Four faculty members honored with Hilldale Awards

Four faculty members are recipients of the 2005 Hilldale Awards, which annually recognize excellence in teaching, research and public service.

The awards, given yearly since 1987, honor top professors in four university divisions: biological sciences, physical sciences, social studies, and arts and humanities.

The Hilldale Fund, which receives income from the operation of the Hilldale shopping mall, makes the awards possible. This year’s awards were presented at the Faculty Senate meeting on April 4.

This year’s recipients are:

Richard M. Amasino, professor in the Department of Biochemistry. Amasino, a faculty member since 1985, is an expert in leaf senescence and the control of flowering time in plants. These two areas are related parts of the question of how plants sense the change of seasons to time their biological cycles.

Prior to Amasino’s work, it was known that certain plants require cold exposure during the winter to flower the following spring, a process called vernalization. Before winter, shortening days and cooler temperatures trigger many types of plants to recover nutrients from their leaves before they are lost, something called leaf senescence.

Little was known about the molecular basis for these processes until Amasino conducted his research. He and his group have identified key regulatory genes that control these processes, and they have been able to use their discoveries to control these processes in ways that may benefit agriculture.

Amasino’s group is intrigued by plants’ ability to “count” the number of days that they have been exposed to cold so that plants have a measure of when spring should arrive.

An outstanding teacher, Amasino is involved in getting hands-on genetics teaching into K-12 classrooms and has served on influential national panels on plant biochemistry.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at Penn State University and a doctorate in biology/biochemistry at Indiana University.

James S. Donnelly Jr., professor in the Department of History. Donnelly joined the faculty in 1973 and is among the most distinguished scholars of his generation in modern Irish history. His published work has ranged broadly, from prize-winning research on the land question to histories of peasant violence and rebellion, and from religion in popular culture to a major new consideration of the disastrous Potato Famine.

In his 1989 contribution to Oxford’s “New History of Ireland” and in his 2001 book, “The Great Irish Potato Famine,” Donnelly tailored a widely influential way of assessing moral responsibility for the disaster and of gauging its causes and effects.

A popular teacher, Donnelly has made significant contributions to faculty governance, serving as history department chair and co-chair of the University Committee.

He also has been a tireless promoter of Irish and British history. He was editor in chief of the new two-volume “Encyclopedia of Irish History and Culture,” which covers Ireland from the Stone Age to the present day. He also is co-editor of “Eire-Ireland,” the most prestigious journal for Irish Studies in North America. With Thomas Archdeacon, he has launched a new book series at the University of Wisconsin Press on the history of Ireland and the Irish Diaspora.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Fordham College, and master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard University.

Paul H. Rabinowitz, a Vilas Research Professor in the Department of Mathematics. Rabinowitz joined the faculty in 1969 and over the years has gained a reputation as a distinguished and original mathematician who has played a fundamental role in the development of nonlinear analysis.

He is one of the prime architects of the theory of topological methods in the calculus of variations.

His work provides fundamental tools in science and engineering, with many applications. His work with a colleague on the “Mountain Pass Theorem” has become a major tool for the study of nonlinear partial differential equations and dynamical systems.

Rabinowitz also has worked extensively with bifurcation theory, which concerns the splitting of one solution of a problem into many, as a critical parameter is reached. His work has become a pillar of the modern theory of nonlinear analysis.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences, and he was a 1998 winner of the Birkhoff Prize in Applied Mathematics.

Additionally, Rabinowitz recently initiated the use of mathematical software in the department’s elementary differential equations courses, modernizing the syllabi.

He holds bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from New York University.

Karen B. Strier, professor of anthropology and affiliate professor of zoology. Strier, who joined the faculty in 1989, is regarded as an international leader in the fields of primatology, biological anthropology and conservation ecology. She is considered the world’s top authority on the woolly spider monkey – or muriqui – one of the most critically endangered primates on the planet.

For more than 20 years, Strier has maintained ongoing field studies in Brazil, where she focuses on muriqui behavior, ecology, reproduction and conservation. That research – one of the longest-running primate projects in the New World – has yielded new insights into muriquis and new theoretical contributions to primatology. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Strier also is a popular and engaging teacher, who won the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2004. In addition, she is committed to teaching students good writing skills.

Beyond campus, she has worked with nearly three dozen Brazilian graduate students and holds external appointments on the graduate faculties of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais., Universidade Federal de Espirito Santo and PUC-Minas. There, she advises graduate students and periodically offers weeklong specialization courses.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and biology at Swarthmore College, and master’s and doctoral degrees in anthropology from Harvard University.