"The National Science Foundation grant provides 3 years of funding for travel to conferences and universities, both nationally and internationally. The opportunity to interact with other mathematicians in my field and to make extended visits stimulates productive collaborations and allows me to disseminate the results of my research effectively. The grant also provides funds for visitors to come to Fairfield, which enriches the intellectual life of the University."

Mark Demers of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science is recognized for "receiving a prestigious grant of national stature" and for "publishing articles in his discipline's top journal." He is the principal investigator of a grant from the National Science Foundation, entitled, "Topics in Dynamical Systems: Open systems, coupled systems and discretization." His ongoing work has led to two recent articles in the top journal in his field, Ergodic Theory and Dynamical Systems.

"We're seeing economic sanctions emerge as a major tool of international governance, as well as of U.S. foreign policy. Invisible War: The United States and the Sanctions on Iraqconcerns the humanitarian impact of the sanctions imposed on Iraq by the UN Security Council. They were devastating on many levels - education, nutrition, child mortality, public health, agriculture, and every aspect of economic development. My project for next year looks more broadly at these issues in the context of ethics - are sanctions a form of violence? Or are they a nonviolent alternative to warfare? Aren't sanctions a form of collective punishment, which has been condemned by Just War doctrine and international law? What are the ethical limitations on their uses?"

Joy Gordon of the Department of Philosophy is recognized for "receiving a prestigious grant of national stature" and for "publishing a book by a University press." She was awarded the prestigious National Endowment of the Humanities research fellowship and published a book by Harvard University Press titled Invisible War: The United States and the Sanctions on Iraq.

Benjamin Fine of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science is recognized for "publishing a book by a high-quality press" and for "publishing articles in a discipline's top journal." He is an internationally known researcher and invited lecturer who has authored noteworthy books on combinatorial group theory, abstract algebra, and aspects of infinite groups, and is one of the founders of a field within mathematics. Recently the journal Groups, Complexity, and Cryptology dedicated one volume to his body of research for his 60th birthday.

"The receipt of this NIH grant has allowed me to expand my study of peroxiredoxin genes into the area of breast cancer and explore the possibility that these genes may be useful targets in cancer therapy, a newly emerging area of research. The nature of this work is very expensive and time consuming, so there is no way I could embark on a project of this scope without this type of funding. I am optimistic that this work will result in several important new publications and presentations, and lay the foundation for future external funding in this area."

Shelley Phelan of the Department of Biology is recognized for "receiving a prestigious grant of national stature." Her competitive grant from the National Institute of Health is titled, "Investigation of the Function and Regulation of Peroxiredoxins in Breast Cancer Cells." Her work has fueled major research in biology resulting in multiple research journal articles that credited students as co-authors.

"Research constructs reality out of chaos, knowing that the construction is temporary, that the reality must be verified by the work of others before they will follow. Those who follow may not come for another hundred years, but they may also come tomorrow. They cannot see what reality is being constructed until it is done. At that moment, they might think how simple the task certainly must have been, and may denigrate the researcher whose vision of reality brought the discipline forward, building a bridge into the night of chaos. If it is done really well, others will believe it quite simple, since all the really accomplished scholars are like athletes - they make the impossible seem facile."

Ronald Davidson of the Department of Religious Studies is recognized for "receivinga prestigious grant of national stature" and for "publishing a book by a University press." His book, Tibetan Renaissance, is published from Columbia University Press and he has numerous scholarly articles published in his discipline. He is also the recipient of prestigious research grants from the National Endowment of the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies.

"These days, relatively few sociologists write books about 'big topics' like the origins of capitalism or the modern world as we know it, and even fewer use a comparative non-Eurocentric angle to analyze what occurred in different parts of the world over long periods of time. Given my interest in sociological theory as well as historical, economic, and political developments, together with my ability to make use of original materials in several different languages, I wanted to address a topic that would have fascinated the founding fathers of Sociology such as Weber, Durkheim and Marx: what was so exceptional about the 'West'? But I also found it interesting to dissect how social scientists in various intellectual traditions conceptualized the 'West' and 'non-West.' I am very pleased that Choice has labeled my book as "essential" for all libraries and that Japanese and Korean translations are forthcoming."

Eric Mielants of the Department of Sociology & Anthropology is recognized for "publishing a book by a University press." His book is The Origins of Capitalism and the Rise of the West, published by Temple University Press.

"Funding from the federal Department of Health and Human Services will help Dr. Diana Mager and me measure how well our program improved teamwork, knowledge of palliative care, and cultural sensitivity among allied health providers. Ultimately, we hope that these gains will translate into better care of the older adults these providers serve."

Jean Lange of the School of Nursing is recognized for "receiving a prestigious grant of national stature." Her grant is from the federal Department of Health and Human Services and extends her work on geriatric and palliative care. She served on a national task force to refine an existing knowledge assessment tool that has received multiple requests for its use from educators in university, hospital, home care, and hospice settings nationwide. She also received a 2010 award from her professional nursing association for outstanding contributions to palliative care nursing.

