleby grew up in New England and earned her bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College, before earning a Master of Arts degree in English Literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a Master of Science degree in Organization Development and Analysis from the Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management. She is married and has a 7-year-old daughter.

She will succeed David Magill, who announced in January that he would retire after 11 years as director. During Magill’s tenure, student diversity and capacity for special needs students have grown; financial aid has increased more than 300 percent; and the Schools’ endowment has doubled. Magill launched the expansion of the Schools, which will provide more opportunities for University families and for students from across area, and led the Lab+ campaign that has made the expansion possible through new and improved facilities that support the work of faculty and students.

Bryan Samuels, national leader in child welfare, named executive director of Chapin Hall

Mon, 05 Aug 2013 11:52 -0500

Leading child welfare policymaker Bryan Samuels has been appointed executive director of Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago, the Chapin Hall board of directors announced Aug. 5. His appointment will take effect Sept. 16.

Since its founding in 1985 by Harold Richman, a former dean of the School of Social Service Administration, Chapin Hall has focused on a mission of improving child well-being through policy research activities—developing and testing new ideas, generating and analyzing information, and examining policies, programs, and practices across a wide range of service systems and organizations. Chapin Hall takes a broad perspective, embracing an interest in policies that promote the well-being of all children and youth while devoting special attention to those facing significant problems.

As executive director, Samuels will advance Chapin Hall’s multidisciplinary, data-driven efforts to improve the well-being of children and youth, their families and their communities. Through its research and policy analysis, Chapin Hall enables people concerned about the welfare of children—policymakers, service providers, families and communities—to be better informed and supported, and to exercise their responsibilities to children more effectively.

Samuels, MPP’93, comes to Chapin Hall from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he is the commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF) and the highest-ranking federal child welfare policymaker. Samuels was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate in 2010. He previously served as the chief of staff of the Chicago Public Schools under Arne Duncan and as director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

John Mark Hansen, who chairs the Chapin Hall board of directors and oversaw a national search for the new executive director, said Samuels would be a transformative leader for the research and policy center.

“Bryan Samuels has demonstrated a deep commitment to the welfare of children and youth, as well as the vision and leadership to put that commitment into action,” said Hansen, the Charles L. Hutchinson Distinguished Service Professor in Political Science and the College. “He is exceptionally well-regarded in the child welfare community, from researchers to policymakers to policy practitioners. He will bring with him a national perspective, profound insights into the policy impact of Chapin Hall’s research, and deep familiarity with Chapin Hall and the University of Chicago.”

Samuels was drawn to Chapin Hall because of its emphasis on uniting rigorous scholarship with the practical realities of policymaking—a major focus of his work at ACYF, he said.

“Everything I’ve done in D.C. has been about moving child welfare from a philosophical platform to an evidence-based platform. We want to build a child welfare system that children benefit from having been involved in, and we can’t do that without science,” Samuels said.

“Chapin Hall, with its tradition of first-rate research and access to the scholarly resources of the University of Chicago, is uniquely suited to produce scholarship that can make a real difference in the lives of children. I am delighted to have this opportunity to return to my hometown and begin a new chapter at Chapin Hall.”

Building on the talents of Chapin Hall’s researchers and its national reputation for applied research, Samuels will focus on strengthening methods for synthesizing and translating qualitative and quantitative research and developing an interdisciplinary approach to policy analysis and formulation.

In addition, Samuels hopes to shorten the sometimes lengthy process of incorporating new research into policy. By putting Chapin Hall’s work into a real-world context and enhancing its dissemination, he will strengthen the relationship between researchers and policymakers and support the faster translation of research into practice.

As ACYF commissioner, Samuels emphasized data-driven approaches to improving the social and emotional well-being of vulnerable children and youth. He oversaw federal programs addressing child abuse and neglect, runaway and homeless youth, domestic and intimate partner violence, and teen pregnancy. He played a key role in the establishment of a federal law requiring state child welfare agencies to screen for and treat the trauma of the children they serve.

While in Washington, Samuels worked to focus child welfare policymaking on tangible outcomes affecting the day-to-day experience of children receiving services. His work placed such child-specific outcomes above system and process outcomes, such as the number of children in foster care on a given day. Samuels relied on data and research to shape initiatives that were no longer “one-size-fits-all,” but tailored to meet the developmental needs of the range of children who are served by the child welfare system.

At the same time, Samuels led the development of common strategies for intervening and achieving better outcomes across ACYF program areas, informed by research describing the overlapping risks faced by young people in child welfare systems, runaway and homeless youth shelters, and domestic violence programs.

Under his leadership, the ACYF integrated research showing that the children and youth served in ACYF programs have similar histories of trauma and maltreatment, as well as similar social, emotional, and behavioral challenges.

“Bryan did an extraordinary job in his time at HHS and exerted great child welfare policy leadership at the federal level. He is extremely skilled at identifying the best research, and translating it into effective policy and programs,” said David Hansell, who worked closely with Samuels at the Department of Health and Human Services as acting assistant secretary of the Administration for Children and Families. “He is an ideal choice for Chapin Hall because he understands the critical intersection of research, policy and practice. Bryan is perfectly positioned to help move Chapin Hall forward.”

Susan Dreyfus, president and CEO of the Alliance for Children and Families and a former member of the Chapin Hall board, said Samuels has “a head and heart connection to the work that we’re doing on the front lines. He is driven by data, but also by his values and a deep desire to see better outcomes for children and families. It’s that same head and heart connection that makes Chapin Hall unique, and gives it such credibility. Bryan’s appointment is wonderful news for him and for Chapin Hall, but even better news for the field of child welfare.”

Child welfare researcher John Landsverk, who collaborated closely with Samuels at the ACYF, said Samuels showed an unusual interest in scientific research into child welfare, and made strong connections across the scholarly community.

“I have an enormous respect for Bryan Samuels,” Landsverk said. “At the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, he has connected across agencies to take in the richness of NIH-funded research on child welfare—something that has never before been done. He has made an enormous impact as a policymaker and brought the dialogue between researchers and policymakers to a new level. Bryan is a charismatic leader who will make Chapin Hall the most important platform for developing the relationship between practice, policy and science. I could not be more pleased or enthusiastic about his appointment.”

Samuels succeeds Cheryl Smithgall, who has served as acting executive director of Chapin Hall since April 2013.

“Cheryl has acted with integrity, patience and good sense in her months of leadership at Chapin Hall. She has done a splendid job in a difficult role, and the staff of Chapin Hall, as well as the entire board, is enormously grateful for her service,” Hansen said.

Samuels, a native of the South Side of Chicago, holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. He was a lecturer at the School of Social Service Administration from 1997 to 2003. His wife, Gina Samuels, is an associate professor at SSA.

