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Lawrence University Art Historian Awarded Prestigious Metropolitan Museum Research Fellowship

Lawrence University Assistant Professor of Art History Alexis Boylan has been named one of 39 international recipients of a 2004-05 fellowship from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Boylan was awarded a Chester Dale Fellowship to support research she is conducting for an article on American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, famous for his civic monuments, most notably those of Civil War heroes, and his bronze bas-relief of author Robert Louis Stevenson.

The fellowship will enable Boylan to spend three months this fall in New York, studying at the Metropolitan Museum, which has two versions of the Saint-Gaudens’ sculpture of Stevenson.

Boylan’s article, “‘Not a Bit Like an Invalid:’ Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson,” examines the relationship between the sculptor and the famed Scottish novelist. She will focus on the artist’s decision to present Stevenson ill and in bed in his 1887 work, exploring the rationale behind Saint-Gauden’s decision to shift from his more typical style of portraying heroic men and instead sculpt Stevenson — a man he admired and considered a good friend — as weak and infirm in this piece.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art awards fellowships to scholars and graduate students from the United States as well as from around the world to undertake research projects at the renowned museum or abroad. Established in 1974, the program supports research in art history, archaeology and art conservation.

Among the 39 recipients, Boylan was the only scholar from a liberal arts college awarded one of the 2004-05 Metropolitan Museum fellowships, which also went to scholars at Columbia, Harvard and Princeton universities, as well as Oxford University and the University of the Sorbonne, among others.

A specialist in 19th- and 20th-century American and European art, Boylan joined the Lawrence faculty in 2002. She earned a bachelor’s degree in history at Bryn Mawr College and a Ph.D. in art history at Rutgers University in 2001.

Political Commentator, Columnist Arianna Huffington Dissects Presidential Election in Lawrence University Convocation

Nationally syndicated columnist, best-selling author and well-known political commentator Arianna Huffington shares her insights on the upcoming presidential election Thursday, Oct. 7 in a Lawrence University convocation.

Huffington presents “The 2004 Election: What’s at Stake?” at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. The address, the second in Lawrence’s five-part 2004-05 convocation series, is free and open to the public.

Hailed as one of Washington’s “most influential commentators” by Newsweek magazine, Huffington, 54, is the author of 10 books, including the 2003 New York Times’ best-seller “Pigs at the Trough,” a scathing indictment of corporate greed and political manipulation.

A one-time staunch conservative whose ideology has since evolved toward more populist views and who now operates outside the two-party system, Huffington ran for governor as an independent in California’s 2003 state recall election — won by Arnold Schwarzenegger — and then wrote a behind-the-scenes account of the election in the book “Fanatics and Fools,” which was published earlier this year.

Politics is a favorite topic for Huffington’s books. In addition to “Pigs at the Trough,” she tackled the subject of political corruption and the need for campaign finance reform in her 2000 book “How to Overthrow the Government” while 1998’s “Greetings from the Lincoln Bedroom” provided a satirical, Alice-in-Wonderland-like fantasy look at the Clinton administration.

Two of Huffington’s most popular books were vivid biographies of world famous artists. Her works “Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend” in 1981 and “Picasso: Creator and Destroyer” in 1988 both became international bestsellers. She launched her literary career by challenging modern feminism in “The Female Woman” (1974), criticizing the women’s liberation movement for “denying or ignoring the longings of millions of women for intimacy, children, and a family.” The book was eventually translated into 11 languages.

A familiar face on the television talk show circuit, Huffington was a frequent guest on “Politically Incorrect” and teamed with Al Franken to provide campaign coverage of the Democratic and Republican conventions in 1996. She also has appeared regularly on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” CNN’s “Crossfire” and Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor” and “Hannity & Colmes.”

Extending her political interests beyond the literary world, Huffington co-founded the Center for Effective Compassion, a Michigan-based organization that promotes faith-principled service to the poor as an alternative to government-run social programs, and The Detroit Project, a national campaign that links fuel efficiency to national security and the country’s reliance on foreign oil. She also serves on the board of directors of the Points of Light Foundation and A Place Called Home, two organizations that foster community solutions to social problems.

