Scholar Awards
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in
Annual awards,
several each year, have been made since 1981 in recognition of
outstanding scholarship in the various social science disciplines.
Traditional forms of scholarship such as published books and
journal articles are typically very important in the selection
process, but other forms of scholarly activity, including the
application of research, can be as well.
Recipients need
not be members of the VSSA, but they must agree to attend the
awards luncheon at the
annual spring meeting; they will expected to reflect on their
professional career at a
plenary awards session at the meeting; and they will be invited
to submit a written version of their remarks for publication in the
next volume of the Virginia
Social Science Journal.
This section of our Web site supplies sketches of most of the more recent winners of VSSA scholar awards each year in select social science disciplines; most of these sketches originated in various issues of the VSSA Newsletter. A companion page lists all the winners on record since 1981 in each of the several disciplines.
2007 Scholar Award Recipients:
Dr. Thomas R. Morris is the author of The Virginia Supreme Court: An Institutional and Political Analysis (1975) and numerous other works on Virginia government and politics. He did his undergraduate work at VMI and earned his PhD at the University of Virginia. Then he taught for many years at the University of Richmond, where he was honored as University Distinguished Educator in 1982, chaired the Department of Political Science, and also chaired the Faculty Council. From 1992 to 2006, he served not only as a professor of political science at Emory and Henry College but also as president of the school. And then, in 2006, Governor Tim Kaine appointed Dr. Morris to his current post as Secretary of Education for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Across a distinguished career that has extended well beyond academe, as he worked in the realm of practitioner and contributed, too, to the education of the broader citizenry, he has often he served as a political analyst for television and newspapers, and he also chaired or served on two state commissions, one on taxation, the other on government efficiency.
Professor Rose Mary Sheldon‘s many publications include Intelligence Activities in Ancient Rome: Trust in the Gods, but Verify (2004) and Spies of the Bible: Espionage in Israel from the Exodus to the Bar Kokhba Revolt (2007). She earned a BA at Trenton State College in New Jersey, an MA at Hunter College in New York, and her PhD at the University of Michigan. After holding teaching positions at Montana State University, Norwich University, and elsewhere, she came to the Virginia Military Institute in 1993, where she is currently (spring 2007) professor of history and chair of the Department of History. A written version of her comments at the plenary session appears in a special section of the 2008 Virginia Social Science Journal.
The VSSA Scholar Award in Sociology was presented to O. Kendall White Jr., who is the William P. Ames Jr. Professor in Sociology and Anthropology at Washington and Lee University. His many publications include dozens of scholarly articles on such topics as race, feminism, marriage, and homosexuality and the Mormon Church, as well as Mormon Neo-Orthodoxy: A Crisis Theology (1987) and the co-edited Religion in the Contemporary South: Diversity, Community, and Identity (1995). He earned his BS and MS at the University of Utah and his PhD at Vanderbilt University. He came to Washington and Lee in 1969, and he has taught there ever since, with an extended stint as chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. His comments from the 2007 plenary session also appear in the 2008 Virginia Social Science Journal.
2006 Scholar Award Recipients:
Warren R. Hofstra, Stewart Bell Professor of History at Shenandoah University, received the 2006 Scholar Award in History. Author of A Separate Place: The Formation of Clarke County, Virginia (1986, 1999) and The Planting of New Virginia: Settlement and Landscape in the Shenandoah Valley (2004), he is also editor of George Washington and the Virginia Backcountry (1998) and co-editor of After the Backcountry: Rural Life in the Great Valley of Virginia, 1800–1900 (2000) and Virginia Reconsidered: New Histories of the Old Dominion (2003). At Shenandoah University, he directs the Community History Project. And with Brent Tarter of the Library of Virginia, he organized the first annual Virginia Forum, held in Winchester shortly after the 2006 VSSA conference.
Tomoko Hamada, the Margaret Hamilton Professor of Anthropology at The College of William and Mary, accepted the VSSA’s 2006 Scholar Award in Anthropology. She earned her BA in American studies at Vassar College, her MA in sociology at Keio University, and her PhD in anthropology at UC–Berkeley, and she taught in South Africa before coming to William and Mary. A contributor to various books and journals, she is the author of American Enterprise in Japan (1991), and she has co-edited such volumes as Cross-Cultural Management and Organizational Culture (1990) and Anthropological Perspectives on Organizational Culture (1994). She has done fieldwork in China, Japan, South Africa, and Spain, as well as the United States, particularly on business culture.
