Milestones

Appointed

Gov. Gary Lock named education Ph.D. student Christopher Knaus to serve as the UW student regent for the 1999-2000 term. Knaus has a bachelor's degree from UC-Davis and a master's degree from WSU and has served as a graduate assistant to the UW associate vice provost for academic planning. Knaus replaces former Regent Jennifer Frankel, whose one-year term expired May 31.

Forest Resources Dean David Thorud was appointed Acting Vice President of University Relations following the departure of former Vice President Robert Edie, who resigned June 30. Edie left to become a senior budget adviser in the state Office of Financial Management in Olympia. He began his UW career in 1986 as its government relations director and became vice president in 1996. The vice president for university relations oversees alumni relations, news and information, government relations, KUOW and other UW units with external audiences. Thorud will continue as dean of the College of Forest Resources, but he also announced that he will not seek reappointment as dean when his term expires in 2000. Two other deans also are stepping down at the end of their appointments: Law School Dean Roland Hjorth and Architecture and Urban Planning Dean Jerry Finrow.

Honors

Four UW faculty and a member of the Board of Regents are among 153 fellows elected this year to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the organization announced in May. They join the distinguished group's 4,000 fellows nationwide, including 160 Nobel laureates and 65 Pulitzer Prize winners, who have been recognized for their contributions to science, scholarship, public affairs and the arts. The UW's honorees are: Regent Daniel J. Evans, a three-term Washington governor and a U.S. senator from 1983 to 1989; Physics Professor Wick Haxton, director of the Institute for Nuclear Theory, whose major research interest is nuclear astrophysics; Medicine and Genetics Professor Mary-Claire King, best known for proving the existence of the first gene for hereditary breast cancer and a leading spokesperson on understanding the genetics of disease; Zoology Professor Emeritus Robert T. Paine, whose primary research interest is the experimental ecology of organisms on rocky shores; and Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences Professor Peter Rhines, whose research program focuses on climate change and ocean circulation.

Physics Professor Haxton was also elected to the National Academy of Sciences, as was Genetics Professor Joseph Felsenstein, who studies evolution by using molecular sequences and other kinds of data.

Medicine and Physiology/Biophysics Professor Robb Glenny has won the only Guggenheim Fellowship Award given in medicine this year. The prestigious fellowships are awarded for distinguished past achievements and exceptional promise for future accomplishments. Glenny will use his fellowship during a sabbatical year at Sweden's Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. He plans to investigate the distribution of lung blood flow in humans during increased centrifugal force.

UW President Richard L. McCormick today announced the first six faculty recipients of the newly created Presidential Faculty Development Fellowships—a funding program enabling talented junior faculty to focus on one special aspect of their portfolio, whether teaching or research. Preference is given to assistant professors who will benefit from a year of reduced teaching or research duties in order to concentrate on the other, and for whom the year will substantially improve their likelihood of achieving tenure and promotion. This year's follows are: Edith Cheng, obstetrics and gynecology; Phillip Dunston, civil engineering; Lauren Goodlad, English; Biren (Ratnesh) Nagda, social work; Kathleen M. O'Neill, law; and Frank Roberts, periodontics.

Kathryn Elizabeth Temple, '99, a double major in economics and math, is the 1999 President's Medalist. The honor goes to the graduating senior with the highest academic achievement. Temple was a Freshman Medalist in 1995-96, has been on the Dean's List annually and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Following graduation she plans to pursue a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Rankings

The University of Washington Medical Center was ranked among the top hospitals in the country in a number of specialties, according to U.S. News & World Report's 1999 annual guide to America's Best Hospitals, released July 12. UW Medical Center was ranked among the top 20 hospitals nationwide in seven of the 16 specialties considered: rehabilitation (2nd); cancer (5th); orthopedics (7th); otolaryngology-ear, nose and throat-(12th); cardiology and heart surgery (14th); psychiatry (17th); and urology (20th).