Born in Athens, Greece, Huffington moved to England at the age of 16 and earned a degree in economics from Cambridge University, where she became only the third woman ever elected president the Cambridge Union, the university’s famed debating society.

President Jill Beck Opens Lawrence University’s 155th Academic Year with Matriculation Convocation Focusing on Value of Personalized Instruction

Jill Beck makes her official public debut as Lawrence University’s 15th president Thursday, Sept. 23, opening the college’s 155th academic year with her first matriculation address.

Beck, who was named the successor of long-time Lawrence president Richard Warch in January and assumed the president’s duties in July, will deliver the address “The Value of Individualized Instruction in
Liberal Education” at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. The event is free and open to the public.

Beck will discuss the importance of highly individualized, one-on-one personal interaction between students and teachers and why that kind of close collaboration is so essential to effective learning.

Prior to her appointment as president of Lawrence, Beck spent eight years as dean of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California-Irvine. During her tenure as dean, she founded ArtsBridge America, a national model for the advancement of educational arts partnerships between universities and K-12 communities, and established the da Vinci Research Center for Learning Through the Arts, an interdisciplinary center for research focused on learning across disciplines.

A native of Worcester, Mass., Beck earned a bachelor of arts degree from Clark University in 1970 and her Ph.D. from City University of New York.

In addition to opening the new academic year, Beck’s matriculation address also launches Lawrence’s five-part convocation series for the 2004-05 academic year. Other scheduled speakers in the convocation series include:

Oct. 7 — Columnist, author and political commentator Arianna Huffington

Feb. 8 — Georgia Congressman and noted civil rights activist John Lewis

March 8 — Human rights activist and Partners in Health medical director Joia Mukherjee

May 26 — Columbia University President Lee Bollinger

LU Psychologist Receives Second National Honor for Scientific Research

For the second time this year, Lawrence University psychologist Peter Glick has been recognized with Fellow status by a national psychological organization.

The American Psychological Association, the world’s largest scientific and professional organization with nearly 150,000 members, has named Glick a Fellow for “outstanding contributions in the field of psychology.” Glick joins a select body of psychologists to obtain APA Fellow status. Only three percent of the Washington, D.C.-based association’s current membership have been recognized as Fellows.

Glick’s APA honor comes on the heels of his election in June as a Fellow in the American Psychological Society (APS). He is the first psychologist in Lawrence history to hold Fellow status in both national organizations.

In announcing Glick’s selection as a Fellow, APA membership committee chair Janet Matthews said Glick’s “diligent work and commitment” have enhanced the field of psychology and “the public is better served.”

“It is especially gratifying to receive recognition for my scientific contributions from the largest and most venerable national organization in psychology,” Glick said of his latest honor. “Such recognition more typically goes to researchers at larger universities, where research productivity is emphasized over teaching. I’m particularly proud of having achieved some degree of prominence in psychology while maintaining my commitments as a teacher at a small, undergraduate liberal arts college.”

A social psychologist who joined the Lawrence faculty in 1985, Glick’s research interests focus on both the subtle and the overt ways in which prejudices and stereotypes foster social inequality. In research he co-authored, Glick introduced the concept of “ambivalent sexism,” asserting that not just hostile, but subjectively benevolent views of women as pure, but fragile, reinforce gender inequality. Such “benevolent sexism,” Glick argues, rewards women for conforming to conventional gender roles and results in hostile attitudes toward women who fail to do so.

In collaboration with research associate Susan Fiske of Princeton University, Glick developed the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, which has since been administered to more than 30,000 people in 30 countries. The research earned them the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues in 1995.

Glick serves on the editorial board of four professional journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Psychology of Women Quarterly and regularly delivers lectures at conferences and universities across the country as well as abroad.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology at Oberlin College and his Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Minnesota.

U.S. News & World Report Cites Lawrence University in Three Categories in Annual “Best College’s Guide”

Lawrence University’s outstanding overall educational experience, its distinctive Freshman Studies program and its diverse international student body are all cited by U.S. News & World Report in the magazine’s most recent annual college rankings.

In U.S. News’ 18th annual “America’s Best Colleges” report released Friday (8/20/04), Lawrence was included among the top quarter of the nation’s 217 leading national liberal arts colleges for the sixth consecutive year, earning a 53rd ranking in the “Best Liberal Arts Colleges” category.

