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Twelve faculty and staff members in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences have been acknowledged by Iowa State University for excellence in the classroom, research and other service areas.

The recipients will be recognized at the Fall Liberal Arts & Sciences Faculty/Staff Convocation on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2009 and formally recognized during the University’s Fall Convocation on Monday, Sept. 21, 2009.

The recipients and their awards include:

ISU Award for Early Achievement in Teaching – recognizes faculty members who have demonstrated outstanding teaching performance unusually early in their professional careers.

• Rachel Haywood Ferreira, assistant professor of Spanish, department of world languages and cultures. Early on in her teaching career, Professor Haywood-Ferreira has earned the esteem of colleagues and students for her clear and lively presentations, her communication of recent scholarship, her careful work with student writing, and her innovative and effective use of instructional technology in the classroom. In her department, she has taken a leadership role in developing Luso-Brazilian Studies, in restructuring the languages and cultures curriculum, and in implementing outcomes assessment, in addition to her significant contribution to designing a Certificate Program in Latin American Studies. Already, she has won respect as a model teacher and an ever-reliable and supportive colleague.

ISU Award for Early Achievement in Research – recognizes faculty members who have demonstrated outstanding accomplishments in research and/or creative activity unusually early in their professional careers.

• Adam Kaminski, assistant professor, department of physics and astronomy. Kaminski received his Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2001 and joined the department of physics and astronomy at Iowa State as an assistant professor in 2004. He is an award-winning well-funded experimental physicist who is a world leader in angular resolved photoelectron spectroscopy measurements of magnesium boride, copper oxide and iron arsenide high temperature superconductors. He has published 40 papers in prestigious journals. His papers are highly cited in the scientific literature. Kaminski is in high demand as a speaker and has given 54 invited talks on his research.

ISU Award for Mid-Career Achievement in Research – recognizes faculty members who have demonstrated outstanding accomplishments in research at the mid-career stage.

• Amy Andreotti, professor, department of biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology. Andreotti is a brilliant biochemist/structural biologist who has received worldwide recognition for her consistently superlative contributions in the multidisciplinary arena of structural biology and molecular immunology. Her contributions can be summed up by a statement from one of her peers: “Dr. Andreotti is an outstanding scientist who brings a high standard of rigor to her work and is very highly respected by her colleagues in the field … Given the quality of her work, it is no surprise that Dr. Andreotti has garnered and maintained excellent NIH support and is considered a rising star … Dr. Andreotti is emerging as one of the strongest young biophysicists working in the area of immunology.”
• Hailing Liu, professor, department of mathematics. Liu is a researcher widely recognized both nationally and internationally for his outstanding contributions to partial differential equations and numerical analysis. His contributions to the areas of critical thresholds in fluid flow, high frequency wave propagation, shock waves in systems of hyperbolic conservation laws, and polymer dynamics are considered seminal in these fields. He has produced both theoretical results such as the proof of the Onsager conjecture, which has been unsolved since 1949, and computational methods such as the Level Set Method and Alternating Evolution Method for various classes of partial differential equations.

ISU Award for Outstanding Career Achievement in Research – recognizes faculty members for outstanding career achievements in research and/or creative activity.

• Klaus Schmidt-Rohr, professor, department of chemistry. Solids are often thought of as either “hard” (like metals) or “soft” (like biological tissues). In the scientific world, it is very challenging to understand soft materials. Schmidt-Rohr has creatively improved and applied one particular technique for studying soft materials: Solid State NMR. In doing so, he has extracted levels of information that no one had even dreamed possible 20 years ago. He has solved important questions for materials as diverse as bone, soil, proteins, and fuel cell membranes. Schmidt-Rohr’s scientific peers describe him and his work with words such as “genius,” “extraordinary powers,” “remarkable,” “beautiful,” and “astounding.”

ISU Award for Departmental Leadership – recognizes department chairs who have demonstrated exceptional leadership qualities in advancing the faculty, staff, students, and programs in their departments.

• Doug Bonett, professor and chair, department of psychology. Bonett is an exemplary leader. He has served the psychology department, the Communication Studies program, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the university community as a whole through his leadership skills. His ability to analyze situations, attend to the needs of staff and faculty, and keep a broad perspective while attending to everyday details is exceptional. Dr. Bonett is a model leader whose insights, creativity, and ability to inspire others make his leadership truly outstanding. Dr. Bonett is also a leading scholar in his field with close to 100 journal publications and approximately 4,700 citations of his work. He is also active on several grant projects.

