Milestones

Howard Erlanger, professor, Law School, was elected to a three-year term as trustee of the Law and Society Association, the leading scholarly organization supporting socio-legal studies nationally and internationally. Because Erlanger received the highest vote total of the eight trustees elected, he will represent this class of trustees on the executive committee of the association.

Jim Jonas has joined the Pharmacy Library as a full-time research intern. Jonas graduated in 2001 with a master’s degree from UW–Madison. He will be overseeing the circulation desk, supervising student employees, assisting with reference instruction and serving on various campus and Health Sciences Library committees.

James M. Mandiberg, assistant professor, social work, is the newest affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty. Mandiberg’s recent research focuses on low-income and poverty-related programs.

Richard Ross, assistant professor, Law School, was elected to the Board of Directors of the American Society for Legal History for a three-year term.

George Andrew Spencer will join the library staff April 1 as an East European Slavic bibliographer in Memorial Library, General Library System. Spencer has a bachelor’s degree in Russian and Soviet Studies with a minor in Russian history from the University of Arizona. In addition, he has a master’s degree in Soviet and East European Studies with a minor in Russian history from Kansas University. Spencer has also studied Russian and Kazakh languages at the Alma-Ata Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Language, located in Kazakhstan.

HONORED

Michael W. Apple, John Bascom Professor, curriculum and instruction, and educational policy studies, was awarded the Critics’ Choice Award by the American Education Studies Association for the book “Educating the “Right’ Way: Markets, Standards, God and Equality” (Routledge 2001).

R. Alta Charo, professor, Law School, has been invited to participate in the National Academy of Sciences’ bioterrorism work by taking part in a study on improving research standards and practices to prevent misuse of biotechnology research. The study is being led by the Committee on International Security and Arms Control.

Michael Fiore, professor of internal medicine, Medical School, director of the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, has received a certificate of appreciation from U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher. Fiore was commended for serving as the chairman of the first and second U.S. Public Health Service clinical practice guidelines on tobacco use and for exceptional leadership in disseminating the guidelines.

Jun Li, assistant scientist, Space Science and Engineering Center, is the 2002 recipient of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s David S. Johnson Award. This honor is bestowed upon young professionals who have developed innovative uses of earth-observation satellite data.

Sheila McGuirk, professor and large animal veterinarian, School of Veterinary Medicine, recently received the National Gamma Award for distinguished service to the veterinary profession from the Omega Tau Sigma professional veterinary fraternity. The Ohio State Chapter of the fraternity presented her with the award.

Jane Schacter, professor, Law School, has been named a Vilas Associate for the 2002-03 and 2003-04 years. The Vilas Associates program recognizes tenured, mid-career faculty for research excellence. Schacter’s research explores problems of legal interpretation, as well as debates about sexuality and law, with an emphasis in both areas on questions of democratic theory.

Mary Ann Test, emeritus professor, social work, was awarded the 2002 Flynn Prize for Social Work Research. The prize recognizes research and scholarship that is distinguished by its rigor, creativity and focus on severe and persistent problems of society. She received the award for her program of research on Assertive Community Treatment, a model developed by Test and Leonard Stein, which has revolutionized the provision of services to people suffering from severe mental illness.

Cliff Thompson, professor, Law School, was one of the two major writers of the winning bid by Checchi Consultants of Washington, D.C., for a $7.4 million contract from U.S. Agency for International Development to assist legal development in Indonesia. The contract began in January 2002 and ends in December 2003. Thompson is serving in Jakarta as a legal education adviser.

David Trubek, former dean of International Studies, and his successor, Gilles Bousquet, have each been named “Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Academiques” by the French government. The award recognizes devotion and accomplishment in teaching, scholarship and research. Bousquet took over from Trubek Jan. 1.

Louise Trubek, director of the Center for Public Representation, has been awarded the William Pincus Award for Outstanding Contributions to Clinical Legal Education by the Association of American Law Schools. The award is based on service, scholarship, program design and implementation, or for other activities beneficial to clinical education or the advancement of justice.

Three members of the Office of Continuing Medical Education received the 2002 William Campbell Felch/Wyeth Ayerst Award for Outstanding Research. The winners of the award — which is given to the outstanding research project dealing with problems facing continuing medical education — are Ann Bailey, associate director; George Mejicano, assistant dean; and H.B. Slotnick, visiting professor of medicine. Their study used epidemiologic methodology to identify learning needs of physicians practicing in Wisconsin and the nation.