Additionally, U.S. News recognized Lawrence in two other categories. For the third year in a row, Lawrence was included among U.S. News’ list of “first-year experiences” based on the strength of Freshman Studies, the college’s signature curricular program. The first-year experiences list is one of eight special categories the magazine uses to highlight what it describes as “outstanding examples of academic programs that are believed to lead to student success.”

The eight special categories are not distinguished by institutional size or type, but include those cited most frequently in a survey of college presidents, chief academic officers and deans of students. Institutions are not numerically ranked in the special categories, but listed alphabetically. Lawrence joined Duke, Princeton, and Stanford universities, among others, who were recognized for first-year programs.

Using enrollment figures from the past academic year, the magazine also ranked Lawrence seventh among all liberal arts colleges in percentage of international students enrolled with 11% of the student body comprised of international students. Lawrence students came from 49 countries, Hong Kong and the Palestinian Authority, in addition to 48 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Williams College of Massachusetts was named the top national liberal arts college for the second consecutive year, while Amherst College, last year’s second-ranked institution, and Swarthmore College, which the magazine ranked third a year ago, tied for second in this year’s rankings.

In compiling its annual “America’s Best Colleges” guide, U.S. News and World Report uses data from 15 separate indicators of academic excellence such as selectivity, graduation rates, student retention, faculty resources and alumni satisfaction. Each factor is assigned a “weight” that reflects the magazine editor’s judgment as to how much that measure matters. Each school’s composite weighted score is then compared to peer institutions to determine final rankings.

For the rankings, U.S. News evaluates nearly 1,400 of the nation’s public and private four-year schools, dividing them into several distinct categories. In addition to the best liberal arts college category, other rankings are based on universities that grant master and doctorate degrees and colleges that are considered “regional” institutions, such as St. Norbert College or UW-Oshkosh. rather than “national” ones, like Lawrence.

Lawrence University Scholar to Edit Major Volume of the Political Writings of Jonathan Swift

Bertrand A. Goldgar, the John N. Bergstrom Professor of Humanities and Professor of English at Lawrence University, has been named by the Cambridge University Press as a contributing editor to a landmark new edition of the works of Jonathan Swift.

The United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Board has awarded a grant of £553,661 over five years (approximately $1.02 million) to support the compilation of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift, which will be published in 15 volumes between 2006 and 2011. The multi-volume edition will be the first scholarly edition of Swift’s collected works in 40 years and, according to the Cambridge University Press, will be the first ever to provide full textual and explanatory information for Swift’s texts.

Funding from the grant will support the creation of an electronic archive of all the authoritative texts of Swift’s prose and assist the general editors, Claude Rawson (Yale University), Ian Higgins (Australian National University, Canberra), and David Womersley (University of Oxford), in the preparation of the texts for the printed edition.

The Anglo-Irish author Swift, born in Dublin in 1667, is widely acknowledged as the foremost satirist in the English language. Best known, perhaps, for his novel “Gulliver’s Travels” (1726), which was intended as a satirical indictment of human nature, Swift wrote extensively, with an array of books, political pamphlets, prose, letters and poetry to his credit.

Goldgar’s contribution to the Cambridge edition, “Swift’s English Political Writing, 1711-1714,” covers Swift’s literary engagement in the politics of early 18th-century London. Although he formerly considered himself a Whig in terms of political philosophy, Swift joined the Tories in 1710 and edited the Tory Examiner for a year. A staunch defender of the Tory party and its leadership, Swift turned his biting satire against the Whigs and their policies, producing such influential political pamphlets as “The Conduct of the Allies” (1711), “Remarks on the Barrier Treaty” (1712) and “The Public Spirit of the Whigs” (1714).

In “The Conduct of the Allies,” Swift claimed that Whig self-interest was instrumental in needlessly prolonging the War of the Spanish Succession, a charge that is said to have led to the dismissal of the commander of the anti-French alliance, British general John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough.

A member of the Lawrence University faculty since 1957, Goldgar is an internationally recognized expert on 18th-century political satire and one of the world’s leading scholars on the life and work of “Tom Jones” creator Henry Fielding.

