April 15, 2010
Faculty members honored for scholarly work
CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Six of Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s colleges and its medical school will honor seven faculty members for outstanding scholarly work April 20 during the University’s “Excellence Through Commitment” awards dinner hosted by Chancellor Samuel Goldman at the Student Center.
Lisa B. Brooten, selected by the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts, Maria de lasMercedes Calbi, selected by the College of Science, Wallace “Dave” N. Davidson III, selected by the College of Business, Sheryl S. King, selected by the College of Agricultural Sciences, Timothy D. Koschmann, selected by the School of Medicine, Mary E. Lamb, selected by the College of Liberal Arts, and Ruth Anne Rehfeldt, selected by the College of Education and Human Services, will receive certificates from the chancellor.
Dale H. Vitt from the College of Science received the University’s overall top-scholar designation. He and other award winners also will be honored April 20.
Here’s a closer look at the college-level winners.
• Brooten, associate professor and interim chair of the radio-television department, focuses on local and global social movement media, as well as on human rights, gender and militarization, and interpretive research methods. As a Fulbright scholar in 2008, she compared media reform efforts in Thailand and the Philippines with similar efforts in Burma (Myanmar) and the United States. Her work has been published in books and a number of professional journals.
Brooten, who joined the University in 2002, has bachelor’s degrees from both the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School (earned in economics in 1986) and its Annenberg School of Communications (also earned in 1986). She is also a two-degree graduate of Ohio University, finishing a master’s there in 1997 and a doctorate in 2003.
• Calbi, an associate professor of physics, uses computer simulations to understand on a theoretical level what happens on a molecular level during laboratory experiments with materials much smaller in diameter than a human hair. Her current work, for which she has received a National Science Foundation Career Award, focuses on how simple atomic and molecular gasses accumulate on the surfaces of porous carbon nanotube bundles and nanohorn spheres.
Since joining the faculty in 2003, Calbi has become her department’s best-funded theorist ever and has a significant publication and presentation record.
Calbi earned both her bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Buenos Aires in 1995 and 2000 respectively.
• Davidson, Henry Rehn Research Professor of Finance since his arrival at SIUC in 1989, focuses his work on both finance and management. An outside source has ranked him as one of the most prolific finance authors in the last half century with 39 articles in the field’s 26 best journals, 10 of those in the top seven publications. In management, 15 of his articles have appeared in the discipline’s top journals.
In his research, Davidson makes a point of mentoring both junior faculty and doctoral students, many of whom appear as co-authors, all the while maintaining a heavy teaching schedule. His teaching skills have, in fact, this year resulted in his selection as the University’s outstanding teacher.
Davidson earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Wright State University in 1974 and 1976 respectively and his doctorate from The Ohio State University in 1982.
• King, a professor of animal science, specializes in the reproductive systems of horses and cows, with an overall emphasis on the mechanisms controlling mares’ seasonal reproductive cycles. She also has sought alternatives to traditional antibiotic treatment of uterine infections and has recently finished a study evaluating supplements that reduce stress.
Over the course of her career, King has received more than half a million dollars in grants and awards and has published 31 peer-reviewed scientific papers and 45 abstracts and proceedings as well as making 62 presentations at national and international meetings.
King, who came to SIUC in 1983, earned her bachelor’s degree in 1977 from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and her doctorate in 1983 from the University of California, Davis.
• Koschmann, professor of medical education at the University’s Springfield campus, studies interactions (language, gesture, other forms of nonverbal communication) between two or more people in order to understand how humans learn. This knowledge helps train doctors to serve patients more effectively. He also is interested in understanding how surgeons train their residents and has built a unique video library of surgical teaching interactions that assist other researchers.
Koschmann has published 17 books or book chapters with two more chapters in the works, 26 peer-reviewed articles with another in press and has made 139 national and international presentations.
Koschmann earned his bachelor’s degree in 1972 from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, his master’s in 1980 from theUniversity of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and his doctorate in 1987 from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He joined the faculty in 1988.
• Lamb, professor of English and a faculty member since 1977, specializes in Renaissance literature with an emphasis on Shakespeare studies and on early modern women writers. Her books have explored such topics as the popular culture of Shakespeare and the influence of changing attitudes about female consumerism on women’s reading and writing in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Her essays and articles have been published in her field’s leading journals and she regularly speaks at both national and international meetings.
Lamb serves as editor of the “Sidney Journal,” a national, peer-reviewed publication, and was recently elected a trustee in the Shakespeare Association of America.
Lamb, with a bachelor’s degree received from Wellesley College in 1968, earned her master’s and doctoral degrees at Columbia University.
• Rehfeldt, a professor in the Rehabilitation Institute, specializes in behavior analysis. She has published 12 book chapters and is co-editor of a major textbook aimed at helping those who work with children with autism. Since beginning her academic career at SIUC in 2000, she has published 59 articles in peer-reviewed journals, with another five in various stages of consideration and has made more than 130 presentations. Because she strives to support undergraduate and graduate research, most of these have included student participation.
Since 2006, Rehfeldt has edited the 70-year-old international journal “The Psychological Record.” She also serves on two editorial boards.
After completing her bachelor’s degree in 1993 at the University of Puget Sound, Rehfeldt earned her master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Nevada, Reno in 1995 and 1998 respectively.