PEP rewards
continued excellence
of full professors

The Florida legislature funded the Professorial Excellence Program (PEP) in 1996 and again in 1998 to recognize, reward and promote excellence and productivity of full professors in the State University System. Each university was asked to develop criteria for the selection of full professors who had been in rank a minimum of seven years and who presented evidence of sustained excellence, continued productivity, and high merit in the areas of scholarship or creative activities, teaching, professional service and academic leadership.

Eligible applicants were invited to submit a portfolio documenting their accomplishments, and a committee of their peers made selection recommendations to the provost and president. This year, there were 21 successful applicants from a pool of 33 qualified applicants.

"The Professorial Excellence Award is an exceptional distinction which the University confers on those select full professors whose excellent level of performance has been sustained over time," said FIU President Modesto A. Maidique. "Many of these professors were hired in the early years of the University's existence and certainly are counted among the `builders' of this great, young urban university."

Following are "mini-profiles" of FIU's PEP recipients.

1996-97 Faculty PEP Awards

Ralph Clem
International Relations
Ralph Clem is a well-known authority on the former Soviet Union and has been honored with appointments as short-term fellow of the Kenan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and as a senior fellow of the W. Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union at Columbia University. He has authored and co-authored numerous books and articles, as well as grant proposals to federal agencies and leading private foundations. He was recently appointed director of FIU's Global Studies Initiative, which will foster research and teaching on transnational issues and will house a range of ongoing and nascent comparative studies efforts.

James Couper
Visual Arts
Since coming to FIU in 1972, James Couper has maintained an active creative activities agenda. He has had 21 solo exhibitions, five two-person exhibitions and participated in more than 200 group shows at international, national and regional museums and galleries. In addition to teaching all levels of painting and drawing courses, he developed "Thesis and Portfolio," the exit course for all B.F.A. majors. He founded The Art Museum at FIU in 1977 (director until 1980) and established the M.F.A. program at the University.

Richard Hodgetts
Management & International Business
Richard M. Hodgetts is the author or co-author of 49 different books and over 100 articles and papers. He is the editor of the Journal of Leadership Studies and has developed an on-line course for the basic management offering, "Management and Organization." He was recently chosen as the 1999 Outstanding Educator by the National Academy of Management.

Donald Klingner
Public Administration
Donald Klingner, who joined FIU's faculty in 1980, is an internationally recognized authority on public human resource management and policy and has authored or co-authored eight books (Public Personnel Management is a standard in the field), numerous journal articles, book chapters, and monographs. His honors include serving on National Academy of Public Administration advisory panels, being a distinguished professor in residence of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and being named a Fulbright senior scholar, Central America.

George Kovacs
Philosophy
George Kovacs' accomplishments at FIU since 1972 have included: founding faculty of the Philosophy Department; published a major book, The Question of God in Heidegger's Phenomenology (Northwestern University Press) and 60 articles dealing with phenomenology and hermeneutics; served as associate editor of the specialty journal Heidegger Studies and as editorial advisor of the international journal Existenzanalyse; and created special courses on: "Philosophy of Death," and "Love and Sexuality."

William Kurtines
Psychology
William Kurtines' areas of scholarly and research interest include: social and personality development, family development, life span developmental psychology, cross-cultural psychology and moral development. He has received many awards, including the Award for Research Excellence from the Southeastern Psychological Association in 1978 and awards for scholarship/research, teaching and professorial excellence from FIU. He has been principal investigator or senior research scientist on large grants funded by federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, and has published many books and 100 journal articles. He is chair of the doctoral program in Life Span Development at FIU.

Anthony Maingot
Sociology
Anthony Maingot, who has been with FIU since 1974, is a widely recognized authority on social issues in the Caribbean. He is the author of several books, including United States and the Caribbean: Challenges of an Asymmetrical Relationship, co-author of A Short History of the West Indies, now in a fourth edition, and many articles. He has served as chairman of the Caribbean Studies Association, and has been the recipient of research grants from organizations including the Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.

Stephan Mintz
Physics
Stephan Mintz, who has nearly 25 years of service at FIU and is current chair of the Physics Department, is the author of almost 70 papers on weak interactions in nuclei and is a recognized expert on neutrino reactions in nuclei. He has been a principal investigator (PI) or co-PI on many grants and is the current PI for the FIU/CEBAF grant. He has received an FIU Excellence in Research Award and an FIU Excellence in Teaching Award. He has served on numerous task forces and committees, including chair of the Research I Task Force.

Samuel Shapiro
Statistics
Samuel Shapiro, a member of FIU's founding faculty, is an authority on assessing the adequacy of statistical models. A procedure he developed for testing such models is included in many of the statistical software packages. He is the author of three books and 25 refereed articles which have appeared in leading technical journals. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and has received awards from leading statistical societies. He has held several academic administrative posts and currently heads the School of Computer Science.

Mary Volcansek
Political Science
Mary Volcansek specializes in judicial politics, comparative judicial politics and Western European politics. She has written or co-authored five books and edited or co-edited three, in addition to articles and book chapters. Her most recent book, Constitutional Politics In Italy: The Constitutional Court will be published by Macmillan (UK) and St. Martin's (US) later this year. She has served as associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and chair of Political Science and founded the FIU-Cambridge University Summer Program (1980-1985).

