AROUND THE QUADS: IN LUMINE TUO CONTINUED [ 2 OF 3]

Around the Quads

• Bollinger Becomes University's 19th President • Cole, Cohen To Leave Administrative Posts • Campus Bulletins • Transitions • Alumni Bulletins • In Lumine Tuo • College Honors 65 Students at Awards and Prizes Ceremony • More Than 1,000 Take Part In Community Outreach

BANCROFT: In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America (Oxford University Press, 2001) by Alice Kessler-Harris, Columbia’s R. Godron Hoxie Professor of American History, was one of two books to receive the 2002 Bancroft Prize at a ceremony in Low Library on April 24. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Belknap Press, 2001) by David W. Blight, a professor at Amherst, also was honored. The Bancroft Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in the field of history, are presented annually to the authors of books of exceptional merit and distinction in the fields of American history, biography or diplomacy.

Kessler-Harris is one of the nation’s leading scholars of gender, the economy and public policy. In her book, she traces and analyzes 20th-century U.S. social policies such as Social Security, unemployment insurance and fair labor stadards that produced different access to resources for men and women. Her critical analysis shows how a deeply embedded set of beliefs, what she calls “gendered imagination,” distorted seemingly neutral social legislation to further limit the freedom and equality of women, especially regarding their rights to full economic citizenship.

NSF: Nicholas Turro, the William P. Schweitzer Professor of Chemistry and a faculty member in the departments of chemistry, chemical engineering and Earth and environmental engineering, is one of six university science researchers and educators nationwide who received the 2002 National Science Foundation Director’s Awards for Distinguished Teaching Scholars. Turro was honored for creating new computer-based models for undergraduate chemistry studies and for developing mentoring programs that involve undergraduates as collaborators on faculty research. His innovative teaching methods have been adopted by college science educators across the country.

Turro is a cutting-edge researcher who is leading advances in the use of photochemistry and spectroscopy to reveal the structure and dynamics of supramolecular systems. Since the start of the 1990s, he has been at the forefront of the development of information technologies for the teaching of science. He has received nearly $2 million in funds over the past decade from the NSF, the Dreyfus Foundation, Columbia and others to develop computer software and Web-based learning programs for teaching organic and physical chemistry and spectroscopy; many of these programs are used in college science courses nationwide.

The Distinguished Teaching Scholars awards were created in 2001 by NSF Director Rita Colwell to promote interest among academics in creative new ways to teach undergraduate science, technology, engineering and mathematics and to involve students in research mentoring programs, including students not majoring in these fields. Each winner receives $300,000 over four years to expand their work beyond their own institutions. In addition to Turro, professors from UC Santa Barbara, Boston University, Princeton, Arizona and Colorado were honored at a ceremony at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. on June 19.

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