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Centre honors five veteran professors DANVILLE, KY - Five Centre College professors have been named as the first recipients of a new honor that recognizes excellence in teaching, scholarly work and contributions to the college community. Mike Barton, Brian Cooney, Jane Joyce, Phyllis Passariello and Marshall Wilt have been designated as the first Centre Scholars. The Centre Scholar awards will be rotated among Centre's full-time faculty on a biennial basis. Each honoree receives a stipend above the normal salary. The Centre Scholars program was made possible at Centre through a challenge gift to the college endowment from David Grissom, a Centre alumnus and Louisville businessman who chairs the college board of trustees. Barton is professor of biology and has taught at Centre since 1979. He has special expertise on fishes and their habitat, and he is involved in on-going research on speciation of fishes in the Bahamas. Barton currently is editing a textbook, Biology of Fishes, to be published next year by Harcourt Academic Press. He regularly takes groups of Centre students for field work at a biology station on San Salvador Island. Barton received a 1987 grant from the Experimental Program for the Stimulation of Competitive Research, and in 1990 he delivered a Centre faculty lecture series. He holds a bachelor of arts degree in zoology from the University of California at Los Angeles, a master's degree in biology from California State University at Fullerton, and a doctorate in fisheries and wildlife from Oregon State University. Cooney, a Centre faculty member since 1980, is professor of philosophy. He has pursued research in the field of philosophical psychology and the mind/brain relationship. Cooney is the editor of The Place of Mind (Wadsworth Publishing, 1999), an anthology of readings in the philosophy of mind, and he is the author of A Hylomorphic Theory of Mind (Peter Lang Inc., 1992). In ethics classics at Centre, Cooney has challenged students to evaluate contemporary social issues within an ethical framework. He holds a bachelor's degree in classics and philosophy from Saint Louis University and master's and doctoral degrees in philosophy from McGill University. Joyce joined the Centre faculty in 1978 and is professor of classics. A classical scholar with wide-ranging interests, she played a key role in establishing Centre's major in the classics, and she has been a leader in the college's humanities program. Her translation of Lucan's Pharsalia was published by Cornell University Press (1993), and she has translated Catullus' lyrics for a collection of Latin literature. Joyce is at work on another volume for the Cornell press, and she is the author of two books of poetry. She holds a bachelor's from Bryn Mawr College and master's and doctoral degrees in classics from the University of Texas at Austin. Passariello is professor of anthropology and has taught at Centre since 1988. Her research interests include the anthropology of tourism, sustainable development for indigenous cultures and the religious pilgrimage as a factor in regional tourism. Passariello has lead a travel-study program in Ecuador, and her Centre students have frequently won top research awards from the Central States Anthropological Society. Passariello graduated magna cum laude from Barnard College at Columbia University. She received master's and doctoral degrees in cultural anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley. Wilt has taught at Centre since 1967 and is professor of physics. He has directed a summer science program at the college for gifted high school students and a physics institute for high school teachers. Wilt also has chaired the sciences division at the college. Wilt routinely involves his students in collaborative research and, together, he and his students have built a laser and an electronic board to control it, as well as parts of an optical bench and other equipment. Wilt has published twenty papers in internationally recognized refereed journals, often with Center undergraduates as co-authors. He earned a bachelor's degree from Centre and completed a doctorate at Vanderbilt University. - end - Communications Office Public information coordinator: Patsi Barnes Trollinger |