"In 2005, several dynamic Fairfield students approached me and expressed their desire to go to China. When we found out that The ASIANetwork provided a scholarship for student/faculty research in Asia, we applied and got the scholarship. I offered my ongoing research project on women and Second Sino-Japanese War to be the research project of the scholarship. During our month in China, 3 students and I interviewed and video-taped 15 Chinese women who experienced the war in the Chongqing region, visited Chongqing Historical Library and Municipal Archives, and the war-related historical sites. This research trip took us to 15 ordinary Chinese women's homes and gave the students opportunities to observe Chinese life firsthand. The trip not only helped me produce a documentary film and finish my book on women and war in the Chongqing region, but also helped the students to connect abstract book knowledge with concrete Chinese reality."

Danke Li of the Department of History and the Program in International Studies is recognized for "publishing a book by a University press." Her book, Echoes of Chongquing: Women in Wartime in China, is published by the University of Illinois Press and illustrates an inside account of women's everyday feminism under perilous circumstances. This work was supported by the Asia Network/Freedman Grant and included student researchers in the project.

"Part of my work focuses on individuals' role models in organizations - how people choose them (if they do), what meaning role models have for them, and how role models affect individual outcomes, such as beliefs about salary, career aspirations, and 'possible selves' - the people we hope to become. Gender is especially important to the question of role models, because even after years of attempting to equalize men's and women's career opportunities, a gap in achievement remains: women just don't believe they can achieve at levels as high as men do. My quest is to figure out why this is so, and part of the reason I think it's so is that women have different kinds of role models. I think it's important to understand how men and women think about their role models so that we can have insight into how the achievement gap can be lessened."

Donald Gibson of the Department of Management is recognized for "publishing an article in his discipline's top journal." His article, "Women and Men's Career Referents: How Gender Composition and Comparison Level Shape Career Expectations" is being published in the journal Organization Science in 2010. He has published twice in that highly-esteemed journal in recent years.

"Sociologists want to understand patterns of behavior. Since graduate school, I have focused my attention on understanding demographic patterns of behavior: births, deaths, and migrations. These are vital behaviors, at both the individual and societal levels, that are undergoing rapid change. I find trying to understand the causes and consequences of these changes a continual challenge."

Dennis Hodgson of the Department of Sociology & Anthropology is recognized for "publishing an article in his discipline's top journal." His article, "Abortion, family planning, and population policy: Prospects for the common-ground approach," was published in Population and Development Review, and his second article, "Malthus' Essay on Population and the American Debate over Slavery," was published in Comparative Studies in Society and History, a second highly regarded journal in the field of sociology.

"My motivation to reflect theologically is energized by all the motivations of Christian believers throughout the centuries to find meaning in their lives through their experiences of God, Christ, and the rich tradition of the Church. The theologian uses these experiences as the evidence for his or her own research and writing, and by doing so, tries to contribute new and meaningful insights to this same tradition that will motivate the faith of contemporary and future Christian believers all the more."

John Thiel of the Department of Religious Studies is recognized for "publishing articles in his discipline's top journal." His two recently published articles in the journal Theological Studies - "For What May We Hope? Thoughts on Eschatological Imagination" and "Time, Judgment and Competitive Spirituality: A Reading on the Development of the Doctrine of Purgatory" - are recognized for their scholarship, and his overall work as a theological scholar is nationally known.

"Serious study of any period, including the Middle Ages, has to begin with the textual evidence, and unfortunately too few of even important and influential texts in European manuscript collections have been critically edited. I have taken as the focus of my research the editing of philosophical, theological, and scientific texts, previously available only in manuscript form, from the High Middle Ages. This particular project - the production of a critical edition of Richard Fishacre's Commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences, the first produced at Oxford (ca. 1241-1246) - began in earnest in 1987, when I was invited by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich to assemble a team and undertake the edition. The NEH funded a year's leave and monies to examine in situ the 13 manuscripts containing Fishacre's work, scattered across Europe."

R. James Long of the Department of Philosophy is recognized for "extraordinary scholarly achievement in his discipline." He recently completed a textual paleographic study of the medieval Dominican friar Richard Fishacre's commentary on Peter Lombard's Four Books of the Sentences, written between 1241 and 1245/46. This research project was funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and took 25 years to complete.

"At the beginning of the 21st century, the purpose, role, and value of the humanities has, deservedly, captured our attention and engendered lively debate. My research focuses on three elements: how to realign the tradition of the canon into a more accessible format; how to implement technology as tools in the service of teaching the humanities; and how to embrace the multiculturalist arguments insofar as American popular music is concerned. By starting the overlap in the mid-19th century with the music of Richard Wagner and Stephen Foster, the pluralist and dialect traditions of the humanities will not only be preserved, but will make the material more relevant to students. In order to teach students how to analyze music within its cultural context, this approach, by necessity, is interdisciplinary in scope."

