Nathan Sanders, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, will hold the honor for three years.

The professorships are named for Knoxville native James R. Cox, whose gifts to the university through his sister and nephew, Charlotte and Jim Musgraves, helped establish the professorships in 2002 for faculty in the arts, theater, biological and physical sciences, architecture, and forestry studies. Recipients are chosen for their excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service. The three-year award provides a stipend of $25,500 to be used at the recipient’s discretion.

Recipients of Cox Professorships are chosen by a committee designated by the chancellor from nominees submitted by the deans of the applicable colleges.

“The Cox Professorships are to honor faculty who are outstanding teachers, who dedicate their service to the university, community, and their profession, and who model excellence in scholarship,” said Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Susan Martin.

Sanders is very involved in his department, be it leading curriculum development or leading research teams, and can trace his passion for ecology and evolution back to his childhood.

“I grew up mostly on a farm in Arkansas and spent a lot of time running around in the woods behind my house looking for mountain lions, deer, bobcats, and the like. I never saw many of them, but I did see lots of ants crawling around. So, I wanted to know why. That question—why are some species common and some rare—drives my research. I especially want to know how climate change and invasive species determine the answer to that question,” Sanders said.

Sanders and his research team examine the causes and consequences of biodiversity in a changing world. Right now, they are focused on being able to forecast the responses of ant biodiversity to ever increasing temperatures and developing experiments to understand how climate change affects biodiversity in mountains.

Sanders recently received a grant for nearly $2 million from the National Science Foundation to fund research for this project. As primary investigator, he is collaborating with colleagues from Harvard University, North Carolina State University, and the University of Vermont.

Sanders also has been awarded the Omicron Delta Kappa Faculty Appreciation Award, the College of Arts and Sciences Junior Faculty Teaching Award, and the Chancellor’s Award for Professional Promise in Research and Creative Achievement.

Along with the prestigious professorships, the Cox family support extends to the College of Architecture and Design and renovations of the Alumni Memorial Building, for which the auditorium is now called the James R. Cox Auditorium.

Previous recipients of the Cox Professorship are Beauvais Lyons, a professor in the School of Art, and Gary McCracken, a professor and head of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

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C O N T A C T :

Stephanie Dixon (865-974-2125, sdixon7@utk.edu)

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, ablakely@utk.edu)

A three-part concert will follow the lecture.

This is the symphony orchestra’s first performance of the spring semester.

Both events are free and open to the public.

James Fellenbaum, director of UT orchestras, will present the pre-concert lecture, “Taking a Look at Mussorgsky’s Pictures” at 7:00 p.m. in the Alumni Memorial Building, Room 210.

Participants will hear the history behind the three concert pieces, Fellenbaum’s reasons for choosing them, and why he will be conducting each a certain way. They also will have the opportunity to ask questions.

The concert will follow at 8:00 p.m. in the Cox Auditorium, also in the Alumni Memorial Building, on the same floor as the lecture.

“The UT Symphony Orchestra’s performance of such a monumental work as Mussorgsky’s Pictures showcases how much the program at UT has developed and grown,” Fellenbaum said. “It’s a cause for some true ‘Volunteer’ pride.”

Pictures will be the premiere piece of the concert. The event also will include a strings composition which harkens back to when Fellenbaum played cello in a professional string quartet and a romantic viola concerto by Assistant Professor Hillary Herndon.

For more information, visit music.utk.edu/events, select February, and click on concert name. You may also e-mail the School of Music publicity office at musicnews@utk.edu or call 865-974-8935.

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C O N T A C T :

Barbara Hill (865-974-8935, bhill29@utk.edu)

Tricia Hepner

Tricia Hepner, center, with graduate students Adrianne Kembel, left, and Jaymelee Kim, right.

Tricia Hepner’s office is in Knoxville, but the heart and soul of her work is in Africa.

Hepner began her career as an expert in political and legal anthropology and human rights issues in the Horn of Africa. While she continues to work with refugees from the region, increasingly dangerous field conditions prompted her to refocus her research slightly southward to Africa’s Great Lakes region.

It is there, specifically in northern Uganda, that Hepner works with other professors and students to tackle complex post-conflict rebuilding issues.

