APPLETON, WIS. — Lawrence University President Jill Beck has announced the appointment of four members of the faculty to endowed professorships.
Patrick Boleyn-Fitzgerald, associate professor of philosophy, was named to the Edward F. Mielke Professorship in Ethics in Medicine, Science and Society. Merton Finkler, professor of economics, was named to the John R. Kimberly Distinguished Professorship in the American Economic System. Peter Glick, professor of psychology, was named to the Henry Merritt Wriston Professorship in the Social Sciences. Claudena Skran, associate professor of government, was named to the Edwin N. and Ruth Z. West Professorship in Economics and Social Science.
Appointments to endowed professorships recognize academic distinction through teaching excellence and/or scholarly achievement.
Boleyn-Fitzgerald, a specialist in bioethics and political philosophy, joined the Lawrence philosophy department in 2001 after six years on the faculty at Louisiana State University. His research interests include the relationship between health care professionals and the philosophical virtues of gratitude, forgiveness and compassion.
A member of President Clinton’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments in 1994, he currently serves as a consultant to Appleton Medical Center and Affinity Health System on issues of confidentiality, competency and end-of-life treatment decisions. Since coming to Lawrence, he has coordinated the college’s annual Edward R. Mielke Lecture Series in Biomedical Ethics.
Boleyn-Fitzgerald earned his bachelor’s degree from Miami University and his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona.
The Mielke Professorship was established in 1982 in memory of Dr. Edward Mielke, a leading member of the Fox Valley medical community and founder of the Appleton Medical Center.
Finkler, a member of the faculty since 1979, is a specialist in health care economics. His recent research efforts have focused on the role of competition in medical-care markets.
A former Robert Wood Johnson Faculty Fellow in Health Care Finance, Finkler spent a year in the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program in California. Amid the national debate on health-care reform in the early 1990s, he co-chaired two Lawrence conferences on health policy guidelines for policy makers and made presentations before both the Wisconsin Assembly and Senate health committees.
Co-founder of the consulting firm Innovative Health Associates, Finkler has served on several state panels, including the Wisconsin Governor’s Task Force on Funding of Academic Medical Centers and the Turning Point project on the transformation of public health services.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at the University of California-San Diego, a master’s degree at the London School of Economics and Political Science and his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Minnesota.
The Kimberly Professorship was established in 1977 by the Kimberly-Clark Corporation in honor of John Kimberly, the former chairman of the board of the company. John Kimberly also served as a Lawrence trustee from 1949-1971.
Glick, a scholar on gender stereotyping and prejudice, has taught at Lawrence since 1985. His research focuses on the subtle and the overt ways in which prejudices and stereotypes foster social inequality. He co-authored research that introduced the concept of “ambivalent sexism,” asserting that not just hostile, but subjectively benevolent views of women as pure, but fragile, reinforce gender inequality and reward women for conforming to conventional gender roles while also creating hostile attitudes toward women who fail to do so. His 2005 research paper, “Evaluations of sexy women in high and low status jobs” published in Psychology of Women Quarterly attracted national media attention.
He was the recipient of the 1995 Gordon W. Allport Prize for the best paper on intergroup relations and was elected a fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society in 2004. The APA and the APS are the two largest and most prominent professional organizations in the field of psychology.
Glick earned a bachelor’s degree at Oberlin College and his Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Minnesota.
The Wriston Professorship was established 1959 in honor of Lawrence’s eighth president (1925-37) by Lester and Gertrude Slocum. Mrs. Slocum served as a Lawrence trustee from 1933-61.
Skran, whose research interests focus on international relations, especially refugee issues, joined the Lawrence faculty in 1990. She is the author of the 1995 book “Refugees in Interwar Europe: The Emergence of a Regime” in which she analyzed the major players in the early days of the international refugee arena, including private volunteer agencies, the forerunners to today’s non-government organizations (NGOs).
In 2005, Skran was awarded a Fulbright Scholars grant to study the role of NGOs in refugee resettlement in post-civil war Sierra Leone, where she spent six months. She also has conducted field research in Central America, studying displaced people in El Salvador and refugee issues in Mexico and Belize.
A 1983 Rhodes Scholar, Skran earned a bachelor’s degree in social science from Michigan State University and her master’s and doctorate degrees in international relations at Oxford University.
The West Professorship was established in 1989. Edwin West, an attorney and business leader, served as a Lawrence trustee from 1941-57 and 1971-84.