The University of Chicago is home to a diverse array of programs and research initiatives aimed at ensuring that children have an opportunity to thrive. These include the Urban Education Institute and programs such as the UChicago Charter School, the Chicago Consortium on School Research and the Urban Teacher Education Program, which aim to create knowledge to produce reliably excellent urban schooling. The School of Social Service Administration has helped define the fields of social work and social welfare for more than 100 years. Crime Lab, a cross-disciplinary program directed by SSA Professors Jens Ludwig and Harold Pollack, studies ways of preventing children from becoming involved in crime. UChicago Promise helps increase college access and readiness among Chicago high school students, offering additional resources and support for those interested in attending the University of Chicago or other selective liberal arts colleges.

Faculty members recognized for outstanding scholarship with new professorships

Thu, 25 Jul 2013 15:58 -0500

Six UChicago faculty members—Elisabeth Clemens, Douglas R. Dirschl, Maryellen L. Giger, Susan C. Levine, Wenbin Lin and John Levi Martin—have received named professorships, while four faculty members— Lauren Berlant, Karin Knorr Cetina, Gregory Lawler and D.N. Rodowick—have been named Distinguished Service Professors.

Biological Sciences Division

An international leader in orthopaedic surgery, Douglas R. Dirschl, the founding chairman of Orthopaedic Surgery and Rehabilitation Medicine, has been named a Lowell T. Coggeshall Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery.

An orthopaedic surgeon, administrator, teacher and researcher, Dirschl specializes in the care of patients with musculoskeletal trauma and fractures, as well as other injuries and diseases of the bones, joints and muscles. His research identifies methods to improve precision and consistency in fracture diagnosis and classification.

He also has written extensively on traumatic shoulder, hip and ankle injuries and on emergency orthopaedic assessment and care. In 2011, as president of the American Orthopaedic Association, he spearheaded the association’s “Own the Bone” campaign, designed to increase awareness among the public and physicians of the serious consequences of bone loss and the growing prevalence of osteoporosis.

Dirschl has received multiple teaching awards for his work with medical students and residents. He has co-authored three books, 40 book chapters, and more than 75 peer-reviewed scholarly articles, and he has lectured all over the world. He serves on editorial and review boards for several notable scientific journals, including the Journal of Orthopaedic Research, Journal of Orthopaedic Trauma, and the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery.

Dirschl joined the University of North Carolina faculty in 1993. In 2001, he served as a professor and chairman of orthopaedics at Oregon Health and Science University. In 2003, he returned to UNC as department chair and remained there until joining the UChicago faculty in January.

Professor and vice chair of Radiology Maryellen L. Giger has been named the A.N. Pritzker Professor in Radiology. Giger, who serves as director of the Imaging Research Institute, and is the immediate past director of the Graduate Program in Medical Physics and founding chair of the Committee on Medical Physics, was honored for her discoveries of new ways to use computers to help radiologists obtain quantitative information from medical images.

Giger and colleagues have refined the art of computer-aided diagnosis by designing computerized-image analysis systems to help radiologists better find and diagnose various cancers, which can translate to better patient prognosis and longer lives.

The author or co-author of more than 300 scientific manuscripts, Giger is the inventor or co-inventor on 25 patents. She is a fellow and former president of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine and a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. She is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a prior vice-president of the Radiological Society of North America, and an elected board member of the SPIE.

In 2010, Giger was elected to the National Academy of Engineering—one of the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. In 2013, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine and the Internal Congress on Medical Physics selected her as one of the 50 medical physicists who have had a major impact on the field over the last 50 years.

She joined the UChicago faculty in 1986.

Humanities Division

Literature professor and cultural theorist Lauren Berlant has been named the George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor in English Language and Literature. Berlant’s work has focused on institutions of intimacy and belonging in the United States since the 19th century, as well as on the public circulation of political emotions like trauma, love, optimism and depression.

She is the author of Cruel Optimism, which examines the affective and aesthetic implications of the recent disintegration of the promise of the “good life” in the United States and Europe. Cruel Optimism received the 2012 Rene Wellek Award from the American Comparative Literature Association.

Her previous publications include a trilogy on national sentimentality—The Anatomy of National Sentiment, The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture, and The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship, as well as the edited volumes Intimacy, Our Monica, Ourselves: Clinton and the Affairs of State, and Compassion: the Culture and Politics of an Emotion. Her most recent book is Desire/Love.

Berlant is the director of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality’s LGBTQ Studies Project, a fellow of 3CT, the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, and a co-editor of Critical Inquiry.

Berlant joined the UChicago faculty in 1984.

Film scholar and filmmaker D.N. Rodowick has joined the University of Chicago faculty as the Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor in Cinema and Media Studies and the College. He comes to UChicago from Harvard University, where he was the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies.

Rodowick’s research interests include aesthetics and the philosophy of art, the history of film theory, philosophical approaches to contemporary art and culture, and the impact of new technologies on contemporary society.

Rodowick is the author of numerous essays as well as five books: The Virtual Life of Film; Reading the Figural, or, Philosophy after the New Media; Gilles Deleuze's Time Machine; The Difficulty of Difference: Psychoanalysis, Sexual Difference, and Film Theory; and The Crisis of Political Modernism: Criticism and Ideology in Contemporary Film Theory.

He also edited the 2009 collection Afterimages of Gilles Deleuze's Film Philosophy. Rodowick has two books forthcoming, Elegy for Theory and Philosophy’s Artful Conversation.

Alongside his scholarly work, Rodowick is an experimental filmmaker and video artist whose short films have received numerous awards.

Before joining the Harvard faculty, Rodowick taught at Yale University, where he founded the Film Studies program. In 2002 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences named him an Academy Film Scholar.

Rodowick joined the UChicago faculty July 1.

Social Sciences Division

Economic anthropologist and sociologist Karin Knorr Cetina has been named the Otto Borchert Distinguished Service Professor in Sociology, Anthropology and the College.

Knorr Cetina’s research interests include financial markets, knowledge and information, globalization, and social theory. Her work explores the information architecture of financial markets and their “global microstructures,” the global social and cultural form these markets take.

She also studies globalization from a microsociological perspective, using an ethnographic approach. In addition, she continues to be interested in laboratory studies, the study of science, technology and information at the site of knowledge production, particularly in the life sciences and in particle physics.

She is the author of The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science and Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Her current book project focuses on global foreign exchange markets and on post-social knowledge societies.

Knorr Cetina joined the UChicago faculty in 2010. She previously taught at the University of Bielefeld and the University of Konstanz in Germany.