Hepner, an associate professor of anthropology, matches students with non-governmental organizations relevant to their area of study. The students spend four weeks in the town of Gulu and surrounding villages talking to community members, working in hospitals, and contributing to peace-building initiatives.

“Students get the opportunity to apply knowledge from the classroom through service work. We focus on building relationships and learning Ugandan perspectives,” said Hepner. “They make friends with people whose lives have been shaped by the conflict and peace building. It really creates a much richer educational experience than is typically available from studying these issues at a distance.”

Hepner and Professor Rosalind Hackett co-direct the popular Gulu Study and Service Abroad Program (GSSAP), a five-week intensive course on human rights and humanitarian service work in northern Uganda. View the GSSAP blog at www.gssap.blogspot.com.

Theresa Lee, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences calls Hepner “a superb teacher and researcher who offers her students hands-on experience—and life-changing experiences—in Africa.”

Hepner is a member of UT’s Disasters, Displacement, and Human Rights (DDHR) focus in anthropology and chairs the migration and refugee studies division of UT’s Center for the Study of Social Justice.

In her free time, Hepner enjoys hiking in the southern Appalachian region and watching mixed martial arts.

Hepner received her bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Barnard College, Columbia University and her master’s degree and doctorate in anthropology from Michigan State University.

Suzanne Lenhart

Suzanne Lenhart at a girls' summer camp.

What do wildlife and math have in common?

They meld together Suzanne Lenhart’s research.

Lenhart, a mathematics professor and a Chancellor’s Professor, infuses ecological and natural resource issues with applied mathematics to model populations and diseases in species such as wild hogs, feral cats, and cattle. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation.

“Through ‘optimal control’ I try to suggest interventions and management decisions,” she said. “If one is managing a certain population of animals, what type of advice could I give? Through my research I’m trying to show the benefits of taking one action over another.”

In the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, Lenhart uses optimal control to study how to manage the spread of feral hogs and protect native species. This mathematical technique suggests strategies to affect the dynamics of a population over a period of time.

“These wild hogs are very invasive. We are trying to estimate the number of hogs in the park and model their dynamics and their spread of disease,” she said.

Lenhart is also the NIMBioS associate director for education, outreach, and diversity. In this position, she organizes summer research programs and conferences for undergraduates and summer camps for female students.

“I feel very strongly about working to promote diversity in the field. I especially want to give women the opportunity to learn about and understand different career options and convince them that they can make a positive contribution,” Lenhart said.

Lenhart also works with the Association for Women in Mathematics and the local chapter of the Association for Women in Science. She co-organizes the Bearden High School Math Club, which she has visited one afternoon per week for the past decade. In her free time she enjoys playing tennis.

Lenhart received her bachelor’s degree from Bellarmine College and her master’s degree and doctorate from the University of Kentucky.

Sarah Lowe

While working on websites for American Experience at a PBS station in Boston, Sarah Lowe picked up an interest in history.

Now an associate professor in the School of Art, Lowe channels her interest in history and her interactive media background to develop mobile platforms.

Lowe’s latest project, the “Beck Tour” mobile app for iPhone and iPad, takes the user on a contextual tour of Knoxville’s African American cultural hot spots. Users can read about the history, see photographs, and listen to narrative storytelling.

“The civil rights sit-in took place at the current UT Conference Center, which used to be Rich’s department store. You can imagine what was going on at that time,” Lowe said. “I love the ability to be more experiential with history.”

Lee said Lowe is “an outstanding teacher who brings her research and teaching to a diverse set of communities both inside and outside the university.”

This semester, Lowe and her students are working with Knoxville’s historic Blount Mansion. They will design a digital tour guide offering visitors a variety of historical perspectives, from the Blount family to Native Americans, slaves, and other Knoxvillians of the time. The project will be available on the Blount Mansion website with the goal of getting it to a mobile platform for tourists visiting the estate.

“Through these design projects, my students begin to see the value of history and how they can help tell a particular story,” Lowe said. “The person using the mobile app can then come to their own conclusions and see history from multiple cultural perspectives.”

A perk for Lowe’s students is the coveted chance to interact with professional clients and designers, while discovering ways to give back to the community.

“Teaching design isn’t just about aesthetics” Lowe said. “It’s about understanding how design can help organizations with a good mission, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Lowe received her master’s degree in graphic design from North Carolina State University and her bachelor of fine arts degree from UT.

