Six Syracuse University faculty and staff members will receive The Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence at a campus ceremony and reception in their honor Thursday, April 15.
The 2009-10 Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence honorees are:
The Chancellor’s Citation awards were first presented in 1979 in recognition of outstanding achievement in teaching, scholarship and creative work. Over time, the focus of the awards has changed to reflect new priorities and institutional directions. The emphasis on excellence and outstanding achievement remains unchanged. Each year, members of the University community are invited to nominate a colleague or co-worker for recognition. A selection committee composed of faculty and staff from across campus reviews the nominations, and award winners are honored each spring.
All six honorees will receive a special art object created by Peter Beasecker, associate professor of ceramics in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, along with a citation statement recognizing his or her accomplishments.
John E. Baldwin
Baldwin is an international leader in physical organic chemistry, well known for his study of cyclopropanes, a ring of three carbon atoms that has unusual properties of chemical bonding. His research expands and strengthens basic understandings of the most fundamental questions in physical organic chemistry, from which new theoretical perceptions can be tested and better theoretical models built.
Few laboratories in the world have undertaken the complex experiments Baldwin has designed and realized over the years. His work since joining the University in 1984 has provided scientists with experimental evidence that either confirmed or led to new theoretical models about how “simple” chemical reactions occur. The National Science Foundation has continuously supported Baldwin’s research throughout his career at SU. Earlier this year, Baldwin was selected as the recipient of the prestigious James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry, presented by the American Chemical Society.
“John’s research efforts have been widely appreciated for their elegance, insightfulness and ambitiousness,” says Karin Ruhlandt, distinguished professor and chair of the chemistry department. “One can say, with no exaggeration, that John has tackled important problems in organic chemistry that no one else in the world would even attempt.”
His additional honors and awards include a Daniel Webster National Fellowship, the Charles Lathrop Parsons Scholar Fellowship, NSF pre-doctoral fellowships, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and a Senior U.S. Scientist Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and visiting professorships in Stockholm and Göteborg, Sweden.
Baldwin has served on a number of national boards and scientific advisory committees, including the President’s Science Advisory Committee; the Medicinal Chemistry Study Section of the National Institutes of Health; the National Science Foundation’s Chemistry Division Standing Review Panel; the executive committee of the American Chemical Society Division of Organic Chemistry; and, currently, the Advisory Board of the Petroleum Research Fund of the American Chemical Society.
Baldwin earned a bachelor’s degree at Dartmouth College in 1959 and completed his Ph.D. studies in chemistry and physics at the California Institute of Technology at the age of 24.
Suzanne L. Baldwin
Baldwin is recognized for both teaching and research excellence in the geosciences, and for her devotion to encouraging and supporting women to enter and achieve success in science.
Baldwin’s research focuses on how planets have evolved over geologic time. She applies her expertise in thermochronology to reveal thermal histories preserved as isotopic abundance variations in minerals. Her research interests are broad and currently include studies aimed at understanding lithospheric plate boundary processes as well as environmental conditions required for the origin of life on habitable planets. Since joining the SU faculty in 2000, Baldwin has directed the Syracuse University Noble Gas Isotope Research Laboratory (SUNGIRL)—a state-of-the-art thermochronology laboratory where noble gases are extracted from minerals to reveal their thermal histories.
Among her high-profile projects in this area of science, she is the lead principal investigator for an international group of collaborators and a research team at SU working with a $3.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation Continental Dynamics Program. The collaborative proposal involves four other leading U.S. institutions and collaboration with several leading international scientists to investigate major tectonic processes in eastern Papua New Guinea, using the region as a field laboratory to examine how the lithosphere has evolved petrologically, rheologically and thermally during the transition from subduction to rifting and seafloor spreading.
She also works with the NASA-funded New York Center for Astrobiology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., to study the chemical, physical and geological conditions of early Earth that set the stage for life on our planet. She has other active research projects in Antarctica, the Aegean Region, New Zealand and the Pyrenees.
“Suzanne’s career is marked by outstanding scholarly accomplishments characterized by both their scope and intensity, and distinguished by deep intellectual richness and creativity. It is no exaggeration to identify her as one of the leaders in her field,” says Jeffrey A. Karson, Jessie Page Heroy Professor in The College of Arts and Sciences. “Her contributions to our department and the University demonstrate her deep commitment to teaching and advising at all levels. In addition, she has taken a leadership role in the University community, especially with regard to career development for women in the sciences.”
Through her undergraduate teaching, she stays in contact with students at the early stages of their careers and serves as an important voice for their career objectives in the sciences. Baldwin also serves as faculty mentor and co-coordinator for WISE at Syracuse University, an innovative program designed to enhance and support the professional development and persistence of women faculty and students in the sciences and engineering.
In the community, she has created multiple programs that introduce the magic of minerals and rocks to local elementary and high school students, including taking her undergraduate mineralogy class into local school classrooms, and bringing young scientists to campus for hands-on mineral demonstrations.
Linda Carty
Carty, a sociologist who focuses on the political economies of gender, race and class inequality in national and international spheres, came to SU in 2000 to become chairperson of the Department of African American Studies (AAS) within The College of Arts and Sciences. Her writing, teaching and community involvement are undergirded by black feminist analysis that is principled, path breaking and visionary.
