HONORS
Teaching Awards in Three Schools. . . Scholarship Honored . . . A Building Named . . . Honorary Degrees This Month for Three SAS Members



GSE: Dr. Usha Balamore

The Graduate School of Education's Excellence in Teaching Award for 1996 will be given at Commencement to Dr. Usha Balamore, a full-time kindergarten teacher at Episcopal Academy who is also a part-time Lecturer in GSE's Early Childhood Education program.

An alumna of Church Park Teachers' College in Madras, India, she took her M.A. in early childhood education and Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Bryn Mawr. Dr. Balamore is certified in teaching in India as well as in Pennsylvania, where she is also certified as a school psychologist.

The award is given annually to one whose teaching is intellectually and imaginatively challenging, clear and well-organized, and innovative in methodology or presentation. In nominating her for this award, former students of Dr. Balamore described her teaching as "...magnificent, charismatic, brilliant...innovative, creative, inspiring, imaginative, and enthusiastic."As a person they rated her "generous, warm, open hearted, enthusiastic, kind, available, appreciative, and a role model." The award will be presented at Commencement by one of her students, Marci Andrews.


SSW: Dr. Anthony Bruno

Anthony F. Bruno, G '84, will receive the School of Social Work's Excellence in Teaching Award at the SSW Commencement ceremony on May 21. On leave for the 1995-96 academic year from Community College of Philadelphia, where he is professor of social sciences, Dr. Bruno taught courses in American Racism and Social Work Practice, Human Functioning in the Social Environment, Adult Functioning and Research. In addition to teaching, he is coordinator of the Department of Human Services Research and Policy Advisory Board and convenor of the Citizens Crime Commission's Juvenile Justice Alliance.

He will also be on the Penn School of Social Work's faculty for the 1996-97 academic year.

A native of south Philadelphia and graduate of Bishop Neumann High School, Dr. Bruno earned his B.S. in political science from St. Joseph's College, his M.S.W. from Temple University, and his D.S.W. from Penn. At Community College, he won the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1988. In his past 20 years there he has developed a variety of training and educational courses for practitioners in human services at the local, state and federal levels.


SEAS's S. Reid Warren Award: Dr. Nelson Dorny, Dr. Susan Margulies

The School of Engineering and Applied Science's two most recent winners of the S. Reid Warren Award for Distinguished Teaching are Dr. C. Nelson Dorny for 1994-1995 and Dr. Susan Margulies for 1995-1996. The award, given by Engineering's undergraduate student body and the Engineering Alumni Society Board of Directors, was named during his lifetime for the late emeritus professor and undergraduate dean (1954-73) renowned for his dedication to teaching and mentoring students. The award recognizes "outstanding service in stimulating and guiding the intellectual development of undergraduate students" at SEAS.

Dr. Dorny is professor and undergraduate chair of systems engineering. He took his B.E.S. from Brigham Young in 1961, and his M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. from Stanford in 1962 and 1965, respectively. Dr. Dorny's expertise is in system theory and system methodology, specifically in probability and statistics, applied mathematics, optimization theory, linear system theory, control theory, computer simulation, and numerical solution of partial differential equations. His current research is in system integration, integrated manufacturing, robotics and automation. Dr. Dorny is also a former White House Fellow as special assistant to the Secretary of Agriculture.


Dr. Margulies is assistant professor of bioengineering. She graduated summa cum laude from Princeton in 1982 with a B.S.E. in mechanical and aerospace engineering, and came to Penn for her M.S.E. and Ph.D. in bioengineering, awarded in 1983 and 1987, respectively. Dr. Margulies's research interests are in biomechanics with an emphasis on injury mechanisms and tolerances, pulmonary regional ventilation and barotrauma, spinal cord injury, and pediatric and adult brain injury.


