Board approves emeritus status for eight faculty members

Board approves emeritus status for eight faculty members

BY LINDSEY FIELDER
Rice News staff

Effective July 1, eight faculty members join the ranks of professors emeriti.

Sidney Burrus

Sidney Burrus, the Maxfield and Oshman Professor Emeritus of Engineering, has been a faculty member for 40 years. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Rice in 1958 and 1960, respectively, and returned to join the faculty in 1965 after earning his doctorate at Stanford. Burrus has served as chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, director of the Computer and Information Technology Institute and master of Lovett College. He became dean of the George R. Brown School of Engineering in 1998.

Throughout his career, Burrus has been honored for his work in the classroom and in research laboratories. He received teaching awards throughout his tenure as a faculty member at Rice. He earned a Humboldt Award in 1975, a Senior Fulbright Fellowship in 1985, was a distinguished lecturer for the Signal Processing Society and for the Circuits and Systems Society from 1989 through 1992, and received the Signal Processing Society Award in 1995.

Robert Curl

Robert Curl, University Professor Emeritus and the Pitzer-Schlumberger Professor Emeritus of Natural Sciences, has been a faculty member for 47 years. He received his bachelor’s degree from Rice in 1954 and his Ph.D. from the University of California–Berkeley in 1957. Curl returned to join the faculty at Rice in 1958 as assistant professor. He became a full professor in 1967. He served as the first master of Lovett College.

Curl’s research activities have focused on several fields of physical chemistry, with the most consistent theme being high-resolution spectroscopy. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996, along with Richard Smalley, University Professor, the Gene and Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry and professor of physics, and England’s Harold Kroto for the discovery of fullerenes.

His recent research focuses on studying the spectra, structure and kinetics of small free radicals using infrared lasers.

Curl is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Lambda Upsilon and Sigma Xi. He has been a fellow of the National Science Foundation, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Optical Society of America.

Joyce Farwell, professor emerita of voice, came to Rice’s Shepherd School of Music in 1994. She taught vocal pedagogy and vocal coaching for collaborative artists.

Farwell received her undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Oklahoma, where she worked with the operatic tenor Joseph Benton. In 1966, she received her doctorate of musical arts from the Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, where she studied and coached with the famous bass-baritone Italo Tajo.

Early in her career, she performed in recitals and operas and with orchestras throughout the country. Farwell is renowned as an accomplished vocal pedagogue and has traveled extensively doing master classes and workshops.

She also has served on the faculty of the American Institute of Musical Study in Austria and has worked with the Voice Institute in the Texas Medical Center presenting seminars and workshops.

Graham Glass, professor emeritus of chemistry, came to Rice 38 years ago. His recent research has focused on studying the spectra, structure and kinetics of small free radicals using infrared lasers.

Glass received his bachelor’s degree from Birmingham University–England in 1959. He then earned his Ph.D. from Cambridge University in 1964. After serving as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, Glass was a lecturer at the University of Essex–England for two years. He then came to Rice in 1967, where he has spent the remainder of his career.

Glass served as dean of graduate studies from 1991 to 1995. He served a one-year term as president of the Association of Graduate Schools in 1994. He also was a member of the University Standing Committee on Education from 2004 to 2005.

Werner Kelber

Werner Kelber, the Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies, came to Rice in 1973. Originally from Germany, he received his theology master’s degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1963.

After becoming a U.S. citizen in 1964, Kelber received his master’s and doctorate degrees from University of Chicago in 1967 and 1970, respectively.

His most recent research centered on the role of memory, sense perception and verbal arts in the biblical tradition.

Kelber became the director of the Center for the Study of Cultures in 2000. Under his leadership, the center fulfilled its commitment to raise $1.6 million for a matching grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to sponsor the distinguished visiting scholar program.

William Leeman

William Leeman, professor emeritus of Earth science, received his bachelor’s degree from Rice University in 1967 and his master’s in 1969. After receiving his Ph.D. in geology and geochemistry at the University of Oregon in 1974, Leeman became an assistant professor at Rice in 1978. He became a full professor in 1987.

During his career, Leeman also had outside appointments as program director in the Earth science division of the National Science Foundation and as a visiting scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Instituto do Geochimica et Georisorce in Italy.

His main research has focused on the origin of magmas and their relation to specific tectonic settings — hot spots, extensions and subductions. In particular, he has focused on the geochemistry of boron and other trace elements in the understanding of the origins of volcanic rocks, magmatic fluids and borosilicate minerals.

Ronald Sass

Ronald Sass, the Harry C. and Olga Keith Wiess Professor Emeritus of Natural Sciences in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, came to Rice in 1958 as an assistant professor studying X-ray diffraction and crystal structures. His most recent research has been focused on the problems of climate change and biogeochemistry. Sass has been recognized for his research on greenhouse gas emissions from rice fields and natural wetlands.

He is the outgoing chair of the ecology and evolutionary biology department, as well as co-director of the Rice Center for the Study of Education. He served as chair of the biology department from 1981 to 1987. He was declared a lifetime winner of the Brown Teaching Award in 1986 and received the Meritorious Service Award in 2001. Over the years, he has held positions at Baylor College of Medicine, NASA, the University of New Hampshire and the Nanjing Agricultural University.

Sass received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Augustana College–Rock Island in 1954 and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Southern California in 1957.

Gale Stokes

Gale Stokes, the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor Emeritus of History, has been at Rice since 1968. He worked his way up the ranks and became a full professor in 1980. He was chairman of the history department from 1980 to 1985. After one year as interim dean of the School of Humanities, Stokes served a two-year term as dean from 2001 to 2003.

Stokes received his bachelor’s degree from Colgate University in 1954 and his master’s and doctorate degrees from Indiana University in 1965 and 1970, respectively. He earned the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Russian and East European Institute at Indiana University in 1995.

His research has encompassed the history of East Europe and Yugoslavia and nationalism. Most recently, he has been focusing on a new way to conceive of European history since 1000 A.D.

Stokes has authored 40 articles and eight books, including “The West Transformed” (1999) with Warren Hollister and Sears McGee. He has also served on the editorial board of several Slavic and East European publications.