Sociologist Elisabeth S. Clemens, who studies the role of social movements and organizational innovation in political change, has been named the William Rainey Harper Professor in Sociology and the College. She also is chair of sociology.

Clemens' first book, The People's Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890-1925, received best book awards in both organizational sociology and political sociology. She co-edited Private Action and the Public Good, Remaking Modernity: Politics, History and Sociology, Politics and Partnerships: Voluntary Associations in America's Past and Present, and the journal Studies in American Political Development.

Clemens, PhD’90, is now completing Civic Nation, which traces the entanglements of benevolence and liberalism in the development of the American nation-state.

Clemens also has served as chair of both the political sociology and the comparative historical sociology sections of the American Sociological Association, as a member of the Social Science Research Council Program on Philanthropy and the Third Sector, and as president of the Social Science History Association.

Clemens joined the UChicago faculty in 2002 as an associate professor in sociology.

Psychologist Susan C. Levine, who investigates the effects of variations in a child’s surroundings and nurturing on the growth of language and mathematical and spatial skills, has been named the first Rebecca Anne Boylan Professor in Education and Society. Her interests also include research into the plasticity of language and cognitive skills following early brain injury.

Her many publications include co-authorship of two books, Quantitative Development in Infancy and Early Childhood and Neural Plasticity and Cognitive Development: Insights from Children with Perinatal Brain Injury.

She is co-director of the University’s Center for Early Childhood Research, co-principal investigator of the National Science Foundation’s Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center, and she has served as chair of psychology and as a member of the National Academies of Sciences Early Childhood Mathematics Committee.

Levine also serves on the board of Chapin Hall, which conducts policy research that benefits children, families and their communities, and on the board of the UChicago Laboratory Schools. She formerly consulted on early math for the PBS program “Sesame Street.”

Levine is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Levine has been a faculty member at UChicago since 1976.

Sociologist John Levi Martin, who has published work on social network analysis, the use of algebraic models for the analysis of dichotomous data and political psychology, has been named the first Florence Borchert Bartling Professor in Sociology and the College.

Martin’s publications include two books, both of which received the Theory Prize for Outstanding Book from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Theory. In The Explanation of Social Action, he critiques the conventional understanding of what it means to “explain” something in the social sciences.

His Social Structures brought together recent findings in sociology, anthropology, political science and history to trace how sets of interpersonal relationships become ordered into various structural forms. The book describes a range of social structures, from families and street gangs to communes and nation-states.

He is currently doing research on the role of aesthetics and judgment in neo-Kantian sociological theory.

Martin has held previous faculty positions at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Wisconsin, Madison; and Rutgers University. He joined the UChicago faculty in 2009.

Physical Sciences Division

Physicist and mathematician Gregory Lawler, a specialist in probability and stochastic processes and in statistical physics, has been named the George Wells Beadle Distinguished Service Professor in Mathematics, Statistics and the College.

He is the author or co-author of six books: Intersections of Random Walks; Introduction to Stochastic Processes; Lectures on Contemporary Probability; Conformally Invariant Processes in the Plane; Random Walk: A Modern Introduction; and Random Walk and the Heat Equation.

Lawler is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Mathematical Society, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Lawler also is a co-recipient of the George Pólya Prize from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

He served as editor-in-chief of the Annals of Probability from 2006 to 2008 and was an editor of the Journal of the American Mathematical Society from 2009 to 2013. He co-founded the Electronic Journal of Probability in 1995 and served as its co-editor until 1999.

Lawler joined the UChicago faculty in 2006, after teaching at Cornell University. He also has been a faculty member at Duke University.

Chemical scientist Wenbin Lin, who designs new materials for applications in catalysis, molecular sensing and nanomedicine, has been appointed the James Franck Professor in Chemistry and the College.

Some of Lin’s recent work has involved the construction of hybrid solids from molecular building blocks for wide-ranging applications in sustainability and human health. He has used this approach to prepare materials for solar-energy applications.

Lin also is attempting to apply these molecular materials at nanoscale levels for applications in biomedical imaging and anticancer therapy. This work includes the development of a new type of nanoparticle that shows potential for more effective delivery of chemotherapy.

Lin is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He appeared on various “top scientists” lists, which are based on citations per article, from 1999 to 2010.

Other honors include the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Young Investigator Award, the Research Corporation Cottrell Scholar Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

Lin previously was the Kenan distinguished professor of chemistry and pharmacy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he had served on the faculty since 2001.

He joined the UChicago faculty on June 1.

Jens Ludwig elected to prestigious Institute of Medicine for research on social determinants of health

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 16:52 -0500

Jens Ludwig, one of the nation’s leading researchers applying scientific tools to the study of social issues such as crime, poverty and health, has been elected to the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine.

Ludwig, the McCormick Foundation Professor of Social Service Administration, Law and Public Policy, and director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, is one of 70 new members and 10 foreign associates elected to the prestigious organization. He is the 14th member of the UChicago faculty to be elected to the group since 1978.

The Institute of Medicine is both an honorific membership organization and a policy research organization. Membership in the Institute is considered "one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievements and commitment to service," according to the IOM. The Institute's members serve without compensation in the conduct of studies and other activities on matters of significance to health.

Current active members elect new members from among candidates nominated for their accomplishments and contributions to the advancement of the medical sciences, health care and public health. Established in 1970 as a component of the National Academy of Sciences, the IOM has become recognized as a national resource for independent, scientifically informed analysis and recommendations on health issues.

“It is a great honor to be selected to join the IOM,” said Ludwig. “Researchers and policymakers are increasingly aware that some of the most important determinants of health have nothing to do with what happens in the medical system, and are instead related to the social environment. It is a privilege to be able to work with the IOM to learn more about social determinants of health outcomes for some of our nation’s most economically disadvantaged people.”

“The Institute of Medicine is greatly enriched by the addition of our newly elected colleagues, each of whom has significantly advanced health and medicine,” said IOM President Harvey V. Fineberg. “Through their research, teaching, clinical work and other contributions, these distinguished individuals have inspired and served as role models to others.”

Ludwig’s research on the social determinants of health has focused largely on three areas: the prevention of violent crime, the effects of urban poverty on health and well-being, and the ways in which public policy affects health outcomes.

With his colleagues at the University of Chicago Crime Lab and its sister organization, the Urban Education Lab within the Urban Education Institute, Ludwig partners with government agencies to carry out randomized clinical trials to learn more about the most cost-effective ways to prevent violence and closely related social problems, such as high-school dropout. The Crime Lab recently released the results of one large-scale randomized trial that was carried out in partnership with the Chicago Public Schools and two local non-profits (Youth Guidance and World Sport Chicago). The study randomly assigned 2,740 disadvantaged young males in grades 7-10 from distressed South and West Side neighborhoods in a counseling and mentoring program called Becoming a Man – Sports Edition.

