UpDate - Vol. 15, No. 14, Page 3
December 7, 1995
Distinguished scholars; Three faculty appointed to named
professorships
Three members of the University faculty have been appointed to
named professorships in recognition of their distinguished service as
teachers and scholars, University Provost Mel Schiavelli has
announced.
New named professors are Roberta M. Golinkoff, H. Rodney Sharp
Professor of Educational Studies; James Hiebert, H. Rodney Sharp
Professor of Educational Development; and Andras Z. Szeri, Robert L.
Spencer Professor of Mechanical Engineering.
Golinkoff and Hiebert were nominated by William B. Stanley,
interim dean of the College of Education; and Szeri was nominated by
Stuart L. Cooper, dean of the College of Engineering.
"Named professorships are awarded to only a few of the
University's best faculty members," Schiavelli said, "and this honor
indicates the esteem with which these three individuals are regarded
by their peers, both on this campus and beyond.
"Dr. Golinkoff is being recognized for her excellence in
teaching, for outstanding service contributions and exemplary
scholarly contributions. Dr. Hiebert has won international recognition
for his scholarship in the area of mathematics education. Dr. Szeri is
highly regarded for his research in the areas of tribology and in
fundamental mechanics problems," Schiavelli said.
These named professorships honor H. Rodney Sharp, a 1900 graduate
who was one of the University's most generous benefactors, and Robert
L. Spencer, who was dean of the then School of Engineering from 1928
until his retirement in 1945.
Roberta M. Golinkoff
Golinkoff, who is based in the College of Education's Department
of Educational Studies, holds joint appointments in the departments of
Psychology and Linguistics. She joined the University in 1974, and in
1980, she took a sabbatical leave at the University of Pennsylvania
sponsored by the Sloan Foundation Program in Cognitive Science.
Golinkoff earned her bachelor's degree in psychology from
Brooklyn College in 1968 and her doctorate in developmental psychology
from Cornell University in 1973. She also held a postdoctoral
fellowship at the Learning, Research and Development Center of the
University of Pittsburgh from 1972-1974.
She was a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow in 1988 and also
received a James McKeen Cattell Supplemental Sabbatical Award for
Psychologists and a Distinguished Faculty Award from the UD College of
Education that year. Golinkoff has been a fellow in both the
developmental psychology and educational psychology divisions of the
American Psychological Association. She also won a graduate teaching
award from the UD College of Education in 1978 and received a research
fellowship from the UD Center for Advanced Study for 1993-1994.
Her research has been supported by several federal grants,
including one from the National Institute of Mental Health to study
infants' concepts of action roles in filmed events, and two from the
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to study a
new approach to language comprehension and language comprehension in
cerebral palsied children.
An organizer and participant in numerous conferences and
institutes, Golinkoff is a member of the Society for Research in Child
Development, the American Psychological Association, the Jean Piaget
Society and the Mid-Atlantic Language Union (MLU).
The editor or co-editor of three books, she is coauthor of a new
MIT Press book on The Origins of Grammar: Evidence from Early Language
Comprehension. She also has written many book chapters and articles
and has served on the editorial boards of Child Development, the
Journal of Educational Psychology, Developmental Psychology and
Society for Research and Child Development Monographs.
She lives in Newark.
James Hiebert
Hiebert joined the University of Delaware's Department of
Educational Development in 1982, and since l987, he has held a joint
appointment in the Department of Educational Studies.
Before coming to Delaware, he was an assistant professor in the
Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of
Kentucky. He also has worked as a project assistant in the Research
and Development Center for Education Research at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison and as a math teacher at Clovis High School in
Clovis, Calif.
Hiebert earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Fresno
Pacific College in 1970 and his master's degree in mathematics from
the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1972. He received his
doctorate in curriculum and instruction from the University of
Wisconsin at Madison in 1979.
Hiebert is the recipient of numerous grants from the Office of
Educational Research and Improvement through the National Center for
Research in Mathematical Sciences Education and from the National
Science Foundation.
He is the author of numerous publications and edited the books,
Research Agenda in Mathematics Education: Number Concepts and
Operations in the Middle Grades and Conceptual and Procedural
Knowledge: The Case of Mathematics. Currently he is working on a new
book, Designing Classrooms for Learning with Understanding.
Hiebert is co-chair of the Special Interest Group for Research in
Mathematics Education for the American Educational Research
Association. He also serves on the advisory panel for the Third
International Mathematics and Science Study Case Studies and Video
Studies for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement,
National Center for Education Statistics.
He is a member of the editorial boards of the American
Educational Research Journal, the Journal of Educational Psychology,
Cognition and Instruction, the Elementary School Journal and the
Journal of Mathematical Behavior. Additionally, Hiebert is an
affiliated scholar with the National Center for Research in
Mathematical Sciences Education at the University of Wisconsin at
Madison.
He lives in Kemblesville, Pa.
Andras Z. Szeri
Szeri came to the University in 1994 as professor and chairperson
of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, after serving as
chairperson of the Mechanical Engineering Department, as the W.K.
Whiteford Professor of Engineering and as professor of mathematics and
statistics at the University of Pittsburgh, where his career spanned
27 years. Before joining the University of Pittsburgh, he worked as a
British Council Professor for Universidad F.S.M. in Valparaiso, Chile,
and as research engineer for the English Electric Co. in Stafford,
England.
At the University of Leeds, Szeri earned his bachelor's degree in
engineering, with first class honors, in 1959 and his doctorate in
engineering in 1962.
He is the recipient of research grants from the Gulf Education
Foundation, the National Science Foundation, Mitsubishi Electric
Corp., the Supreme Council of Universities in Cairo, Egypt, the Air
Force Office of Scientific Research, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing
Center and the Department of Energy, among others.
Szeri has directed numerous graduate theses, and his students
have gone on to careers at such institutions as Case Western and Texas
A&M universities, the University of Cairo, Westinghouse Research
Laboratories, Universidad Santa Maria in Chile, Stanford Research
Institute and various other insitutions throughout Korea, Taiwan,
Thailand and the United States.
A member of the Research Committee on Tribology for the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and an external examiner for
the University of the West Indies, he has been a technical editor and
an associate editor of the Journal of Tribology, a member of the
executive committee of the Tribology Division of ASME and a member of
the Editorial Review Board of ASLE Transactions.
A member of ASME, he was elected a fellow of that society in
1988. He also is a member of the American Academy of Mechanics, the
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Society of
Engineering Science, the Society for Natural Philosophy, the Society
of Rheology and the American Society for Engineering Education.
Szeri is the author of one book and numerous journal articles. He
lives in Hockessin.
-Beth Thomas