Carty served as chair of AAS from 2000-05, amassing numerous accomplishments including key academic, pedagogic and structural developments in the department. Her effectiveness was reflected in greater institutional support for AAS faculty members’ scholarship and scholarly presentations; sponsorship of AAS conferences on issues facing African peoples on the African continent and across the Diaspora; and the creation of programs and institutions within the department that expanded intellectual offerings and enhanced links to black communities in Syracuse and across the diaspora. Examples of her work include the establishment of the AAS Pan African Graduate Studies Program in 2005—which she guided in collaboration with SU professor Micere Mugo and other AAS colleagues. Carty’s other accomplishments include relocating the Community Folk Art Center—a cultural and educational bulwark for SU and the community—to a more expansive space at 805 E. Genesee St. in Syracuse. She also contributed to the expansion of the AAS curriculum to include Caribbean studies, a focus not found until then on campus.
As an Afro-Caribbean woman whose scholarship has focused on gender issues in Caribbean societies, Carty has forged ties among SU, the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica, and leading Caribbean scholars and feminists, artists and writers. These partnerships have provided an academically demanding and enlightening course of study at SU and practicum placements for SU students in Jamaica.
Within and beyond Syracuse, Carty is a recognized authority in feminist theory, known for her searing gender, class and migration analysis that challenges conventional feminist thought and practice. Under Carty’s articulation and enactment of feminist theory and praxis, responses to global-local inequality and resource and labor exploitation require that community members are equal partners and participants in university-community theoretical and strategizing collaborations.
Along these lines, another example of Carty’s major contributions to SU and the community is her participation in the Democratizing Knowledge Working Group—a collaborative project that aims to challenge our understanding of knowledge and the implications of using knowledge to create an equal and democratic society—that Carty helped found with faculty in the Writing Program/LGBT Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Latino/Latin American Studies and English.
Carty’s work also extends to environmental justice issues: She was the principal author and investigator (with AAS colleague Kishi Animashaun Ducre) of a major Ford Foundation grant awarded to examine the largely unexplored health and social impacts of environmental toxins and hazards on the lives of poor women of color, their families and communities. Most notably, in this and other Carty projects, the community was not simply an object of student and faculty study; its members were integrally involved in the planning and implementation of projects designed to elicit information about their lives and desires for healthful transformation within their communities.
“Dr. Linda Carty’s great integrity, ideals and contributions to Syracuse University, her disciplinary field, academic department, interdisciplinary colleagues, students, community and society commend her as most deserving of the appreciation and recognition that the Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence would express,” says SU law professor Paula Johnson in her letter nominating Carty for the honor.
James Kenneth Duah-Agyeman
“All things come to the person who is modest and kind in a high position.” That proverb from the I Ching is a favorite of Duah-Agyeman, director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs. His admirers feel that it could describe the man affectionately known as “Dr. D.”
“He is a wonderful role model, friend, supervisor, confidant, teacher, counselor and much more all rolled into one person,” says Amit Taneja, associate director of the LGBT Resource Center, who nominated Duah-Agyeman for the Chancellor’s Citation. Taneja has known Duah-Agyeman for seven years, since Taneja’s first week on campus. “As a visionary leader and role model, he has served as a mentor to several new professionals, including myself. In doing so, he has been successful in mentoring students and young professionals, especially those of us who identify as people of color.”
Duah-Agyeman received his Ph.D. in mathematics education from SU and has served the University since 1982, first as graduate assistant in mathematics and then becoming assistant director and counselor in the Office of Supportive Services in 1986. He was subsequently named director of the Center for Academic Achievement and interim associate vice president and director of the Division of Student Support and Development, which included Summer Institute for Incoming First-Year Students, Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program, Learning Disability Services, the University-wide Tutoring Center, High Education Opportunity Program (HEOP) and Student Support Services Program (SSSP).
Odean Dyer, a senior in the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science, comments, “[He] has been extremely supportive of my endeavors and has pushed me to strive for the best…. Dr. D. took time out of his busy week on several occasions in order to help me write a speech. His help on the speech has allowed many doors to open careerwise for me, and sky rocketed my recognition on and off campus.”
Duah-Agyeman’s commitment to diversity education is perhaps most evident in his role with the CARE (Conversations About Race and Ethnicity) Intergroup Dialogue circles, an educational model that involves bringing together students from two or more social identity groups in a small-group, co-learning environment.
“James began this work [CARE] with a small team of us in the spring of 2003. Since that time, James has continued to provide a wonderful vision and never-ending enthusiasm around this work,” says Duah-Agyeman’s supervisor, Rebecca Reed-Kantrowitz, associate vice president for student affairs. “James’ ability to develop strong, respectful and effective relationships has ensured a very strong and dynamic program, one that promotes the mission of the institution.”