Ludwig and colleagues found that even a modest investment in strengthening “non-academic” skills such as impulse control, future orientation and social-information processing – at a cost of about $1,100 per participant – was capable of increasing high school graduation rates by 7 to 22 percent, and reducing violent-crime arrests by fully 44 percent. The Crime Lab is now partnering with the MacArthur Foundation to carry out an even more ambitious experiment starting in the fall of 2013.

A second strand of Ludwig’s research focuses on the effects of urban poverty on the health and well-being of low-income families. Violence, adverse health outcomes and many other social problems are geographically clustered and disproportionately concentrated in the most distressed urban neighborhoods. This pattern has raised questions about whether something about neighborhood environments themselves might causally affect people’s life outcomes, although this hypothesis has been difficult to test with available data.

Since 1995 Ludwig has been involved in the study of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Moving to Opportunity (MTO) residential-mobility experiment, which randomly offered some public housing families the opportunity to use housing vouchers to move into less-distressed neighborhoods. Ludwig served as the project director for the long-term (10-15 year) MTO follow-up, for which he had lead responsibility for raising $16 million from HUD, NIH, NSF, CDC, the US Department of Education and numerous private foundations to carry out in-person data collection from families – including the collection of “biomarkers” to measure detailed health outcomes. In a series of recent papers, including publications in the New England Journal of Medicine and Science, Ludwig and his collaborators showed that while moving from a high-poverty into a lower-poverty neighborhood had few detectable effects on adult economic outcomes or children’s schooling outcomes, such moves generated very large declines in rates of extreme obesity, diabetes, and clinical depression.

A third strand of his research focuses on the effects of education and other public policy interventions on health outcomes. He has, for example, written about the sensitivity of health outcomes to policy intervention during early childhood as part of his work on Head Start. He has also carried out research on gun violence, including efforts to measure the social impacts of gun violence on American society (Gun Violence: The Real Costs, with Philip Cook, Oxford University Press, 2000); a study with Cook on the effects of the Brady Act on gun violence, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association; and a study of the “industrial organization” of underground gun markets in Chicago and the implications for violence prevention, carried out in partnership with Cook, Anthony Braga, and Sudhir Venkatesh.

Ludwig, 43, was born in Germany and grew up in Massachusetts and New Jersey. He received his PhD from Duke University. From 1994-2007 he was on the faculty of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., before coming to the University of Chicago.

Ludwig has received many honors including the David Kershaw Prize from the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, for contributions to public policy by age 40, an Investigator Award in Health Policy from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and a visiting scholar award from the Russell Sage Foundation. He is also an elected fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology, non-resident senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, and co-director of the National Bureau of Economic Research working group on the economics of crime.

Ludwig is married to Elizabeth Scott. They have one child and are expecting another, and live with their dog, Trixi, in Hyde Park.

Faculty members recognized for outstanding research with new professorships

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 10:15 -0500

Thirteen UChicago faculty members — Mark Bradley, Marshall Chin, Juan de Pablo, Frances Ferguson, Ayelet Fishbach, Chang-Tai Hsieh, Holly Humphrey, David J. Levin, Robert McCulloch, Kathleen Morrison, Paul Nealey, Nicholas Polson and Kazuo Yamaguchi — have received named professorships, while six faculty members — Alex Eskin, Michael Fishbane, David Jablonski, Bruce Lincoln, Eric Santner and Rosanna Warren — have been named Distinguished Service Professors. The William Claude Reavis Distinguished Service Professor Richard Shweder has been named the Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor. Alan Kolata, the Neukom Family Distinguished Service Professor, has been named the Bernard E. and Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Service Professor. Two faculty members, Kenneth Pomeranz and Dam Thanh Son, have been named University Professor.

Biological Sciences Division

Marshall Chin has been appointed the Richard Parrillo Family Professor in Medicine. Chin is a general internist with a research focus on reducing racial and ethnic health disparities. As the director of Finding Answers: Disparities Research For Change, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation based at UChicago, Chin oversees the funding and evaluation of disparities reduction projects around the country. Chin is also co-principal investigator for Improving Diabetes Care and Outcomes on the South Side of Chicago, which is working with local clinics, patients and the community on innovative solutions to controlling and treating the chronic disease.

Holly Humphrey has been appointed the Ralph W. Gerard Professor in Medicine. Humphrey studies how the medical school curriculum can be reshaped to fit the modern health care system and place a greater emphasis on professionalism, diversity, doctor-patient relationships, research and scholarship. Her work has informed the implementation of The Pritzker Initiative and other programs at the Pritzker School of Medicine, which Humphrey oversees as dean of Medical Education. Under her supervision, the Pritzker School of Medicine reached the top 10 in national medical school rankings in 2012.

Humanities Division

Frances Ferguson has been named the Ann L. and Lawrence B. Buttenwieser Professor in English Language & Literature and the College. Her research interests include 18th- and 19th-century literature, as well as 20th- and 21st-century literary theory. Ferguson, who comes to the University from Johns Hopkins University, is currently at work on a project that explores the rise of mass education and how it affects our conception of both individuals and society.

David J. Levin has been appointed the Addie Clark Harding Professor in Germanic Studies, Cinema and Media Studies, Theater and Performance Studies, and the College. His latest book, Unsettling Opera: Staging Mozart, Verdi, Wagner and Zemlinksy, (University of Chicago Press, 2007), explores how radical stagings impact one’s understanding of classic operas. Levin, an expert on German opera, theater, cinema and performance theory, serves as executive editor of Opera Quarterly and as the director of the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry.

Eric Santner, a leading scholar of German literature, history and culture, has been named the Philip and Ida Romberg Distinguished Service Professor in Germanic Studies and the College. Santner works at the intersection of literature, political theory, philosophy, psychoanalysis and religious thought. His most recent book, The Royal Remains: The People’s Two Bodies and the Endgames of Sovereignty, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2011.

Divinity School

Michael Fishbane has been named the Nathan Cummings Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish Studies in the Divinity School and the College. His many works explore the ancient Near East, biblical studies and rabbinics, the history of Jewish interpretation, as well as Jewish mysticism and modern Jewish thought. He is presently completing a book that incorporates modern critical and traditional Jewish interpretations of the Song of Songs.

Bruce Lincoln has been named the Caroline E. Haskell Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions in the Divinity School, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Committee on Medieval Studies and the College. He is particularly interested in issues of discourse, practice, power, conflict, the violent reconstruction of social borders and ideological aspects of religion. Lincoln tends to focus on pre-Christian Europe and pre-Islamic Iran, with occasional excursions elsewhere. His Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars: Critical Explorations in the History of Religions, which calls for a more critical approach to studying the role of religion in history and culture, was published in May by the University of Chicago Press.