Jay Rubenstein

Jay Rubenstein, associate professor of history, has experienced a renaissance of his own while at UT.

“When I first started working on medieval history, one of the things that I liked about it was that it was completely irrelevant,” Rubenstein said. “The Middle Ages was a sort of exotic, beautiful, but an uncared-about flower. It didn’t seem to have any connection to the big issues of the world.”

Following the events of September 11, 2001, all of that changed.

“In the last ten years, issues like theology, politics, and religious warfare—all of these topics—suddenly were in the headlines and people were looking back to things like the Crusades to try and explain them,” he said.

Rubenstein, a former Rhodes Scholar and 2007 recipient of the prestigious Macarthur Fellowship, explored these topics in his most recent book, Armies of Heaven: the First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse. The book is a gripping, apocalyptic narrative detailing the First Crusade of 1096-1099.

“I went in expecting the book to be very much a study of how people reacted to the Crusades in Europe and how people returning from the Crusades reintegrated into life. What I didn’t expect it to turn into was a study of apocalyptic thought and how ideas about the end of the world intersected with ideas about the Crusades.”

Rubenstein, who teaches for UT’s acclaimed Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, channels these often-controversial ideas into the classroom.

“The biggest challenge was to convince students that, yes, people were actually willing to fight for religion; that alone will drive a war,” he said.

Lively discussions between students often spark ideas for Rubenstein’s research and writings.

“Students now are more likely to come into class with ideas and interests. When I first started teaching it was more of a challenge to get people interested in the Middle Ages, but now if I offer a class on the Crusades there’s a certain sense that ‘yeah, this is interesting, it’s something I should know.’”

Outside the medieval research arena, Rubenstein enjoys watching old movies, reading crime novels, and traveling with his wife.

Rubenstein received his bachelor’s degree from Carleton College, his master of philosophy from the University of Oxford, St. John’s College, and his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley.

Jeff Sharlet

KNOXVILLE—Author and professor Jeff Sharlet will discuss the intersection of religion and politics in America at the second annual David L. Dungan Memorial Lecture at 7:00 p.m., Tuesday, February 28, in the Cox Auditorium of the Alumni Memorial Building at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Sharlet’s lecture is titled “The Noise of Democracy: Faith, Faithlessness, and the Country In Between,” and is presented by UT’s Department of Religious Studies.

“It is an honor to have Jeff Sharlet speak on campus,” said Rosalind Hackett, department head of Religious Studies. “Jeff is a major voice in discussions about religion in the public sphere.”

Sharlet, who teaches creative nonfiction at Dartmouth College and is a contributing editor to Rolling Stone and Harper’s, will discuss what he describes as the “cacophony choir” of religion in the United States and the tension between the American belief in the liberty of conscience and the problem of its practice.

“The sound of democracy isn’t perfect harmony but cacophony, many voices together and apart,” Sharlet writes.

Sharlet is the author of the best-selling book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, an expose of a secretive Christian community in Washington, DC, that ministers specifically to members of Congress. His latest book of essays is titled Sweet Heaven When I Die.

After the presentation, Sharlet will participate in a question-and-answer session, and a reception and book signing will follow.

Both events are free and open to the public. Public parking is available in the University Center parking garage.

Sponsors include the Department of English and the UT Issues Committee.

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C O N T A C T :

Charles Primm (865-974-5180, charles.primm@tennessee.edu)

Gordon Burghardt, joint professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and psychology, dressed as Charles Darwin for the 2009 Darwin Day Events with current Darwin Day coordinator and graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology, Jessica Welch.

Darwin Day is a three-day event which includes a teacher’s workshop, film screenings, a T-shirt design contest, information booth, and several talks and lectures.

“The goal of Darwin Day is to promote the understanding of evolution and its importance as a unifying concept in biology,” said ecology and evolutionary biology graduate student and Darwin Day 2012 coordinator Jessica Welch. “To do this, we sponsor many different events in the hopes that there will be a little something for everyone.”

UT alumni and world-renowned evolutionary biologists Rosemary Gillespie from the University of California, Berkeley, and Harry Greene from Cornell University will deliver keynote addresses at 7:00 p.m. on February 8 and 9. The careers of both scientists revolve around Darwin’s central concept of evolution by natural selection, and they will talk about its importance to their research.

