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PARTNERS ARE ESSENTIAL (contd.)
ADVANCING QUALITY
Faculty Excellence. With the addition of Jack Nelson,
Leonard Pitts, Jr. and Deborah Nelson, eight
Pulitzer Prize winners now teach in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism. No other journalism faculty claims more than two Pulitzer Prize winners. The
Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to adjunct physics professor John
C. Mather for providing a clearer look at the birth of the
universe. NASA awarded Dennis Wellnitz and Michael A'Hearn its Exceptional
Achievement Award for their work in the Deep Impact Mission that drove an instrumented space craft into the comet Tempel 1 about 80 million miles from here. English professor Michael
Olmert won his third Emmy as the writer for a Discovery Channel/BBC animated program called Before the Dinosaurs. Two faculty were elected to the national academies this year: Gregory
Baecher, Civil and Environmental Engineering, was elected to the National
Academy of Engineering and Ruth DeFries, Geography and Earth System Science, was elected to the National
Academy of Sciences.
Rita Colwell, Distinguished University Professor in microbiology and biotechnology, received the prestigious Order
of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star from the Japanese government. She was also inducted into the Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences and recognized as a NOAA Distinguished
Scholar. John Baras, Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Institute for Systems Research, was elected as a Foreign Member of the Royal
Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. Queen Elizabeth bestowed the Royal
Medal on Michael Fisher, Distinguished University Professor and USM Regents' Professor, for his contributions to natural knowledge. In the world of business, Dilip
Madan received the 2006 Alexander von Humboldt Research Award in mathematics for pricing models, investment strategies, and risk allocation.
Across the board we continue to attract competitive scholars in diverse fields. The A. James Clark School of Engineering appointed five faculty specializing in nanotechnology. The School of Public Policy appointed the former U.S. Commissioner of Social Security (1997–2001), Kenneth
S. Apfel. The Robert H. Smith School of Business appointed Albert "Pete" Kyle, a premier financial theorist, and a member of the NASDAQ Economic Advisory Board. The College of Education welcomed Alberto
Cabrera, a specialist in higher education and a scholar of diversity issues. Giovanni
Forni was appointed to the Michael Brin Chair in Mathematics. Forni is an extraordinary mathematician with "revolutionary new ideas." We shall be hearing more about these faculty in the years ahead.
In the Robert H. Smith School of Business, Tyser Fellow Erich Studer-Ellis, who teaches undergraduate business statistics, was named by Business Week as one of the nation's favorite undergraduate business school teachers in 2006. He has also won the School's Krowe Teaching Award and has mentored a cadre of teaching assistants in his approach to pedagogy. His statistics course was ranked by students among the least popular courses on campus before he took it over. Five
Physics faculty members were listed among the top 75 physics teachers in the nation by the American
Association of Physics Teachers.
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