Mira Wilkins
Economics
Mira Wilkins is an economic and business historian, who has written extensively on the history of multinational enterprise. Her most recent book, published by Oxford University Press (and co-edited with Harm Schröter), is The Free-Standing Company in the World Economy 1830-1996. Her ongoing research is on the history of foreign investment in the United States; she is currently preparing the sequel to her book The History of Foreign Investment in the United States to 1914, which was published by Harvard University Press in 1989. She is a fellow of the Academy of International Business and serves on the editorial boards of leading business history journals.

Subbarao Wunnava
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Subbarao V. Wunnava, whose interests are in the areas of networking and digital and computer system development, joined FIU in 1977, and currently is graduate coordinator and associate chair in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has written four books on microprocessors and associated applications. He received two TIP awards, two FIU teaching awards and an FIU research award. He has been an active consultant and has conducted collaborative research with several major industrial organizations.

Steve Zanakis
Decision Sciences & Information Systems
Steve Zanakis was the program chair of the 5th International Conference of the Decision Sciences Institute (Athens, Greece, July 4-7, 1999), organized by the College of Business Administration, and has served as associate editor for Decision Sciences and guest editor for Management Science and the European Journal of Operational Research. His research articles have appeared in these and other leading journals. Students are often challenged by his no-formula case instruction of quantitative methods and TQM self-evaluation.

1998-99 Faculty PEP Awards

Milan Dluhy
Public Administration
Milan Dluhy has been a tenured professor of Public Administration for the past 14 years and has held a variety of administrative posts at the University, including associate director of the Center on Aging, interim dean of the School of Public Affairs and Services, and director of the Florida Institute of Government. He has authored/co-authored eight books and more than 60 professional publications and has been the principal investigator on 28 externally funded research projects. He has consulted widely with state and local government in Florida (and several other states) as well as with a number of federal agencies.

Grenville Draper
Geology
Grenville Draper's research concerns the tectonic movements of the Earth's crust in the northern Caribbean as deduced from field observations. He is the author of over 50 publications. He is presently an associate editor of International Geology Review, co-editor of the Scientific Results Volume of Leg 165 of the Ocean Drilling Program and advisor to the EC-funded geologic mapping project in the Dominican Republic. His latest project is a textbook on field geology for Prentice-Hall.

M. Ali Ebadian
Mechanical Engineering
M. Ali Ebadian was instrumental in the 1995 establishment of the Hemispheric Center for Environmental Technology (FIU-HCET), a unique environmental technology research and development organization formed as a partnership between FIU and the U.S. Department of Energy. Under his direction, HCET has brought $24.2 million in research funding to the University, making him the top researcher for three sequential years. He dedicates his scholarly and professional activities to bringing recognition to the Department of Mechanical Engineering in FIU's College of Engineering.

Joan Erber
Psychology
Joan Erber is a leading researcher in the psychology of aging. She has published over 40 peer-reviewed journal articles on aging and memory and how stereotypes of aging influence our perceptions and evaluations of older adults. She has received nearly $500,000 in research funds from the National Institute on Aging. She holds fellowship status in the Gerontological Society of America and in the American Psychological Association (APA). She recently completed a term as president of Division 20 (Adult Development and Aging) of the APA.

Ronald Fisher
Psychology
Ronald Fisher and his research colleague, Ed Geiselman (UCLA), have developed and adapted theoretical principles of cognitive psychology (memory, perception, attention, etc) to be used in investigative interviews to facilitate the memories of victims and witnesses of crime and other events. Their technique (Cognitive Interview) is used by many investigative agencies around the world (e.g. FBI, British police).

Kenneth Hardy
Physics
Kenneth Hardy has adapted time of flight spectroscopy to the study of the Dissociative Recombination Reaction. This reaction is important in the chemistry of plasmas occuring in regions as diverse as interplanetary space and gas lasers. His discoveries have led to a new understanding of the mechanics of this reaction.

Sharon Kossack
Elementary Education
Sharon Kossack combines research, service and teaching to maximize her effort and impact to the benefit of both students and community. Text- smart techniques developed at a middle school will be posted on the Abaco, Bahamas, "Every Child Counts" literacy project web site so that teachers throughout the Bahamas can access them. A unique collaborative five-year reading master's program, in which she was professor-in-residence, received a National School Excellence Award and was named a national Elementary Demonstration Site for the New Jersey Writing Project.

David Lee
Biological Sciences and Environmental Studies
David Lee has combined excellence in teaching and service (the inaugural chair of the Department of Environmental Studies, 1994-97) with significant accomplishments in research on the functional ecology of plants. This past year he worked on the puzzle of autumn leaf coloration as a Bullard Fellow at Harvard and as an invited participant in the French dirigible rainforest canopy expedition in Gabon.

Florentin Maurrasse
Geology
Florentin Maurrasse's research has focused on the geology of the Caribbean region, with special emphasis on the island of Hispaniola, and he is regarded as an expert on the geology of the region. He has been featured in two special TV series on the extinction of the dinosaurs, because he discovered major evidence in Haiti showing that the Earth was affected by a catastrophic asteroid impact on the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago.

