New Woodhouse Awards honor exceptional faculty achievements

Professor William Benoit

Professor Steven Hofmann

Professor Deborah Huelsbergen

Professor Mian Liu

Professor Anand Prahlad

Five faculty members from the College of Arts and Science are recipients of the first Woodhouse Awards, which honor A&S faculty for exceptional achievements in teaching, research and service.

The honorees are William Benoit, professor of Communication; Steven Hofmann, professor of Mathematics; Deborah Huelsbergen, associate professor of Art; Mian Liu, professor of Geological Sciences; and Anand Prahlad, professor of English. Each recipient receives a $1,000 stipend.

"Ultimately, the awardees are examples of the level of accomplishment that one regularly encounters in the College of Arts and Science," says Dean Richard B. Schwartz. Schwartz selected the recipients based on nominations from their department chairs.

The awards, which will be distributed annually, were made possible through a $100,000 unrestricted gift from the estate of Frances J. Woodhouse, BA '29 chemistry, of Freeport, Ill. Schwartz used the gift to establish an endowed fund to memorialize Woodhouse and her husband, John Woodhouse, BA '30 economics. Frances died in July 2004; her husband preceded her in death.

Schwartz also decided that the prizes should honor the accomplishments of A&S faculty. "This kind of award cannot solve the growing problem we face with regard to faculty compensation, but it can indicate our appreciation for the impressive efforts of our faculty and offer them some public recognition for those efforts," he says.

Benoit is recognized nationally as the second most-published scholar in significant communication journals during the past five years. Among his recent accomplishments, he completed three book manuscripts, which are in press; presented multiple invited lectures; held a research fellowship in Hong Kong; wrote 13 published articles and two book chapters; wrote 10 articles or chapters that are in press; and completed a term as editor of the Journal of Communication. In addition, he was appointed editor of Communication Studies.

Hofmann, who is known internationally for research in harmonic analysis and partial differential equations, recently solved the Kato problem, a conjecture that originated in the 1960s. Three of the key papers concerning the solution appeared in Acta Mathematica and Annals of Mathematics, arguably the two best mathematics journals in the world. In August 2006, Hofmann will present a lecture in the analysis section of the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid. An invitation to deliver a plenary address at the ICM is one of the highest honors in mathematics.

Huelsbergen, whose specialty is graphic design, is an outstanding teacher. While serving as director of undergraduate studies in the art department—a role that includes advising 360 students—she teaches a full course load plus a freshman seminar, taught as an overload. This past year she served as a mentor for two students who received distinguished research awards. Huelsbergen herself earned an ET@MO Academic Transformation Grant and an Excellence in Education Award from MU's Division of Student Affairs. She is a former winner of a William T. Kemper Fellowship for excellence in teaching.

Liu serves as the cornerstone of the geophysics and active tectonics research group in the geological sciences department, a group that has developed an internationally recognized research reputation in continental dynamics. The strength of the group derives from the complementary nature of the researchers' expertise, which features cutting-edge observational methods of crustal deformation and earthquake seismology, integrated through high-resolution computer simulations. Liu's honors course in active tectonics is highly regarded, and his training of graduate students is exceptional. His most recent doctoral student accepted a position with the prestigious Lunar Planetary Institute in Houston. Liu has published major papers this year. His work is supported by five grants from the National Science Foundation as well as grants and contracts from other federal agencies.

Prahlad has established himself as one of the major folklore scholars in the world. He recently completed editing the Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore and wrote 40 of the individual essays. The encyclopedia—the first comprehensive reference work on African American folklore—is a massive, multidisciplinary, three-volume project, consisting of 700 entries written by more than 140 international scholars. Prahlad also published two landmark essays in the top international folklore journal and edited a special issue of that journal on African American Folklore. He is a creative writer, an innovative user of technology in the classroom and a prized mentor.