Six faculty receive mid-career awards

Six professors have received Kellett Mid-Career Awards that promote the continued scholarly efforts of established faculty.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation sponsors the $60,000 awards, one of several annual programs supported each year by WARF’s block grant to the university. Candidates must be between five and 20 years past their first promotion to a tenured position.

Winners are chosen by a committee of the Graduate School. The award is named after William R. Kellett, a former president of the WARF Board of Trustees and retired president of Kimberly Clark Corp.

Winners are:

Timothy Baker, professor of psychology. Baker has frequently taught such classes as “Introduction to Psychology” and graduate classes on psychotherapy and assessment. His service work includes being senior scientific consultant to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He is editor of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Baker’s research focuses on demonstrating the effectiveness of smoking cessation efforts, developing cost-effective treatment programs for health-care settings and probing the nature of nicotine withdrawal.

John Doebley, professor of genetics. Doebley has been recognized for his excellence in teaching, commitment to academic service and scholarship in evolutionary biology research. His research focuses on the significance of six regulatory genes as the major determinants of differences among closely related species of maize. Doebley also displays a comprehensive knowledge as a researcher with cutting-edge technologies who brings findings from all related fields to bear on a central problem.

Steven Nadler, professor of philosophy. Nadler is a leading scholar of early modern philosophy with a long list of books and articles, mainly on Arnauld, Malebranche and Spinoza, to his credit. Nadler leads the new UW Center for the Humanities and has served on numerous university committees. He is recognized as an outstanding teacher in graduate seminars and an array of undergraduate courses for the philosophy department and for Integrated Liberal Studies.

Brenda Gayle Plummer, professor of history and Afro-American Studies. Plummer has written extensively on Afro-American history, foreign relations, and civil and human rights. Her scholarship includes two books on Haiti and “Rising Wind: Black Americans and U. S. Foreign Affairs,” which received prizes from the American Historical Association and the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations.

John Valley, professor of geology and geophysics. Valley studies the geochemistry and mineralogy of rocks to understand ancient, deeply eroded mountain belts. He employs new techniques for microanalysis of stable isotope ratios to determine the importance of water in the deep crust of the Earth, as well as in the earliest crust of Mars and Earth. He teaches 3.5 courses a year to undergraduate and graduate students, and has served on numerous editorial and review boards, as a councilor of the Mineralogical Society of America, and as chair of the Department of Geology and Geophysics.

Rick Vierstra, professor of horticulture. Vierstra’s work with the photoreceptor phytochrome established him as a world leader being the first to identify and purify this important plant receptor. Vierstra’s teaching accomplishments include co-teaching Biology 152, a universitywide undergraduate course, and Horticulture 550. He maintains a strong graduate and post-doctoral program in his lab. Vierstra is recognized for giving willingly of his time to the department, college, university and for addressing national needs associated with his discipline.