Taneja points out that Duah-Agyeman has been strongly supportive of the University’s vision of Scholarship in Action. “As the University has moved in a direction to recruit enterprising students and the corresponding growth of students of color on our campus, Dr. D. has been instrumental in realizing that access alone without support is not enough,” he says. To that end, Duah-Agyeman has been instrumental in the establishment of a variety of support initiatives for students of color who are not affiliated with SU athletics or sponsored by any state or federal program.
“Dr. D. continues to touch the lives of students, staff and faculty of Syracuse University, as well as others in the surrounding community,” says Regina Jones, assistant director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs—Native Student Program. She echoes the feelings of many others when she adds, “I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to get to know and work with Dr. D.”
J. Michael Haynie
Haynie is creator of the nationally recognized Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV), which to date has positively impacted the lives of more than 200 U.S. soldiers wounded as a result of their service to the United States.
In 2007, Haynie, a former U.S. Air Force major, designed and developed the EBV as an initiative to offer world-class training in entrepreneurship and small business management to men and women disabled as a result of their military service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Haynie recognized entrepreneurship and small business ownership as a means through which veterans with disabilities can re-engage in their professional civilian lives.
The EBV has motivated America’s colleges of business and management to embrace this social mission. The early success of the program generated the expansion of the SU-based EBV into a national consortium of schools—UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, Florida State University’s College of Business, the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University, the Mays College of Business at Texas A&M University and the School of Business at the University of Connecticut—that now serve as EBV entrepreneurship bootcamp sites and represent the country’s most prestigious program since World War II focused on opening the doors of America’s colleges and universities to veterans motivated by business ownership.
Haynie and the EBV have also helped create new conversation in government and higher education as to how to formulate policy related to education and vocational rehabilitation of U.S. veterans. The EBV has been the subject of congressional testimony and held up as a national model by the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Labor. In 2009, the Department of the Army recognized the EBV program as a “National Best Practice” in serving soldiers and their families–the only program in higher education to receive this honor. The Canadian government has replicated the program for the Canadian Defense Forces.
In recognition of his determined advocacy for the advancement of care and retraining of America’s veterans, Haynie was honored with the McGraw-Hill/Irwin Award by the Academy of Management in 2009 for the most innovative design and application of entrepreneurship pedagogy. This international award is voted on by academic peers and is one of the most prestigious awards conferred by the academy.
As noted by his colleagues at the Whitman School of Management, “Haynie’s story of engaging the world exemplifies Scholarship in Action. His program was born of–and is embedded in–his research and teaching of entrepreneurship. His initiative has taken on a life beyond him, and even beyond the walls of this university.”
In addition to his EBV leadership, Haynie has teaching and research interests in entrepreneurial thinking and management decision making, and has been published in many of the leading entrepreneurship and business journals. Haynie has received numerous awards for both his scholarship and teaching, including the Guttag Research Fellowship (2007-09),the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) Award for Excellence in Research on the General Topic of Entrepreneurship (2007) and the 2007 Mescon Award for the Best Empirical Research Paper in Entrepreneurship from the Academy of Management. In 2007, SU honored Haynie as the recipient of the Oberwager Prize for his efforts to make a difference in the lives of young people outside the classroom.
Robert A. Rubinstein
Rubinstein is widely recognized within anthropology and peace and conflict studies for his scholarship on how and why peacekeeping functions both as a way of productively managing conflicts and transforming violent encounters into constructive conflicts.
Since arriving at the Maxwell School in 1994, Rubinstein has produced an impressive body of scholarly work, including seven books, nearly 40 refereed journal articles and 25 chapters in scholarly books. His edited book “Peace and War: Cross-Cultural Perspectives” (Transaction, 1986) is highly influential and has been in print continuously since its original publication. His book “Peacekeeping Under Fire” (Paradigm, 2008) has been praised for the way it brings anthropology to bear on contemporary problems of peace and war, and his 2009 co-edited collection “Building Peace: Practical Reflections from the Field” has been lauded by scholars and practitioners as an important advance for designing and evaluating peace-building efforts. At the Maxwell School, Rubinstein has promoted theoretical and practical work during his tenure from 1994-2005 as director of the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts. He is the current series editor of the “Syracuse Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution” published by Syracuse University Press.
Rubinstein was one of the founders of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences’ Commission on Peace and Human Rights. He served as the commission’ s executive secretary and today is its co-chair. In these capacities he has organized anthropologists around the world to bring anthropology to bear on the world’s most urgent problems of peace, security and human rights.
He has organized meetings and scholarly symposia at national and international anthropological meetings, and free-standing conferences in Russia, India and Belgium. His organizational efforts on behalf of the anthropology of peace and conflict include four years as the founding editor of Social Justice: Anthropology, Peace and Human Rights, the official journal of the IUAES Commission.
Rubinstein is a major voice in international policymaking. Based on his work on the cultural aspects of peacekeeping, the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations asked him to help design culturally appropriate missions in Sudan. He has worked regularly with the U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stabilization Institute, which led to the incorporation of cultural considerations into its doctrine. As a distinguished visitor for four consecutive years, he helped graduating colonels from the U.S. Army War College understand how their militarized responses to crises might communicate exactly the opposite message from what they had intended. He was also invited by the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs to contribute to developing health diplomacy in the Middle East.