Sidney M. Milkis, winner of the Scholar Award in Political Science, is the White Burkett Miller Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, Chair of the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics there, and co-director of the American Political Development Program at the university’s Miller Center of Public Affairs. In addition to his dozens of articles and essays, his books include The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System since the New Deal (1993), Political Parties and Constitutional Government: Remaking American Democracy (1999), and eight others, most recently a co-edited volume, The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism (2005).
2005 Scholar Award Recipients:
James B. Campbell, Professor of Geography and former head of the department at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, is a specialist in physical geography and remote sensing. He earned his PhD from the University of Kansas in 1976. His book Introduction to Remote Sensing (1987, 1996, and now in its third edition, 2002) is one of the leaders in the field and has been widely adopted in North America and Europe. He has also published two other books — Mapping the Land: Aerial Imagery for Land Use Information (1996) and the co-authored Soil Landscape Analysis (1985) — and has authored or co-authored dozens of articles in professional journals. In 2003 he was on research assignment at the University of Rennes, where he investigated the history of coastal reclamation in southwestern France. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the U.S. Forest Service. The Association of American Geographers and the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing have both honored him with outstanding service awards. At Virginia Tech he teaches classes in remote sensing, photointerpretation, geomorphology, and quantitative methods.
Ann J. Lane, Professor of History and Studies of Women and Gender at the University of Virginia, received her PhD in history from Columbia University in 1968. With her early research focusing on the history of the U.S. South, and especially on African American history, she authored The Brownsville Affair: National Crisis and Black Reaction (1971) and edited The Debate over Slavery: Stanley Elkins and his Critics (1971). Then her focus shifted to women's history, and she has since published books on Charlotte Perkins Gilman, including To Herland and Beyond: The Life and Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1990), and on the feminist historian Mary Ritter Beard. She has received prestigious grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Association of University Women. In addition to her scholarship, Professor Lane served as the Director of the Studies of Women and Gender Department from 1990 to 2003 and has played a prominent role in the academic life of the University of Virginia.
2004 Scholar Award Recipients:
Charles A. Holt received his BA in 1970 from Washington and Lee University and his PhD in economics from Carnegie Mellon University. He has taught since 1983 at the University of Virginia, where is the A. Willis Robertson Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Economics and has served as Department Chair, Graduate Director, and Undergraduate Director. His publications include more than 60 journal articles and book chapters involving economics research and 18 articles on teaching economics and using experiments in the classroom, published in such top economics journals as the American Economic Review, International Economic Review, and the Journal of Political Economy, as well as in such top journals of other disciplines as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Political Science Review, Psychology and Marketing, and the Journal of Law and Economics. Numerous grants have supported his teaching and research, including 11 National Science Foundation grants. Two current NSF grants are “Collaborative Research: Economics Experiments to Prepare Secondary Teachers and Reinforce Understanding of Basic Economics” and a multi-million dollar multi-disciplinary 5-year grant entitled “Game Theory and Social Interactions: A Virtual Collaboratory for Teaching and Research.” Dr. Holt founded the journal Experimental Economics in 1998 and continues to co-edit it. He has served as president of the Southern Economic Association and the Economic Science Association, on the Board of Editors of the American Economic Review, and as an Associate Editor for the journals Economic Theory and the International Journal of Game Theory.
Glen Susmann, of Old Dominion University, is chair of the Department of Political Science there and this year’s Scholar Award winner in that discipline. His BA is from UCLA, his MA from San Francisco State University, and his PhD from Washington State University. Before coming to ODU he taught at Morningside College, and more recently he has been a visiting professor at Kitakyushu University in Japan. Topics of his many journal articles and book chapters include trade politics, peace activists, media coverage of public affairs, and the environment as a public policy issue in Virginia. His recent publications include the co-authored books The American Presidency and the Social Agenda (2001) and American Politics and the Environment (2002).
Peter Wallenstein teaches in the Department of History at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He did his undergraduate work at Columbia and his graduate work at Johns Hopkins, and, before coming to Virginia Tech in 1983, he taught at Sarah Lawrence College, at the University of Toronto, and with the University of Maryland’s program on military bases in Japan, Korea, and Guam. He has published dozens of journal articles and book chapters on the history of the U.S. South, and he has served on the board of editors of the University of Virginia Press and the Journal of Southern History. He is the author of From Slave South to New South: Public Policy in Nineteenth-Century Georgia (1987), Tell the Court I Love My Wife: Race, Marriage, and Law—An American History (2002), and Blue Laws and Black Codes: Conflict, Courts, and Change in Twentieth-Century Virginia (2004). He has co-edited The Encyclopedia of American Political History (2001) and a forthcoming collection of essays, Virginia’s Civil War (2005). In addition, his work on the history of higher education has led to Virginia Tech, Land-Grant University, 1872–1997: History of a School, a State, a Nation (1997) and From VPI to State University: President T. Marshall Hahn Jr. and the Transformation of Virginia Tech, 1962–1974 (2004). Dr. Wallenstein’s teaching passion emphasizes what he calls “undergraduate research at a research university,” but he has also directed or served on more than 30 MA thesis committees.
