Lance Bennett Receives an International Honor in Style
Matthew Sparke Recieves NSF Career Award
Listing of Additional A&S Awards and Honors

Lance Bennett Receives an International Honor in Style

It’s not every day that a university professor is expected to don a laurel wreath—and formal attire—to receive an award. And rarely do professors share honors with such luminaries as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. So when Lance Bennett, UW professor of political science and Ruddick Lawrence Professor of Communications, was invited to receive the Doctor of Philosophy Honoris Causa from Uppsala University in Sweden, he jumped at the chance.

“The event was part of a huge 400th anniversary celebration of the first Ph.D. granted at the University,” explains Bennett. “About 30 people were honored. World leaders were among them, but also scholars in many areas of study who had long-standing research ties to the University.”

Bennett’s own connection with Uppsalsa University began in 1989, when he spent time there on a Fulbright Fellowship. He has been back several times since. He suspects his recent honor is partly the result of a book he and colleague Erik Asard wrote at Uppsala titled Democracy and the Marketplace of Ideas: Communication and Government in Sweden and the United States. Bennett describes the book as “one of the first comparative studies to look at how political institutions shape the language and quality of deliberation in public policy debates.”

Was the award ceremony as memorable as Bennett had anticipated? Absolutely. “The Swedes are in many ways not a pomp and glamour culture,” he says, “but when they do it, they pull out all the stops.”

Bennett explains that everyone was expected to wear a black vest with tails in the morning and a white vest with tails in the evening. “They had fashion police with emergency reserves if people didn’t get it right,” he says. As if that weren’t enough, an artillery brigade shot a cannon after each award was presented, as a choir sang in the balcony. “It was over the top,” Bennett admits.

As part of the celebration, each honoree received a gold Uppsala University ring resembling an ornate wedding band, with his or her name inscribed inside. “I left with the sense that I had been invited into Uppsala’s community,” says Bennett. “For me it’s become an academic home away from home.”

Matthew Sparke Receives NSF Career Award
For Matthew Sparke, assistant professor of geography and international studies, the twentieth century ended with some very good news. In December, Sparke learned that he had received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Award. The award, which includes a $233,880 grant, recognizes outstanding potential in young academics for their teaching and research.

Matthew Sparke

Sparke received the award based on a proposal to NSF that combines teaching, research, and outreach. “This award enables me to do exactly what I want to do,” says Sparke. “It allows me to teach a new course for first-year students on the topic of globalization. It includes outreach to high school students in minority communities. And it enables me to expand significantly my research on transnational networking at a variety of different spatial scales.”

Why develop a course for first-year students, rather than for majors? “I think an important goal of the University is to prepare students as citizens,” explains Sparke. “The question is, citizens of what? In an increasingly global society, I believe we need to train them to be citizens of the world. I see a clear need for a course at the beginning of students’ UW career to help prepare them for global citizenship.”

Sparke’s plan also includes having UW students develop teaching modules to take to local high schools with large minority populations. These students will not only serve as ambassadors for the UW, but will also facilitate reciprocal visits to the University by minority high school students, hopefully inspiring them to go on to apply to the UW.

"This plan was partly written as a personal response to I-200," explains Sparke. "I think the idea is workable for other faculty too."

The research portion of the grant will explore how emerging economic interdependencies are leading towards the transnationalization of civil society. “I plan to examine this at three different scales: cross-border, continental, and global,” says Sparke. “My goal is to tie this research into my courses and outreach so as to enable students to develop a better sense of their own location in changing local and global networks.”

Sparke credits several UW colleagues with helping him get his hefty NSF award: Vicky Lawson, chair of the Department of Geography; Susan Jeffords, divisional dean for the social sciences; and George Bridges, associate dean for undergraduate education and associate vice provost. Together they committed more than $37,000 in matching funds for parts of the project, demonstrating the UW's commitment to Sparke's efforts.

“I feel like the University was totally behind me,” says Sparke. “I think the willingness to provide matching funds really helped me get the award.”

Additional Awards and Honors

Ann Anagnost, associate professor of anthropology, received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for her work on the figure of the child in modern Chinese national identity.

Jaime Diaz, professor of psychology, has been selected as a Carnegie Scholar for 2000-2001 in the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL). CASTL is a major initiative of the Carnegie Foundation.

Fred Fiedler, professor emeritus of psychology, has received the James McKeen Cattell Award of the American Psychological Society, recognizing career accomplishments.

Anthony Geist, associate professor of Spanish, has received a grant from the Puffin Foundation of New Jersey for work on “They Still Draw Pictures,” a traveling exhibit of drawings from children’s refugee colonies during the Spanish Civil War.

Leland Hartwell, president and director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and professor of genetics, has received the Medal of Honor from the American Cancer Society, the institution’s most prestigious award. He also has received a 1999 City of Medicine Award.

Sydney Kaplan, professor of English, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for 2000-01 for her project, “Circulating Genius: Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, T.S. Eliot, and John Middleton Murry.”

Charles Keyes, professor of anthropology, is president-elect of the Association for Asian Studies.

Jason Kilmer, research scientist in psychology, has received the Harold Yuker Award for Research Excellence from the American Psychological Association, along with Charles Bombardier and Dawn Ehde of Harborview Medical Center and the UW, for a paper they co-authored.

Robert Kohlenberg, associate professor of psychology, has received the Washington State Psychological Association’s Distinguished Psychologist award.

Victoria Lawson, professor and chair of the Department of Geography, has been selected as the first Thomas L. and Margo G. Wyckoff Faculty Fellow. The award recognizes her exceptional achievements in scholarship, teaching, and leadership.

Conway Leovy, emeritus professor of atmospheric sciences and geophysics, has been awarded the Year 2000 Gerard P. Kuiper Prize by the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. The prize is awarded annuallly to a scientist whose achievements have advanced our understanding of the planetary system.

Lillian McDermott, professor of physics, has been named Welling Professor at George Washington Univeristy, a distinguished visiting professorship.

Edward Sarachik, professor of atmospheric sciences and adjunct professor of oceanography, has been named a fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research interests include interactions between oceans and the atmosphere and climate.

Julie Stein, divisional dean for computing, facilities, and research in the College of Arts and Sciences, received the Rip Rapp Archaeological Geology award from the Geological Society of America—the annual career award of the Society’s Archaeological Geology Division.

Christopher Stubbs, professor of astronomy and physics, has been elected to Fellowship in the American Physical Society.

Jonathan Wakefield, associate professor of statistics and biostatistics, has been awarded the Guy Medal in Bronze for 2000 by the Royal Statistical Society. The Guy Medals are the most prestigious awards made by the Society; for the Bronze Medal, preference is given to researchers under the age of 35.

R. Jeffrey Wilkes, research professor of physics, and other members of the Super-Kamiokande Collaboration, a joint U.S.-Japan research project on neutrino astrophysics, have been awarded the Asahi Prize for 1999 by the Asahi-Shinbun Cultural Foundation.

Robin Wright, associate professor of art history and curator of Native American art at the Burke Museum, has been elected president of the Native American Art Studies Association. This is the major international professional organization in the field of Native American art.

[Winter 2000 - Table of Contents]