Boston University Arts & Sciences

Professor of the History of Art & Architecture Patricia Hills has won the Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award from the College Art Association (CAA) in its 2011 Awards for Distinction. From the award notice: “An active, gifted teacher, faithful mentor, and valued colleague, Patricia Hills has maintained a prodigious career, producing scholarship that has profoundly shaped the history of American art and visual culture. Her textbook Modern Art in the USA: Issues and Controversies of the Twentieth Century (2001) has become standard reading in the field...she is a creative, active, and engaged classroom leader who has developed an innovative style of teaching that emphasizes intellectual role-playing and demonstrates striking methodological openness.”

William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of Greek Language & Literature at Boston University Jeffrey Henderson has been elected President of the American Philological Association (APA), North America’s chief professional society for the study of classical languages, literature, and society. He will take office in January 2012. He served as dean of CAS from 2002 to 2007 and as chair of the Department of Classical Studies from 1991 to 2002. He is also the general editor of the Loeb Classical Library, the world’s largest collection of classical texts and translations, and is the author of numerous publications on ancient Greek literature.

Archie Burnett, Professor of English and Co-Director of the Editorial Institute, has been awarded the John T. Shawcross Award by the Milton Society of America for the most distinguished reference work on Milton published in 2009. He shares the award with Stephen Dobranski (Georgia State University) for A Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton: Samson Agonistes (Duquesne University Press, 2009). Professor Burnett wrote the critical introduction to the volume; Professor Dobranski edited the text.

Joseph Rezek, Assistant Professor of English, has been awarded the 2009–2010 Richard Beale Davis Prize for his essay “The Orations on the Abolition of the Slave Trade and the Uses of Print in the Early Black Atlantic.” The Davis Prize is awarded biennially by the Modern Language Association’s Division of American Literature to 1800 for the best article published in Early American Literature. It appeared in the Fall 2010 issue of the journal.

The Boston University Humanities Foundation has named six senior faculty as Jeffrey Henderson Senior Research Fellows for 2011/12. The large application pool made the fellowship process very competitive, as winners obtained funding to pursue their individual projects. Winners include:

• Qianshen Bai, Associate Professor of the History of Art & Architecture, will continue his work on “Art, Leisure and Modern Nation Building in Nineteenth-Century China.”
• William C. Carroll, Professor and Chair of English, is expanding his lecture on the importance of genealogy in Shakespeare into a book-length study, “The Tragedy of Genealogy: Shakespearean Drama 1595–1606.”
• Bonnie Costello, Professor of English and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, is beginning a new project on the pronoun we as it appears in modern American poetry: “Private Faces in Public Places: Modern Poetry and the First Person Plural.”
• Sarah Frederick, Associate Professor and Acting Chair of Modern Languages & Comparative Literature, continues her investigation of popular fiction in Japan with a project on “Yoshiya Nobuko: Women Readers, Popular Writers, and Modern Japanese Literature.”
• Deeana Klepper, Associate Professor and Chair of Religion, has developed a new project exploring the ideology behind medieval European attitudes toward Jewish communities: “Banishing Hagar: Christian Conceptualizations of Jewish Exile and Expulsion.”
• Eugenio Menegon, Associate Professor of History, proposes to explore the careers of Jesuits and other Europeans who lived in China during the Early Modern period: “Amicitia Palatina: Court Networks and the Europeans in Imperial Beijing, 1601–1820.”

Tino Villanueva, lecturer in the Department of Romance Studies, has had six poems published in the recently released Norton Anthology of Latino Literature (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.), edited by Ilán Stavans (Amherst College). Among Villanueva’s poems included are “Catharsis,” “Voice Over Time,” “Scene from the Movie GIANT,” and the three-part poem, “At the Holocaust Museum: Washington, D.C.” Villanueva’s book, Scene from the Movie GIANT (1993), won a 1994 American Book Award.