He is the author or editor of seven books, including “The Curse of Party: Swift’s Relations with Addison and Steele” (University of Nebraska Press, 1961); “The Literary Criticism of Alexander Pope” (University of Nebraska Press, 1965); “Walpole and the Wits: The Relation of Politics to Literature, 1722-1742” (University of Nebraska Press, 1976); “Henry Fielding, The Covent-Garden Journal and A Plan of the Universal Register-Office” (Wesleyan University Press, 1988); “Miscellanies by Henry Fielding, Esq., Volume 2” (Wesleyan University Press, 1993); “Miscellanies by Henry Fielding, Esq., Volume 3: Jonathan Wild” (Wesleyan University Press, 1997); and, most recently, “The Grub Street Journal, 1730-1733” (Pickering & Chatto, 2002), a four-volume edition with introduction and annotation. He also wrote the Afterword for “Plagiarism in Early Modern England” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Lawrence University Political Scientist Cited With National Dissertation Award

A Lawrence University government professor’s research on representation of African-American interests in Congress has been honored with a national award by the American Political Science Association.

Assistant professor of government Christian Grose has been named the recipient of the APSA’s 2004 Carl Albert Dissertation Award for the nation’s best doctoral dissertation in the area of legislative studies.

Established in 1999, the award recognizes outstanding work on national or subnational topics focusing on Congress, parliaments, state legislatures or other representative bodies. Grose is the first faculty
member at a liberal arts college to receive the award. Three of the four previous winners teach at Yale, Harvard and Duke universities.

Grose will receive his award, which includes a $400 cash prize, Labor Day weekend at the annual American Political Science Association meeting in Chicago.

“The award is quite competitive,” said Bruce Oppenheimer, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, who served as chair of the APSA committee that reviewed the nominations and selected the winner for the Albert award. “Because the degree-granting department must first nominate a dissertation before it can be considered, only the very best dissertations are put forth for consideration.

“What separated Christian’s dissertation from the other excellent ones that were nominated was the substantive importance of his findings about the representation of African-American interests in Congress, his integration of rigorous statistical analysis with extensive interviews and field research findings and the overall originality of the work.”

Completed early last year through the University of Rochester, Grose’s dissertation, “Beyond the Vote: A Theory of Black Representation in Congress,” examines the effect of electoral structures and the election of black legislators on the representation of black constituents in Congress. Rejecting more narrow measures of representation presented by previous scholars, Grose focused his analysis on three different modes of representation: roll-call voting, “pork” project allocation and constituency service.

Grose found that electing black representatives in Congress, even if the result in the aggregate is a Republican legislature, is the best strategy for achieving “greater” representation for black Americans when measured as activities beyond roll-call voting. To increase the substantive representation of black interests as measured only by roll-call voting, however, the best strategy is to elect Democratic
legislators of any racial ethnicity.

“I’m certainly honored to have my research recognized by my peers,” said Grose. “The news that I had been selected for the Albert award was as thrilling as it was surprising.”

As a political scientist, Grose’s interests focus on congressional representation, racial politics, elections, voting behavior and public opinion. He joined the Lawrence government department in 2002. In addition to his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester, Grose earned his bachelor’s degree in political science and history from Duke University.

Lawrence University Psychologist Recognized for Contributions to Science Research

Peter Glick, professor of psychology at Lawrence University, has been elected a Fellow in the American Psychological Society for his contributions to the advancement of psychological science. He is the first psychologist at Lawrence ever accorded Fellow status by the APS.

Glick was one of only 19 psychologists nationally awarded fellowship status in the first of two rounds of elections this year. Fellow status recognizes APS members who have made “sustained, outstanding
contributions” to the science of psychology in the areas of research, teaching and/or application.

Founded in 1988, the APS is dedicated to the advancement of scientific psychology and its representation at the national level. It seeks to promote, protect and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in research, application, teaching and the improvement of human welfare. Of the organization’s current 14,260 members, only 1,703 hold Fellow status.

In announcing Glick’s selection, the APS cited him for “enhancing the reputation” of the organization and helping the APS establish itself “as the major voice for scientific psychology.”

“It’s very gratifying to have the national organization for scientific psychology recognize my research,” said Glick. “It’s nice to know that such contributions are valued and appreciated.”