Laura Nash of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts is recognized for having "achieved an accomplishment that is recognized as contributing to the enhancement of teaching and pedagogy throughout the discipline at large." Her U.S. Department of Education grant for music pedagogy has influenced the way in which music is taught in schools. For this accomplishment, she is the 2009 recipient of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Award - Connecticut Professor of the Year.

"Vertebrate Zoology is a classic natural history course that enables the student to place themselves in their surroundings. It opens their eyes to what is around them in ways that they've never experienced, enabling them to be more relevant members of society. Most significantly about this course is the trip students can take to Brazil to experience nature in a completely different place, opening their eyes to habitats and environments that they've never seen before. Add in culture and social/political sidebars, and you have a course that makes them well-rounded and much more globally aware citizens."

Brian Walker of the Department of Biology is recognized for "demonstrating the impact of teaching excellence beyond the classroom." His course, Vertebrate Zoology, has had a significant impact on the institutional culture of teaching excellence and demonstrates teaching excellence beyond the classroom through a triumvirate teaching pedagogy that begins with a lecture course in the Fall, a 2-week field trip to Brazil during winter session, and a continuing lab section in the Spring. Matching his students with international scientists on their immersion trip is especially noteworthy.

"I have been involved with work on Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia since I first visited the former Soviet Union in 1979, which included a trip to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Over the 16-year existence of Fairfield's Russian and East European Studies program, over 40 visiting scholars from the former Soviet Union and the Balkans (including students and faculty from every Central Asian republic) have visited Fairfield and have enriched our students' lives and the the curriculum of the University. Global Citizenship for me is a way of life, a passion, and a commitment. This new initiative extends our understanding of teaching and learning from some of our best teacher-scholars at Fairfield to a crucial area of the world: at the vortex between China, Russia, and Afghanistan/Pakistan. The work we do in Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan may help, in some small way, junior faculty at the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgystan and the Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research to stay connected to the U.S. and to Fairfield University, and to teach the Fairfield faculty about their problems, their needs, and their situation. The recent events in Kyrgystan, where both the U.S. and Russia have military bases, underscore the importance of this work."

David McFadden of the Department of History is recognized for "providing leadership on a major University initiative." He has been an active global citizen through his work in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and in the Program on Russian and East European Studies. His work has fostered exchanges between Fairfield and international faculty overseas in the fields of business, economics, ethics, history, writing and Russian studies. This work is supported by a grant from the American Council of International Education funded by the American/Central Asian Education Foundation.

"Mentor is the only fully integrated online course management and assessment system. It is designed to streamline the work of assessment of student learning outcomes by putting assessment tools right into the hands of teaching faculty who can use them for grading. Education is moving toward outcomes-based evaluation of student learning, and Mentor is on the forefront of making this possible (and easy) for faculty to accomplish."

Curt Naser of the Department of Philosophy is recognized for "demonstrating extraordinary leadership in service." He is receiving this award for his work establishing the EIDOS system, now named Mentor, which is used for educational assessment purposes extensively in professional schools to prepare for accreditation by national associations.

"I first met the St. Martin de Porres teachers when they were on campus for a 2-day professional development experience in 2009. I, along with several other GSEAP colleagues, offered workshops for the teachers to support them in their important work. I have long been a fan of Jesuit-sponsored Nativity Schools like St. Martin, so was thrilled to learn that GSEAP was making an explicit commitment to partner with St. Martin. As part of my commitment to them, I offered to facilitate a Teacher Learning Community (TLC) - a teacher-centered professional development support group with the agenda set by the teachers. An exciting collateral project emerged with the service learning component of my undergraduate ED 329 Philosophy of Education course. This semester, 6 Fairfield students have been driving to New Haven twice a week to lead an after-school Theater Project for over 20 St. Martin students."

Wendy Kohli of the Graduate School of Education and Allied Professions is recognized for maintaining "a major leadership position related to one's academic discipline that promotes the Jesuit values of the University to the larger community." She has served in multiple leadership roles in her profession, but most notably has promoted Jesuit values through her service work at St. Martin De Porres School in New Haven by creating and developing an extended teaching and learning community there. In addition, she has served as the liaison for President von Arx to the Bridgeport Higher Education Alliance.

"I originally became involved in committee service because that's part of what it means to be a responsible member of the Fairfield University community. I have found that the topics are often quite interesting, and the work itself is enjoyable, particularly in that it entails collaborating with committed faculty and administrators from across the University on issues of mutual concern."

Susan Rakowitz of the Department of Psychology is commended for her work on the Academic Council Subcommittee on Governance, her leadership as chair of the Faculty Salary Committee, her service as Associate Director of the Honors Program and her contributions to multiple Living and Learning initiatives have enriched Fairfield in myriad ways. For her sustained dedication for the good of the faculty and of the University as a whole, she was awarded a special commendation.