CLAS Names Ten Term Professors
This article was originally published in the September 1999 issue of CLASnotes.
One of the CLAS "It's the Performance That Counts" campaign goals is to raise money for 20 new term professorships. These professorships, funded entirely by private sources, allow the College to recognize faculty who excel in both scholarship and teaching. Each term professor will receive a one-year supplement of $5,000 in salary and $1,000 in research support. This year the College was able to award ten professors, up from six last year and three in 1997.
Andres Avellaneda (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Herb and Catherine Yardley Term Professor
Professor Avellaneda teaches Spanish American literature and maintains an active research agenda centering on the relation between state, literature and culture in contemporary South American nations. He is currently working on the role of Eva Perón in recent Argentine poetry and fiction.
Steve Benner (Chemistry)
Townes R. Leigh Commemorative Term Professor
Among many other projects, the Benner group has completed the first versions of the "Master Catalog," which combines genomic data, principles of chemical reactivity, and paleontological information to provide a coherent model of the origin and development of biological function on planet Earth. This catalog will underlie most of the future work within the group, and serve as a research tool for others.
Leann Brown (Political Science)
Robin and Jean Gibson Term Professor
Brown teaches courses in international political economy, international politics, international environmental relations and European Union politics. Her research focuses on regional economic and political cooperation and decision-making processes of the European Union.
David Hackett (Religion)
Delton L. Scudder Commemorative Term Professor
Hackett's current research includes issues of gender in American culture and American spirituality. He has been awarded the Brewer Prize by the American Society of Church History and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. His book Fraternal Orders and the Re-Imagining of American Religious History is forthcoming from Princeton University Press.
Elizabeth Lada (Astronomy)
Dr. David Williams Term Professor
Professor Lada studies young stellar clusters to investigate the origin and development of stars like our Sun. She recently discovered, as part of a team of international astronomers, a small cloud in the earliest phases of collapsing to form a new star. Last year, Lada received the Presidential Early CAREER award, a five-year, $500,000 honor given by the White House.
Linda Lombardino (Communications Sciences and Disorders)
Ruth McQuown Commemorative Term Professor
As Coordinator of the reading disabilities program at the University of Florida Speech and Hearing Clinic, Lombardino specializes in treating developmental dyslexia and other childhood language disorders. Her research and teaching interests focus on the neurobiology, assessment, and treatment of developmental reading disabilities.
Michael Miyamoto (Zoology)
Robin and Jean Gibson Term Professor
Miyamoto's research combines both empirical and theoretical approaches to study the patterns and processes of evolution in DNA and protein sequences. One of his primary aims is to estimate the evolutionary history of life, from populations to higher groups (e.g., of mammals and other vertebrates). He continues to serve as a liaison for CLAS to the new UF Genetics Institute. (Photo: Molly Van Wagener)
Michael Perfit (Geology)
Edward R. Flint Commemorative Term Professor
Perfit's research includes studies of the volcanic, tectonic and geochemical evolution of the seafloor and island arcs. Recent investigations have concentrated on recent submarine volcanic activity and mineralization along actively spreading ridges and seamounts in the eastern Pacific. He teaches Honors Physical Geology, Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology, and Igneous Geochemistry.
Padgett Powell (English)
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Commemorative Term Professor
Powell is the author of three novels: Edisto (1984), A Woman Named Drown (1987) and Edisto Revisited (1996); and two story collections: Typical (1991) and Aliens of Affection (1998). He has received a Whiting Writer's Award, the Prix de Rome in Literature, and a nomination for the National Book Award. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in the New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's, and The New York Times Magazine.
Barbara Zsembik (Sociology)
T. Lynn Smith Commemorative Term Professor
Sociologist Barbara Zsembik studies the demography of health and aging with particular attention to minority populations. Her work also encompasses Latino sociology, family and household demography, and the sociology of sex and gender.
