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Four appointed to named professorships

The professors were chosen in recognition of their service and contributions to the University and to the scholarly community at large, Rich said.

Mary Dozier

Mary Dozier, named Amy E. du Pont Chair in Child Development, is internationally recognized for her research on early childhood experience and on disruptions in foster care.

Her research already attracts almost $1.5 million in funding to the University annually, including funding from the National Institute of Mental Health for a study assessing effectiveness of foster-parent training programs. The study will be centered at the University’s Early Learning Center after its opening in June. Dozier is director of research at the center, which will provide an integrated model of research, training and service in child development and child care.

Dozier, who came to the University as an assistant professor of psychology in 1993, is known for “translational research’’—research that can be translated from basic science to prevention and intervention.

Her newest NIMH research grant is one example of how Dozier’s work is valued by academics worldwide and by the local community. That research will be conducted in collaboration with the Delaware Division of Family Service. Dozier has developed training programs with the family service agency for 10 years.

Dozier is a frequent colloquia speaker, conference presenter and the author or coauthor of more than 40 professional articles. She came to the University in 1993 from Texas, where she worked as an associate professor of psychology at Trinity University and an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Health Science Center.

Dozier earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and studies of India and a doctorate in clinical psychology, both at Duke University.

The Amy E. du Pont Chair in Child Development, made possible by an endowment provided by the Unidel Foundation, is named for Amy du Pont, the youngest daughter of Eugene du Pont. Known as “Miss Amy,’’ she established the Unidel Foundation in 1939 to provide special gifts for the University for purposes that might be difficult to accomplish otherwise. Among her many contributions to UD during her lifetime, she paid part of the salary for a child development professor. After her death, she willed the major part of her inheritance from her father to Unidel.

Roberta Golinkoff

Roberta M. Golinkoff, appointed the H. Rodney Sharp Chair in Human Services, Education and Public Policy, was chosen for her internationally acclaimed research on early language development and for her distinguished record as a scholar and a teacher.

Golinkoff is co-author of “Einstein Never Used Flash Cards,’’ a popular book based on her research into how children really learn and why they need to play more and memorize less. The book, written with Kathy Hirsh-Pasek of Temple University, has been called reassuring to new parents happy to hear its message—that nurturing play is the best way for children to learn.

Golinkoff, who has joint appointments in the departments of psychology and linguistics and was named an H. Rodney Sharp Professor in 1995, also coauthored “ How Babies Talk: The Magic and Mystery of Early Language Comprehension.’’ Written for a general audience, the book,written with Hirsh-Pasek, has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian and Chinese.

Much of Golinkoff’s scholarly work focuses on early language acquisition. She has found groundbreaking empirical evidence for the syntactic and lexical knowledge of children at ages much younger than previously known.

She has authored or coauthored seven books and monographs and more than 70 scholarly articles and book chapters. She also teaches a large, required course for elementary education majors.

She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Brooklyn College and earned a doctorate in development psychology from Cornell University. She began a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning, Research and Development Center in 1972, and came to UD in 1974.

The H. Rodney Sharp Chair, made possible by an endowment provided by the Unidel Foundation, is named for one of the University’s most generous benefactors. Sharp’s financial contribution to UD was one of the largest from a private donor to any American university, and he also took a personal interest in the details of the campus where he was graduated in 1927. He worked with the landscape architect to create portions of The Green that are unchanged 70 years later. He is the namesake of Sharp Hall and Sharp Laboratory.

Debra Norris

Debra Hess Norris, appointed Henry Francis du Pont Chair in Fine Arts, has influenced the ways photographic collections are conserved and preserved in America and throughout the world through her scholarship and teaching. She trained the majority of the photographic conservators now employed full-time in North America, and she created teaching manuals used internationally by undergraduates, graduate students, mid-career professionals and the general public.

Norris has consulted at the Hermitage, the Israeli State Museum, the Library of Congress and other museums and art institutes around the world. Her advice has been sought on objects as varied as photographs by Thomas Eakins and Andy Warhol to the original negatives of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Working as chairperson of the Department of Art Conservation and director of the Winterthur/University of Delaware Graduate Program in Art Conservation, she continues to teach undergraduate and graduate students.

Norris also has been an effective fundraiser for the University, where she and her husband, Robert Norris, were graduated in 1977 and where she earned a master’s degree from the Winterthur/UD Program in Art Conservation in 1981. Her fundraising has enabled the department to continue to compete for the best students and to enhance the graduate-level curriculum in a variety of areas, including preventive conservation, electronic media and conservation science.
In 2002, she was inducted into the University’s Alumni Wall of Fame.

Norris has earned many professional honors, including being a two-term president of the American Institute for Conservation and currently chairperson of heritage preservation.

Besides her professional publications on such subjects as collection management and emergency recovery procedures for photographic materials, she has written many articles and book chapters aimed at families who wish to preserve photographs as family treasures for future generations.

The Henry Francis du Pont Chair in Fine Arts, made possible by an endowment provided by the Unidel Foundation, recognizes the founder of Winterthur, An American Country Estate, a showplace of furniture and decorative arts used in the U.S. before 1860 and home to the Winterthur/UD Program in Art Conservation.

Babatunde Ogunnaike

Babatunde Ogunnaike has been named to the newly endowed William L. Friend Professorship in Chemical Engineering. Ogunnaike is coauthor of the dominant textbook in process control, “Process Dynamics, Modeling and Control.”

In nominating him for the named professorship, Mark A. Barteau, Robert L. Pigford Professor of Chemical Engineering and department chair, said, “Tunde would be near or at the top of the list of faculty in our department whom other institutions would most like to have.”

Endorsing Ogunnaike’s nomination, Eric Kaler, Ellizabeth Inez Kelley Professor of Chemical Engineering and dean of the College of Engineering, said, “Tunde is a remarkable scientist and a remarkable individual. He has a substantial record of exceptional scholarship. His teaching skills are phenomenal, and he is a wonderful mentor and colleague.’’

The University recruited Ogunnaike when he was finishing his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, but he chose to join the DuPont Co. He became a research fellow at DuPont and worked as an adjunct professor at the University, teaching and collaborating on faculty research.

He joined the University as a full-time professor of chemical engineering in September 2002.

Ogunnaike has authored or coauthored four chemical engineering textbooks and has written or cowritten 40 articles.
A chemical engineering graduate of the University of Lagos, Nigeria, he earned a master’s degree in statistics and a doctorate in chemical engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

The named professorship recognizes William L. Friend, who earned his master’s degree in chemical engineering from UD in 1958. He wrote his master’s thesis on “Turbulent Heat Transfer Inside Tubes,” and later published on the subject with Arthur B. Metzner, H. Fletcher Brown Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering at UD, in the AICHE Journal, the journal of the American Institute for Chemical Engineers.

Friend retired as executive vice president and director of Bechtel Group Inc. in 1998, after a distinguished, 41-year career in international engineering and construction.

Currently, he chairs the University of California’s President’s Council on the National Laboratories, which encompasses Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Berkeley laboratories.

He also continues to serve as a director of Bechtel National Inc. and as treasurer and a member of the council of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). He is a member of the executive committee of the governing board of the National Research Council and a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Friend also serves on the NAE’s Committee on Diversity of the Engineering Workforce. He is a trustee and chairs the finance committee of Polytechnic University and serves on UD’s Chemical Engineering Advisory Board.

Photos by Kathy Atkinson

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