ISU Award for Academic Advising Impact – recognizes faculty or professional staff who have continued to demonstrate outstanding performance in advising Iowa State University undergraduate students throughout their professional careers.

• Kathleen Timmons, academic advisor, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Timmons has been advising, empowering, and championing Iowa State students for 30 years through her work with interdisciplinary programs, distance education, curriculum, and the degree audit system. Towering over those significant achievements is her work with the Bachelor of Liberal Studies program, which she has nurtured from its humble beginnings in 1978 to its current status as one of the largest majors in the LAS College. Timmons’ student-centered commitment, attention to detail, and knowledge of curriculum have helped thousands of students – many of whom once questioned if they could ever achieve their goal of a baccalaureate degree – become Iowa State alumni.

ISU Award for Early Academic Advising – recognizes ISU faculty or staff who have demonstrated outstanding performance in advising undergraduate students early in their professional careers.

• Denise Hix, academic advisor in the biology program, department of ecology, evolution and organismal biology. Hix demonstrates the accessibility, caring and creativity that have earned her the praise of her students and colleagues. In addition to advising more than 200 students individually, she is the advisor to the undergraduate Marine Biology Club, coordinates several Biology Learning Communities, develops and teaches the Biology Orientation course for new students, and assists faculty advisors. She is continually envisioning new ways to support the biology students and apply new technologies to advising and teaching, as well as promoting ISU and biology in K-12 and other outreach settings.

ISU Award for Professional & Scientific Research – recognizes professional and scientific staff members for excellence in research.

• Vladimir Kogan, adjunct research associate professor, department of physics and astronomy. Dr. Kogan has made numerous important contributions to the physics of vortices in superconductors, particularly to the theory of vortex elasticity and magnetization in anisotropic high-Tc superconductors, fluctuation effects, nonlocal generalization of London electrodynamics, structural transitions in vortex lattices, Josephson vortices in layered superconductors, and the electrodynamics of multiband superconductors. The wide international recognition of his outstanding work is evident from his impressive citation index and the fact that the “Kogan formulas” for the torque, magnetization, and elastic moduli of the vortex lattice in anisotropic superconductors have become part of the standard language of the vortex physics community.

Regents Award for Professional & Scientific Excellence– recognizes and honors P&S employees who have achieved excellence in their respective fields.

• Jane Jacobson, director of Student Academic Services, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. Jacobson oversees orientation and academic advising, and guides the development of many learning communities. As a major leader within the National Academic Advising Association, Jacobson brings her expertise and progressive thinking to national conferences and workshops, crafting influential policies that improve the health and well-being of academic advising throughout the nation. At the university level, Jacobson helped design and implement the new academic probation policy that is affecting student retention in positive ways. Her dedication and commitment to enhancing undergraduate education is her defining characteristic.

Regents Award for Faculty Excellence – recognizes outstanding university citizens who have rendered significant service to Iowa State University and/or to the State of Iowa.

• Mark Kaiser, professor, department of statistics. Kaiser is a truly outstanding university citizen. He has administered the graduate program in statistics, taught courses ranging from first-year undergraduate to doctoral-level, published in outstanding refereed journals, made many invited professional presentations, was elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, and edited the flagship journal in statistics. He has participated in $10 million of funded grants, chaired the Graduate Council, and mentored younger colleagues. He is an exemplar to which we all can aspire, and a leader by example. It would be difficult to think of a better representative of Iowa State University to the world at large.
• Lee Poague, professor, department of English. The author of 10 books, primarily in film studies, with an 11th book forthcoming in 2010, Dr. Poague has taught an impressive array of graduate and undergraduate courses in the English department, not only in film studies, with subjects such as Igmar Bergman and Woody Allen; Fritz Lang; Billy Wilder; Film Noir; and Alfred Hitchcock, but also in the areas of Literary Theory and Criticism, First Year Composition, and Shakespeare. Poague has been an invaluable department- and university-wide citizen serving as the Assistant Chair of the English department (2001-2007), as well as on committees with the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, the Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities, and the ISUComm Planning Committee.

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NEWS RELEASE
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Iowa State University

Contacts:
Dawn Bratsch-Prince, Liberal Arts and Sciences Associate Dean, (515) 294-1162 (deprince@iastate.edu)
Laura Engelson, Liberal Arts and Sciences Communications, (515) 294-7742 (lge@iastate.edu)