Institute for Molecular Engineering

Juan de Pablo, who comes to UChicago from the University of Wisconsin, will become the Liew Family Professor in Molecular Theory and Simulations and the College, effective Sept. 1. de Pablo specializes in conducting supercomputer simulations to understand and innovatively design new materials and to find applications for them. He is one of the leading experts in simulating polymeric materials, substances that consist of long, flexible chains of identical molecules. de Pablo also develops computational simulations of molecular and large-scale phenomena, including DNA dynamics, protein aggregation and the latter’s poorly understood relationship to various diseases.

Paul Nealey, also formerly of the University of Wisconsin, will join the faculty as the Brady W. Dougan Professor in Molecular Engineering and the College as of Sept. 1. Nealey is a pioneer of directed self-assembly, a technique that is becoming important in microelectronics processing to create patterns for integrated circuits. He also is a world leader on patterning organic materials, which entails creating physical patterns of structure and composition in materials at the nanoscale, which affects the function of the materials. Nealey’s expertise in fabricating nanostructured surfaces extends to tissue engineering of corneal prosthetic devices.

Physical Sciences Division

Alex Eskin has been appointed the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor in Mathematics and the College. Eskin is generally interested in the aesthetics of mathematics, but his particular research interests include the dynamics and geometry of Teichmüller space, billiards in rational polygons, and geometric group theory. He also studies Lie Groups, discrete groups, ergodic theory, applications to number theory and geometric group theory.

David Jablonski has been named the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Service Professor in Geophysical Sciences and the College. Jablonski is a paleontologist who studies macroevolution, which takes place above the species level and encompasses large-scale patterns of evolution, mass extinction, diversification and the origin of evolutionary breakthroughs. He also compares patterns of extinctions and survival during mass extinctions to better understand the evolutionary significance of extinction events. His methods emphasize the combining of data from living and fossil organisms to study the origins and fates of lineages and adaptations.

Dam Thanh Son has been appointed University Professor in Physics, the Enrico Fermi Institute and the James Franck Institute, effective Sept. 1. Son currently serves as a professor of physics and a senior fellow in the Institute for Nuclear Theory at the University of Washington. A theoretician, his research interests span nuclear, particle, condensed matter and atomic physics. Among his accomplishments, Son has borrowed ideas from string theory and black holes physics to explain some phenomena observed in relativistic heavy-ion collisions.

Social Sciences Division

Mark Philip Bradley has been named the Bernadotte E. Schmitt Professor in History and the College. His research and teaching focuses on 20th-century U.S. international history, the global history of human rights politics and postcolonial Southeast Asian history. He is the author of Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, Vietnam at War and is completing a book that explores the place of the United States in the 20th-century global human rights imagination.

Alan Kolata has been named the Bernard E. and Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Service Professor in Anthropology and the College. He is leading ongoing interdisciplinary research projects studying human-environment interactions over the past 3,000 years in South America and Southeast Asia, including problems of water sustainability and climate change in Cambodia. His new book, Ancient Inca, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2013.

Kathleen Morrison has been named the Neukom Family Professor in Anthropology and the College. Her research examines the causes and consequences of agrarian transformations in southern India, especially the connections between power relations and environmental change. Morrison’s work indicated that these transformations, begun in ancient times, led to inequality and environmental degradation, including current construction of large dams and a current rash of farmer suicides. This work integrates data from archaeology, history and environmental sciences, including botanical and stable isotope analysis.

Kenneth Pomeranz, one of the nation’s leading scholars of modern China, joined the faculty July 1 as University Professor of History and the College. Pomeranz’s research is focused on three primary areas: reciprocal influences of state, society and economy in late Imperial and 20th-century China; the origins of a world economy as the outcome of mutual influences among various regions; and comparative studies of labor, family organization, and economic change in Europe and East Asia. His book, The Great Divergence (2000), won the John K. Fairbank Book Prize in East Asian History from the American Historical Association, one of the most important honors for a scholar of Asian studies.

Richard Shweder, a cultural anthropologist, has been named the Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in Comparative Human Development and the College. His recent research examines the scopes and limits of pluralism and the multicultural challenge in Western liberal democracies. He also is working with a group of scholars from a number of universities to look at the “equality-difference paradox”—the apparent tradeoff between equality and diversity, such that very few contemporary countries have achieved both; and the implications of the evidence that the most economically egalitarian countries are also the most ethnically and culturally homogeneous.

Rosanna Warren has been named the Hanna Holborn Gray Distinguished Service Professor in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought and the College. An acclaimed poet, Warren examines poetry and translation, and the relations between classical and modern literature in her scholarship. Among her award-winning poetry are titles such as: Each Leaf Shines Separate; Stained Glass, which won the Lamont Award from the Academy of American Poets; and Departure (2003). Her most recent book of poems is Ghost in a Red Hat (2011). She is also author of a book of literary criticism, Fables of the Self: Studies in Lyric Poetry (2008).

Kazuo Yamaguchi has been named the Ralph Lewis Professor in Sociology and the College. Yamaguchi is a prominent scholar of statistical modeling of family processes. A specialist in quantitative methodology, social stratification, the family and mathematical sociology, he is interested in statistical models for social data and rational choice theory. He also studies work-life balance and gender inequality in Japan, and is an advisor to Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and the Gender Equality Bureau of the Cabinet Office, regarding the promotion of women in economic activities.

University of chicago Booth School of Business

Ayelet Fishbach has been named the Jeffrey Breakenridge Keller Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing. A member of the Booth faculty since 2002, Fishbach studies the process of self-regulation, specifically the simultaneous pursuit of multiple goals. A primary focus of her research is on the practice of self-control, especially how people protect their long-term goals from the influence of short-term motives or temptations.

Chang-Tai Hsieh has been named the Phyllis and Irwin Winkelried Professor of Economics at Chicago Booth, where his research is centered on growth and development. Several of his papers have been published in a number of top economic journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Hsieh has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Banks of San Francisco, New York and Minneapolis.

Robert McCulloch has been named the Katherine Dusak Miller Professor of Econometrics and Statistics. His research centers on applications of data mining and Bayesian statistical methods in business, statistical computing and machine learning. A member of the Chicago Booth faculty from 1985 to 2008, he rejoined the faculty this year after serving on the faculty of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, Austin.

