KU News Release

June 1, 2009
Contact: Christie Appelhanz, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, (785) 864-3516.

Three KU faculty members honored with Steeples award for service to Kansas

LAWRENCE — Three University of Kansas faculty members were honored this spring for outstanding service to the state.

Recipients of the 2009 Steeples Service to Kansas Award are Stephen B. Fawcett, the Kansas Health Foundation Professor of Applied Behavioral Science; Thomas E. Mulinazzi, professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering; and Charles Rapp, professor of social welfare and director of the Office of Mental Health Research and Training.

Don Steeples, the Dean A. McGee Distinguished Professor of Applied Geophysics and senior vice provost for scholarly support, and his wife, Tammy, established the award in 1997 to honor Don Steeples’ parents, Wally and Marie Steeples, and to recognize outstanding service by KU faculty to other Kansans. The award provides recipients with $1,000 and an additional $1,000 base adjustment to their salaries.

“KU faculty members constitute a rich source of valuable expertise for the citizens of Kansas,” said Joseph E. Steinmetz, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “The recipients of the prestigious awards exemplify the many ways the university gives back to the state, and I’m grateful to the Steeples family for making this recognition possible.”

Recipients were honored by their respective schools during commencement weekend.

Information about the recipients is below.

Stephen Fawcett joined KU as a faculty member in 1975. He serves as director of the KU Work Group for Community Health and Development, a designated World Health Organization Collaborating Centre at KU. Fawcett and colleagues developed the Community Tool Box, a 7,000-page resource to build healthier communities used by health and human development workers in Kansas and throughout the world. He has consulted with a number of private foundations and national organizations, including the Kansas Health Foundation, where he supported initiatives to prevent adolescent pregnancy and substance abuse. He is currently engaged in a five-year National Institutes of Health-funded project to promote Latino health by increasing healthy nutrition, physical activity and access to health services. He is co-author of nearly 200 articles and book chapters that feature his participatory research with partners in state agencies, foundations and community organizations across the state, nationally and internationally.

Thomas Mulinazzi came to KU in 1979 after spending six years at the University of Maryland. His bachelor’s degree is from the University of Notre Dame and his graduate degrees are from Purdue University. He has been involved with technology transfer to local transportation agencies since 1983 and has taught seminars on traffic control, highway maintenance, risk analysis and work zone signage in more than 80 locations around the State. Mulinazzi strives to impress the importance of safer road networks within the state of Kansas by advocating for effective and proper traffic sign location and installation, reparation of potholes in the context of risk management, properly blading gravel roads and work zone signage. His research and teaching interests are traffic engineering, highway design, airport planning and design, railroad engineering and surveying. Mulinazzi is a licensed engineer and surveyor in Kansas and serves on the Kansas State Board of Technical Professions.

Charles Rapp has been part of KU’s School of Social Welfare since 1979. He studies the development and testing of client-centered administrative practices, community mental health practice and policy centered on people with severe mental illness. Rapp captured the attention of state lawmakers in 1987 with a study revealing the lack of funding for community-based mental health services in Kansas. Evidence proved that community-based mental health services were more effective in addressing the needs of those suffering from psychiatric disabilities versus treatment strictly through institutionally based mental health services. His study was the catalyst over the following three years in efforts to change the allocation of funds. In 1990, the Kansas Mental Health Reform Act was signed into passage by then-Gov. Mike Hayden, resulting in a dramatic augmentation of funding for community-based mental health services. Rapp is a member of the Kansas Health Solutions Statewide Quality Improvement Committee and the SRS Unified Training Advisory Group.

Funds for the Steeples award are managed by KU Endowment, the independent, nonprofit organization serving as the official fundraising and fund-management for KU. Founded in 1891, KU Endowment is the first foundation of its kind at a U.S. public university.

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