KU News Release

Dissertation prizes go to history, medicinal chemistry doctoral graduates

LAWRENCE — Winners of the Haglund and Argersinger prizes for outstanding dissertations at the University of Kansas will be honored during the doctoral hooding ceremony at 4 p.m. Saturday, May 19, in the Lied Center.

Mark D. Hersey in history won the $1,000 Dorothy Haglund (pronounced HAYG-lund) Prize for his dissertation, “'My Work is that of Conservation: The Environmental Vision of George Washington Carver.”

Christina Sheree Stauffer in medicinal chemistry won the $1,250 Marnie and Bill Argersinger Award for her dissertation, “Total Synthesis and Structure-Activity Relationship Studies of Antifungal Peptidyl Nucleoside Antibiotics.”

“The Haglund and Argersinger dissertation prizes honor Dorothy Haglund’s and Dean William Argersinger’s efforts to improve graduate education, and we celebrate the creation of new knowledge and research by recognizing these outstanding graduate students and their scholarly works,” said Diana Carlin, dean of the Graduate School and International Programs.

The Haglund Prize for an outstanding doctoral dissertation was established in 1979 through former vice chancellor and dean William J. Argersinger Jr., his wife, Marnie, and their friends, in cooperation with KU Endowment. The prize was established to honor the late Dorothy Haglund, who served KU graduate students from 1940 until her retirement in 1983. In 1992, Argersinger and his wife established a fund to provide an additional dissertation prize. Before a dissertation may be nominated into the competition for either the Haglund or Argersinger prizes, doctoral candidates must pass their dissertation defense with honors.

Prize winners and finalists are listed below by hometown, date of graduation, field of study and dissertation topic. Parents’ names and previous degrees earned are included when available.

DOUGLAS COUNTY
From Lawrence and Ambler, Pa.
Mark D. Hersey, a fall 2006 doctoral graduate in history, is the Haglund Prize winner. He is a lecturer in KU’s history department and interim director of the “This Week in KU History” project and the Kansas State Historical Society’s KansasHistoryOnline.org project, whose sponsors include KU’s Hall Center for the Humanities. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa. He is the son of Richard and Rose Hersey of Ambler, Pa., and a graduate of Upper Dublin High School. The University of Georgia Press plans to publish Hersey’s dissertation as part of its new series “The Environment and the American South.” Although Hersey’s undergraduate years in Alabama prompted an interest in Carver, it was the neglect by recent historians of Carver that inspired Hersey’s research. “Every now and then a historian stumbles onto what appears to be a yawning historiographical gap, and such was the case with Carver. He remains a household name, but few people can tell you more about him than that he has a vague association of one sort or another with peanuts. As an agriculturist, Carver spent most of his life thinking about the ways in which people ought to interact with the natural world around them. As a result of his professional training as a student at the Iowa Agricultural College (now Iowa State) and the peculiar circumstances surrounding impoverished black tenant farmers in Alabama’s Black Belt, where he spent most of his career at Tuskegee, Carver developed a farsighted environmental vision for the South — one that at once fits neatly within the dominant trends of Progressive Era conservation and is unique in its own right,” Hersey said. Hersey received a number of awards to help with his research including the Ambrose Saricks Family Memorial Scholarship in 2003 and 2004 and the Arthur and Judith McClure Scholarship in 2005. In 2006, he received a research grant from the State Historical Society of Iowa.

From Lawrence 66044
Hong Jin, summer 2006 doctoral graduate in chemical and petroleum engineering, was a finalist for the Argersinger Award for her dissertation, “Exploiting CO2-expanded Solvents as Reaction Media for Catalytic Hydrofomylation of Higher Olefins.” She earned a bachelor’s degree from Zhong Shan University in China

John Drysdale Paden, fall 2006 doctoral graduate in electrical engineering and computer science, was a finalist for the Argersinger Award for his dissertation, “Synthetic Aperture Radar for Imaging the Basal Conditions of the Polar Ice.” He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1999 and a master’s degree in 2003, both from KU. Paden is a Baldwin High School graduate.

JOHNSON COUNTY
From Overland Park 66212 and Klatony, Czech Republic
Martina Musteen. SEE CZECH REPUBLIC

ARKANSAS
From Conway 72032
Susan Dunn-Hensley, fall 2006 doctoral graduate in English, was a finalist for the Haglund Prize for her dissertation, “Powerful Purity: The Sacred Virgin in Early Modern Literature.” She earned a bachelor’s degree from University of Central Arkansas in Conway. Dunn-Hensley is the daughter of Robert and Aneda Dunn.

PENNSYLVANIA
From Ambler and Lawrence, Kan.
Mark Hersey. SEE DOUGLAS COUNTY

From New Holland 17557
Christina Sheree Stauffer, fall 2006 doctoral graduate in medicinal chemistry, won the Argersinger Award. Stauffer is a postdoctoral research assistant at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She is the daughter of Dave and Barbara Stauffer and was a 1997 graduate of Pequea Valley High School in Kinzers, Pa. She earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Grove City (Pa.) College in 2001 and a master’s degree in medicinal chemistry from KU in 2004. While at KU, she received an American Chemical Society predoctoral fellowship in medicinal chemistry. Aventis, a global pharmaceutical company, sponsored the fellowship. Stauffer and her adviser, Apurba Dutta, assistant professor of medicinal chemistry, have submitted her dissertation to a research journal. Stauffer’s dissertation and research focus on “the synthesis and structure-activity relationship studies of two classes of the peptidyl nucleoside antibiotics: the nikkomycins and amipurimycin.” Stauffer noted that an increasing number of fungal infections in the past 25 years has become a serious public health concern. Current drugs, while potent, have become less appealing as a result of several liabilities. “Therefore research into the discovery and development of new antifungal drugs, particularly those with a novel mode of action, are of paramount importance. The complex peptidyl nucleoside antibiotics are a unique class of natural products, with several members of this class possessing a novel mode of action. As a result of their demonstrated antifungal activity, fungal cell specificity, and novel mode of action, the peptidyl nucleoside antibiotics have attracted considerable interest as potential leads in the search for a new generation of antifungal agents.”

VIRGINIA
From Arlington 22204
Molly G. Rightmyer, spring 2006 doctoral graduate in ecology and evolutionary biology, was a finalist for the Argersinger Award for her dissertation, “A Phylogenetic Analysis of the Bee Tribe Epeolini, with a Review of the Genus Triepeolus.” She earned a bachelor’s degree from Scripps College in Claremont, Calif.

CZECH REPUBLIC
From Klatony and Overland Park, Kan.
Martina Musteen, summer 2006 doctoral graduate in business, was a finalist for the Haglund Prize for her dissertation, “The Role of International Networks in the Acquisition of Foreign Market Knowledge among Czech New Ventures.” She earned a master’s degree from KU in summer 2000.

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