Nicholas Polson has been named the Robert Law Jr. Professor of Economics and Statistics. Polson is a Bayesian statistician who conducts research on financial econometrics and Markow Chain Monte Carlo methods. Inspired by an interest in probability, Polson has added a number of new algorithms to the field of financial econometrics, including the Bayesian analysis of Stochastic Volatility and sequential particle learning. He has published in a variety of disciplinary journals, including the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society and the Journal of Finance.

Mario Small appointed next dean of Social Sciences Division

Tue, 01 May 2012 12:00 -0500

Prof. Mario L. Small has been appointed dean of the Social Sciences Division for a five-year term, President Robert J. Zimmer and Provost Thomas F. Rosenbaum announced. Small’s appointment takes effect on July 1.

Small is currently professor in sociology and the College and chair of Sociology. Recognized as a leading sociologist of his generation, Small’s research focuses on the creation of community and social capital in urban spaces. He joined the faculty in 2006.

In a joint email to Division faculty, Zimmer and Rosenbaum wrote that they were seeking a scholar and leader who would work with faculty to define the division’s intellectual and educational direction, while building support for the division. An elected advisory committee of Social Sciences faculty recommended Small for the post.

“This demanded a dean with outstanding scholarly credentials, who was a collaborative leader for the faculty, and who would work with other deans, the provost and the president to help build and fulfill the highest aspirations of the University. In appointing Mario to this position, we are confident in his ability to be such a leader,” the president and provost wrote.

“The Division has produced many of the most important ideas in social science over the past 100 years,” Small said. “I am honored by this opportunity, and I hope to serve the Division to the best of my abilities.”

Small succeeds John Mark Hansen, the Charles L. Hutchinson Distinguished Service Professor in Political Science and the College, who is stepping down after two five-year terms as dean. The president and provost praised Hansen for exceptional service.

“Mark has shaped the Division, appointing more than half of its current faculty while dean, and has helped transform the educational experience for graduate students and undergraduates alike. As professor, chair, dean and deputy provost, Mark has been emblematic of the values of the University of Chicago,” they wrote.

Small, a native of Panama, earned his bachelor’s degree from Carleton College in 1996 and his doctorate in sociology from Harvard University in 2001, working with William Julius Wilson. He served on the faculty at Princeton University from 2002 to 2006.

Small is the author of two books, Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio (Chicago, 2004) and Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life (Oxford, 2009), and nearly two dozen articles and chapters. Villa Victoria received numerous honors, including the C. Wright Mills Award for Best Book and the Robert E. Park Award for Best Book. Unanticipated Gains also received the C. Wright Mills Best Book Award, making Small the sole two-time recipient in the history of the award.

Small is currently studying institutional approaches to urban disadvantage, formal and informal systems of support among low-income mothers, and help-seeking behavior among students in higher education. He led a team that recently launched the Urban Portal, an initiative to bring together the University’s disparate programs of urban research into a powerful force for transformational scholarship on urban issues.

Small also has served as associate editor of the American Journal of Sociology and is currently editorial board member of Social Science Quarterly, City and Community, and Sociological Forum, a council member of the American Sociological Association, and a trustee of NORC at the University of Chicago.

Pritzker appointed chair of the University of Chicago Charter School board

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 09:00 -0500

Margot Pritzker has been appointed governing board chair of the University of Chicago Charter School, effective July 1.

As chair, Pritzker will lead the Charter School’s 17-member governing board, which provides oversight to the school’s four South Side campuses. Pritzker has served on the governing board since July 2007.

“The University of Chicago Charter School contributes directly to the neighborhoods around us, while it provides a platform for ideas and practices that can help schools across the city and around the nation,” said University President Robert J. Zimmer. “Margot Pritzker’s breadth of vision and her deep belief in the power of education make her an ideal leader for this important position.”

“We have a proven educational model and the replicable tools for teachers and children. This has already had, and will continue to have, a profound impact on public school education, here in Chicago and throughout the country,” Pritzker said. “I am deeply committed to this endeavor and look forward to working with our equally dedicated board, faculty and community to continue this essential work.”

The Charter School’s governing board includes faculty and leaders from the University of Chicago and the Urban Education Institute, parents from each of the Charter School’s campuses, and community leaders. The board reviews school performance, provides financial oversight and offers guidance on key personnel.

“Margot has an unparalleled commitment to improving the quality of schooling for children and families on the South Side of Chicago and for sharing what we learn with schools across Chicago and the nation,” said Timothy Knowles, the John Dewey Director of the Urban Education Institute. “We are thrilled she has agreed to chair the board of the University of Chicago Charter School.”

Pritzker plays a vital role in numerous philanthropic initiatives worldwide. She is the founder and president of WomenOnCall.org, an online network that helps connect women with volunteer opportunities. She has worked to improve opportunities for youth in the developing world through her involvement with the Ashesi University in Ghana, Asian University for Women in Bangladesh and the Acumen Fund. In addition, Pritzker has overseen the establishment of schools in the Himalayas and Afghanistan.

She is a director of the Pritzker Early Childhood Foundation, a trustee of the Aspen Institute and a board member of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Pritzker received her BA from Northwestern University and her AM from the University of Chicago.

The Charter School is operated by the University of Chicago’s Urban Education Institute and serves 1,700 public school students from pre-kindergarten through grade 12 at its four campuses. Using curriculum and programming developed at UEI, the four campuses aim to prepare students for success in four-year colleges.

About the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute: The mission of UEI is to create knowledge that helps produce reliably excellent schooling for children in urban America. The organization prepares outstanding urban teachers and leaders through the Urban Teacher Education Program; conducts rigorous research to improve policy and practice, anchored by the Consortium on Chicago School Research; operates four campuses of the University of Chicago Charter School, serving students across the South Side of Chicago; and provides tools, analytics and training to improve schools nationwide through UChicago Impact.

Michael Dawson named director of Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:25 -0500

Michael Dawson, the John D. MacArthur Distinguished Service Professor in Political Science and the College, has been named director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture.

“One of the nation’s leading experts on race and politics, Michael Dawson was the Center’s founding director,” said Provost Thomas F. Rosenbaum, the John T. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor of Physics. “His return promises to advance innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship, teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, public engagement with matters of race, ethnicity, politics and culture, and community building on campus and beyond.”

Dawson’s research has explored the development of quantitative models of African American political behavior, identity and public opinion. He has focused on the political effects of urban poverty and has characterized African American political ideology. His work also explores the differences in public opinion between African Americans and white Americans.

With his new appointment, Dawson said he looks forward to reinforcing the University’s leading role in the study of issues surrounding race.

“We are truly fortunate to be located in a city with such rich political and cultural traditions — traditions that have been, and continue to be, profoundly shaped by the dynamics of race in the U.S. and the world,” Dawson said.

