Focus publishes a column on a periodic basis that recognizes significant accomplishments of members of the Rutgers community. Faculty and staff who wish to be recognized for achievements or those who would like to note the achievements of others may submit a notice through the Submit News form.

See awards on page 2

Ka-Neng Au, acting director of Rutgers’ John Cotton Dana Library, Newark, has received the national Dun & Bradstreet Award for outstanding service to the minority business community. Au has taught and developed classes for small business owners in New Jersey for four years.

Jerome Aumente, emeritus professor, School of Communication, Information and Library Studies, New Brunswick, has received an award for excellence in journalism research from the Society of Professional Journalists for his book From Ink to Paper to the Internet. The book examines the history of daily and weekly newspapers in New Jersey from the 18th to the 21st centuries.

Heike Bucking, assistant professor of biology, Camden, was principal investigator on a newly awarded $211,205 National Science Foundation grant to support the multidisciplinary Research Experience for Undergraduates. Starting this summer, 10 undergraduate students will work with Rutgers faculty mentors on 10-week research internships relevant to the New Jersey Pinelands. Students will have the opportunity to use the lab facilities and to reside at the Rutgers Pinelands Field Station. Georgia Arbuckle-Keil, professor of chemistry, Camden, served as co-principal investigator. 

John Cantwell, professor, Department of Management and Global Business, Rutgers Business School–Newark and New Brunswick, was awarded a $10,000 grant from the Academy of International Business–Michigan State University to support the planning and arrangement of the academic program for the Academy of International Business conference, to be held in Milan this summer.

Gretchen Chapman, professor of psychology, School of Arts and Sciences, was designated a fellow by the American Psychological Association, the Washington-based scientific and professional association representing psychologists in the United States. Fellowships are bestowed on association member who have demonstrated unusual and outstanding contributions or performance in the field.

S. Chan Choi, chair and professor, Department of Marketing, Rutgers Business School–Newark and New Brunswick, won the 2008 Davidson Honorable Mention Award for the best article in Journal of Retailing 2006 for his article, co-authored with Anne T. Coughlan, “Private Label Positioning: Quality versus Feature Differentiation from the National Brand.”

Barbara Cooper, professor of history, School of Arts and Sciences, won a three-year New Directions fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The fellowship assists faculty members in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who are established in their fields and wish to acquire systematic training outside their own disciplines.

Mark Croft, Michael Gershenson, and Matthew Strassler, professors, Department of Physics and Astronomy, have been named fellows of the American Physical Society (APS). The APS cited Croft for “seminal contributions to correlated electron physics and electronic structure of rare earth and transitional metal compounds … [and] novel applications of synchrotron radiation”; Gershenson for “experimental studies of quantum transport and dephasing processes in disordered low-dimensional electronic systems”; and Strassler for “work extending the AdS/CFT gravity/gauge duality to QCD-like confining theories, and for insights into novel aspects of the physics of strongly coupled supersymmetric theories.”

Lee Cronk, professor of anthropology, School of Arts and Sciences, was selected to be a member in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Studies, a research center that supports fundamental research in the sciences and the humanities.

Niki Dickerson, assistant professor, Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations, School of Management and Labor Relations, has been named the 2008 Undergraduate Research Mentor of the Year. This award, which invites students to nominate a faculty member who has made a difference in their undergraduate research experience, recognizes outstanding commitment to undergraduate research projects.

Valentin Dimitrov, professor, Department of Accounting, Business Ethics, and Information Systems, Rutgers Business School–Newark and New Brunswick, has been appointed the Boutillier Endowed Faculty Scholar from July 1, 2008, through June 30, 2011. The fund was established by the family and friends of Marie and Robert Boutillier to support research that will aid in the discovery of new knowledge and enhance the instructional mission of Rutgers Business School. It recognizes a junior faculty member with less than 15 years in academe who shows exceptional promise in the study of accounting.

Robert Emmons, associate director the Honors College, Camden, has received the Home Grown Feature Length Documentary Award from the Garden State Film Festival for his documentary Goodwill. The film chronicles the fatal Pine Barrens crash of Mexican pilot Emilio Carranza.