Writing Program Lecturer Michelle Hoover, an Iowa native, recently published her first novel, The Quickening. The novel follows two fictional Iowa farm women, isolated and very different neighbors who face a series of hardships together. She says her great-grandmother’s journal, which included family photos, sparked the idea. Click here to read a review from the Radio Iowa website.

Three CAS faculty members were awarded prestigious Sloan Research Fellowships. The professors are Corey Stephenson, Chemistry; Xue Han, Neuroscience; and Pankaj Mehta, Physics. Awarded annually since 1955, the fellowships are given to early-career scientists and scholars in recognition of achievement and the potential to contribute substantially to their fields.

The Research Corporation for Science Advancement has given a Scialog Award to Associate Professor of Chemistry Sean Elliott and his fellow researchers for their innovative proposal “Artificial Nanoscale Enzymes for CO2 Reduction Catalysis.” Their research focuses on making solar energy more viable. The award is a supplement to an earlier grant received by Elliott. It came about through a collaborative process initiated by the Research Corporation whereby awardees get together to explore further research opportunities, for which they can receive additional grants.

Boston University Professor of Chemistry Mark W. Grinstaff has won the inaugural Innovator of the Year Award from BU Technology Development (OTD), recognizing a faculty member who translates research into innovations that benefit humankind. Grinstaff was recognized at OTD’s first annual networking event, “Tech, Drugs & Rock ‘n Roll,” the unofficial kickoff of a University-wide commitment to establish Boston University as the new hub of entrepreneurship in Boston.

Post-doctoral Researcher Philip Moquist has received a post-doctoral research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to study in Germany with Professor Gerhard Erker at the Westfaelische Wilhelms-Universitaet Muenster Organisch-Chemisches Institut in Muenster. His research proposal is to work on the asymmetric activation of hydrogen using electron deficient boron complexes. The Humboldt Foundation aims to promote academic cooperation between German scientists and researchers from other countries.

The goal of Professor of Chemistry John Porco’s research program, “Chemical Synthesis of Bioactive Flavonoid and Xanthone-Derived Natural Products” (NIH R01—$1,637,000 over 5 years), is to develop new methodologies for the syntheses of complex, flavonoid and xanthone-derived natural products and to study their biological properties in collaborative efforts. The relevance to public health of the syntheses of complex natural products will be the identification of novel, biologically active anti-tumor and anti-infective agents. Specifically, such agents will be useful as novel pharmacological therapies and as cytotoxic agents against both human cancers and malaria. (It should be noted that this application received extraordinary reviews from the NIH reviewers, ranking in the 4th percentile.)

In June, Chemistry professors John Porco and John Snyder received the highly competitive BU Ignition Awards for commercially promising projects to develop cancer and tuberculosis drugs. The Ignition Award Program provides technology transfer funds for BU research projects so they can be licensed for commercial development. (Read article on the Chemistry Department website.)

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Corey Stephenson’s five-year career plan for an organic synthesis program, “New Chemical Methods Enabled by Visible Light Photocatalysis” (NSF, $997,000 over 5 years), will address fundamental questions at the intersection of two areas: transition metal chemistry and photochemistry. These operationally simple, green chemical methodologies use inexpensive household light bulbs and energy efficient LEDs for irradiation, thereby forgoing the need for specialized photochemistry equipment. This research will also serve as a training opportunity for students in his lab, and also as a hands-on experimental module in a series of workshops designed to engage high school students from Boston inner city schools in the excitement of interdisciplinary science.

Another Stephenson project, “Photoredox Catalysis Applications to Bioactive Compounds” (NIH R01—$1.7 million over 5 years), seeks to develop novel catalytic approaches to the synthesis of alkaloid natural products. These visible light-mediated methods provide innovative avenues toward challenging molecular architectures with broad biological activity. These new chemical reactions will enable the synthesis of biologically active natural products implicated in cancer, infection, and cardiovascular disease.