“Darwin Day has become an expected and anticipated set of events here at UT that students and the public can rely for provocative lectures and informative workshops concerning evolution,” said Andrew Kramer, professor and head of UT’s anthropology department.

The event is sponsored by Darwin Day Tennessee, a Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology group. The group and the February celebration debuted in 1997, making it the longest-running Darwin Day event in the U.S. It joins other Darwin Day groups across the country to promote the importance of the concept of evolution.

For a schedule of events, visit the website at http://eeb.bio.utk.edu/darwin.

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C O N T A C T:

Jessica Welch (865-974-6188, jwelch14@utk.edu)

Whitney Heins (865-974-5460, wheins@utk.edu)

All UT Science Forum presentations are held from noon to 1:00 p.m. on Fridays in Dining Room C-D in the Arena Dining Hall of Thompson-Boling Arena. Membership in the forum is not required to attend the lectures; they are free and open to the public.

This semester’s lineup of forum programs will begin with a presentation by Flora Meilleur, assistant professor of biochemistry at North Carolina State University. Her presentation, “Neutrons for Biology and Bioenergy,” will cover research she is currently doing at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The UT Science Forum is proud to have been hosting weekly programs since 1933.

“Some professors on campus saw that science was getting very specialized. They wanted to keep up with what other people were researching, but there was so much going on with such diverse specialties, they could not always understand what others were doing,” said Mark Littmann, journalism professor and program chairman of the forum.

To remedy this, the professors took turns briefing the group on their research, especially to see if they could help each other and their students.

“I think the forum is continuing because it really serves an important purpose; there is so much cutting-edge research at UT, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and other local facilities, and people would like to know about it.”

Today, UT Science Forum programs are organized by Littmann. Alan Heilman, professor emeritus in botany, serves as the forum’s president; Sandra Twardosz, a professor in child and family studies, is vice president; and Mike Clark, an associate professor of earth and planetary sciences, is secretary-treasurer.

“This is not just for scientists, engineers, and health professionals. It’s also for everyone who has an interest in science but can’t follow a technical talk full of jargon. This is a chance for people to hear science presented at a level that they can understand and ask distinguished researchers questions about.”

Attendees are invited to bring their own lunch or purchase lunch at the arena. A forty-minute presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer period.

Future science forums will feature:

• February 10: David F. Cihak, associate professor of Education, will present “Apps for Autism,” explaining how life can be improved for autistic people, especially children.
• February 17: Mark Blevins is a history teacher and men’s basketball coach at Bearden High School. He will demonstrate his personal teaching practices in his presentation, “This Most Uncivilized War—Reenacting Civil War History in the Classroom.”
• February 24: No meeting
• March 2: Dawnie Wolfe Steadman is a professor of anthropology and the director of the Forensic Anthropology Center. Her talk, “Forensic Anthropology Goes Global: The Identification of Disappeared Persons,” will focus on identifying the remains of victims of terrorism and genocide.
• March 9: Terry C. Hazen is a UT/ORNL Governor’s Chair and a professor of civil and environmental engineering. Hazen will discuss the Gulf oil spill in regards to what degree nature can clean itself up in his presentation, “Can Mother Nature Take a Punch?”
• March 16, 23, 30, and April 6: No meetings
• April 13: Justin M. Beaver, of ORNL’s Computational Data Analytics Group, will present “Addressing Challenges in Cyber Security through Intelligent Computing.” In light of the recent foreign and anonymous hackings into government files, Beaver will cover digital spying and how to protect national and corporate computer systems against cyber-attacks.
• April 20: Dr. Tom Terrell is an associate professor of family medicine at the UT Graduate School of Medicine. He will speak about “Concussions in College Sports: Are There Genetic Factors that Influence Risk?”
• April 27: Norman Mannella, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, will deliver a talk titled “The Discovery of Quanta: The Birth of Modern Physics.” His presentation is an appreciation of how science came to its modern perspectives.

For additional information, visit the UT Science Forum web site.
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C O N T A C T :

Mark Littmann (865-974-8156, littmann@utk.edu)

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, ablakely@utk.edu)

Read his obituary in the Knoxville News Sentinel.

