• David J. Hancock, professor of history — The cosmopolite: William Petty-Fitzmaurice, 2nd earl of Shelburne, and the end of enlightenment.

• Elisha P. Renne, professor of anthropology and associate chair, Department of Afroamerican and African Studies — Veils, turbans, and Islamic reform in northern Nigeria.

• Mrinalini Sinha, Alice Freeman Palmer Professor of History — Complete political independence: the curious history of a nationalist Indian demand

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AAAS Fellows
Five U-M faculty members have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a prestigious society that recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions in scholarly and professional fields.

• Elizabeth Gerber, professor of public policy, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy; professor of political science, LSA; and faculty associate, Center for Political Studies. She conducts research focusing on intergovernmental cooperation in U.S. metro areas, local government capacity, political participation, elections, economic development, and urban politics and policy.

Hutchings, professor of political science, LSA; and research professor, Center for Political Studies. He is an expert on public opinion, elections and voting behavior, as well as African-American politics.

• Kitayama, Robert B. Zajonc Professor of Psychology, LSA; director of the Culture and Cognition Program; and faculty associate, Research Center for Group Dynamics. He has conducted research revolving around cultural differences and similarities in a variety of mental processes such as self, emotion and cognition. He has focused on comparing people from Asian countries such as Japan, the Philippines and China with Americans.

• O’Shea is a professor of anthropology, LSA, and curator of Great Lakes Archaeology, Museum of Anthropology. His research focuses on the ways in which the archaeological study of funerary customs could be used to recover information on the social organization of past cultures. His topical interests include: tribal societies, prehistoric ecology and economy, spatial analysis, ethnohistory, Native North America and later European prehistory.

• Henry Wellman, Harold W. Stevenson Collegiate Professor of Psychology, LSA; and research professor, Center for Human Growth and Development. His research focuses on children’s acquisition of foundational knowledge — early acquired understandings that shape and frame later cognitive developments — studied via naturalistic and laboratory studies with infants and young children.

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UM Health System Headlines

This financial investment into Crossbar Inc. kicks off a unique new initiative designed to help propel technologies into the marketplace and deliver strong returns on the university’s endowment.

The Michigan Investment in New Technology Startups (MINTS) program, announced in October 2011, could inject up to $25 million during the next decade into select venture-funded U-M startups — new companies built around inventions born in faculty members’ labs.

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The annual rankings, released by the federal agency this week, show U-M atop the R&D expenditures list for public universities and behind only Johns Hopkins University on the list of all U.S. universities and colleges. The latest NSF rankings cover fiscal year 2010. Read More

“Art-Making and the Arts at Research Universities,” a three-year plan, is the result of nearly a year of discussions and research with the goal of further integrating the arts into higher education curriculum and campus life.

“While creative processes across fields have a great deal in common, creative process in the arts tends to be more radically open-ended, more immediately immersive, and more hands-on and experiential,” said Theresa Reid, executive director of ArtsEngine, an University of Michigan consortium to promote interdisciplinary collaboration in the arts.

The group includes U-M’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance, School of Art and Design, College of Engineering, A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning, and U-M Libraries.

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Taking A Scientific Approach to Science and Engineering Education [pdf]

Presented Thursday March 22, 2012
Blau Auditorium, Ross School of Business

Dr. Carl Wieman, Associate Director for Science, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

“Guided by experimental tests of theory and practice, science has advanced rapidly in the past 500 years. Guided primarily by tradition and dogma, science education has remained largely medieval.
Taking a research approach to teaching science and engineering is now revealing principles and practices that achieve much better learning than traditional approaches The combination of this research approach to instruction has set the stage for a major advance in undergraduate science and engineering education, an advance that can provide the relevant and effective education in these fields for all students that is needed for the 21st century. I will discuss the failures of traditional educational practices, even as used by “very good” teachers, and the successes of some new practices and technology that characterize this more effective approach. I will also discuss how these results are consistent with basic principles of learning coming from cognitive psychology and hence are widely applicable.”

~ Dr. Carl Wieman

Dr. Wieman was appointed as the Associate Director for Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in September 2010. Previously, he divided his time between the University of British Columbia and the University of Colorado. At each institution, he served as both a Professor of Physics and the Director of Collaborative Science Education Initiatives aimed at achieving widespread improvement in undergraduate science education.

He has conducted extensive research in atomic and laser physics. His research has been recognized with numerous awards including sharing the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001 for the creation of a new form of matter known as “Bose-Einstein condensate.”

Dr. Wieman has also worked extensively on research and innovations for improving science education; he was the founding Chair of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Science Education. He has received numerous awards for his work on science education.

Sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Michigan.
For more information, contact Sandy Fike at fikes@umich.edu or (734) 764-1185.

Date: Wednesday, March 21

Time: 12 noon to 1:30 p.m.

Location: 1180 Duderstadt Center, 2281 Bonisteel Blvd.

RSVP by March 16:
To help us plan for lunch, please let us know if you will attend. It’s important that we have an accurate indication of the interest in this program

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