Stephenson also received the 2010 Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) New Investigator Award in Organic Chemistry. The award provides $50,000 funding for a post-doctoral fellow for research on photoredox catalysis to enable chemical synthesis with visible light. A privately held pharmaceutical company, BI supports academic research projects and is dedicated to enhancing the careers of talented scientific professionals around the world.

In May, the Journal of Chemical Physics (JCP) named Professor of Chemistry John Straub as associate editor in recognition of his outstanding achievements in chemical physics. He is responsible for manuscripts in experimental and theoretical areas of biochemical physics. The JCP is published by the American Institute of Physics.

Professor of Computer Science Mark Crovella has been named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). In naming him a Fellow, the ACM recognized his “contributions to the measurement and analysis of networks and distributed systems.” The ACM recognizes members for their contributions to computing and computer science that have provided fundamental knowledge to the field and generated multiple innovations in industry, commerce, entertainment, and education.

Computer Science Professor and Department Chair Stanley Sclaroff is principal investigator on a project that won one of this year’s National Science Foundation Expeditions in Computing awards. The project is titled “Computational Behavioral Science: Modeling, Analysis, and Visualization of Social and Communicative Behavior.”

The National Science Foundation awarded a three-year, $474,000 grant to Assistant Professor of Computer Science Evimaria Terzi. The grant will fund research to develop tools to protect the privacy of social media users. Terzi is the principal investigator for the project.

Associate Professor of Earth Sciences Ethan Baxter was named a distinguished lecturer for 2011/12 by the Mineralogical Society of American (MSA). MSA distinguished lecturers offer talks at schools that would otherwise not have the opportunity to hear about recent advances in mineralogy. Baxter will offer lectures on “Making a Long Story Short: Evidence for Brief Pulses of Metamorphism;” “Garnet: Tree Rings of Crustal Evolution;” and “Multiple Paths, Multiple Sinks: The Untold Story of Noble Gas Thermochronology.”

The American Physical Society (APS) has selected four professors from the CAS Physics Department to be APS Fellows: Plamen Ivanov, William Klein, Andrei Ruckenstein, and George Zimmerman.

Professor of Physics Kenneth Lane was awarded the American Physical Society’s J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics for a 1984 paper that helped chart the course for supercollider physics. The prize, one of the most important in the field of theoretical physics, was established to recognize and encourage outstanding achievement in particle theory.

President Obama nominated Professor of History and Chair of African American Studies Allison Blakely to serve on the National Humanities Council. The appointment is pending the consent of the U.S. Senate. Professor Blakely came to Boston University in 2001 after teaching for 30 years at Howard University. He is the author of Blacks in the Dutch World: Racial Imagery and Modernization (Indiana University Press, 1994); Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thought (Howard University Press, 1986; winner of an American Book Award in 1988); several articles on Russian populism; and others on various European aspects of the Black Diaspora.

Professor of Archaeology Curtis Runnels played an integral role in unearthing evidence of early hominid habitation on the island of Crete, making Archaeology magazine’s list of Top 10 Discoveries of 2010. The stone tools that Runnels and his colleagues found at two sites on Crete were between 130,000 and 700,000 years old and resemble those used by Homo heidelbergensis and Homo erectus. This shows that one of these ancient human ancestors traveled across 40 miles of open sea to reach the island—the earliest indirect evidence of seafaring.

CAS Professor of Economics John Harris’ article on the Harris-Todaro model of migration and employment in poor countries was picked as one of the top 20 American Economic Review articles of all time. (See John Harris and Michael Todaro, “Migration, Unemployment and Development: A 2-Sector Analysis,” American Economic Review, Vol. 60, No. 1 (March 1970), 126–142.) The “Harris-Todaro” model is considered a staple part of the toolkit of development economics.

Professor of Economics Bob King has been elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society. Fellowship in the Econometric Society (ES) is among the highest honors in the economics profession. Professor King joins seven other senior faculty (six current, one emeritus) in BU Economics who are ES fellows.