Edwin McClintock
Mathematics and Computer Education
Edwin McClintock's research and development, which focuses on the preparation of middle and senior high school teachers of mathematics and science, employs an innovative approach that reexamines goals, processes, value systems and experiences. The integrated set of programs study the requisites of effective education in mathematics, science and technology (MST) of underserved students. It also is an experiment for undergraduate and graduate students in modeling, mentoring, teaching and learning about reform and its application for at-risk students.

Osama Mohammad
Electrical and Computer Engineering
In his efforts to improve students' learning ability, Osama Mohammed continues to incorporate the latest educational technology in the classroom. He has researched and adopted an asynchronous learning environment for teaching. He pioneered this model at FIU and has developed courses that are delivered asynchronously via the Internet and live video. He has published more than 150 papers, with 55 in refereed journals. He has been elected a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, chaired three major international conferences and served as technical program chair for two other conferences.

Luz Porter
Nursing
Luz Porter developed the proposal for the Master of Science in Nursing program at FIU and established the School of Nursing's partnership with Miami Children's Hospital for the development of a clinical specialty in Advanced Child Health Nursing. She has secured more than $200,000 in Professional Nurse Traineeship grants, which have provided scholarships to nearly 200 students.

Arun Prakash
Finance
Winner of FIU's Excellence in Research Award for an unprecedented three times, Arun J. Prakash won the Professorial Excellence Program (PEP), as well as the Teaching Incentive Program (TIP) awards during the 1998-99 academic year. Co-author of more than 50 articles and three books, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society in 1990. He also served as the chairperson of the Finance Department for nine years. Three of his co-authored articles have been selected by ANBAR Electronic Intelligence of the UK for its Hall of Fame.

J.M. Quirke
Chemistry
Martin Quirke's research interests fall into two categories: porphyrin chemistry and chemical derivatization for electrospray mass spectometry. He was the first person to determine the unambiguous structure of a geoporphyrin and has been active in mass spectrometric analyses of porphyrins. His collaborative work with G.J. van Berkel has led to the development of techniques that have expanded the utility of electrospray mass spectometry analysis for selective detection of non-polar analytes.

Emmanuel Roussakis
Finance
Emmanuel Roussakis developed the commercial banking curriculum of the Finance Department and directs the certificate programs in banking. His publication record includes seven books, three chapters in books, and 40 articles. The second edition of his commercial banking textbook was translated into Chinese. He has lectured bank executives and trainees in the United States and abroad and has offered expert testimony in bank litigation. He was recently awared an endowed chair, funded by the Florida International Bankers Association, in the College of Business Administration.

John Sheldon
Physics
John Sheldon established the University's Atomic Beam Laboratory (in collaboration with Kenneth Hardy), which led to a series of publications. He has also worked with NASA research scientists on the plasma physics of the tethered satellite.

John Stack Jr.
Political Science
John F. Stack Jr., who serves as director of the Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship Studies, conducts research focusing on the role of ethnicity in world politics from domestic, transnational, and comparative perspectives. As the post-Cold War international system emerges, ethnicity increasingly plays a major role in the relations among states and within states in affluent, developed societies as well as developing states throughout the world. Stack's contribution underscores the important, yet often overlooked, role of ethnicity in world politics.

Les Standiford
Creative Writing
Les Standiford, director of the Creative Writing Program since 1985, and a professor of English since 1991, has published seven critically acclaimed novels and two works of non-fiction. Booklist called his recurring fictional character John Deal, "the most emotionally centered protagonist in contemporary crime fiction." He is the past recipient of the Frank O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and has won a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction as well as a Fellowship in Fiction from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. His work has appeared in scores of magazines and anthologies.

Mark Szuchman
History
Mark D. Szuchman, currently associate dean of Faculty and Graduate Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, was the first professor of Latin American history at FIU. Having authored five books and 34 articles, he is nationally known as one of the most important authorities of 18th and 19th century Argentine history. With Provost Mark Rosenberg, he was one of the founders of FIU's Latin American and Caribbean Center.

William Vickers
Sociology and Anthropology
Anthropologist William T. Vickers specializes in the human ecology of the Amazon Basin and the related issues of native land and civil rights within the rapidly developing Amazon frontier. An avid field worker, he has made 16 research trips to Ecuador and Peru since 1972. With over 70 publications on native subsistence patterns, resource use and conservation, ethnobotany, and frontier development policies and conflicts, He is an internationally recognized expert on both traditional and modern Amazonia.

Nancy Wellman
Dietetics and Nutrition
Nancy Wellman is the director of the National Policy and Resource Center on Nutrition and Aging and past president of the 70,000-member American Dietetic Association, the nation's largest group of food and nutrition professionals. She chairs the Nutrition Screening Initiative, a nationwide campaign against elderly malnutrition that is backed by a coalition of 35 prominent aging organizations. Wellman has testified before Congress, serves on several national advisory boards and committees, and appears regularly in the national popular press and on TV and radio.