A social psychologist, Glick’s research interests focus on both the subtle and the overt ways in which prejudices and stereotypes foster social inequality. In research he co-authored, Glick introduced the
concept of “ambivalent sexism,” asserting that not just hostile, but subjectively benevolent views of women as pure, but fragile, reinforce gender inequality. Such “benevolent sexism,” Glick argues, rewards women for conforming to conventional gender roles and results in hostile attitudes toward women who fail to do so.

Glick and his research associate, Susan Fiske of Princeton University, developed the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, which has since been administered to more than 30,000 people in 30 countries. The research earned them the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues in 1995.

“Peter’s election as APS Fellow puts him deservedly among a distinguished group of psychological scientists whose research greatly contributes to the growth of our knowledge,” said Fiske, former APS president from 2002-03. “His work has garnered an impressive array of adjectives from others in the field, including ‘innovative,’ ‘truly ground-breaking,’ ‘bold and clever’ and been hailed by as ‘important scholarly work’ and ‘sophisticated, both in its theoretical approach and its methods.'”

“Peter is one of those very rare scholars,” Fiske added, “whose insights can shape the direction of the field for decades.”

Glick serves on the editorial board of four professional journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Psychology of Women Quarterly and regularly delivers lectures at major conferences and universities across the country as well as abroad. A member of the Lawrence faculty since 1985, Glick earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology at Oberlin College and his Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Minnesota.

Eight Alumni Recognized for Career Achievement, Service at Lawrence University Reunion Celebration

For nearly 30 years, Jean Schumaker has been working on mechanisms for improving the learning effectiveness of students with learning disabilities as well as the instructional effectiveness of teachers.

The co-founder of the Center for Research on Learning at the University of Kansas, Schumaker is one of eight Lawrence University graduates who will be recognized Saturday June 19 for their accomplishments and service as part of the college’s annual Reunion Weekend celebration.

Lawrence will welcome nearly 1,000 alumni and guests from 42 states and four countries, including Australia and South Africa, back to campus for a variety of weekend-long activities. Three alumni will be recognized with distinguished achievement awards and five will he honored with service awards during the annual reunion convocation Saturday at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel.

Schumaker and David Hawkanson, executive director of Chicago’sSteppenwolf Theatre, will receive the Lucia R. Briggs Distinguished Achievement Award. Named in honor of the second president of Milwaukee-Downer College, the Briggs award recognizes alumni of more than 15 years for outstanding contributions to and achievements in a career field.

A 1968 graduate with a major in psychology, Schumaker co-founded UK’s Center for Research Learning in 1978 and serves at its associate director today. Also an associate professor in the UK’s department of special education, Schumaker is regarded as one of the nation’s leading researchers in the field of learning disabilities.

She has been principal investigator of research grants and contracts totaling nearly $60 million and has written more than 80 articles for professional journals, 29 book chapters and 45 books and instructional manuals for classroom teachers, including “Teaching Every Adolescent Every Day: Learning in Diverse High School Classrooms,” which she co-edited.

Schumaker also founded the International Training Network (ITN), whose 1,200 trainers teach educators throughout the world to use the scientifically based instructional practices developed by the CRL. In 1983, she established Edge Enterprises, an educational research and publishing organization that provides specialized instructional materials to educators.

She earned her Ph.D. in development and child psychology from the University of Kansas and was trained as a somatic experiencing practitioner in trauma therapy by the Ergos Institute. She is a member of the University of Kansas Women’s Hall of Fame and have been a recipient of the Outstanding Achievement Award of the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division for Learning Disabilities.

Hawkanson, who earned a bachelor’s degree in theatre and drama in 1969, has enjoyed a distinguished 30-year professional career managing regional theatres across the country. Prior to being named executive director of Steppenwolf Theatre in 2003, Hawkanson spent six years (1996-2001) as managing director of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, where he first began his career as a house manager in 1970. He also has held managerial positions with the American Conservatory Theater, served as managing director of the Arizona Theater Company and spent eight years as managing director at the Hartford Stage Company, which received a special Tony Award in 1989 for outstanding achievement in regional theatre while under his management.