Professor of Economics Kevin Lang has been named a fellow of the Society of Labor Economists, the principal organization of academic labor economists. Founded to promote the study of labor economics and contributions of labor economics and labor economists, the Society publishes theJournal of Labor Economics, the premier journal in the area. Click here to view the press release.

Professor and Chair of International Relations William Grimes has been named a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. The council is an independent membership organization and think tank that contributes to public policy discourse on issues of international affairs through its meetings, task forces, publications, and outreach efforts. Membership is selective and based on exceptional achievement, involvement, and promise in international affairs. Other International Relations faculty members of the Council on Foreign Relations include Andrew Bacevich, Charles Dunbar, David Fromkin, Augustus Richard Norton, and Charles Stith.

Adil Najam, professor of International Relations and Geography & Environment and Director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, was named the Advisory Panel for the 2011 Human Development Report, produced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Najam also was appointed to serve a two-year term on the Visiting Committee for the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

Associate Professor of International Relations Henrik Selin’s book Global Governance of Hazardous Chemicals: Challenges of Multilevel Management, published by MIT Press, was recently announced as the runner-up for the 2011 Harold and Margaret Sprout Award. The Sprout Award was established in 1972 and named in honor of two pioneers in the study of international environmental problems. The award is given annually, recognizing books that contribute to theory and interdisciplinarity, show rigor and coherence in research and writing, and offer accessibility and practical relevance.

Professor of Political Science, Sociology, and Anthropology, and Director of the Institute for the Advancement of the Social Sciences, Liah Greenfeld was recently appointed Distinguished Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at Lingnan University, Hong Kong, for a term of five years, starting May 2011. During yearly month-long stays, she will deliver public lectures and faculty/graduate seminars, and chair weekly research discussions with colleagues of the department.

Professor of Political Science Cathie Jo Martin received the Jack Walker Award and Professor Dino Christenson received the Political Communications Award at the recent American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. Recognizing excellence in the profession is one of the most important activities of the American Political Science Association. To this end, the association has established a number of awards covering such areas as dissertations, papers and articles, books, and career achievements. Professor Martin received the Jack Walker Award for “an article published in the last two calendar years that makes an outstanding contribution to research scholarship on political organizations and parties” for her APSR article co-authored with Duane Swank, “The Political Origins of Coordinated Capitalism: Business Organizations, Party Systems and State Structure in the Age of Innocence.” Professor Christenson, who recently joined the department, received the Political Communications Award for the best paper by a graduate student presented at the previous convention for his “Learning From Campaigns: Political Information and Context in Presidential Elections.”

Boston University Professor and Chair of Political Science Graham Wilson was named president of the British Politics Group of the American Political Science Association (APSA). Wilson will serve as the group’s president for two years starting in September 2011.

Assistant Professor of Sociology Japonica Brown-Saracino’s book, “A Neighborhood That Never Changes,” has been awarded the 2011 Best Book Award from the Urban Affairs Association.

Associate Professor of Sociology Laurel Smith-Doerr has been named to the advisory board of a new ethics center at the University of Illinois. The center, funded through a five-year, $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, will include an online portal for professional and research ethics in science, mathematics, and engineering. The online center, called the National Center for Professional and Research Ethics, will develop, gather, preserve, and provide comprehensive access to resources related to ethics for teachers, students, researchers, administrators, and other audiences.

BA and undergraduate minor in European Studies
Change of program name: from “Women’s Studies” to “Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies”

(*indicates a laboratory component)

Courses listed below are typically more advanced, and may be less-frequently offered, than those on the short list for divisional studies. Students must have completed all prerequisites and must register for any corequisites.

