UpDate - Vol. 12, No. 37, Page 10
July 22, 1993
Doctoral graduates recognized during annual awards luncheon

     Four doctoral graduates--Subramanian Ramanathan, Katrien Nicole
Christie, David Patterson McCarthy and Scott Fendorf--received awards for
outstanding dissertations at the Office of Graduate Studies' annual
luncheon honoring 1992-93 Ph.D. recipients.
     Each recipient was awarded a certificate and $1,000 at the May 28
luncheon in Clayton Hall.
     Ramanathan, of the Department of Computer and Information Sciences,
received the Allan P. Colburn Prize in Engineering and Mathematical
Sciences for his dissertation, Scheduling Algorithms for Multi-Hop Radio
Networks. New algorithms were used theoretically to resolve problems in
several types of networks and then tested against actual networks for
increasing efficiency. His adviser was Errol Lloyd, associate professor of
computer and information sciences.
     Christie, of the Department of Linguistics, was awarded the George
Herbert Ryden Prize in Social Sciences for her dissertation, Universal
Grammar in Second Language: An Experimental Study of the Cross-Linguistic
Properties of Reflexives in English, Chinese and Spanish.  Dealing with
pronoun-antecedent relationships, Christie suggested that the claims for
the significance of binding are false, raising questions about the concept
of universal grammar, which depends on that theory. James Lantolf, a former
faculty member in linguistics now at Cornell University, was her adviser.
     McCarthy won the Wilbur Owen Sypherd Prize in Humanities for his
dissertation, Compromised Positions: Situations for the Nude in American
Painting, 1955-1980. McCarthy studied the painting of the nude as a symbol
of liberation from convention in American painting, within the context of
social and sexual mores of the post-World War II period. William I. Homer,
H. Rodney Sharp Professor of Art History and chairperson of the department,
was his adviser.
     Fendorf, of the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, was given the
Theodore Wolf Prize in Physical and Life Sciences for his dissertation,
Oxidation and Sorption Mechanisms of Hydrolyzable Metal Ions on Oxide
Surface. Fendor researched complex soil chemical reactions at the
microscopic level, studying how the environmental contamination of soils by
chromium pollution takes place and how it can be reversed or prevented. His
adviser was Donald L. Sparks, professor and chairperson of the department.
                              -Sue Swyers Moncure