2003 Scholar Award Recipients:
Spencer C. Tucker is the John Biggs ’30 Cincinnati Professor of History at the Virginia Military Institute. A VMI alumnus, Dr. Tucker earned his PhD from UNC at Chapel Hill and went on to teach at Texas Christian University for 30 years before returning to VMI in 1997. An authority on military history, his publications have garnered numerous awards. His many books include Andrew Hull Foote, Civil War Admiral on Western Waters (2000); A Short History of the Civil War at Sea (2001); and Brigadier General John D. Imboden: Confederate Commander in the Shenandoah (2002). The numerous reference works he has edited, and to which he has contributed hundreds of entries, include Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (3 vols., 1998) and Encyclopedia of the Korean War (3 vols., 2000). He has directed twenty-four graduate theses and has established foreign study programs to Hungary and Vietnam.
Larry J. Sabato, who is often called the “most quoted professor in the country,” is the Robert Kent Gooch Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs and University Professor at the University of Virginia, where he is the Director of the Center for Politics. After completing his BA at UVA, he was a Woodrow Wilson Scholar at Princeton. As a Rhodes Scholar, he attended Oxford, where he received his doctorate and became a Lecturer. He joined the UVA faculty in 1978. His early books included The Party’s Just Begun: Shaping Political Parties for America’s Future (1988), Paying for Elections: The Campaign Finance Thicket (1989), and his very well-known Feeding Frenzy: How Attack Journalism Has Transformed American Politics (first published in 1991). A recent book is Overtime! The Election 2000 Thriller (2001). He has received Outstanding Teacher awards at the university and from SCHEV. Dr. Sabato cut his teeth on politics as a teenaged follower of Henry Howell. His experience and the interests reflected in his books led him to begin programs at the Center for Politics that emphasize civic education and participation.
Thomas R. Allen Jr. is associate professor of Geography at Old Dominion University. Recruited by VSSA members Chris Drake and Don Zeigler, Tom matriculated as a member of the Honors Program and was the Outstanding Geography Graduate in the class of 1991. He went on to get his PhD from UNC Chapel Hill in 1995, and in 1996 he returned to ODU, where he won the Instructional Technology Teaching Award in 2001. His research focus has been the integration of geographic information services and satellite remote sensing. One recent grant, sponsored by the NASA Stennis Space Center in the amount of $75,000, was for “Remote Sensing Applications in Landscape Epidemiology: Mosquito Control and Disease Surveillance.”
Dr. Allen has
made 40 conference presentations and has published four book
chapters, several technical reports, eight conference proceedings,
and eight articles, among them “Topographic Context of Glaciers and
Perennial Snowfields, Glacier National Park, Montana.”
2002 Scholar Award Recipients (partial list):
Frederic J. Baumgartner is Professor of History at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, where he has taught since 1976. An active participant in the affairs of his department, the university, and professional associations, he has served as president of the Southern Historical Association’s European Section, president of the American Catholic Historical Association, president of the Faculty Association of the College of Arts and Sciences at Virginia Tech, and president of the Virginia Tech chapter of the American Association of University Professors. His many publications include From Spear to Flintlock: A History of War in Europe to the French Revolution (1991), Louis XII (1994), France in the Sixteenth Century (1995), and Longing for the End: A History of Millennialism in Western Civilization (2001).
Annie S. Barnes is Professor Emerita of Sociology and Anthropology at Norfolk State University. With a BA from Shaw and an MA from Atlanta University, she took her PhD from the University of Virginia. She served as president of the VSSA in 1983–84 and received a SCHEV teaching award in 1988. Her early books included The Black Middle Class Family: A Society of Black Subsociety, Neighborhood, and Home in Interaction (1985) and Single Parents in Black America: A Study in Culture and Legitimacy (1987. Her major work is Say It Loud: Middle Class Blacks Talk about Racism and What To Do about It (2000), which was published in paperback under the title Everyday Racism: A Book for All Americans (2000). She is currently revising her autobiography, projected to appear as Annie Lee. Dr. Barnes has been professionally active in so many ways over the years. Her fame has recently stemmed from her dozens of radio appearances across the nation, especially commenting on racial violence.