Neal Knapp is a 20th-century social and political historian with a special interest in the political history of education in the Civil Rights era. He also has focused on the role of women educators as activists in a number of schools, including Highlander Folk School in Tennessee (1932–61), the Freedom Schools in Mississippi (summer 1964), and the Prince Edward County schools in Virginia (1948–65). Working this year with Sarah Phillips, assistant professor of history, Knapp taught two courses (HI/IR 349 and HI/IR 350) and plans to teach next year in the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program. “Neal is an exceptionally effective teaching fellow,” writes William Keylor, professor of history. “I have had numerous reports from students singing his praises, and he received very high evaluations for the fall semester. He is totally reliable and shows a great deal of initiative.” In addition to his academic interests, Knapp, who comes from a farming family, runs a business in Rochdale, Indiana, advising five sheep farms on marketing and genetic planning for sheep breeding. He also maintains his own flock of 30 prize-winning Tunis and Montadale sheep.

Caitlin O’Connell’s research focuses on the interactions among ecology, hormones, and behavior in primates. More specifically, she works on questions about orangutan development and sociality. These apes have extremely long periods of dependence on their mothers and she hopes to determine the mechanisms of juvenile independence—both ecological and physiological. A second-year graduate student, she has been an exceptional section leader in the introductory bio-anthropology course across several terms. Many of her students have told the professors how much they have enjoyed her sections/labs and how much they have learned from her. In addition, Caitlin has demonstrated great leadership in helping the other two teaching assistants, who are cultural anthropology graduate students, better understand material unfamiliar to them. Because of Caitlin’s competence and leadership in AN 102, the faculty in biological anthropology have recommended that she be part of the team helping develop 2-hour labs for the new lab version of the course that will start in Fall 2011.

Kaoru Makino is a PhD candidate in the Department of Archaeology. Her dissertation project, titled “Food and Foodways of the Dutch and Bantenese in the 17th to 18th-Century Sultanate of Banten, Indonesia: An Investigation of Hybridization Processes,” has received funding from the Boston University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and the Center for the Humanities. During the spring 2011 term, she has served as a teaching fellow for AR 307 Archaeological Science, the department’s most demanding course for teaching fellows. She is assisting with translation work for Professor Alice Tseng (History of Art & Architecture) on a Japanese project. This semester, she has continued her paleoethnobotanical research on phytolith, starch, and macro plant remains from the Banten Lama Project, and thin-section analysis at MIT on pottery from that site and from other potential sources of production.

Deborah Stein, a PhD candidate in the Department of the History of Art & Architecture, is a recipient of the Presidential University Graduate Fellowship, the Graduate School’s most prestigious award. Her research focuses on the closing decades of the 19th century in Boston, and her doctoral dissertation examines the career of Callahan Perkins, a leader in the founding of the Museum of Fine Arts, the Massachusetts College of Art, and the Boston Arts Club. In the classroom, Stein introduces students to the full range of the history of art and architecture, from the prehistoric caves of France to postmodern painting, sculpture, and architecture in Europe and America. She is beloved by her students in CAS AH 111 and 112 for the individual attention she gives them and for the high standards she insists they meet.

Jordan Montgomery earned BS degrees in physics and mathematics and a BA degree in Biblical studies at Gordon College, Wenham, MA. His research interests in astronomy include the study of dark matter and dark energy. He was a teaching assistant for five years at Gordon and has been a teaching fellow in BU’s Astronomy Department for almost two years, teaching AS 102 with Professor Dan Clemens in Fall 2010 and AS 102 with Professor Kenneth Brecher this spring. In Summer 2008, he was a research intern in the Atomic Physics Department at the University of Michigan. This summer, he will conduct research on planetary atmospheres with Professor John Clarke.