Tatiana Flores, assistant professor of art history, School of Arts and Sciences, was a Cisneros visiting scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. Cisneros fellowships are awarded to scholars from Venezuela or to researchers exploring Venezuelan topics.

New Jersey State Nurses Association awarded its 2008 C.A.R.E. (Clinical Practice Administration Research Education) Award for Excellence in Research to Linda Flynn, assistant professor, College of Nursing. Flynn also will receive the 2008 Governor’s Nursing Merit Award for excellence in the nurse researcher expert category from the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services on June 5.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division awarded Steve Gold, assistant professor, School of Law–Newark, a special commendation for outstanding service in recognition of several major settlements under Superfund and the Clean Air Act that he concluded in 2006–07. Gold was senior attorney in the division’s Environmental Enforcement Section before joining the law school faculty last summer.

David Greenberg, assistant professor of journalism and media studies, School of Communication, Information and Library Studies, has received the Hiett Prize in the Humanities. This $50,000 prize is awarded annually by the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture to young scholars whose work shows exceptional promise.

Sumit Guha, professor of history, School of Arts and Sciences, and director of the Rutgers South Asian Studies Program, received a fellowship to research the nature of identity and power in South Asian politics from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, which supports scholars and artists.

Alycia M. Guichard, interim director of the Minority Student Program and Externships and supervising attorney of the Street Law Program, School of Law–Newark, received the New Jersey Bar Association’s 2008 Young Lawyer of the Year Award.

Eva Halkiadakis and Charles Keeton, assistant professors of physics and astronomy, School of Arts and Sciences, were awarded Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program awards from the National Science Foundation, the federal agency which supports scientific research. The program recognizes junior faculty who effectively integrate research and teaching.

Jochen Hellbeck, associate professor of history, School of Arts and Sciences, won a fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin (www.americanacademy.de) to pursue research in the fall of 2009 on the battle of Stalingrad, as remembered by Germans and Russians. The academy, an independent research center, awards residential fellowships to Americans engaged in the arts, humanities, social sciences and public policy.

Mary Hartman, professor and director of the Institute of Women’s Leadership, New Brunswick, was recently named president-elect of the Executive Women of New Jersey, an organization whose mission it is to promote women in the state to the highest levels of business, government, and professions.

Mahmud Hassan, director of Rutgers Business School’s pharmaceutical management program and of the Blanche and Irwin Lerner Center for Pharmaceutical Management Studies, was chosen as a Highly Commended Award Winner at the Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2008 for his paper “Do mergers and acquisitions create shareholder wealth in the pharmaceutical industry?” published in International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing.

Kristjan Haule, assistant professor at the School of Arts and Sciences, has earned the Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship. Haule, a physicist, intends to use this $50,000 fellowship to develop computer simulations that predict properties of materials with layers only a few atoms thick.

New Brunswick professors Jeannette Haviland-Jones, psychology, School of Arts and Sciences; Terry McGuire, genetics; and Claire McInerney, School of Communication, Information and Library Studies, have been appointed as senior fellows of the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement. The center encourages and strengthens the efforts of colleges and universities to reform undergraduate education, especially in the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Mary Hawkesworth, professor of women’s and gender studies and senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics, New Brunswick, has won the 2008 Women’s Caucus Outstanding Professional Achievement Award for her excellence in research, teaching, and service.

Elizabeth C. Hirschman, professor, Department of Marketing, Rutgers Business School–Newark and New Brunswick, has been awarded the Distinguished Alumni Scholar Award by the Grady Society Alumni Board from her alma mater, the University of Georgia, where she received her doctorate. The Distinguished Alumni Scholar Award honors a graduate from University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication who has demonstrated excellent and sustained contributions to scholarship in journalism and mass communication education.

Dorothy Hodgson, professor of anthropology and director of the Institute for Research on Women, New Brunswick, was recently voted president-elect of the National Association for Feminist Anthropology.