Contact: John Scarffe, KU Endowment Association, (785) 832-7336.
LAWRENCE - A chemist and a molecular biologist at the University of Kansas have been named the first recipients of a new faculty award created by Madison "Al" and Lila Self, Chancellor Robert E. Hemenway announced today.
The first Self Faculty Scholars are Robert C. Dunn, associate professor of chemistry, and Leslie Heckert, assistant professor of molecular and integrative physiology at the KU Medical Center.
The Selfs, of Hinsdale, Ill., established the Madison and Lila Self Faculty Scholars Fund at the KU Endowment Association. The Self Faculty Scholar Award recognizes and helps support KU faculty members in engineering, business and the sciences who are early in their careers and have demonstrated the potential to establish renowned and peer-acclaimed scholarship within their research fields. The award also acknowledges professors who are prepared to mentor pre-doctoral students in the Self Graduate Fellowship program.
"Al and Lila Self understand what it takes for KU to be a truly excellent university," Hemenway said. "We continue to be grateful to the Selfs for all they have done for KU and for establishing this faculty award, which will help the university retain exceptionally talented faculty members and sustain overall excellence in research and scholarship at KU."
Each year, the Self Faculty Scholars program will select two faculty members, who will receive $50,000 annually for three years. The faculty scholars may use the funds in any way to support their research and careers, including paying for personnel, equipment, supplies or travel directly related to research.
In addition to conducting research, the faculty scholars will serve as mentors to students in the Madison and Lila Self Graduate Fellowship program. The fellowships are awarded annually to incoming doctoral students who have outstanding records in scholarship and who are judged to possess unusual leadership potential. The Selfs established the fellowships in 1989 and have made several additional contributions to the endowed fund for this program, which currently supports 36 students.
"Lila and I created the Self Graduate Fellowship to attract and support unusually talented Ph.D. students at KU," Al Self said. "The Self Faculty Scholars program has been designed to strengthen graduate education for the Fellows and KU as a whole. Recognizing and providing support for outstanding faculty like Bob Dunn and Leslie Heckert as Self Faculty Scholars, and including them in the Self Graduate Fellowship mentor program, will enhance the value of the fellowship even further. We warmly congratulate Bob and Leslie as the first Self Faculty Scholars."
Robert Dunn's research focuses on developing new microscopic techniques to study single biological molecules. He has been named a Searle Scholar and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
Dunn received a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1988 from California State University, Sacramento, and a master's degree in physical chemistry in 1990 and a doctorate in 1992, both from the University of California, San Diego. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Pacific Northwest Laboratory in Richland, Wash.
"I applied for the Self Faculty Scholar Award because I was impressed with the Self Graduate Fellowship program and the opportunities that it has given students," Dunn said. "I saw it as a way to become more involved with the program while helping our research stay competitive by keeping up with new technology and equipment. I can't put into words how honored and excited I am to have received this award."
At the KU Medical Center, Leslie Heckert focuses her research on understanding how reproductive genes in mammals are activated during the development of the testes and ovaries. Her goal is to understand the biological processes that determine the sex of an individual and the regulation of reproductive hormone levels.
She received a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1982 and a master's degree in biochemistry in 1986, both from the University of Montana. She received her doctorate in biochemistry in 1991 from Washington State University and held postdoctoral positions at Washington State University and Case Western Reserve University. Heckert received a National Research Service Award in 1993 for her postdoctoral work, and in 1999 she received the Investigator Research Award at the KU Medical Center.
"It is very exciting to be part of this program," Heckert said. "We now have the opportunity to explore new research avenues that might not have been possible otherwise."
An external review committee, chaired by Del Shankel, KU chancellor emeritus, evaluated the candidates' applications. The review committee included scholars from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Iowa State University, the University of Washington and the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Al Self, who has been a leader in the business world, met his wife, Lila, when both were students at KU. They married in 1943, the same year he graduated with a degree in chemical engineering. In 1947, he acquired Bee Chemical Co. in Lansing, Ill. When he sold the company 37 years later, it had grown from a staff of three to a sizable corporation with five U.S. manufacturing sites and operations in Japan and England.
Lila Reetz Self, a native of Eudora, attended KU with the class of 1943. Over the years she has maintained a special interest in art and architecture and has been active in the community, including serving on the Student Life Committee at Chicago's Illinois Institute of Technology. The couple has one son.