Prizes for Scholarly Publication

Dr. Noam Lior, professor of mechanical engineering and applied science in SEAS, has won one of the two Best Treatise Awards of the International Desalination Associationa new prize given for papers of 20,000 words or more. Dr. Lior's treatise is on "Foaming: General Review, and Discovery as a Novel Method for Significant Improvement of Flash Evaporation."

Dr. Ian Lustick, professor of political science in SAS, has been awarded the American Political Science Association's J. David Greenstone Award for his 1993 book, Unsettled States, Disputed Lands, which discusses conflicts between Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, and Israel and the West Bank-Gaza.

Dr. Siegfried Wenzel, professor of English, has received the Charles Homer Haskins Award, the highest honor of the Medieval Academy, for his book on Macaronic Sermons: Bilingualism and Preaching in the Late Medieval Period.



Naming the Solomon Laboratories

On April 19 the Trustees Executive Committee passed the following resolution on naming the psychology laboratories (see photos, at right and below).

The faculty of the Department of Psychology has proposed that the Psychology Laboratory Building at 3720 Walnut Street be renamed the Richard L. Solomon Laboratories of Experimental Psychology in honor of their late colleague, who died on October 12, 1995, at age 77. This proposal has the enthusiastic support of the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, the Provost, and the President.

Dr. Solomon received his A.B. degree in 1940 and master's degree in 1942 from Brown University. After wartime service with the Office of Scientific Research and Development, he earned his Ph.D. from Brown in 1947. He taught for a year there before joining Harvard's Department of Social Relations, where he became full professor in 1953. He joined Penn's Department of Psychology and Institute for Neurological Sciences in 1960 as the first James M. Skinner University Professor of Science. At Penn, he took a leading role in work in perception, avoidance learning in dogs and people, the effects of punishment on subsequent behavior, the interaction of Pavlovian conditioned reflexes with instrumental behavior, the conditions for establishing learned helplessness, and drug addiction.

A brilliant scientist, Dr. Solomon was also an extraordinary teacher and mentor. Upon retiring in 1984, he had published some 65 papers and supervised 35 doctoral dissertations. He also served as the first Faculty Master of Van Pelt College House--Penn's first college houseand the first head of the University Scholars Program. Among his many honors were election to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; a Guggenheim Fellowship; and awards including the Society of Experimental Psychologists' Warren Medal for research, the Monie A. Ferst Award of Sigma Xi, and a Distinguished Achievement Citation from Brown University.

Resolved, that the psychology Laboratory Building be renamed the Richard L. Solomon Laboratories of Experimental Psychology, in honor of one of the University's most distinguished and beloved citizens.

The structure now named for the late Dr. Richard L. Solomon, right, is the psychology laboratory building where he did much of his work during his years at Penn. It is the westernmost building in the social services quadrangle in 3700 block between Locust Walk and Walnut Street. This view faces Stiteler Hall, with the School of Social Work to the left and Graduate School of Education to the right.

Photo by Frank Ross, Courtesy of University Archives


Honorary Degrees to Three Penn Members Next Week


Dr. Ralph Hirschmann, the Makineni Professor of Bioorganic Chemistry, will receive the honorary degree Doctor of Science on May 17 from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Dr. Hirschmann took his Ph.D. at Wisconsin in 1950 before launching his illustrious career in chemical research, which has produced a new class of anti-inflammatory steroids, a new approach to the treatment of insulin-requiring diabetics, and other major breakthroughs in the biomedical sciences.



Dr. Judith Rodin, President of the University, will receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Lafayette College on May 19. Dr. Rodin is being honored for her innovative work in the biological processes in health and behavior, as well as for her leadership of Penn.



Dr. Ake Sjoberg received an honorary Doctorate of Theology from Uppsala University in Sweden on May 27, 1995. The Clark Research Professor Emeritus of Assyriology in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, who has also been curator of tablet collections in the University Museum, is an Uppsala alumnus and editor of the world-renowed Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary project, which began in 1984 and projects another twenty years' work to complete.



Almanac

Volume 42 Number 32
May 14, 1996


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