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Executive Summary: Delivering the Promises

Accomplishments and Initiatives

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Accomplishments and Initiatives

Delivering the Promise of Excellence through Outstanding Faculty and Programs with High Impact

At universities, investing in quality means building and supporting a faculty of the highest caliber, and the competition for these leaders is as intense as any competition for corporate or athletic talent in top firms and teams. From outstanding faculty flow the energy, ideas and leadership that make a university great. Through their accomplishments, our faculty bring widespread recognition to the State. They pursue their research and scholarship at the top levels of excellence, which sets the bar high across the University and raises the intellectual ambiance. The following descriptions of some of last year's top award winners indicate how they enrich the University by their service as well as their stellar research. Such faculty repay our investment in them many times over.

Nobel Prize Winner. The most visible of the international awards is the Nobel Prize, and this year Distinguished University Professor Emeritus Thomas Schelling was co-winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics. He won the prize for analyses of practical applications of game theory in areas including labor negotiations; crime and segregation; smoking behavior; tobacco and drug policies; and the economics of climate change, among others.

His approach to risk and negotiations served the world well during the nuclear arms negotiations in the Cold War. This is the third Nobel Prize for a Maryland faculty member; the 1997 prize in physics went to William Phillips (UM and the National Institute for Standards and Technology), and the 1956 prize in literature was awarded Juan Ramón Jiménez. Having devoted 13 years at UM to teaching, research and extensive service on committees, Professor Schelling now uses his celebrity to serve the University. He declared to a Financial Times reporter that the "University has un-retired me. It was good to me." He has been dutifully helping to raise funds, and plans to lecture on campus and abroad.

While the Nobel is the public jewel in the crown of prizes, the crown has other very precious stones in it too. For instance, in mathematics there exist two great prizes, the Fields Medal, given to the best mathematician worldwide under the age of 40, and the Wolf Prize, given to laud a career of great contributions to mathematics. Each is of the stature of a Nobel Prize. In 2005, Maryland Professor Sergei Novikov won the Wolf Prize, which complements the Fields Medal that he won in 1970. This makes him a candidate for the title of the world's best mathematician.

Queen Elizabeth bestowed the Royal Medal on Michael Fisher, Distinguished University Professor and USM Regents' Professor. The medal was created by King George IV in 1826 and is conferred twice per year for great contributions to "natural knowledge." Earlier recipients include mathematicians Paul Dirac and Lord Rayleigh, and astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle.

In May 2005, the National Academy of Sciences elected into membership Ellen Williams, Distinguished University Professor in Physics. Williams, an outstanding researcher, has a long history of leadership and service at the University. As director of the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, she has led a team that is nationally recognized for pioneering research in nanotechnology.

Professor James Wallace, Department of Mechanical Engineering, was named 2005 Maryland Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. Professor Wallace is the director of one of our most successful enriched learning programs, Gemstone, a unique program in which Honors students participate over four years in team research projects that integrate technological and social issues connected with major national problems.
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Office of the President, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742