John M. Kramer is professor and chair of the Department of Political Science and International Affairs at Mary Washington College. He took his PhD from the University of Virginia, where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a University Fellow, and a Du Pont Fellow. He has held research fellowships at Harvard and at National Defense University and has had a Fulbright Fellowship. During his tenure at Mary Washington, he has also taught at the U.S. Marine Command and continues today as visiting professor at the Naval War College and resident scholar at the Naval Staff College. Dr. Kramer is the author of The Energy Gap in Eastern Europe (1990); 24 articles; 13 book chapters; and some 75 professional papers.
Leonard I. Ruchelman is Eminent Professor of Urban Studies and Public Administration at Old Dominion University. He taught at West Virginia, Alfred, and Lehigh before coming to Old Dominion in 1975. He has published some 26 book chapters and journal articles, including in the Virginia Social Science Journal. His books include Who Rules the Police? (1973); The World Trade Center: Politics and Policies of Skyscraper Development (1977); and Cities in the Third Wave: The Technological Transformation of Urban America, as well as such guides as A Workbook in Program Design for Public Managers (1985) and A Workbook in Redesigning Public Services (1989). Dr. Ruchelman is highly respected for his consulting work, especially in Tidewater Virginia.
2001 Scholar Award Recipients:
Edward L. Ayers is the Hugh P. Kelly Professor of History at the University of Virginia. Dr. Ayers has a BA from Tennessee and a PhD from Yale. His many publications, largely on the South and on the Civil War, include the prize-winning Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the Nineteenth-Century American South (1984) and the prize-winning The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction (1992). He is the primary force behind the development of "Valley of the Shadow," the nationally acclaimed multi-media history of two counties during the Civil War, one in Virginia, the other in Pennsylvania. This project demonstrates the possibilities for using archival data to motivate students and provide research in original materials. He won a SCHEV Outstanding Faculty Award in 1991 and was a National Book Award finalist in 1992.
Donelson R. Forsyth is Professor of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University. Because a high school friend wrote an application for Dr. Forsyth, he found himself an undergraduate at Florida State, where he had a double major in psychology and sociology. At the University of Florida, he blended the two fields and received his PhD in social psychology. His many publications include An Introduction to Group Dynamics (1983) and Social Psychology (1987). He has been named as Outstanding Professor at the department and university levels.
Susan Kent, Eminent Professor of Anthropology at Old Dominion University, received her PhD from Washington State University. She was brought to the discipline by reading a book on archaeology when she was in the seventh grade and becoming hooked on the notion of gathering physical data from field sites. Her early work centered on the American Southwest, for example on the Navajo, and then she shifted her focus to Africa. Her major work, involving almost annual trips to Botswana and elsewhere, has centered on the bushmen of southern Africa and changes in society in which people evolve from a nomadic to a more sedentary existence. She has written dozens of book chapters and journal articles, as well as Analyzing Activity Areas: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of the Use of Space (1984). Books she has edited include Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space: An Interdisciplinary Cross-Cultural Study (1990); Cultural Diversity among Twentieth-Century Foragers: An African Perspective (1996); and Gender in African Archaeology (1998).
Lewis P. Fickett, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Mary Washington College, has had three careers: academic, political, and public service, as reflected in his three Harvard degrees: Law, public administration, and PhD. After a tenure as a foreign service officer, he moved to Fredericksburg, where he used a Ford Foundation Grant to infuse the Mary Washington curriculum with South Asian politics. Along the way, he served four terms in the Virginia House of Delegates, in part because he was so appalled that the state did not provide free textbooks to students in public schools, and he is remembered for his battles for minimum wage and the sales tax, and his Maine accent. His publications include The Major Socialist Parties of India: A Study in Leftist Fragmentation (1976).
William L. Morrow, Professor Emeritus of Government at The College of William and Mary, is honored as the first recipient of the VSSA’s scholar award in Public Administration. He spent 29 years at William and Mary, where he became John Marshall Professor of Government and also received the Chi Omega Award for excellence in teaching. He received his BA from Southwest Missouri State University and an MA and PhD from the University of Iowa. In 1965 he was a Congressional Fellow, working for Sen. Stuart Symington and Rep. Lee Hamilton, and in 1973 he became a Public Administration Fellow, working in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. His publications, which are primarily concerned with the connections between public bureaucracies and the larger democratic system, include Congressional Committees (1969), Public Administration: Politics, Policies, and the Political System (1980), and A Republic If You Can Keep It: Constitutional Politics and Public Policy (2000).
2000 Scholar Award Recipients:
Andrew I. Kohen,
the 2000 VSSA Scholar Award winner in
Economics, received his
undergraduate degree in from Wayne State; his MA from Yale; and his
PhD from Ohio State in 1973.