GRANTS, FELLOWSHIPS

Lyn Abramson, professor, psychology, has received a two-year grant from the National Institute of Mental Health on negative cognitive depression.

Thomas Kaplan, associate director, Institute for Research and Poverty, has contracted to work with the Rockefeller Institute of the State University of New York on its multistate study of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families implementation. Kaplan is collecting budgetary, staffing and workload data on TANF performance in Wisconsin.

Manos Mavrikakis, assistant professor, chemical engineering, received a 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award. The grant will help Mavrikakis investigate fundamentals of fuel cell catalysts and can be renewed for up to three years.

Gregory Shaffer, assistant professor, Law School, has been designated a senior fellow of the Center on World Affairs and the Global Economy. The proposal that earned him the fellowship is entitled “Transatlantic Economic Relations: Regulatory Cooperation and Conflict.”

Jeanne Swack, professor of musicology, has received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship for summer/fall for her book project, entitled “Composition and Performance in the Music of Georg Philipp Telemann.” Cambridge University Press will publish the book.

A proposal co-developed by Gerald Thain, professor, Law School, is being funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The project aims to utilize the lessons of tobacco litigation and regulation for studying ways of coping with certain marketing practices aimed at minors.

Barbara Wolfe, Institute for Research and Poverty, has been awarded funding from the Foundation for Child Development to review existing plans to finance education for 3- and 4-year-olds from the standpoint of feasibility, efficiency and relative merits.

PUBLISHED

“Understanding Poverty,” a book edited by Institute for Research and Poverty associates Sheldon H. Danziger and Robert H. Haveman, has been co-published by the Russell Sage Foundation and Harvard University Press.

OTHER MILESTONES

Jens T. Carstensen, professor emeritus, School of Pharmacy, recently had an exhibition of 53 of his paintings at the Charles Allis Art Museum in Milwaukee. The exhibition was entitled “Jens Carstensen: A Dane in Dane County” and ran Jan. 17-March 10. Carstensen, the author of 10 pharmaceutical textbooks, began his second career as a painter while on a Parisian sabbatical in 1977.

Max Lagally, E.W. Mueller Professor, materials science and engineering, is serving as institute visiting professor for materials research at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, for the 2001-02 academic year.

Stewart Macaulay, professor, Law School, was invited to visit the University of Groningen in Holland for a week in January. He met with teachers of civil law to discuss ideas about teaching contracts. Macaulay also attended a session in which faculty and graduate students in the sociology of law department discussed four of his articles.

The Center for Patient Partnerships, a joint project of the schools of Law, Medicine and Nursing created in 2001, has received new grants from the Wallis and Klein foundations and the Wisconsin Department of Justice to help its start-up phase. The center teaches future doctors, lawyers, nurses, social workers and pharmacists to work together to become better advocates for their patients. The students are put in multidisciplinary teams to work with individual patients recently diagnosed with cancer and other serious illnesses.

The Engineering Professional Development Master of Engineering in Professional Practice program has won the University Continuing Education Association’s Outstanding Credit Program Award. The award will be presented at the UCEA annual conference in Toronto this April.

Platypus Technologies, a company with ties to the College of Engineering, has received a technology development loan through the state’s Department of Commerce. The money will help the company make nanotechnology devices aimed at the medical, agriculture and defense industries. The company’s founders are Nicholas Abbott, professor of chemical engineering; Christopher Murphy, professor of veterinary medicine; and Barbara Israel, senior scientist, School of Veterinary Medicine.

The College of Engineering Reed Photonics Center has received a gift of equipment from Agilent as part of the Agilent Photonics request for proposal program. This program honors organizations that demonstrate creativity and innovation in addressing the education of future engineers and scientists in photonics, optics and communication technologies. The equipment will enhance the undergraduate fiber optics laboratory and a senior/graduate level laboratory to accompany the Fiber Optics Communications course.

The Resource Center on Impaired Driving received a certificate of commendation from the National Commission Against Drunk Driving for its commitment to the fight against drunk driving on the nation’s roads and highways.