Honoring Our Faculty Achievements 2004

Browse or jump to the faculty member's last name:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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Seasons of Migration to the North (translated from Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davis) By Tayeb Salih

Very few writers have explored the complexities and consequences of leaving home for the North (or the West) and returning home (to the South or the East) with such depth and insight. This novel remains today, as it was when first published, a penetrating explication of the human condition of those?like myself, who left to the North or the West, whether they end up staying or eventually go back home to the South or the East!

 

Fouad Abd-El-Khalick
Department of Curriculum and Instruction

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To Kill a Mockingbird By Harper Lee

I grew up in rural Alabama , and this book captures the essence of my childhood. Atticus Finch demonstrates the best qualities of humanity: honesty, respect, and courage. I read this book again every year, because it gives me hope about our world.

Linda G. Ackerson
University Library

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Oeuvres, Volume 3 (1972-1984) By Jean-Pierre Serre

These papers contain some beautiful mathematics and are beautifully written.

Scott Ahlgren
Department of Mathematics

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Pedagogy of the Oppressed
By Paulo Freire

Friere presents an approach for educating illiterate persons, through which the dispossessed learn to critically assess their social and economic circumstances. This serves as a liberating phenomenon that establishes the foundation for further growth. Friere's ideas have important implications for thinking about empowering the poor, community building, and mutual assistance, as well as in considering the roles of teachers and students in the educational process.

Steven G. Anderson
School of Social Work

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Evaluation in organizations: A systematic approach to enhancing learning, performance, and change By Darlene Russ-Eft and Hallie Preskill

Professor Hallie Preskill was very instrumental in shaping my thinking about program evaluation. Dr. Preskill's work launched a new way of thinking about what evaluation is and its purpose across the entire evaluation community. This book has influenced how I’ve structured my own courses that I teach in program evaluation.

Steven R. Aragon
Department of Human Resource Education

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One Child
By Torey L. Hayden

This book is a memoir of an outstanding teacher who despite the odds reached a child deemed unreachable. I read this book many years ago and it inspired me to become a teacher. The power of teachers to touch and positively change young lives is still at the center of my work. Much of my research focuses on investigating ways to better meet the needs of students viewed as at-risk.

Eurydice Bauer
Department of Curriculum and Instruction

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EL Aleph
By Jorge Luis Borges

Because of my unconditional love to my dad.

German A. Bollero
Department of Crop Sciences

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Different Faces of Geometry (International Mathematical Series, v.3)
By Simon Donaldson, Yakov Eliashberg, Mikhael Gromov (eds.)

This collection of essays, on topics close to my heart, will, I think, be a valuable addition to our library. With its emphasis on original ideas and open questions, the collection is an inspiring reminder that mathematics is a vibrant and remarkable human endeavor.

Steven Bradlow
Department of Mathematics

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Veterinary Medicine: a textbook of the diseases of cattle, sheep, pigs, goats and horses
By O. M. Radostits … [et al.]

This has been "the" textbook for the medicine of horses, domestic ruminants, and swine for over 30 years. I was taught by Doug Blood at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and will be an author on the next edition (10th).

Peter Constable
Department of Veterinary Clinical Medicine

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Small Nation of People
By David L. Lewis

Ollie Watts Davis
Department of Music

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Radiative Transfer
By S. Chandrasekhar

This is the first book I read on radiative transfer and it changed the course of my graduate research. It is still the most eloquent mathematical formulation and solution to problems in radiative transfer. Computers now provide fast solutions, but the insight provided by Chandrasekhar is truly enlightening.

Larry Di Girolamo
Department of Atmospheric Sciences

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Umbelliferae In: A. Engler and K. Prantl (eds.), Die naturlichen pflanzenfamilien
By O. Drude

Until recently, this century-old treatment of Umbelliferae (or Apiaceae, the carrot family) was the authoritative work on the taxonomy of this important group of flowering plants. Through the use of comparative gene sequencing and other modern systematic methods, my students and I are revising the classification of the family to produce a "new Drude" for the 21st century and beyond.