Jeffrey DaCosta is interested in the evolutionary ecology of birds and is combining cutting-edge DNA sequencing methods with extensive fieldwork in Tanzania for his dissertation research on the brood parasitic indigobirds of Africa. Focusing on his research in the field and lab during spring and summer, DaCosta has devoted most of his time each fall semester for the past four years to teaching the laboratory sections of BI 303 Ecology, one of our core undergraduate courses. In addition to weekly sessions in the laboratory, DaCosta also organizes and leads weekend field trips to Broadmoor Wildlife Sanctuary and has served as the lead teaching fellow, training new teaching fellows on the protocols and expected outcomes of laboratory experiments and field trips. Professor Thomas Kunz, who teaches BI 303, comments, “In my 40 years of mentoring teaching fellows, I have never had a more academically capable and dedicated teaching fellow.” Most importantly, DaCosta is highly regarded and much appreciated by his students, who consistently give high praise for his knowledge, dedication, patience, fairness, and genuine concern for students.

Sarah Soltau has been a teaching fellow for a number of courses in the departments of Chemistry and Biology, where she has taught Biochemistry I and II (BI/CH 421 & BI/CH 422). Soltau sets high expectations for herself, which is reflected in student evaluations that range from respect to fear. Soltau knows how to take charge in the classroom, a critical attribute in biochemistry labs. Her outstanding knowledge, skill, enthusiasm, and dedication this past year abundantly qualify her for recognition as an outstanding teaching fellow. While working as a teaching fellow this fall in Biochemistry I, Soltau extended herself to help five junior teaching fellows learn that course’s intricate experiments and improve performance in the classroom. Soltau also ran the pre-lab discussion sections (four weekly, hour-long lab-pedagogy sessions for 160 students), which she did outside of her normal teaching assignment.

During her six years at Boston University’s Department of Classical Studies, Sophie Klein has been an exemplary teaching fellow. While teaching stand-alone courses, such as Beginning Latin and Latin Poetry, or leading discussion sections in Greek and Roman civilization courses, Klein has repeatedly demonstrated her ability to inspire and challenge her students. Her faculty supervisors have recognized her command of difficult material, and her students appreciate her willingness to go the extra mile to ensure that concepts have been explained and mastered. Her ability to illustrate her points vividly comes naturally; Klein is not only a talented teacher but also an award-winning playwright. Her latest work, The Spitting Image, received superb reviews in productions in New York and Boston. She currently is completing her dissertation on the Roman poet Horace’s use of theatrical material in non-dramatic poetry.

Iljir Capuni, a PhD candidate in the Department of Computer Science, has served with distinction as a teaching fellow for a number of computer science courses, including Introductory Computer Science and Programming, Probability in Computing, and Theory of Computation. His research interests include sequential fault-tolerant computing and average-case complexity, and he has served as an instructor for combinatorial algorithms. His teaching evaluations consistently reflect his excellence in communicating complex theoretical concepts, his command and enthusiasm for the subject he teaches, his dedication to his students, and his ability to stimulate their thinking and improve their understanding.

Joseph Laycock is a PhD candidate in the Division of Religious & Theological Studies specializing in religion in American culture and society. Laycock has served as a teaching fellow in courses ranging from Religion and Culture to Death and Immortality, Buddhism, and our newly revamped Introduction to Religion. Laycock received his BA degree from Hampshire College and an MTS degree from Harvard Divinity School in the Religion and Secondary Education program. He came to BU already an accomplished high school teacher, quickly translating that experience into success in teaching students at the college level. He is able to make complex ideas accessible to undergraduates without sacrificing rigor. Students respond to his clarity, ease in the classroom, and faith in their ability to master difficult material, commenting in particular on his ability to revisit and reframe challenging readings. Professors he has worked with note how seasoned, well-organized, and completely reliable he is. They cite his regular and insightful feedback on the students’ performance in his sections, his intelligent essay suggestions for exams, and the promptness with which he grades and returns student work. He has delivered first-rate lectures on subjects as diverse as New Testament Christianity, theory and methodology in the study of religion, and concepts of the self in Buddhism. Laycock has become a wonderful mentor to less-experienced graduate students facing their first teaching assignments.