Before joining Steppenwolf, Hawkanson maintained a management consulting practice with clients in Arizona, Connecticut, Oregon, Minnesota, New Mexico and Illinois. He has served as an artistic advisor to the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, been a program committee member for
the National Arts Stabilization Fund and worked as a panelist and advisor to both the Ford Foundation’s Working Capital Fund and the Minneapolis Foundation’s Working Capital Reserve Fund.

In addition, he is a former senior staff member at the National Endowment for the Arts and a former chairman and panelist for the theatre program of the NEA. He has served as an officer and board
member of the Alliance for Arts Advocates, Theater Trustees of America, the Theatre Communications Group, Minnesota Citizens for the Arts, New York Stage and Film and the American Arts Alliance.

Mary Louise Knutson, a 1988 graduate and piano performance major, will receive the Nathan M. Pusey Young Alumni Distinguished Achievement Award, which recognizes Lawrence alumni of 15 years or less for significant contributions to and achievements in a career field. The award honors the 10th and youngest president of Lawrence and an exemplary figure in higher education in the 20th century.

A jazz pianist and composer based in Minneapolis, Knutson has been called “one of the most exciting and innovative artists to happen to jazz piano in quite some time.” Her debut jazz trio CD, “Call Me When You Get There,” spent eight consecutive weeks in the top 50 in the United States and Canada following its 2001 release and earned Knutson “Top New Jazz Instrumentalist of the Year” honors. The CD’s title track composition was selected as the music for the art documentary “Wellington Lee: 60 Years of Artistic Photography” and soon will be heard at major art museums across the country. She has performed with jazz greats Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby McFerrin, Dianne Reeves, Slide Hampton, Richie Cole and Greg Abate, among others as well as Smoky Robinson, the Osmonds and Engelbert Humperdinck. She has toured internationally as lead keyboardist for Synergy (formerly known as Rupert’s Orchestra) and regularly plays clubs, festivals and concert halls around the country with her jazz trio or as a soloist.

Knutson has been honored numerous times as a composer, including two awards from Billboard magazine for her compositions “How Will I Know? and “Meridian.” In addition, her composition “Merle the Pearl” streams on the Internet as the theme music for “Jazz Release,” an interview program on JazzSteps.com.

A former instructor in jazz piano and improvisation at Carleton College, Knutson is a member of the International Association for Jazz Education and teaches a variety of masterclasses, including “Jazz Voicings and Scales: Freedom from the Written Page” for beginning jazz students and “What’s Up with Jazz?” for non-musicians.

William Mittlefehldt, a 1968 graduate, will receive the George B. Walter Service to Society Award. Named in honor of Walter, a 1936 graduate and former faculty member and dean of men at Lawrence, who believed strongly that every individual can and should make a positive difference in the world, the award recognizes alumni who best exemplify the ideals of a liberal education through socially useful service in their community, the nation or the world. Since 1974, Mittlefehldt has taught social studies, futuristics, environmental issues and — by example — community service at Anoka High School in Minnesota with imagination, energy and personal commitment.

Widely recognized as the author of innovative and effective curricula, Mittlefehldt’s economics curriculum “Minnesota, Where Are We Growing?” earned first-prize honors in the 1987 National Economics Award Program. In 1992, he was honored by the Amway Corporation and Time magazine as one of nine “Earth Teachers of the Year” for his curricular unit “Energy: How Weather Is Created,” which also earned Anoka High School a $10,000 grant from Amway. In 2002, Mittlefehldt was named a regional winner of the NASDAQ Distinguished Teaching Award and most recently, he was a first-place winner at the secondary-school level of the 3M-sponsored Innovative Economic Education Awards.

Mittlefehldt has led student teams to testify before the United Nations, the U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee and the Minnesota legislature and has directed numerous other student ventures into the realm of education through activism. He serves on the national advisory board for Rescue Mission Planet Earth, is an advisor to Vermont’s Center for a Sustainable Future and serves as a curriculum designer for the Water on the Web team at the University of Minnesota.

Kelly Carroll Rhodes, a 1989 graduate, and Gina Perri Jaeckl, a 1994 graduate, will each receive the Marshall B. Hulbert Young Alumni Service Award. Presented to alumni of 15 years or less who has provided significant service to the Lawrence, the award honors Marshall Hulbert, a 1926 graduate known as “Mr. Lawrence,” who contributed to thousands of Lawrentian lives and served the college and the conservatory in many significant capacities for 54 years.

