January 12, 2006

Faculty honors

Clare Cavanagh, associate professor of Slavic languages and literatures and of gender studies, has been named the Herman and Beulah Pearce Miller Research Professor in Literature.

Her research interests include 19th and 20th century Russian poetry; Polish and Russian literature, history and culture; comparative modernism; and gender theory.

An accomplished translator and author, Cavanagh won the 1996 American Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages Award for Outstanding Scholarship for her book about 20th century Russian poet Osip Mandelstam.

Titled “Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Creation of Translation,” the book won critical acclaim for its scholarship.

Jeffrey L. Kwall, a leading author and educator in income taxation, is visiting at the School of Law during the winter and spring quarters as the Harry R. Horrow Visiting Professor in International Law.

Kwall is the Kathleen and Bernard Beazley Research Professor and director of the Tax LLM Program at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

He pioneered an innovative business tax curriculum at Loyola and is the author of the leading comparative corporate and partnership tax casebook, “The Federal Income Taxation of Corporations, Partnerships, Limited Liability Companies and Their Owners.” More than 40 law schools across the nation have adopted the book.

Richard Miller, professor of molecular pharmacology and biological chemistry, has been named Alfred Newton Richards Professor of Pharmacology at the Feinberg School of Medicine.

Miller is a leader in the field of pharmacology of receptors, signal transduction and synaptic transmission.

His research focuses on the molecular aspects of nerve cell communications, with emphasis on the voltage-sensitive calcium channels that are responsible for the influx of calcium into neurons and the release of transmitter.

Miller has demonstrated that calcium channels consist of a family of related molecules that form multi-subunit channels. Using molecular biological, electrophysiological and imaging techniques, Miller has identified the channels’ different biophysical and pharmacological properties and various neuronal functions.

Kenneth Seeskin, professor of philosophy, has been named the John Evans Professor in Moral and Intellectual Philosophy.

Seeskin’s research explores Jewish philosophy, ancient and medieval philosophy, and philosophy of religion. He teaches a broad range of material on classical and medieval philosophers and uses classic texts in the history of philosophy to explain problems of perennial interest.

Seeskin was awarded the Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence in 1995, Arts and Sciences Award for Outstanding Teacher and the E. LeRoy Hall Prize for Teaching Excellence. He was the invited speaker for the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences commencement in 1990 and was awarded the Koldyke Outstanding Teaching Professorship from 2000-02.

The author of six scholarly books and two books for general audiences, Seeskin most recently served as editor of the “Cambridge Companion to Maimonides.”

Kathryn Spier, professor of management and strategy at the Kellogg School of Management, has been named Richard M. Paget Distinguished Professor of Management and Strategy.

Spier holds a variety of leadership positions within her field, most notably on the Board of Directors at the American Law and Economics Association, where she was recently elected to serve a second term. She is also an active member of the National Bureau of Economic Research as a research Associate.

Spier’s research is primarily in the areas of law, economics and industrial organization. She has published over two-dozen papers on the settlement of litigation, contract design and products liability law.

James Spillane, professor of human development and social policy and of learning sciences and faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, has been named Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Professor in Learning Organizations.

Spillane’s research explores the policy implementation process at the state, district, school and classroom levels. It explores the substantive ideas about education reform that local policymakers – administrators and lead teachers – come to understand from state and national reforms.

Spillane is principal investigator of the Distributed Leadership Studies, funded by the National Science Foundation and the Spencer Foundation, which is doing an empirical investigation of school leadership practice in urban elementary schools working to improve mathematics, science, and literacy instruction.

A former elementary school teacher, Spillane conceptualizes organizational leadership as a distributed practice involving formal and informal leaders, followers, and a variety of organizational tools and artifacts.

David A. Robertson, director of the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art and lecturer in art history, has been named the museum’s first Ellen Philips Katz Director.

The directorship has been endowed by University Trustee and museum board member Ellen Philips Katz.

Robertson, who was appointed director of the Block Museum in August 2002, previously served as associate director of the University of Chicago’s David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art. Robertson has also held museum directorships at the University of Oregon Museum of Art, Loyola University and Dickinson College.

Robertson has written a number of exhibition catalogues and published articles in “The Art Bulletin,” UNESCO’s “Museum International,” and “Grove Dictionary of Art.”

Jane Y. Wu, M.D., professor of neurology, has been named Doctor Charles L. Mix Research Professor in Neurology and Psychiatry at the Feinberg School of Medicine.

Wu’s current research focuses on the involvement of pre-mRNA splicing in regulating genes important for development of neurodegenerative disorders and on the mechanisms of cell migration and its role in human diseases.

Wu has had continual grant support from a number of distinguished societies, including the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the Leukemia Society of America and the National Institutes of Health. She has served as a grant reviewer for several scientific groups, such as the Alzheimer’s Association, Kirsch Foundation, Medical Research Council Canada and National Science Foundation.