After teaching at the University of Connecticut and holding
two research positions, he came to
James Madison University
as associate professor in 1976 and became professor in 1983.
At JMU he has served as chair of the Faculty Senate, and
beyond the campus, he has been president of Beth El Congregation and
sits on the Virginia/North Carolina Regional Advisory Board of the
Anti-Defamation League.
Professor Kohen’s many publications include
Years for
Decision: A Longitudinal
Study of the Educational and Labor Market Experience of Young Women
(1976).
Melvin I. Urofsky, the 2000 VSSA Scholar Award winner in History, holds the PhD from Columbia and a law degree from the University of Virginia. Recognized in particular as a preeminent scholar on constitutional issues, his many books include Big Steel and the Wilson Administration: A Study in Business-Government Relations (1969), American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust (1976), Louis D. Brandeis and the Progressive Tradition (1980), Felix Frankfurter: Judicial Restraint and Individual Liberties (1991), Affirmative Action on Trial: Sex Discrimination in Johnson v. Santa Clara (1997), and Lethal Judgments: Assisted Suicide and American Law (2000). He has lectured in Australia, Burma, Canada, France, Malaysia, Turkey, and various other countries. He has received numerous grants and fellowships, and in 1995 Virginia Commonwealth University bestowed on him its highest faculty recognition, the Award of Excellence.
Stephen E. Wright, Geography, holds a BA in Geography, an MA in Urban Studies, and the PhD in Agricultural and Extension Education, all from the University of Maryland. He worked as cartographer/research analyst with Earth Satellite Corporation and the World Bank. Then he worked for eight years in the U.S. Department of Defense before coming in 1990 to James Madison University, where in 1998 he became Co-Director of the Applied Spatial Research Center. He is the author of more than 300 maps. At JMU, he has held numerous committee positions, often dealing with the utilization of information technology.
1999 Scholar Award Recipients:
Emmert F. Bittinger, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Bridgewater College, is recognized as one of the nation's authorities on the history and sociology of the Church of the Brethren, in which he is an ordained minister, as was his father. His ties to Bridgewater College include his son-in-law, Carl Bowman, Chair of the Sociology Department. He received his BA from Bridgewater and his PhD from the University of Maryland. His publications include Heritage and Promise: Perspectives on the Church of the Brethren (1970; revised 1983) and Allegheny Passage: Churches and Families of West Marva District (1990), as well as some 28 articles on the Brethren and Mennonite congregations, particularly in Virginia and Maryland.
Steve A. Yetiv, Associate Professor of Political Science at Old Dominion University, is recognized as a national and international authority on the Middle East. He is the author of The Persian Gulf Crisis (1997), which was named by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Book of 1998, as well as America and the Persian Gulf: The Third Party Dimension in World Politics (1995). He has also published 12 articles in leading journals in the field. Steve earned his BA and MA at the University of Akron and his PhD at Kent State. He was a Research Fellow and Teaching Fellow at Harvard prior to his coming in 1993 to ODU, where he is Associate Director of Graduate Programs in International Studies and Director of the MA and PhD track on Interdependence. Recipient of The Secretary's Open Forum Distinguished Public Service Award, he has been a consultant to the U.S. State Department, and his extensive media experience includes appearances on CNN, C-Span, Voice of America, National Public Radio, and AP, as well as more than 230 different op-ed pieces in various US newspapers. He was nominated by ODU for SCHEV's 1998 Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award.
1998 Scholar Award Recipients:
Ronald E. Carrier holds a degree in Economics from the University of Illinois and is honored this year as a scholar in that field. He has authored one book — Plant Location Analysis: An Investigation of Plant Locations in Tennessee (1969) — and over 30 articles and monographs on economics and education. But he is best known as the "President Laureate" of Virginia, having served as President of James Madison University since 1971. He took the opportunity to regale the audience with experiences in academe that had the group laughing. Many of us did not realize that he started his career at Ole Miss as an economics professor and then moved to Memphis State, where he rose to the position of Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs before coming to JMU. As he anticipates retirement this year, he can look back on a phenomenal record of growth and improvements at that institution.
Robert D. Reid is the first person since 1993 to receive recognition with a VSSA scholar award in Business. He received the BS and MS from the University of Wisconsin-Stout, before learning that it was cold up there and moving to Virginia Tech to take an EdD in 1985. He taught first at Tech and then at James Madison University, where he held the J. Willard Marriott Professor of Hospitality and Tourism Management and served as head of the Department of Marketing and Hospitality Management before becoming dean of the College of Business in 1996. He is in great demand as a consultant in the industry. His publications include the book Hospitality Marketing Management, which has appeared in multiple editions.