The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) has awarded a Certificate of Excellence to UT’s writing program, which includes the first-year composition (FYC) program and the Writing Center.

The award will be presented at the CCCC annual convention in St. Louis, Missouri, on March 23.

Stan Garner, professor and English Department head at UT, said receiving this award is a great honor.

“This award recognizes what we’ve long known, which is that our first-year composition program and our Writing Center are among the nation’s best,” Garner said. “We’re proud to receive this award.”

The award application cited the FYC program’s “rhetoric- and research-intensive curriculum that teaches transferable skills and prepares students to communicate and create new knowledge in the many different disciplinary communities they encounter in their undergraduate courses and beyond.”

Kirsten Benson, adjunct assistant professor of English and interim director of the FYC program, said the English 101 and 102 courses were redesigned several years ago as part of the implementation of a new FYC curriculum.

“Since all incoming UT students take these two English courses, we want the courses, and the first-year program as a whole, to help our students become better communicators across a wide range of academic disciplines,” Benson said.

The FYC program was the source of English professor John C. Hodges’s inspiration to create the Hodges Harbrace Handbook in 1941. Today, the program also hosts the Stokely Conference for Teaching Writing, a professional development conference that helps K-12 teachers in East Tennessee enhance the quality of writing at the elementary, middle, and high school levels.

The award application also cited the Writing Center, which was established in 1936. An endowment from the family of former UT Trustee William B. Stokely allowed the creation of a new facility for the Writing Center and the hiring of a full-time director in 1996.

Marcel Brouwers, English department lecturer and acting director of the Writing Center, said they receive thousands of student visits each year.

“Students from all over campus, from any subject area, come here seeking one-to-one help from our tutors, as well as the writing workshop courses we offer to first-year students,” Brouwers said. Those courses include individual tutoring as well as an extensive array of Blackboard-based writing resources.

The Writing Center also helps increase student retention by teaching English 103 and 104 during the UT LEAD summer program, which helps students from underperforming high schools get a good start to their college career.

The CCCC award selection committee recently notified UT that it had won the Certificate of Excellence, noting that UT’s overall writing program is “outstanding” and “demonstrates ongoing program assessments and studies with ample professional development for all instructors and also a strong two-semester requirement.”

To view a video about the writing program that accompanied the award application, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SFBGk2v73Y.

For more information about the first-year composition program, visit http://web.utk.edu/~english/academics/freshman.shtml. For more information about the Writing Center, visit http://writingcenter.utk.edu.

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CONTACT:

Stanton Garner (865-974-6927, sgarner@utk.edu)

Charles Primm (865-974-5180, charles.primm@tennessee.edu)

McSween is being awarded the J. Lawrence Smith Medal for his pioneering studies of the parent planets of meteorites and his work on the geological history of Mars using studies of Martian meteorites and spacecraft missions to the planet. In 1999, McSween led a team of researchers which discovered geologic evidence on a meteorite that water existed deep in Mars’s crust.

“Hap McSween is the epitome of the superb scientist, teacher, researcher, and university citizen,” said Theresa Lee, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “He began his academic career in the College of Arts and Sciences at UT, and throughout his stellar career he has been a torchbearer of the highest standards of excellence of the college and the university. We are, indeed, proud of this most recent recognition of his accomplishments.”

The medal and prize of $25,000 are awarded for recent original and meritorious investigations of meteoric bodies. The award was established as a gift from Sarah Julia Smith in memory of her husband and has been presented since 1888.

“Hap McSween is well-deserving of this honor,” said Larry McKay, professor and head of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. “He’s a great scholar who successfully combines world-class research with exceptional teaching and mentoring. Hap brings his research into the classroom, where he has inspired many students to pursue highly successful careers in the earth and planetary sciences. He’s also been a leader in communicating science to the public through numerous talks as well as recent books on planetary sciences aimed at the general reader.”

The recipients will be honored in a ceremony on April 30, during the National Academy of Sciences’ 149th annual meeting. McSween is one of seventeen honorees.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit institution that was established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It recognizes achievement in science by election to membership, and — with the National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council — provides science, technology, and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations.

For a complete list of the honorees, visit http://www.nasonline.org/news-and-multimedia/2012_01_19_Awards.html.

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C O N T A C T:

Whitney Heins (865-974-5460, wheins@utk.edu)