Veritas, Vol. 40, No. 07, April 1998

              Outstanding faculty recognized for scholarly activity
Nine faculty members are recipients of the second annual Provost’s Award for Scholarly Activity, created by Executive Vice President and Provost Luis Glaser in recognition of extraordinary research and scholarly pursuits.
“These awards truly give a sense of our faculty’s excellence,” says Glaser, “and the extraordinary breadth of what is at the University, from accounting to psychiatry.”
This notable group includes Michael Carlebach, communication (photography); Sara Czaja, industrial engineering and psychiatry; Susan Haack, philosophy; Angel Kaifer, chemistry; Brenda Lonsbury-Martin, otolaryngology; Paul Munter, accounting; A. Parasuraman, marketing; Paul Posnak, keyboard performance; and Jose Szapocznik, psychiatry and behavioral sciences. In addition to a commemorative plaque, each faculty member received a $4,000 cash award and $2,000 toward continued research support. The awards were presented at a February luncheon held in their honor at the James W. Me Lam ore Executive Education Center.
The selection process began with nominations made by faculty and endorsed by deans. Nominations were then reviewed by a committee designated by the Provost, which included several of last year’s recipients. With some 2,000 outstanding faculty at the University, the most difficult process is narrowing down the field. “The committee handed out more awards than they expected to,” says Glaser.
“We try to have five or seven, but if they tell me we have too many wonderful people—that’s okay.”
Michael Carlebach, a professor in the School of Communication, has devoted most of his research to the history of photojournalism and has penned two books on the subject, The Origins of Photojournalism in America and American Photojournalism Comes of Age. Until his work, the subject lacked scholarly examination. “Almost all histories of photography were written by art historians,” he explains. Carlebach is also a past recipient of an Excellence in Teaching Award.
Sara Czaja, professor of industrial engineering in the College of Engineering, is also affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine and is director of the Miami Center on Human Factors and Aging Research. Czaja believes her most unique feat has been her ability to integrate her psychology background with her engineering training. “What’s helped
me do that successfully is research support that I’ve obtained from the National Institutes on Aging to develop a center of applied research on aging at the University of Miami,” says Czaja, “and the opportunity to work with the faculty at the medical school under the direction of Dr. Carl Eisdorfer.”
She credits terrific colleagues and interactions with students as her motivation, along with a keen interest in understanding how to develop strategies to optimize the aging process.
Angel E. Kaifer, professor of chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences, is most proud of how his group has studied and understood the coupling between molecular recognition and electron transfer reactions. Though he enjoys his work for its fundamental value, in terms of practical applications, it might result in sensors that detect harmful chemicals in the environment or the development of metabolites associated with disease.
Kaifer is driven by a desire to dis-
"These awards truly give a sense of our faculty's
excellence."
W. Jarrard Goodwin, Jr., (far left) chairman of the Department of Otolaryngology and chief of Head and Neck Surgery at the medical school, accepted the award on Brenda Lonsbury-Martin's behalf. Other recipients of the scholarly awards include (from left to right) Paul Posnak, Michael Carlebach, A. Parasuraman, Paul Munter, Angel Kaifer, Susan Haack, Sara Czaja, and Jose Szapocznik.
Honors are piling up for Susan Haack, visiting professor in the School of Law and professor of philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences. She received the Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1994, the Graduate Dean’s Award for Outstanding Graduate Mentor in 1997, and is the national Phi Beta Kappa Romanell Professor of Philosophy for 1997-98. She notes her most interesting accomplishments as her introduction of a now-standard distinction between deviant and extended logics and origination of a new theory of the nature and structure of empirical evidence, foundherentism, on which she is now building a novel approach to scientific evidence and method.
“What drives my research is the interest of the problems, the intellectual pleasure of sorting out difficult issues, and clearing up confusions and ambiguities,” says Haack.
Executive Vice President and Provost Luis Glaser and A. Parasuraman, award recipient and marketing professor working to revolutionize the gauging and efficiency of customer service.
cover things in nature and control molecules. “It’s very satisfying that we can create molecules in the laboratory that work for what we designed them to,” he says.
Major contributions to the field of otoacoustic emissions have been made by Brenda Lonsbury-Martin, professor in the Department of Otolaryngology in the School of Medicine. “We’ve taken a relatively new basic science observation and established that it can be measured in real people, as a good indicator of the hearing status of the peripheral ear,” she says. “Essentially, it means that we can now test hearing of the very first stages of auditory processing at the receptor level in newborn babies who are just a few hours old.” Her department’s work also has applications in the clinic for interoperative
monitoring in patients who are undergoing tumor removal or receive ototoxic or anti-tumor drugs.
The opportunity to help people keeps Lonsbury-Martin going. “I feel these kinds of contributions are really what medicine’s made of in terms of taking something from the laboratory bench and converting it into a useful application,” she says.
Paul Munter, professor in the Department of Accounting in the School of Business Administration,
credits his participation in the national standard setting process as his greatest contribution to his field. Because of the extensive literature he has written on accounting, he was invited to serve on a task force charged with developing a new accounting standard.
“I enjoyed it so much because it was an opportunity to directly contribute to the practice of accounting,” he says.
Munter is also pleased with his ability to create a link between the academic accounting community and the practicing accounting community. “Every day there are new things to look at and explore, so it never gets old or stale,” says Munter.
For the last 15 years, customer service has been the main area of research and scholarly interest for A. Parasuraman, professor in the Department of Marketing in the School of Business Administration. “My major accomplishment in the field was developing a series of techniques, concepts, and models that a variety of different organizations can use to understand how their customers and constituents perceive they’re delivering their services, and also to take action internally to improve quality of service,” he says.
“It’s being widely used in a number of media companies.”
Simultaneous interest both from the academic and practitioner communities inspires Parasuraman. “Support from the prestigious Marketing Science Institute has also been a motivating factor,” he says. “They only channel their resources into areas that are likely to have immediate impact.”
Paul Posnak, professor of music in the Department of Keyboard Performance and director of the Accompany-ing/Ch amber Music Program in the School of Music, feels his strongest suit is his versatility. “What makes me most alive and valuable to my students and to the University is that fulfillment in my career comes from being involved in my profession as comprehensively as
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