University of Delaware
Office of Public Relations
The Messenger
Vol. 5, No. 2/1996
Seven UD faculty become named professors
Seven members of the University of Delaware faculty have
been appointed to named professorships in recognition of their
distinguished service as teachers and scholars. New named
professors are Roberta M. Golinkoff, H. Rodney Sharp Professor of
Educational Studies; James Hiebert, H. Rodney Sharp Professor of
Educational Development; Andras Z. Szeri, Robert L. Spencer
Professor of Mechanical Engineering; and four new Unidel
professors: David Colton and Ralph Kleinman, both mathematical
sciences; and Leslie F. Goldstein and James K. Oliver, both
political science and international relations.
"Named professorships are awarded to only a few of the
University's finest faculty members," Provost Mel Schiavelli said
"This honor indicates the esteem with which these individuals are
held by their peers, both on campus and beyond."
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.
Unidel professorships owe their origin to the Unidel Foundation,
established by
Amy E. du Pont (1876-1962), sportswoman and philanthropist,
who bequeathed her estate to the University.
DAVID L. COLTON
Colton specializes in research in the inverse scattering
theory-the problem of determining the physical properties of an
unknown object from its effect on acoustic, elastic or
electromagnetic waves. All of these waves travel through space
and when an object is placed in front of the wave, the wave is
deformed or "scattered." How it is scattered depends on what it
has bumped into. Inverse scattering tries to determine what the
object is from observing the deformed waves.
Applications of the theory can be seen in radar and sonar,
in the use of ultrasound to detect tumors in the body, elastic
waves to determine the location and shape of flaws in materials
and elastic or electromagnetic waves to determine the location of
mineral deposits in the Earth.
Recently, in collaboration with Peter Monk, UD professor of
mathematical sciences, Colton has been investigating the use of
inverse scattering theory in detecting leukemia. Because bone
marrow testing for leukemia is expensive, painful and not without
danger, the two hope to develop some form of electromagnetic
imaging for detection of the disease. This research is being
sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
LESLIE F. GOLDSTEIN
Goldstein joined the University in 1973. She has taught
numerous courses on American government and political theory and
on the American judiciary. Her fields of specialization include
American constitutional law, American political thought, the
history of political theory and gender and law. She served as
president-elect and then president of the UD Faculty Senate from
1989-91.
Goldstein is author of five books, including Federal Unions
and Sovereignty (in progress), In Defense of the Text: An
Introduction to Constitutional Theory, Contemporary Cases in
Women's Rights and The Constitutional Rights of Women: A Case
Study in Law and Social Change. She edited Feminist
Jurisprudence: The Difference Debate and co-authored Women in the
Judicial Process. Additionally, she has written numerous
articles, chapters, review essays and book reviews for scholarly
publications.
She is a former president of the Law and Courts Section of
the American Political Science Association and served on the
editorial board of Polity and Women and Politics.
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.
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.
The editor of three books, she is co-author 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 several
journals.
JAMES HIEBERT
Hiebert joined the University's Department of Educational
Development in 1982, and since 1987, he has held a joint
appointment in the Department of Educational Studies.
Hiebert is the recipient of several 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.
RALPH E. KLEINMAN
Kleinman's research is mainly concerned with mathematical
problems associated with the propagation and scattering of
acoustic and electromagnetic waves, including radar cross-section
analysis. He currently is the principal investigator on a
Multidisciplinary Research Program of the University Research
Initiative (MURI) grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific
Research.
Director of the Center for the Mathematics of Waves at UD,
his recent research is concerned with problems in inverse
scattering and error estimation. In inverse scattering, the
shape, location and interior makeup of an object is determined by
measuring how the object "scatters" known incident waves, either
acoustic, electromagnetic or elastic. Recent projects have been
directed toward locating buried objects.
His work in error estimation involves deriving mathematical
methods for measuring the error committed when integral equations
are solved numerically, even when the exact solution is unknown
and the direct comparison is impossible.
He is author and co-author of more than 100 publications in
books and journals. He is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical
and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), past chairperson of the U.S.
Commission B, International Scientific Radio Union, associate
editor of The SIAM Journal of Applied Mathematics and the former
associate editor of Inverse Problems and Radio Science.
JAMES K. OLIVER
Oliver, director of the UD International Relations Program,
also holds a joint appointment in the College of Marine Studies.
He joined UD
in 1969, after completing his doctorate in international
studies at The American University's School of International
Service.
His research and teaching fields include international
relations and organization, American foreign and defense policy
and international relations theory.
In addition to publishing numerous articles in these fields,
he has co-authored three books, The Future of United States Naval
Power, United States Foreign Policy and World Order and Foreign
Policy Making and the American Political System.
Oliver has traveled in Europe for the U.S. Information
Agency and lectured on American foreign and defense policy. For
UD and the Winterthur Museum, he has traveled in central Europe,
the Soviet Union and Russia.
ANDRAS Z. SZERI
Szeri came to the University in 1994 as professor and
chairperson of the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
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, the
Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Pittsburgh
Supercomputing Center and the Department of Energy among others.
A member of the Research Committee on Tribology for the
American Society of Mechanical Engineers and an external examiner
for the University of the West Indies, he is the author of one
book and numerous refereed journal articles.