| A new endowed chair, three new named professorships and the creation of endowments for two existing named professorships were announced April 8 by President David P. Roselle at the semiannual General Faculty meeting.
Acting Provost Dan Rich said, “It is a pleasure to recognize our outstanding faculty members who have contributed so much to the University through their research, teaching and professional achievements. Thanks to the success of the Campaign for Delaware, and the generosity and continuing support of long-time friends of the University, we have been able to create new professorships and endow those which are already established.”
Donald Sparks, now the T.A. Baker Professor of Plant and Soil Sciences, will become the S. Hallock du Pont Chair of Plant and Soil Sciences, the result of a $1 million gift from the Unidel Foundation.
The new named professors, all effective Sept. 1, are Antony N. Beris, who will become the Arthur B. Metzner Professor of Chemical Engineering; Christine Leigh Heyrman, who will be Distinguished Professor of History; and Abraham M. Lenhoff, who will be the Gore Professor of Chemical Engineering.
The Gore family is supporting the endowments of the professorships granted to Beris and Lenhoff, and the Unidel Foundation is funding Heyrman’s professorship.
In addition, two new endowments have been created to support the E.I. du Pont Professorship of Marine Biochemisty and Biophysics, which is held by John S. Boyer, and the Robert L. Pigford Professorship of Chemical Engineering, which is held by Mark A. Barteau. These changes also are effective Sept. 1 and both are supported through the generosity of the Unidel Foundation.
 Donald Sparks
Sparks will be the S. Hallock du Pont Chair of Plant and Soil Sciences. His research focuses on the kinetics of soil chemistry processes, with emphasis on metal and organic chemical interaction at the soil, mineral/water interface.
Among his awards, he is a fellow of the American Society of Agronomy, the Soil Science Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He also received UD’s Francis Alison Award in 1996.
Earlier this year, Sparks journeyed to Australia, where he received the Sir Frederick McMaster Visiting Fellowship, given annually to a distinguished overseas scientist working in the field of agricultural and environmental sciences. The McMaster Fellowship culminated in a plenary lecture by Sparks at Bioavailability 2001, an international symposium organized by the Land and Water Group of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) focused on chemical bioavailability in the terrestrial environment.
Sparks joined the UD faculty in 1979, has served as chairperson of the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences since 1989. He also holds joint faculty appointments in the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Chemistry and Biochemistry. Sparks also serves as president of the International Union of Soil Sciences.
The new endowed chair is named in honor of S. Hallock du Pont, who was a generous benefactor who supported a professorship and research in animal husbandry at UD for many years.
 Antony N. Beris
Beris, who will be Arthur B. Metzner Professor of Chemical Engineering, conducts research that involves the development and applications of numerical methods to fluid mechanics, transport phenomena, reaction engineering and materials processing; the modeling of nonequilibrium thermodynamics and simulation of complex systems, such as polymer solutions and melts; and the use of parallel computer architectures in high performance computing.
He has participated in several national and international research collaborations. Most recently he became leader of a research team involving Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown, Washington and Ohio State universities and the Naval Research Laboratory.
He has published extensively in his field and made several invited presentations, including a plenary lecture for the Society of Rheology in 2001. Among his honors, Beris is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received a Fulbright Foreign Scholarship for sabbatical leave in Belgium in 1999-2000 and a Navy fellowship for a sabbatical leave at the Naval Research Laboratory. He has served on national advisory boards and is a reviewer for several scientific journals.
Joining the UD faculty in 1985, Beris is a graduate of the National Technical University of Athens and received his master’s and doctoral degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
This professorship honors Arthur B. Metzner, H. Fletcher Brown Emeritus Professor of Chemical Engineering, who came to the University in 1953 and chaired the Department of Chemical Engineering from 1970-77. Among his honors, he is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and received the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Rheology and UD’s Francis Alison Award as an outstanding member of the faculty.
 Christine Leigh Heyrman
Heyrman will be Distinguished Professor of History. An early American historian, Heyrman received the 1997 Bancroft Prize, awarded by the Columbia University Library for the best books about American history, for her book, "Southern Cross, The Beginnings of the Bible Belt," which also was named a Notable Book by The New York Times. She also is the author of "Commerce and Culture: The Maritime Communities of Colonial Massachusetts 1690-1750" and "Nation of Nations," a survey of Colonial times, now in its third edition.
She was elected a member of the Society of American Historians in 1999, was named an Outstanding Faculty Scholar at UD in 1998, received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1993-94, was named a fellow at the Shelby-Cullom-Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University in 1994 and received a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies in 1993-94.
A graduate of Macalester College, Heyrman received her doctorate from Yale University where she received the Theron Rockwell Field Dissertation Prize. She was on the faculty of Brandeis University and the University of California, Irvine, and was the Cardozo Visiting Associate Professor of History at Yale before joining the UD faculty in 1990.
 Abraham M. Lenhoff
Lenhoff will become the Gore Professor of Chemical Engineering. His research interests involve transport phenomena, separations processes, biophysics and bioengineering, colloid and interface science.
Lenhoff currently serves as director of the National Institutes of Health Center of Biomedical Research Excellence in Structural and Functional Genomics. He was a visiting research fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia, in 1995, a visiting professor at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in 1990 and a research fellow at Johannes-Gutenberg Universität in Germany in 1985. In 1987, he received the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award.
He has published more than 80 articles in refereed journals. Joining the UD faculty in 1984, Lenhoff is a graduate of the University of Cape Town and received his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
His professorship honors the Gore Family, including UD trustee Robert W. Gore’59, Sarah I. Gore ‘76M and Genevieve W. Gore, who have made generous gifts to the University, including Gore Hall, which is named in their honor.
 Mark A. Barteau
Barteau, chairperson since 2000 and Robert L. Pigford Professor of Chemical Engineering since 1994, serves as the director of the Center for Catalytic Science and Technology, and his research focuses on chemical reactions at solid surfaces and their applications in heterogeneous catalysis.
Joining the faculty in 1982, Barteau has received numerous fellowships and awards, including the first International Catalysis Award ever given by the International Association of Catalysis Societies. He received his doctorate from Stanford University.
His professorship honors Robert L. Pigford, chairperson of the Department of Chemical Engineering from 1947-66, the first recipient of UD’s Francis Alison Award and a member of the Board of Trustees from 1982 until his death in 1988.
 John S. Boyer
Boyer, E.I. du Pont Professor of Marine Biochemistry and Biophysics, conducts research on water stress physiology in plants, in which he uses marine plants to help understand the biochemistry and biophysics of terrestrial plants.
A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Boyer has received several awards, including UD’s Francis Alison Award. A graduate of Swarthmore College, he received his master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin and his doctorate from Duke University.
His professorship honors Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, 1771-1834, who established a black powder works on the Brandywine River, which grew into the modern day DuPont Co. He also was appointed a director of the Bank of the United States in 1822.
April 25, 2002
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