Stephen R. Downie
Department of Plant Biology

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Introduction to Coding Theory
By J. H. Van Lint

Iwan Duursma
Department of Mathematics

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Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals
By Saul D. Alinsky

This book was given to me by my youngest brother while I was an undergraduate student. The book was an important influence on my later choice of social work as a profession. It also has contributed to the enduring belief that I held as a practitioner, and continue to hold as an instructor and researcher, that individuals can make a difference in the struggle for social justice.

Mary Keegan Eamon
School of Social Work

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The Cat in the Hat Comes Back
By Dr. Suess (Theodor Suess Giesel)

This was one of my favorite books as a kid first learning to read and to think. I was fascinated by the idea that the Cat in the Hat had another cat under his hat, and that cat had another cat under his hat, and so on, each cat smaller than the one before.


Jeff Erickson
Department of Computer Science

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Mimesis: the representation of reality in Western literature
By Erich Auerbach

Auerbach's Mimesis threw open the possibilities of literary scholarship for me when I read it at age twenty-three. It surveys the entire sweep of western writing from the Greek and Christian epics to the novels of Proust and Woolf, revealing the history of style to be anything but a merely bookish pursuit. What's more astonishing, and even poignant, is that Mimesis is a kind of library unto itself: writing in WWII Istanbul, exiled from Germany , Auerbach retells as if from memory the stories of the ages, sharpening their meaning with close, impassioned analysis.

Jed Esty
English Department

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Trends in Emerging Viral Infections of Swine
By Jeffrey Zimmerman


Lawrence D. Firkins
Department of Veterinary Pathobiology


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Cosmos
By Carl Sagan

The PBS television series was an inspiration for me as a child. Along with other superb books such as Contact and Pale Blue Dot, Sagan brings to life the fascinating mysteries and wonders of our universe and humanity's efforts to unlock its secrets through science.

Kevin Ford
Department of Mathematics

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Lee's Lieutenants, A Study in Command
By Douglas Southall Freeman

This series of books was my father's favorite. To him as a southern military historian, it documented the strategic brilliance of Lee's general staff. On a broader scale for me, it illustrates that there are often two rational sides to every conflict and that it is entirely possible for both sides to feel that they have the moral imperative to promote their agenda. The key then becomes in negotiating effectively with one another in order to establish middle ground before we find ourselves drawn irreparably into such devastating conflict.

Jonathan Hale Foreman
Department of Veterinary Clinical Medicine

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The Man Who Planted Trees
By Jean Giono

This simple story shows that if one's objective is clear, grand results which are their own reward can come from quiet persistence in even the simplest of tasks. I sometimes forget this.

Jonathan Freund
Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics

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Things Fall Apart
By Chinua Achebe

Simple, powerful, and always relevant to our understanding of the world around us.

Poshek Fu
Department of History

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Numerical recipes in C
By William H. Press … [et al.]

This beautifully written book introduced me (and many others) to basic ideas about numerical problem solving. It opened up for me the possibility of discovering something new about nature and the universe using computers.

Charles F. Gammie
Department of Astronomy
Department of Physics/Engineering

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Person and Object
By Roderick Chisholm  

A great, but not widely read, discussion of some classic metaphysical problems. The treatment is solidly analytic, but the results are distinctively at odds with much received doctrine in philosophy.

Allen Renear
Graduate School of Library and Information Science

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Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics
By Jonathan Pevsner

This book offers an integrated overview of the biological, statistical and computational components of bioinformatics and functional genomics through detailed descriptions and worked examples. I selected this book because it provides a comprehensive and insightful review of the major disciplines that are the basis of my research and teaching programs as well as shaping the progress of biological discoveries.


Sandra Rodriguez-Zas
Department of Animal Sciences

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Motivation in Education: Theory, Research, and Applications, 2/E
By Paul R. Pintrich

My book selection is in honor of my late mentor, Paul Pintrich. Paul was writing the first edition of this book during my first year of graduate school at the University of Michigan . I started graduate school with a broad interest in student learning. Conversations with Paul about various chapters in his book sparked an interest in a motivational approach to understanding students’ success in school. With Paul’ guidance I pursued research on how students’ goals set in motion different patterns of engagement in school. My research still concerns such questions about individual motivational processes as well as identifying features of the context (peer groups, classrooms, test situations) that influence students’ motivation and engagement. More broadly, Paul’s writings and research set a high standard for theoretical innovation that had practical application to students in schools. His vision and work continue to inspire me to do research that contributes insights about how to support positive academic and social development so that all children might realize their potential.