In addition to numerous journal publications, book chapters and opinion pieces, Dawson has authored two books — Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics (Princeton, 1994) and the award-winning Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies (Chicago, 2001). A third book, Not in Our Lifetimes: The Future of Black Politics, is being published by the University of Chicago Press this fall.

Principal investigator on several significant studies of African American political behavior, Dawson is also known for his project with Lawrence Bobo, in which they conducted six public opinion studies on the racial divide in the United States. The information they gathered between 2000 and 2004 is considered the richest data on the issue. Along with Bobo he is also the co-founding editor of the Du Bois Review, the leading social science journal on racial research.

Dawson, whose three-year term began July 1, succeeds Ramon A. Gutierrez, the Preston & Sterling Morton Distinguished Service Professor of History and the College. Gutierrez is a distinguished scholar with expertise in Chicano history, race and ethnicity in American life, the social and economic history of the American Southwest, colonial Latin America and Mexican immigration.

Under Gutierrez’s leadership, the Center has hosted scholarly and cultural activities that include faculty research conferences on topics such as migrant rights, black religions and spiritualities, and black youth; an artist-in-residence program; fellowship awards to students and postdoctoral scholars; and expanded course offerings.

Dawson’s new role is his latest position of leadership at UChicago. He joined the faculty in 1992, having served on the faculty at the University of Michigan after receiving his PhD from Harvard University in 1986. Dawson was on the faculty at Harvard from 2002-05, when he returned to the University of Chicago. In addition to his role as founding director of the Center, Dawson has served as chair of the Department of Political Science and director of the Mellon Undergraduate Fellowship Program.

Members of UChicago faculty honored for graduate–level teaching

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 09:43 -0500

Faculty Awards for Excellence in Graduate Teaching

Christine Mehring, Associate Professor in Art History and the College and Director of Graduate Studies for Art History

William Schweiker, the Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics in the Divinity School

Robert Soare, the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor in Mathematics and Computer Science

Michael Stein, the Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor in Statistics

Chicago Booth awards

Emory Williams Award for Teaching Excellence — Alan Bester, Associate Professor of Econometrics and Statistics

Hillel J. Einhorn Excellence in Teaching Awards — Matthew Bothner , Adjunct Associate Professor of Organizations and Strategy, and Ronald Burt, the Hobart W. Williams Professor of Sociology and Strategy

Faculty Excellence Award — Linda Ginzel, Clinical Professor of Managerial Psychology

McKinsey Award for Excellence in Teaching— Lubos Pastor, the Charles P. McQuaid Professor of Finance

Harris School of Public Policy Studies awards

Kerwin Charles, the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor

Paula Worthington, Senior Lecturer

Law School awards

Graduating Students Class Award — Saul Levmore , the William B. Graham Distinguished Service Professor of Law

Graduating Students Award for Teaching Excellence — David A. Strauss, the Gerald Ratner Distinguished Service Professor of Law

Pritzker School of Medicine awards

Outstanding Basic Science Teaching Award — Ting-Wa Wong, Associate Professor of Pathology

Doroghazi Outstanding Clinical Teaching Award — Scott Stern, Professor of Medicine

Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award — Susan Glick, Associate Professor of Medicine, and Edward Naureckas, Associate Professor of Medicine

Faculty Physician Peer Role Model award — Peter Angelos, Professor of Surgery, Chief of Endocrine Surgery and Associate Director of the MacLean Center for Medical Ethics

School of Social Service Administration award

William Pollak Award— William Sites, Associate Professor

Richard M. Daley appointed distinguished senior fellow at University of Chicago Harris School

Tue, 24 May 2011 10:54 -0500

Former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, one of the nation’s most prominent urban leaders, will bring his extensive policymaking experience to the University of Chicago as a distinguished senior fellow at the Harris School of Public Policy Studies.

The five-year appointment, Daley’s first commitment since leaving public office on May 16, will take effect July 1.

Daley will coordinate a guest lecture series that will include a variety of perspectives and approaches concerning the major issues facing cities in the 21st century. The 10 annual guest lectures, beginning with the 2011-12 academic year, will bring policymakers from around the globe to debate critical urban policy challenges, and to help train future policy leaders at Chicago Harris. As Chicago’s longest-serving mayor, Daley will add an important voice to the University’s ongoing conversations about the future of cities.

“The students and faculty at the University of Chicago benefit from a culture of open debate, in which a diverse range of scholarship and practical experiences comes together in the search for knowledge and solutions,” said University President Robert J. Zimmer. “By bringing in urban policy leaders of many perspectives, Mayor Daley will help foster illuminating discussions about how our cities can flourish, and will provide University of Chicago students with valuable educational experience.”

Citing the University of Chicago’s history of vital contributions to Chicago, Daley said he looks forward to engaging with researchers and young leaders who are committed to forming a vision for the future of cities.

“The University of Chicago has been a leader in developing new approaches to address the evolving needs of cities,” Daley said. “I am honored to add my voice and experience to that important work. As I’ve always said, cities that continue to rely on old methods and common practices will almost certainly lose their footing in our growing global economy.”

Daley’s new role will provide students and faculty at the Harris School and across the University with insights on subjects such as urban education, law enforcement, civic planning and economic development, said Harris School Dean Colm O’Muircheartaigh. "There isn’t a policy practitioner out there with more strategic vision and hands-on experience with the ins and outs of running a city today than Richard M. Daley,” O’Muircheartaigh said. “Bringing the country’s most experienced mayor into Chicago Harris enriches our policy school and complements our rigorous scholarship. I am delighted that, as a university embedded in a great city, we are able to benefit from this unique resource.”

First elected mayor of Chicago in 1989, Daley announced last fall that he would not seek re-election after more than 22 years as mayor and nearly 40 years in elected office. As mayor, he has been widely recognized for efforts to help improve Chicago’s public spaces, urban design, educational system, public safety, public libraries and business development. Daley’s tenure in office has influenced scholars and other leaders in defining the role that mayors can play in addressing the problems confronting America’s largest cities.

Daley’s affiliation with the University of Chicago comes as the University continues broad-based efforts to expand its programs on a range of challenges confronting modern cities.

As part of this effort, the Harris School founded its Urban Policy Initiative in 2009 to foster new research relevant to Chicago and other urban environments around the world, and to train the professionals who will lead these cities. In addition to Daley’s visiting scholar position, the Harris School currently is in the process of hiring five new faculty members to conduct urban-related research.

The Urban Policy Initiative also partners with a number of efforts within disciplines across the campus, such as the Urban Health Initiative, the Crime Lab, the Urban Education Institute, Chicago Booth’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and a new University of Chicago Urban Network dedicated togenerating collaborative social science research.