As reflected in student evaluations of his classes, Samuel Tuttle is an exceptional teaching fellow who is passionate about his subject and in command of his material. He excels at explaining difficult concepts and makes himself easily available to council students outside of class time. Tuttle is finishing a master’s degree in earth sciences with a thesis on hydrological modeling of evapotranspiration at the watershed scale.

In addition to serving as a teaching fellow for introductory microeconomics and macroeconomics classes, Robert Munger also has taught the 400-level game theory class. Students consistently praise Munger in their course evaluations, which is to be expected in light of his prodigious teaching talent and deep concern for undergraduates. His approach to teaching combines a clear emphasis on core concepts and a genuine interest in showing students how the concepts being discussed relate to their own experiences. His favorite part of teaching is the interactive process of watching student reactions to what is going on in the class and then using that information to dynamically improve the classroom experience. Munger’s research interests include mathematical game and decision theory; as his interests have become more applied, he has broadened his study to include health economics and, after the financial crisis, financial regulation. He approaches both of these subjects as a game and decision theorist, weighing the effects of conflicting incentives and the vicissitudes of human decision-making. This summer, Munger will teach the 300-level health economics class. After he completes his graduate studies, Munger hopes to continue in academia as a professor and researcher.

Karen Guendel is a superb student and scholar. She has inspired her students to fall in love with poetry, helped them develop their critical skills as interpreters of literature, and given them the kind of caring, attentive feedback, and encouragement that makes them better readers, writers, and thinkers. Before coming to BU, Guendel was a captain in the U.S. Air Force responsible for a team of over 50 military intelligence analysts and for procuring sophisticated rocket systems. Having dazzled examiners at her PhD oral exam, Guendel now is focused on her dissertation in which she explores how modern American poetry revises notions in English and American Romantic poetry of selfhood, transcendence, and the body. Guendel was selected for the Outstanding Teaching Fellow Award not for these achievements, but for her extraordinary talent in the classroom. She received course evaluations of 4.94 and 4.91 for introductory courses in poetry and fiction, and the rarely seen rating of 5.0 in her two writing-rich (WR) courses. Students consistently rave about her as the best professor they’ve had at BU, as one who made them never want to miss class, one who, with humor, dedication, and brilliance, gave them the gift of confidence in their own analytical abilities, love for the works of literature engaged by the class, and competence in writing articulately.

Marta Ribera has excelled as a teaching assistant for a very large undergraduate class on the natural environment, a notable accomplishment since students in this class typically have no science background, making it for many their first exposure to the scientific method and numerical estimation. An excellent teaching assistant, Ribera received the Dean’s Outstanding Teaching Fellow Award in 2009/10 and has mentored other teaching fellows in the department over the last two years. Professors who have taught the natural environment course with her have high praise for her diligence and solid teaching credentials. Ribera’s research integrates fisheries economics and policy, marine biology, and computer technologies to develop an interdisciplinary spatial model for analyzing the heterogeneous distribution of human and biological activities in a marine environment. Her methods include leading-edge approaches from two disciplines: artificial neural networks from computer science and spatial property rights in the form of spatial ITQs (individual transferable quotas) from fisheries economics. She plans to apply this model to the Gulf of Maine fishery, integrating it into a larger decision-support tool. One of expected outcomes of Marta’s research is detailed information on the optimal spatial allocation of fishery activities that will assist fishery resource managers in their decision-making processes.

Michael Holm has been a teaching fellow in large History Department lecture classes (HI/IR 349 and HI/IR 350) for the past two years and has performed at the very highest level in both of these classes. The feedback about his discussion sections, both anecdotal and from written student evaluations, has been extraordinarily positive. Holm is praised for his command of the reading assignments, and his skill in promoting discussion, although he has earned a reputation for being a very tough, demanding grader who holds students to a high standard of performance. While he may appear modest and unassuming, Michael Holm possesses a sharp intellect and a strong commitment to giving his students the best possible instruction.

