Offices and Awards
Faculty—
David Stern, professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Iowa, has been named a Collegiate Fellow of the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) in recognition of his distinguished teaching, research, and service.
"The designation as Collegiate Fellow recognizes senior faculty whose excellence in teaching and scholarship is matched by exceptional leadership in service to the university, the college, and their departments," says CLAS Dean Chaden Djalali. "I am very pleased to recognize Professor Stern’s accomplishments and the distinction he brings to the college and university."
Collegiate Fellow awards are supported by a gift to the UI Foundation from the late R. F. and Maryon E. Ladwig and carry a discretionary fund to support the Fellow’s teaching and research.
Stern is an internationally recognized authority on the history of 20th-century philosophy, and is best known for his scholarship on Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is the author of Wittgenstein on Mind and Language (1995) and Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations: An Introduction (2004), as well as more than 40 journal articles and book chapters. His co-edited volumes include The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein (1996), which will be issued in a second edition next year. His next book, Wittgenstein: Lectures, Cambridge 1930-1933, From the Notes of G. E. Moore, will be published in 2015; digital images of the source materials will be published online.
One of the first faculty to teach in the UI’s Information Arcade, his work in the digital humanities led him to serve on the American Philosophical Association’s “Philosophy and Computers” committee and to chair the university’s Information Technology Advisory Committee. He is a past chair of his department, and has served on the college’s Promotion and Tenure Consulting Group and on the 2012-13 CLAS Self-Study Committee.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences has named Jerald L. Schnoor, Allen S. Henry Chair in Engineering in the University of Iowa College of Engineering, a 2013 recipient of an Einstein Professorship.
As a condition of the award, Schnoor, a civil and environmental engineering professor, will visit China May 13-23 to deliver the following three lectures:
—"Water Sustainability in a Changing World," at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing.
—"Phytoremediation—Using Plants to Help Clean the Environment," at The University of Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Guangzhou.
—"Intelligent Digital Networks for Sensing, Modeling, and Forecasting Water Quality and Quantity," at The University of Hong Kong.
The academy annually awards Einstein Professorships worldwide to 20 distinguished international scientists actively working at the frontiers of science and technology for the purpose of lecturing, leading workshops, and interacting with faculty and students for one or two weeks in China. The goals of the program include strengthening ties between awardees and Chinese scientists and enhancing the training of future Chinese scientists.
A member of the National Academy of Engineering, Schnoor also serves as research engineer at IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering, co-director of the UI Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, and editor-in-chief of the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
In addition, he is a professor of occupational and environmental health in the College of Public Health and researcher in the Center for Biocatalysis and Bioprocessing.
An internationally recognized expert in the fields of water quality monitoring, aquatic chemistry, and climate change, Schnoor has testified before Congress on several occasions and currently leads the UI Initiative on Water Sustainability.
Students—
Iowa Gov. Branstad presented "The Governor's Cup" to the top students in nine ROTC programs from six Iowa universities today, Wednesday, April 10. The cadets will commission as second lieutenants or ensign in the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Navy next month.
UI recipients are, Cadet Lt. Col. Thomas W. Bentley II, University of Iowa Army ROTC from Chaska, Minn., and Cadet Col. Amanda M. Heller, UI Air Force ROTC, from Fort Collins, Colo. Both are enrolled in CLAS.
Alumna—
Jen Silverman, (Master of Fine Arts, 2011) alumna of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, has won the 2013 Yale Drama Series award. Silverman was honored for Still, a play about three women who are each dealing with challenges of childbirth.
Marsha Norman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of ‘night, Mother, selected the play from nearly 1,100 entries.
The Yale Drama Series is an annual, international competition for emerging playwrights. The winner is awarded the David Charles Horn Prize of $10,000, publication of the winning play by Yale University Press, and a staged reading at Lincoln Center Theater in New York City.
During a 2011 Obermann Center working group, Elizabeth Heineman, a UI associate professor of history and gender, women's, and sexuality studies, worked on a memoir about her experience of a stillbirth. Silverman collaborated with Heineman on a script about that experience, which became Still. In spring 2012, a staged reading of the play at the UI was directed by Meredith Alexander, lecturer in the Departments of Theatre Arts and Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies.
The Iowa Playwrights Workshop—the University of Iowa's MFA Program in Playwriting—is an intensive three-year program dedicated to educating playwrights for the professional theater.