February 9, 2006

Faculty honors

Robert O. Bonow, M.D., Max and Lilly Goldberg Distinguished Professor of Cardiology and chief of cardiology at the Feinberg School of Medicine, has received the 2006 Distinguished Service Award from the American College of Cardiology in recognition of his profound contributions to health care.

Bonow, who is also chief of cardiology and co-director of the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, is recognized internationally for his research and teaching in a variety of cardiac diseases, including coronary artery disease, valvular heart disease and heart failure.

Among his honors are the National Institutes of Health Director’s Award, the U.S. Public Health Service Commendation Medal and Outstanding Service Medal and elected membership in the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians.

He is also the recipient of the Distinguished Fellowship Award (2000) of the American College of Cardiology and the Distinguished Leadership Award (2003) and Distinguished Achievement Award (2005) of the American Heart Association.

Micaela di Leonardo, professor of anthropology and performance studies, is spending the 2005-06 academic year in Santa Fe, N.M., in a National Endowment for the Humanities residential fellowship at the School of American Research.

She is finishing her historical ethnography of the political economy and public culture of New Haven, Conn., “The View from Cavallaro’s: History, Power and Public Culture in New Haven”.

di Leonardo has been engaged in ethnographic research on race, gender, urban representation and economic restructuring in New Haven since 1987. She is focusing on one changing neighborhood in the context of larger political and economic shifts, especially in terms of race and gender politics. This emphasis counters the bent of most urban studies, which often fail to connect the residents of American neighborhoods to cities and the global forces that affect them.

Three faculty members – Carl R. Johnson, Gary E. Swanson and Brook A. Ziporyn — have been awarded Fulbright Scholar grants for the 2005-06 academic year.

Johnson, a scenic artist at the Theatre and Interpretation Center, will visit Taipei’s National Taiwan University, where he will lecture on theatrical environments and the impact of the visual arts on theatre. Johnson teaches basic scene design, scene painting and life drawing for theatre at Northwestern.

Swanson, assistant professor of broadcast journalism at the Medill School of Journalism, will visit Beijing’s Communications University of China. He will lecture on broadcast journalism and production topics. A former faculty member at DePauw University, Swanson worked as a network editor and producer for NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, and in the Chicago bureau of Sunrise.

Ziporyn, associate professor of religion and philosophy, will visit Huafan University in Taipei, researching Tiantai Buddhism. Ziporyn, who teaches courses on Zen Buddhism, contemporary Buddhist philosophy, Confucianism, Taoism and other subjects at Northwestern, has published books in intellectual history, religion and philosophy.

Johnson, Swanson and Ziporyn are among approximately 850 faculty and professionals traveling abroad as Fulbright Scholars to some 150 countries this academic year. The Fulbright Scholar Program was established in 1946 through legislation introduced by the now late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. It is designed to build understanding between scholars in the United States and other countries.

America’s flagship international educational exchange program, it is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Jacquelyn Thomas, associate professor of integrated marketing communications in the Medill School of Journalism, is a recipient of the 2006 Marketing Science Institute/H. Paul Root Award. The award is administered by the Marketing Science Institute, a not-for-profit organization established as a bridge between business and academia.

Thomas, who is a triple degree graduate of Northwestern, received the award for an article she co-authored titled “Balancing Acquisition and Retention Resources to Maximize Customer Profitability” appearing in the January 2005 issue of Journal of Marketing.

Co-author of the book “Customer Equity” (Harvard University Press), Thomas taught at Stanford and Emory universities before joining Northwestern’s faculty. She has been named Integrated Marketing Communications Teacher of the Year for the past two academic years.

Thomas’s research interests are in the areas of customer relationship management, customer lifetime value analysis, database and direct marketing, and statistical modeling of the customer life cycle.