Ikemefuna ‘Ike’ Agbanusi is a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics. His thesis research centers on stochastic reaction-diffusion models for biological processes inside cells. He is particularly interested in modeling the reactions and interactions between particles and in developing efficient numerical methods to simulate these processes. Applications include gene expression, gene regulation, and signal transduction. Agbanusi was an outstanding teaching fellow for two large introductory courses in calculus and multivariable calculus. Students uniformly praised his teaching style, the clarity of his explanations, and his availability outside of class.

After receiving her bachelor’s degree in philosophy and religious studies, Mary Catherine Youmell completed a master’s degree on political philosophy and ethics at the New School in New York. Youmell is especially interested in the intersections of psychology and philosophy, and she is currently doing research on narrative and self-identity. As students roundly attest, she is a superb teacher, someone who listens, communicates clearly, and inspires. Not surprisingly, Youmell loves teaching ethics and political philosophy, and finds working with students incredibly rewarding. Her passion for teaching stems from her belief that the critical thinking skills learned in philosophy courses help students become better writers, better friends, and better persons, enhancing their lives and their careers.

Finishing his first year of graduate studies in physics, Brian Alexander Long is pursuing a PhD degree in experimental physics. As a teaching fellow for only two semesters, Long has performed above and beyond the call of duty, spending significantly more time than required in office hours, preparing his own introduction to the relevant topics each week, presenting various approaches to the homework problems each week, and volunteering to do more than his share of grading of tests and homework. Students raved about his performance and many asked to be changed to his section, which was accommodated until capacity was reached. Long is described by his faculty supervisor as a responsible and likable individual who is great at doing what is expected in a timely fashion.

With an undergraduate degree from Cornell and a master’s from the London School of Economics, Matt Maguire has a uniquely interesting background. Before coming to BU, his life experiences ranged from working on organic farms in Italy to working for a very prestigious DC law firm, and he is making full use of these experiences as he works with his students. Maguire recently was awarded the Pre-Dissertation Research Fellowship and plans to do field research this summer in Europe.

Maya Rosen has been a teaching fellow for the physiological psychology course for four semesters. Her unique contributions as a teaching fellow included the extreme lucidity, accuracy, and breadth of her explanations of concepts, her ability to place concepts into a larger context and make them “relevant,” and her ability to inspire interest and enthusiasm for the material. She is known for her tireless availability well beyond office hours and her kindness, warmth, and patience with her students. A doctoral candidate in the Brain Behavior & Cognition Program in the Psychology Department, Rosen is studying cognitive neuroscience and is interested in the shared and dissociated neural mechanisms underlying attention and long-term memory retrieval. In particular, she is using functional magnetic resonance imaging to parse the functional role of the parietal lobe in attention and memory.

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Meaghan Stiman graduated from Stonehill College in 2010. There, in recognition of her academic skills, she served as a teaching assistant and a research assistant for faculty. Since arriving at Boston University last September, Stiman has fulfilled the promise that she demonstrated to her undergraduate teachers. As a teaching fellow for a large, introductory sociology class, she has worked closely with students in discussion sections, during office hours and through grading assignments. Her students consistently describe her as knowledgeable, encouraging, always willing to help, and enthusiastic about sociology. Faculty mentors have noted her ability to effectively present concepts to students and to actively engage them with the materials. Stiman’s research interests include the sociology of gender and sexuality.

Mike D’Alessandro, a graduate student in American & New England Studies, joined the Writing Program in Fall 2007 as a writing tutor and has served since Fall 2009 as a graduate writing fellow. In this capacity, he has taught courses titled “American Romantic Fiction and the Occult” and “The City in Modern American Drama.” With a master’s degree in dramatic criticism, D’Alessandro also has taught several theater surveys and maintains research interests in nineteenth-century transatlantic melodrama, modern Irish drama, and the theater’s convergence with early silent film. He is currently conducting research for a dissertation on links between antebellum American melodrama and working-class sensation fiction.