April 8, 2005
Trustees honor 3 profs; OK name change, degree transfer, new degree
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – The Purdue University Board of Trustees today (Friday, April 8) approved three distinguished professorships, a department name change at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, the transfer of a Statewide Technology degree program and a new bachelor of science degree program in Kokomo, Ind.
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John Cushman was named University Distinguished Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences; Anne Smith, department head and professor of speech, language and hearing sciences, was named Distinguished Professor of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences in the College of Liberal Arts; and Jerry M. Woodall was named the Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. These appointments bring the number of designated professors to 109.
"This designation is the ultimate in peer recognition for these faculty because it acknowledges their hard work, their dedication and their excellence in their chosen fields," said Provost Sally Mason. "We're proud to have them associated with Purdue because they personify the best in their field."
Distinguished professors are individuals whose achievements in scholarship or research have been internationally recognized or who have made a unique contribution to the university through scholarship, research, teaching or leadership functions.
Cushman received a bachelor's degree in 1975 in mathematics and master's and doctoral degrees in mathematics and agronomy in 1976 and 1978, respectively, all from Iowa State University. His research areas are the physics of fluids in porous media, applied mathematics and computational chemistry, and include elements of theory, computation and experimentation.
Cushman holds professorships at Purdue in the departments of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Mathematics, and Agronomy. He has been appointed to editorial boards and served as a member of many national and international committees. He's published more than 170 refereed articles and three books and has presented more than 120 invited and plenary lectures at national and international meetings. Topics covered by his recent publications include blood flow in microcapillaries, drug delivery substrates, fluid transport in foods, swelling biopolymers and clays, mica slit pores, and microbial motility in natural porous media, as well as more generic porous media problems.
Purdue's only fellow of the American Geophysical Union and a fellow of the Soil Science Society of America, Cushman has been on Purdue's faculty since 1978. He has been a visiting professor of mathematics at the Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a visiting professor in environmental fluid mechanics at the University of Rome and was a visiting scholar in molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University.
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Smith earned her master's degree in 1974 and doctorate in 1978 from University of Iowa. She received a bachelor's degree in 1972 from Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Mich. Her research focuses on the neurophysiological bases of speech production, specifically in the area of normal development and disruptions of speech in stuttering.
She joined Purdue's faculty in 1981 and has twice won editor's awards from the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research. She has been principal investigator for numerous projects funded by the National Institutes of Health and has served on many review panels for the NIH.
Smith has mentored numerous students, and her research has been published in several prestigious journals in her area of expertise as well as in journals outside her discipline, such as journals in neurology and neurophysiology.
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Woodall, who received a National Medal of Technology from George W. Bush in 2001, earned his undergraduate degree in 1960 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his doctorate from Cornell University in 1982. His primary areas of interest are microelectronics and nanotechnology.
Woodall worked briefly as a staff engineer at Clevite Transistor Products in Waltham, Mass., before joining IBM Research in 1962. He became an IBM Fellow in 1985 and held that post until joining the Purdue University faculty in 1993. He left Purdue in 1998 to join the faculty at Yale University and returned to Purdue in 2005.
He has 334 publications and has been issued 67 U.S. patents. He has received 11 major national awards from six organizations and was awarded nine NASA Certificates of Recognition and four Outstanding Innovation awards from IBM.
Woodall is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He was named a fellow of four societies: the American Vacuum Society, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Electrochemical Society, and American Physical Society.
In other business, the board approved changing the name of the Department of Chemistry at IUPUI to the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. The new name will more accurately reflect the interdisciplinary nature of modern chemistry and describe ongoing and future research and instruction in the department.
The board also approved a transfer of the Purdue Statewide Technology degree from Versailles, Ind., in Ripley County to Greensburg, Ind., in Decatur County. The transfer was requested because of an increased demand for Purdue programs centered toward Greensburg.
Trustees also approved a bachelor of science degree in computer information systems technology for Statewide Technology in Kokomo, Ind., in Howard County. The degree will benefit the growing percentage of associate degree recipients in computer technology who want additional computing education. The new degree also will serve as an additional option for students on the West Lafayette campus.
Writer: Maggie Morris, (765) 494-2432, maggiemorris@purdue.edu
Sources: Sally Mason, (765) 494-9709, sfmason@purdue.edu
John Cushman, (765) 494-8040, jcushman@purdue.edu
Anne Smith, (765) 494-3788, asmith@purdue.edu
Jerry Woodall, (765) 494-3479, woodall@purdue.edu
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu
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