Vinson H. Sutlive, the 1998 scholar award recipient in Anthropology, is well-known to the VSSA; he served for several years on the executive committee before becoming VSSA president in 1991, and in 1995 he was awarded the Association’s Zamora Distinguished Service Award. He holds a BA in Psychology, a Bachelor of Divinity degree, and an MA in Foreign Studies, so it was only logical that he earn a PhD in Anthropology from Pittsburgh. He and his wife served as missionaries to Sarawak from 1957 until 1972. Then he came to the College of William and Mary, where he served as department chair for 11 years. He is executive director of the Borneo Research Council, and from 1993 to 1998 he was president of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. His publications, primarily on the cultures of Borneo and Malaysia, include Natural Disasters and Cultural Responses (1986) and Female and Male in Borneo: Contributions and Challenges of Gender Studies (1991).
Paul L. Knox, recognized this year in Geography, is University Distinguished Professor and Dean of the College of Architecture and Urban Studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. A native of England, he took his BA and PhD from the University of Sheffield. His books include The Geography of Western Europe: A Socio-Economic Survey (1984), The United States — A Contemporary Human Geography (1988), The Restless Urban Landscape (1993), and World Cities in a World System (1995). He has also published more than 40 refereed articles and over 25 book chapters, and he is a co-editor or review editor for 6 journals. Professor Knox is listed as one of 55 "new centurions" — individuals whose work has been cited more than 100 times in the Social Science Citation Index. In 1989 he received his college's award for Teaching Excellence.
James I. Robertson Jr., Alumni Distinguished Professor of History at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, is widely recognized as a leading authority on Virginia and the Civil War. A prolific author, his work has received major awards for Civil War studies. His many books include General A. P. Hill: The Story of a Confederate Warrior (1987) and Soldiers Blue and Gray (1988). His latest, Stonewall Jackson — The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (1997), is a main selection of the History Book Club and the Book of the Month Club, and movie rights have already been sold. A native of Danville, he earned his undergraduate degree at Randolph-Macon College and his graduate degrees at Emory University.
Murray Milner is a Texan by birth and received a BSc from Texas A & M, an MDiv from Union Theological Seminary, an MA from Texas, and the PhD from Columbia. He is Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia, where he chaired the department from 1989 to 1993. He served as the Director of the East Pakistan Relief and Rehabilitation Program of the National Council of Churches, before going to the Bureau of Social Science Research at New York University, and he came to Charlottesville in 1972. He has received the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Publication Award, has been a visiting scholar at the London School of Economics and at Cambridge, and was Senior Fulbright Fellow to India. He has produced a television documentary on living with the threat of nuclear war, and he has served on the executive committees of the AAUP at the local and state levels. Professor Milner is the author of The Illusion of Equality: The Effect of Education on Opportunity, Inequality, and Social Conflict (1972); Unequal Care: A Case Study of Interorganizational Relations in Health Care (1980), and Status and Sacredness: A General Theory of Status Relations and an Analysis of Indian Culture (1994).
1997 Scholar Award Recipients:
Charles T. Goodsell, the 1997 recipient of the VSSA Scholar Award in Political Science, is one of the best known scholars in the field of Public Administration in America. With a BA from Kalamazoo College, he went on to receive an MPA, an MA, and his PhD from Harvard University. He taught at Southern Illinois University from 1966 to 1978, when he came to Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, where he is Professor in the Center for Public Administration and Policy. His vita contains 5 books, including The Case for Bureaucracy; 15 chapters in books; over 50 articles; and 35 papers read at professional meetings. He is on the editorial boards of 3 journals, has done extensive consulting work, and still finds time for political party activity and church work.
Joseph D. Enedy, Geography, received his BS from Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania, an MS from Eastern Michigan University, and his PhD from Kent State University. He began his career as a teacher in Dearborn, Michigan, and came to James Madison University in 1971, where he is Professor and Department Head. He is statewide coordinator of the Virginia Geographic Alliance and editor of its Newsletter, and he has hosted numerous workshops and summer institutes for teachers at James Madison University. Dr. Enedy is the author of various articles primarily concerned with geographic education and the interrelationships between geography and technology.
1996 Scholar Award Recipients:
Robert W. Morrill, the 1996 Scholar Award winner in Geography, has become known nationwide for his leadership role in the scholarship of teaching. The national reform movement in pre-collegiate geographic education has been powered by two ground-breaking documents: the 1984 Guidelines for Geographic Education and the 1994 Geography for Life: The National Geography Standards. Bob Morrill served as an author of both and has been a driving force for restoring geography to the American school curriculum. He has served as President of the National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE) and on the Steering Committee of the Geographic Education National Implementation Project. One of his articles in the Journal of Geography commanded an excellence award from the NCGE. His service to geographic education in Virginia was recognized by Governor Baliles in 1990 when he was appointed State Geographer. Recently, his publications have focused on the integration of Geographic Information Systems into college geography courses with funding from NSF and the U.S. Department of Education. With a PhD from Clark University, he arrived at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1973.
