October 25, 1999
Contact: Mary Jane Dunlap, University Relations, (785) 864-8853.
LAWRENCE -- Five University of Kansas faculty members have been named 1999 Outstanding Educators by KU's chapter of Mortar Board, a national senior honor society.
Winners are Chuck Berg, professor of theatre and film; Robert G. Carlson, professor of chemistry; Beverly B. Mack, associate professor of African and African-American studies; Judith C. Richards, instructor of Spanish and Portuguese and Jan Roskam, Deane E. Ackers distinguished professor of aerospace engineering.
This is the second time Carlson has been honored by Mortar Board students.
The faculty members will be recognized in ceremonies on Saturday, Oct. 30, and Sunday, Oct. 31, at KU.
On Saturday in a halftime ceremony at the 6 p.m. KU vs. University of Nebraska football game in Memorial Stadium, Chancellor Robert Hemenway and Mortar Board representatives Anate Aelion, Memphis, Tenn., senior; Chrissy Hagen, Weatherby Lake, Mo., senior; and Erin Carlson, Beatrice, Neb., senior, will present the winners with certificates .
On Sunday, the winners will be honored at a reception at 1:30 p.m. in the Kansas Room of the Kansas Union. Mortar Board members and alumni as well as university administrators and faculty colleagues have been invited.
The recipients are nominated for their devotion to academia, teaching style, accessibility, knowledge of their subject and other special quailities identified by the Mortar Board membership which is about 40 students. Mortar Board members selected winners from nominations by the membership.
Biographical information on KU's1999 Mortar Board Outstanding Educators
CHUCK BERG
Chuck Berg, professor and associate chair of the theatre and film
department, has taught at KU since 1977. He teaches classes in American
popular culture and in film-television history, theory and criticism. In
addition to his books, "Music to Accompany the American Silent Film" and
"Lookout Farm: A Case Study of Improvisation for Small Jazz Group," written
with David Liebman and Richard Beirach, Berg contributes regularly to
scholarly journals and periodicals such as "Cinema Journal," "Journal of
Film and Video," "Journal of Popular Film," "Journal of Dramatic Theory and
Criticism" and the "Hollywood Reporter."
Berg has directed two films, "Behind the Grand Door" and "For Beth,"co-directed with Ed Small. He is a noted jazz musician, playing saxophone and flute, and a jazz critic whose commentaries have been published in "JazzTimes," "DownBeat," "Jazz Educators Journal," "Gramophone," "Coda" and "American Music." Berg earned a Ph.D. in film, television and music at the University of Iowa, Iowa City.
ROBERT G. CARLSON
This is the second time since joining the KU faculty in 1963 that Carlson
has been selected an Outstanding Professor by Mortar Board students. He was
first honored by Mortar Board in 1982. In 1973, he was also named an
Outstanding Educator of America at KU. In 1977 Carlson received the AMOCO
Foundation Award for Excellence in Teaching. His chief research interest is
in synthetic organic chemistry and the development of new synthetic
methods. His research has been supported through grants from the National
Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation. He earned his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology.
BEVERLY B. MACK
Mack has taught at KU since 1993. In addition to teaching, she has served
as an associate dean of international programs at KU. Mack has created and
taught KU courses on Islamic literature, women and Islam, Southern African
literature, African women writers, Hausa culture and African oral
narratives. She is fluent in the Hausa language, the major language of West
Africa, and also speaks French, Arabic and Krio.
Mack's third book, "One Woman's Jihad: Nana Asma'u Scholar and Scribe," will be published in March 2000 by Indiana University Press. She is researching books on Muslim women's scholarship in West Africa and on Hausa women's poetic voice. Mack has supported her research with grants and fellowships including a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, two Fulbright-Hays grants, Ford Foundation and Woodrow Wilson grants and National Defense Education Act language study fellowships. She earned Ph.D. and masters of arts degrees at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
JUDITH C. RICHARDS
Richards joined the KU faculty in 1998. Previously she had taught 13 years
at Rockhurst College in Kansas City, Mo. At Rockhurst, Richards served as
chair of the modern languages department and received a Teaching Excellence
award in 1997. She is researching a book on women's novels of the Mexican
Revolution. Her research interests include 20th-century Spanish American
narrative, literary theory and analysis, autobiographical writing by Latin
American and Latino women writers and Hispanic Caribbean literature.
Richards earned a master's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison
and a Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese from KU.
JAN ROSKAM
Roskam has taught at KU since 1967. At KU, he teaches courses in aircraft
design and flight dynamics and he developed the KU Flight Research Lab.
Aircraft companies around the world have consulted with Roskam to improve
aircraft comfort, economy, speed, safety and handling characteristics. His
design team is cited in "Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1978-79" for their
work on Italy's SIAI/Marchetti S-211.
Roskam's students regularly win top awards in national aircraft design competitions including the Bendix aviation design contest, the AIAA/United Technologies/Pratt Whitney individual student aircraft design contest and the AIAA/General Dynamics Corp. Aircraft contest. His recent honors include being co-editor of Aircraft Design journal. He received the 1996 Gould Award for outstanding contributions to engineering science and the 1992 Ned. N. Fleming Teaching Award. He received his Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering from the University of Washington, Seattle.