May 15, 2003
Columbian Research Fellows Established
Faculty Members Selected to Finish Research, Departments
Develop High-Quality Replacement Plans
By Greg
Licamele
Six Columbian College of Arts and Sciences (CCAS) professors will spend
the next academic year as Columbian Research Fellows, allowing them
to continue or finish important research while their departments welcome
accomplished visiting faculty members as their teaching replacements.
“This program is important for the future of the college because
it invests directly in two important activities: the scholarly, creative,
and research programs of the faculty and the integration of research
and teaching,” says William Frawley, CCAS dean.
The following professors and their research were selected by a committee
of five peers and the dean’s office: Cornelius Bennhold, associate
professor of physics, will develop a new Center for Innovative Teaching
in Science and Engineering; Jeffrey Cohen, associate professor of English,
will complete his book, “The Flow of Blood in Medieval Norwich”;
Linda Levy Peck, professor of history, will complete her book, “Consuming
Splendor: Luxury Consumption and Cultural Borrowing in 17th Century
England”; Josef Pryztycki, professor of mathematics, will complete
two books on topology and knot theory; and Steven Tuch and Ronald Weitzer,
professors of sociology, will complete data collection and write a book
about police-minority relations in America.
These fully-funded professors are released from their teaching responsibilities
while working on their projects, but they are required to share their
research with the Columbian College and to help their departments develop
innovative replacement teaching plans.
“I find that time is my most precious resource,” Bennhold
says. “The fellows program provides time to put an idea in place
that benefits the college. I also feel that it contributes to a ‘sense
of community’ for the faculty within the Columbian College since,
in effect, the college as a whole says to me: ‘What you’ve
proposed sounds interesting, so we’ll pick up part of your teaching
load to allow you to implement this idea.’ ”
Bennhold says the new center will provide a forum for innovative ideas
in the teaching of science and engineering, something he and the physics
department have worked on over the last few years, most notably with
Respondex, the interactive classroom response system.
“This research activity clearly has great value to our mission
of science education and, by the increased interest in physics, the
results of such research may help the nation recover from a three-decade-long
decline in the number of physics majors,” says William Parke, chair
of the physics department.
While these faculty members are conducting their research, plans have
been developed by each department to bring in well-regarded replacements.
“We’re not only investing in a faculty member who is going
to complete research and bring something back to the University, but
while this person is working on his or her research project, we’re
bringing in accomplished scholars who are going to share their research
with undergraduates and graduates,” says Nina Mikhalevsky, CCAS
assistant dean for academic programs and planning.
Sociology’s Weitzer and Tuch will spend the fall semester writing
a book on policing and
racial minorities in the United States, covering such topics as
police misconduct, racial bias, community policing, and reforms to improve
police practices. They say the book is expected to break new ground
both in terms of its scholarly contribution and its implications for
changes in police practices and reforms in police department policies
— changes that should help to improve relations between the police
and minority groups. Weitzer and Tuch also will give a lecture describing
their work.
In return, the sociology department will bring in two scholars, one
whose interest is in race and the other in criminology: Jeremy Travis,
former director of the National Institute of Justice (the research branch
of the Department of Justice) and now a senior fellow at the Urban Institute
in Washington; and Chester Hartmann, president and executive director
of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council. Hartmann will teach
“Race Relations” in the fall and Travis will teach “Mass
Incarceration and Prisoner Reentry” in the spring. Each scholar
will give at least one public lecture to the GW community during their
time in residence.
“Crucially, the teaching plans for those replacing the Fellows
will have to involve senior faculty with undergraduates,” Frawley
says. “Part of ‘the deal,’ as it were, is that this investment
in research requires a concomitant investment in undergraduate teaching.”
Parke believes the high-quality teaching replacements create a winning
situation for CCAS and physics. Earl Skelton, currently a visiting professor
and formerly of the Naval Research Laboratories, will continue his teaching
endeavors. He recently taught a Hewlett Foundation-sponsored seminar
using Washington-area resources that emphasized hands-on learning. His
focus on new teaching methods, coupled with Bennhold’s work, will
position the department as an innovative place to study physics.
“Research in physics education has convincingly demonstrated that
‘teaching by telling’ through the traditional lecture is an
ineffective mode of physics instruction,” Bennhold says.
For Przytycki, his classroom obligations have precluded him from finishing
two books about topology and knot theory, topics he has researched with
his students for the last 15 years, eight of which have been at GW.
Przytycki will continue to teach his freshman Dean’s Seminar on
knots, even with his research release.
“This is an opportunity to do something we’ve always wanted
to do for Josef, but struggled to do before,” says Michael Moses,
CCAS associate dean for graduate studies and associate professor of
mathematics.
Frawley envisions the Columbian Research Fellows continuing each year.
“My own research experience is like my colleagues’: when my
best ideas were coming to fruition, I wished I had the support to give
me time to fine-tune them,” says Frawley, also a professor anthropology
and psychology. “Now that I’m in a position to allow these
things to happen, I thought it would be important to have a program
where faculty members would compete for the opportunity to bring projects
to completion, but with a critical twist — promote high-quality,
innovative teaching at the same time. The fellows program is very much
like a CCAS-internal think tank, a kind of Columbian Center for Advanced
Study that obligatorily connects idea-generation with teaching.”
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
