Maine Perspective Front Page
UMaine's Prestigious Faculty Awards Presented at Honors Convocation
The University's highest honors to faculty for outstanding achievement in teaching, research and service to the public were awarded this week during the Academic Honors Convocation.
The 1998 Distinguished Maine Professor is Fred Irons, the Roger C. and Virginia A. Castle Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering. Last year, Irons received the Presidential Teaching Award. In 1995, he received the College of Engineering's most prestigious honor, the Ashley Campbell Award recognizing excellence in research, teaching and service.
Irons joined the UMaine faculty in 1967. Ten years later, he left the University to go to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory where his research involved high-performance analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). ADCs are used to create digital representations of physical quantities, with applications in such systems as digital recording for CDs. The results of Irons' research are being used by manufacturers to produce faster and more accurate ADCs.
The state-of-the-art process for characterizing these devices has been the basis of his research since returning to UMaine in 1990.
In partnership with Associate Professor Donald Hummels, Irons built a research laboratory supported by federal and industrial funding that is unique in the nation and perhaps the world. Undergraduate and graduate students working in his research group are actively sought by firms across the country.
As Castle Professor, Irons each year names a second-year Electrical or Computer Engineering student to be a Castle student, a designation the student keeps through graduation.
Castle students receive special mentoring, as well as financial support, for projects they undertake under his guidance.
The recipient of the Presidential Research and Creative Achievement Award is Professor of Philosophy Doug Allen. An internationally recognized scholar, Allen simultaneously follows several strands of research. His research on the religions of Asia, and on political and social conflicts in Indochina continually feed into his teaching and service work. He has had a multidimensional career at UMaine, with research at the center of his work.
Allen has published several books on Mircea Eliade, perhaps the best-known 20th century scholar and theorist of comparative religions, two books on the war in Indochina and one on religion and politics in South Asia. His book, Culture and Self: Philosophical and Religious Perspectives, East and West, was published last year, and a book on Eliade's theories of myth is forthcoming this year.
For his 1997-98 sabbatical, Allen was the recipient of three grants, including a national grant from the American Academy of Religion for research in Israel. In the fall, he spent three months in India and was appointed a visiting scholar at the University of Delhi. His sabbatical research project is on: "Self and Other in Hindu and Jewish Philosophy: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas."
The Presidential Outstanding Teaching Award recipient is Sandy Caron, associate professor of family relations. Caron was cited for the creativity, innovation and commitment she brings to her work, and for the excitement for learning she inspires in her students.
Sandy regularly teaches two large lecture classes, as well as several advanced undergraduate and graduate courses. These classes are designed to make use of traditional lectures but also include guest speakers, film and video, and the novel use of "one-act" lectures in which Caron takes on the role and costume of learned figures, scientists or activists. This integration of pedagogical methods evidences a highly committed and thoroughly creative approach to teaching.
A key feature of Caron's teaching is firm intellectual integrity. In the content and intellectual discipline of her classes, Caron's design of topics, the assignment of contemporary literature, and the volume of reading and written assignments are exemplary. In all her work, Caron is committed to gender and cultural diversity, and to blending education with community service.
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Dana Humphrey is the recipient of the Presidential Public Service Achievement Award. Humphrey, president of the Faculty Senate, is the 1995 Distinguished Maine Professor.
Humphrey's public service is an outgrowth of his academic discipline and professional expertise as the nation's leading expert on civil engineering applications of scrap tires. His promotion of the engineering and environmental benefits of end-uses for scrap tires has had a major impact throughout the United States and Canada. In Maine alone, his efforts have resulted in some 2.5 million tires being put to a beneficial end-use. Humphrey's nationwide public service educational effort is outreach "in the best tradition of a land-grant university."
In addition, in conjunction with the UMaine Student Chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers which he advises, Humphrey uses his civil engineering expertise to design and construct projects for needy individuals and organizations in central Maine. Humphrey's projects, included five wheelchair ramps and one security fence, also benefit students with whom he shares his knowledge of how to design and build real projects, and his commitment to volunteerism.