Peter S. Onuf, chair of the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia, holds the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professorship. He earned his bachelor's and doctoral degrees at Johns Hopkins University and, prior to coming to Charlottesville in 1989, taught at Columbia University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and other schools. Professor Onuf has authored two books, The Origins of the Federal Republic (1983) and Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance (1987). He has co-authored six more, most recently All Over the Map: Rethinking Region and Nation in the United States (1996). His articles and essays now number thirty. Five of those appeared in the William and Mary Quarterly, the outstanding journal for the history of early America; one was named the best article published in the Quarterly in 1986. He has served as a member of the Council of the Institute of Early American History and Culture since 1993 and is currently President-elect of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic.
Carl Bowman is Professor of Sociology at Bridgewater College. He did his undergraduate work at Elizabethtown College, received an MS in sociology from the University of Wisconsin, and was awarded his PhD in sociology from the University of Virginia. He taught briefly at his alma mater before coming to Bridgewater in 1986, where he is now chair of the department. His research interests have included opinion research on abortion and the culture of Chicanos. His major contribution has involved the culture of the Church of the Brethren, on which his publications include Brethren Society: The Cultural Transformation of a "Peculiar People" (1995). Not yet published is On the Backroad, Heaven Bound: Old Order Hutterites, Mennonites, Amish, and Brethren, co-authored with Donald B. Kraybill. He has done research for the Church of the Brethren and presently is a member of the Board of Trustees of Bethany Theological Seminary.
1995 Scholar Award Recipients:
Stephen E. Plog is Professor of Anthropology and Chairman of the Department of Anthropology at University of Virginia. He received the BA, MA, and PhD at the University of Michigan. His research interests are in the area of archaeological method and theory with an emphasis on stylistic and ceramic analysis, social organization, demography, and exchange networks. He has studied the evolution of prehistoric societies in the American Southwest and in Mesoamerica. His books include Stylistic Variation of Prehistoric Ceramics: Design Analysis in the American Southwest (1980).
Brian W. Blouet
is the Fred Huby Professor of
Geography and International Education, in the School of
Education and Department of Government, at The
College of William and Mary.
He received his BA and PhD at the University of Hull.
Prior to coming to College of William and Mary in 1989, he
taught at the University of Sheffield, Oxford University, the
University of Nebraska, and Texas A&M University.
Professor Blouet’s research emphases are far-ranging, and he
is an active participant in the Virginia Geographic Alliance and the
geographic study of Williamsburg and
Jamestown.
His books include Halford Mackinder: A
Biography (1987), the co-authored
Human Geography:
People, Places, and Cultures (1986), and the co-edited
works The Great Plains:
Environment and Culture (1979) and
Latin America and the
Caribbean: A Systematic
and Regional Survey (1993).
Paul Finkelman, this year’s History Scholar, has been teaching at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University since 1992. He previously taught at the University of Texas, the Texas Law School, the State University of New York at Binghamton, and the Brooklyn Law School. He received his PhD at the University of Chicago and was a Fellow in Law and History at Harvard Law School. Professor Finkelman’s work is mostly in American legal history, with an emphasis on race relations. He is the author of An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity (1981) and the editor of dozens of other books. He has presented more than 100 lectures and papers in the U.S and around the world, has served on various editorial and advisory boards, and is co-editor of the Legal History of the South series with the University of Georgia Press.
Edward H. Peeples is Associate Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health at the Medical College of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University. He received his MA in Human Relations from the University of Pennsylvania and the PhD in Sociology with a concentration in Medical Behavioral Science from the University of Kentucky. His recent scholarly interests have emphasized confronting violence, AIDS, human relations, and patterns of discrimination. He has headed the Violence Prevention Project, an ongoing cooperative project involving the Department of Preventive Medicine and VCU’s Center for Public Service, which investigates the patterns of, possible causes of, and likely remedies for the epidemic of violence in our urban areas, such as the City of Richmond. He is a community scholar in the truest sense.