Rhodes, Edina, Minn., has served as class secretary for her class for 11 of the 15 years since she graduated. She has served on all three reunion steering committees and has volunteered as a career contact and an admissions volunteer. In 2003, she completed a four-year term on the Lawrence University Alumni Association Board of Directors, during which she was a member of the student relations committee and later assumed leadership of the careers committee, which included serving on the board’s executive committee.

Jaeckl, Chicago, has been active with her 5th- and 10th-year reunion steering committees and also served on the gift committee for her 10th Reunion this year. She has worked as a volunteer for the admissions program and served for three years as a career contact. In addition, she has helped organize and host alumni events in the Chicago region and been active the Viking Gift Committee, soliciting support from young alumni for The Lawrence Fund.

Husband and wife Walter and Barbara Ives Isaac, Lakewood, Colo., will share the Gertrude B. Jupp outstanding Service Award. Named in honor of Gertrude Jupp, a 1918 graduate of Milwaukee-Downer College who was named M-D Alumna of the Year in 1964 for her long volunteer service to the college.

Both members of the class of 1964, the Isaacs have served as key alumni leaders, working on every reunion committee since they graduated. Barbara Isaac has served as a volunteer admissions worker in the Denver area for more than 20 years, coordinating countless admissions events and persuading many Denver high school students to enroll at Lawrence.

Walter Isaac served on the Lawrence University Alumni Association Board of Directors for six years, where he chaired the communications committee for two years and served on the executive committee for four. He served as president of the LUAA from 2001-03.

Lawrence University Psychologist Awarded Norwegian Marshall Fund Grant to Study Cross-Language Speech Perception

Lawrence University psychologist Terry Rew-Gottfried has been awarded a 10,000 kroner grant (approximately $1,500 U.S.) by the Norwegian Marshall Fund Committee to conduct research on cross-language differences in speech perception. The grant will help support his sabbatical research during April and May of 2005 in Trondheim, Norway.

Rew-Gottfried will pursue a two-part research project while in Norway. The first phase is an extension of earlier work he conducted in Denmark comparing Danish and English spectral and durational information in vowels. In collaboration with a Norwegian colleague, he will investigate differences in how Norwegian listeners, in comparison to Danes, perceive the vowel contrasts of their native and their second language.

The second part of his research will focus on determining whether the use of linguistic tones in Norwegian provides native speakers of that language with an advantage in learning the lexical tones of Mandarin Chinese. Mandarin Chinese uses phonemic tones that are primarily cued acoustically by contours of pitch. For example, the syllable ma means “mother,” “hemp,” “horse,” or “scold,” depending on whether the pitch is high-level, mid-rising, low-dipping or high-falling, respectively. Like Mandarin, Norwegian varies pitch contour in some words to indicate different meanings. While American English listeners have considerable difficulty in differentiating the phonemic tones of Mandarin, native Norwegian listeners may have less difficulty, given their native language’s use of linguistic tone to make phonemic distinctions.

Rew-Gottfried’s research is expected to address more broadly the question in psycholinguistics and second language learning of what factors help or hinder language learners in speaking and understanding a second language. Learners vary considerably, according to Rew-Gottfried, in their ability to achieve native-like competence in producing and perceiving speech sounds. The research has important implications for theories of speech processing across many different languages.

A member of the Lawrence psychology department since 1986, Rew-Gottfried has spent more than 20 years investigating the effect of second-language learning on listeners’ ability to identify and discriminate unfamiliar speech sounds, how acoustic characteristics of different languages differ with the context in which they are spoken as well as the relationship of musical ability and second-language learning.

He spent the fall 2001 academic term as a Fulbright Visiting Lecturer/Research Scholar at the English department of Aarhus University in Aarhus, Denmark, teaching the psychology of language and conducting collaborative research on the duration and rate effects on American English vowel identification by native Danish listeners.

Rew-Gottfried has also conducted research on memory, including eyewitness memory and the use of perceptual imagery in improving recall. He earned his Ph.D. in experimental psychology at the University of Minnesota.