Allison Ryan
Department of Educational Psychology

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Biological Physics : Energy, Information, Life
By Philip Nelson

One of few books covering biophysics.

Paul Selvin
Department of Physics

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Digital Transmission of Information
By Richard E. Blahut  

This book has been instrumental in instilling in me an interest in Communication and Information Theory. This interest lead to my proposing the idea of networks-on-a-chip (NOC) to address the reliability problem facing the semiconductor industry today. NOCs are well-accepted world-wide as representing a paradigm shift in chip design.


Naresh R. Shanbhag
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering

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New Ideas from Dead Economists: An Introduction to Modern Economic Thought
By Todd G. Buchholz

This book provides a completely accessible introduction to the major branches of economic thought, and provides a framework to better understand major economic forces that affect us everyday.

Bruce J. Sherrick
Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics

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Critical Regionalism. Architecture and Identity in a Globalized World
By Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis

Critical Regionalism. Architecture and Identity in a Globalized World contains important essays by its two authors explaining and sumptuously illustrating critical regionalism as an architectural alternative to modernist and postmodernist design. Critical regionalism emphasizes the integration of local culture, geography and sustainability. Beyond its intended architectural framework, the concept is readily applicable by scholars from diverse disciplines to the problem of identity construction under globalization's homogenizing effects. I am using ctirical regionalism as a foundational concept in my study of the impact of mass tourism on the city of Cusco , former capital of the ancient Inca Empire and Peru 's foremost tourist destination.

Helaine Silverman
Department of Anthropology

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The Mathematical Theory of Plasticity
By R. Hill

Petros Sofronis
Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics

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Proofs from the Book (3rd Edition)
By Martin Aigner, Gunter M. Ziegler  

This book presents particularly beautiful mathematical proofs in an appealing way.

John M Sullivan
Department of Mathematics

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The World Turned Upside Down
By Christopher Hill

I read this book as a teenager and it clinched my decision to study history at university. A pathbreaking and gripping study of radical thought in seventeenth-century England , it highlights, for me, the power of the past to unleashe the social and political imagination in the present.

Adam Sutcliffe
Department of History

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Unthinking Eurocentrism: multiculturalism and the media
By Ella Shohat and Robert Stam

This book is nearly encyclopedic in its breadth and depth in the area of global media with attention to issues of ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Although it has a 1994 publication date, it still stands as a monumental piece of work and a must read for any media scholar interested in a globally infused study of media in the many multicultural situations throughout the world. In other words it is absolutely an essential text for all media scholars. It never lets go of the difficult interplay between cultures and representational strategies within difficult contexts. It combines the study of text with context and draws on such a wide array of academic traditions that it really remains a model of scholarship for me.

Angharad N. Valdivia
Institute of Communications Research

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Optimization by Vector Space Methods
By D. Luenberger  

Because it is an excellenty written book on optimization, comprehensively and rigorously covering a great number of research and application areas.

Petros Voulgaris
Department of Aerospace Engineering

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The MIT Encylcopedia of Communication Disorders
By Raymond D. Kent

This is a comprehensive text that provides state of the art research about human communication disabilities and the influence of communication disabilities on quality of life.

Ruth V. Watkins
Department of Speech and Hearing Science

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Grendel
By John Gardner

It was a thrill to read the Beowulf tale through the eyes of the monster during the Nixon presidency: it was the time for this story. I re-read it now to remind myself that other perspectives matter - like my students!

Randall Westgren
Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics

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The Guild Handbook of Scientific Illustration
By Elaine R. S. Hodges

When originally starting at university, I had a difficult time deciding between art and science. I continue to be fascinated with the usual aspects of the natural world, and this is one of my favorite books on the techniques of illustration.


James B. Whitfield
Department of Entomology

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Native Realm
By Czeslaw Milosz

Czeslaw Milosz

Raymond E. Zielinski
Department of Plant Biology

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