1994 Scholar Award Recipients (partial list):
Edgar A. Toppin, the 1994 winner of the Scholar Award in History, has authored or co-authored ten books. With degrees from Howard University and Northwestern University, Dr. Toppin taught at Alabama State College, Fayetteville State College, and then the University of Akron before moving to Virginia State University, where he taught from 1964 until his retirement in 1993. At Virginia State, Professor Toppin also served as Dean of the School of Graduate Studies and as Provost. His vast professional service (much of it current) outside the university includes membership on the Board of Trustees of the Virginia Historical Society and of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and on the Board of Directors of Richmond Renaissance and the Black History Museum and Cultural Center in Richmond. He has served as chairman of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy as well as president of the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History.
G. Rodney Thompson, Professor of Finance at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, is the 1994 VSSA Scholar Award winner in Business Administration. Early in his career he worked for U.S. Steel and Litton Industries. With a PhD in economics in 1976 from the University of Florida, he has taught at Virginia Tech since 1982, after earlier teaching posts at Bentley College in Massachusetts and Salisbury State College in Maryland. He has won teaching awards at Virginia Tech and has taught or made presentations in China, Russia, Albania, and Lithuania. Among the places his many publications have appeared are the Journal of Applied Business Research, the Quarterly Journal of Business and Economics, and the Journal of Financial Research.
Diana Scully, professor sociology and women’s studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, is the 1994 recipient of VSSA Scholar Award in Sociology. She received her PhD from the University of Illinois–Chicago in 1976. Widely hailed for her influential research on women’s health issues and on violence against women, her publications include Men Who Control Women’s Health: The Miseducation of Obstetrician–Gynecologists (1980, 1994), Understanding Sexual Violence: A Study of Convicted Rapists (1990), a book chapter in the recent Violence against Women: The Bloody Footprint (1993), and a foreword to the book Surviving the Dalkon Shield IUD: Women v. the Pharmaceutical Industry (1994).
1993 Scholar Award Recipients:
The 1993 VSSA Scholar Award in History goes to Dr. Young-tsu Wong, Professor of History at Virginia Tech. Born in Shanghai, China, he earned degrees from National Taiwan University, the University of Oregon, and the University of Washington. He has taught at Tech since 1971. During that time, he has translated one volume, edited another, and authored eight more. His more recent monographs, parts of a long-term effort to conceive and execute the history of many centuries of Chinese historiography, include Search for Modern Nationalism: Zhang Binglin and Revolutionary China (1989) and Rejuvenating a Tradition: Reform and Revolution in Modern China (1990).
Dr. Harold F. Gortner is the 1993 winner of the VSSA Scholar Award in Political Science. With degrees from Earlham College and Indiana University, he has taught for the past ten years at George Mason University, where he chaired the Department of Public Affairs from 1983 to 1990. His books are Administration in the Public Sector (1977), Organization Theory: A Public Perspective (co-authored, 1987), and, reflecting his focus on ethics in public administration, Ethics for Public Managers (1991).
Dr. Robert Sigethy receives this year’s VSSA Scholar Award in Business Administration. He has served since 1987 as dean of the School of Business at Marymount University. His degrees are from Lehigh University, Purdue University, and American University, and he previously taught and served as dean at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. His publications include many proprietary reports for the U.S. Air Force and the Analytic Science Corporation on the management of technology, industrial preparedness, and mobilization of resources.
Dr. James P. O’Brien is presented the VSSA Distinguished Scholar Award in Psychology. He is professor of psychology at Tidewater Community College, the Virginia Beach campus, where he has taught since 1972. His research interests include adult higher education, communication systems for the physically challenged, military systems, social ethics, race relations, and personnel selection, training, and evaluation. His publications include The Soldier Dimension in Battle (five co-authored volumes, 1983). His degrees are from the University of Richmond, Virginia Commonwealth University, and The Catholic University of America. He has been elected president of the Virginia Academy of Science.
Dr. George E. Hoffer received the 1993 VSSA Scholar Award in Economics. He is professor of economics in the School of Business at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he has taught since 1970. Dr. Hoffer’s research has focused on the area of transportation economics—the automobile industry, from auto safety to the used car market—and has led to dozens of publications. His expertise has led to service as a high-level consultant to the Federal Trade Commission as well as being quoted in the major newspapers and on national evening news shows. His degrees are from the University of Richmond, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and the University of Virginia.
The 1993 VSSA Scholar Award in Anthropology goes to Dr. John Milton McDaniel III, whose PhD is from the University of Pennsylvania. Professor of anthropology at Washington and Lee University, where he has taught since 1972, he has published in the areas of physical as well as cultural anthropology, yet much of his work has focused on historical site archaeology. One hallmark of his teaching over the years has been his extensive involvement of students in fieldwork. The history of Liberty Hall Academy, antecedent to Washington and Lee, is one area of inquiry that has related his archaeological investigations, his students’ fieldwork, and his papers and publications.