“The University of Chicago is committed to engaging with its urban environment, and the participation of the former mayor will greatly enhance its capacity to do so,” said O’Muircheartaigh. “The future of cities will determine the future of civilization; students and faculty across the whole University will have a keen interest in participating in these conversations.”

Following Tuesday's announcement, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel released a statement on Daley's new appointment.

"On behalf of the entire city of Chicago, I congratulate Mayor Daley on his appointment at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy Studies. I am confident that Mayor Daley will bring to his new role the wisdom, insight and experience of his more than two decades in office. I am thankful that he will be participating in the ongoing dialogue as we all work to make Chicago a safer, stronger city."

Payne to serve as interim Chief Education Officer for Chicago Public Schools

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 15:56 -0600

Chicago Public Schools interim Chief Executive Officer Terry Mazany has appointed one of the University’s leading experts on urban school reform, Charles Payne, as interim Chief Education Officer of the nation’s third-largest school system.

The appointment, announced at a news conference Friday at Fiske Elementary School in the Woodlawn neighborhood, will last through the end of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s term in May.

Payne, the Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor in the School of Social Service Administration, said his primary task for CPS will be to lead the process of writing a new educational plan for the district.

“We can begin to vet and explore some ideas that will help the next mayor and chief executive officer get off to a faster start,” Payne said.

Payne is a member of the University’s Committee on Education and an affiliated scholar with the University’s Urban Education Institute. UEI has a long history of doing research on Chicago Public Schools, as well as operating four charter school campuses, preparing teachers and developing new approaches to help improve education in urban areas. Scholars from UEI have held a number of important advisory and leadership roles for CPS.

Payne also has provided expertise for the Woodlawn Children’s Promise Community, a project involving ten public schools in the Woodlawn neighborhood, as well as families and community groups. He said that his experience working in schools would be one of the greatest assets he brings to the new role.

“I know, at a very deep, personal, professional level, what these kids can do,” Payne said. “And I know what teachers and principals can do when they get the proper support.”

Mazany said that Payne’s service to CPS is a natural outgrowth of the strong ties between the University and the school system.

“This is a further testament to the University’s commitment to improving urban education, and to its deep partnership with Chicago Public Schools,” Mazany said.

Payne, whose academic work also has looked at the civil rights movement and issues of social change, has written a number of important books on inequality and urban school reform. He is the author of So Much Reform, So Little Change (2008), which looks at the ways in school reform in Chicago is an unfinished project.

Among his other works are Getting What We Ask For: The Ambiguity of Success and Failure in Urban Education (1984), which looks at the variety of ways problem students can respond to different teachers; and I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (2nd ed., 2007), which is a story of the civil rights movement from the activists’ point of view. He is co-author of Debating the Civil Rights Movement (2nd ed., 2006) and Time Longer Than Rope: A Century of African American Activism, 1850-1950 (2003).

Payne has received a number of awards for I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, including the outstanding academic book from the magazine Choice; the outstanding book award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in the United States; the Lillian Smith Award from the Southern Regional Council and the McLemore Prize from the Mississippi Historical Society. He also received an Outstanding Academic Book award from Choice for Getting What We Ask For.

Payne received a BA in Afro-American studies in 1970 from Syracuse University and a PhD in sociology in 1976 from Northwestern University.

He joined the UChicago faculty after having served as professor of African and African American studies and history and Bass Fellow at Duke. He previously served as professor of African American studies at Northwestern University, and was on the faculties of Haverford College, Williams College and Southern University.

From 1982-86, Payne was executive director of the Urban Education Project in Orange, N.J. As the founding director, he was responsible for program and curriculum development as well as fundraising and staff supervision.

The program in Orange connected disadvantaged students with careers based on technology. His work there increased his interest in school reform, a research focus that continued after he moved to Chicago to become a faculty member at Northwestern.

Rasul named Director of Neighborhood Schools Program

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 13:00 -0500

Shaz Rasul, Managing Director of the Chicago Public Schools/University of Chicago Internet Project, has been named Director of the University’s Neighborhood Schools Program. Rasul also will manage the Gear–Up Program that provides academic enrichment to students at Dunbar Vocational Career Academy and Kenwood Academy High School. He will begin his new position Monday, Nov. 1.

Rasul, SM’08, AB’97, has a wide array of experience working with schools as a teacher trainer, curriculum integration expert, and an IT consultant for nearly a decade. He has worked with more than 35 public schools and the CPS Technology Magnet Cluster Program to help strengthen technology integration efforts throughout greater Chicago.

A Hyde Park resident, Rasul has been instrumental in mentoring various Neighborhood Schools Program students, and he worked closely with teachers and school administrators to find the best ways to utilize technological resources that would make a transformative impact in the classroom. Rasul also served in the U.S. Peace Corps, where he developed and facilitated workshops for teachers and school management committees in South Africa on the post–Apartheid curriculum.

“We are delighted to have Shaz Rasul join our team as director of such a worthwhile program that helps to enhance our education outreach efforts,” said Sonya Malunda, Associate Vice President for Civic Engagement. “The Neighborhood Schools Program provides support to more than 40 schools, community centers and the administrative offices of local elected officials. It is our goal to link these partners to the vast array of University resources to improve the quality of life within the community.”

Founded more than 30 years ago, the program provides opportunities for University of Chicago students to assist in classrooms, community centers and government offices. In addition to classroom instruction, students also do individual and group tutoring. The program not only connects the University’s public school partners to campus resources but also offers a way for students to gain invaluable, hands–on experience by working in the community.

“It has been the greatest of pleasures to work with Shaz and to experience his practical solutions to very difficult, daily problems of the city schools,” said Donald York, the Horace B. Horton Professor in Astronomy & Astrophysics, who has worked with Rasul as a co–director of CUIP. “I and all of our staff members wish him the very best in his new position.”

Bernadette Butler, Principal of William H. Ray Elementary School, located in Hyde Park, said Rasul has a sound ability to work with many different constituencies to handle the various educational needs within the community.

“I have worked with Mr. Rasul for the past three years in his leadership capacity with CUIP,” said Butler. “He worked over months, tirelessly, facilitating the process of how to upgrade our technology hardware at Ray School. During that project, Mr. Rasul had to work with parents, teachers and community members to address technology needs.”

Rasul succeeds long–time program director Duel Richardson, who retired in June after 34 years of building the University’s ties with the community. Richardson was an early staff member of the Office of Civic Engagement when it was created in 1974 as the Office of Community Affairs.

“As a college student at the University, working in the Neighborhood Schools Program gave me my first opportunity to help schools in a meaningful way,” said Rasul. “I am humbled by this appointment as this is an excellent way to help nurture and build upon our partnerships in the community while supporting the University’s commitment to public education.”