ANN ARBOR—University of Michigan Regents, at their July 17-18 meeting, approved several appointments to endowed and titled professorships.

Dana Muir, assistant professor of law, history and communication, will hold the Sanford R. Robertson Assistant Professorship in Business Administration.

Jane E. Dutton, the William Russell Kelly Professor of Business Administration, professor of organizational behavior and human resource management and corporate strategy, and associate professor of psychology, will also hold the Jack D. Sparks-Whirlpool Corporation Research Professorship in Business Administration.

Sabine G. MacCormack, the Alice Freeman Palmer Professor of History and professor of history and of classical studies, will be the Mary Ann and Charles R. Walgreen Jr. Professor for the Study of Human Understanding, and professor of history and of classical studies.

Stephanie S. Platz, assistant professor of history, will hold the Alex Manoogian Assistant Professorship of Modern Armenian History.

Alan V. Deardorff, professor of economics and public policy and professor of public policy, also will hold the John W. Sweetland Professorship of International Economics.

John F. Greden, professor of psychiatry, also will hold the Rachel Upjohn Professorship of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences.

Kevin K. Tremper, professor of anesthesiology, also will hold the Robert B. Sweet Professorship of Anesthesiology.

Prof. Muir is “one of our most promising junior scholars, who is working in the areas of executive compensation law, and the intersection of corporation law and employee benefits law,” said B. Joseph White, dean of the School of Business Administration. “She has a solid list of publications, both in number and in the quality of the journals in which she publishes, and is frequently invited to present her research at national conferences. Since 1995 she has received five distinguished or outstanding proceedings paper awards from professional associations. Her teaching ratings are excellent.”

Prof. Dutton, Dean White said, is “an accomplished researcher with an extensive list of refereed publications in some of the most prestigious journals in her field. In addition, she is extremely active in her profession, both in the National Academy of Management, where she has served in various capacities since 1989, and in serving as editor for some of the profession’s top journals. She is an excellent teacher whose ratings consistently fall above the departmental average, and has been extremely active in the School’s doctoral program, serving on 10 doctoral committees to date.”

Prof. MacCormack is “an exceptionally brilliant and broad-ranging scholar,” said Edie N. Goldenberg, dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. “Her most remarkable feature is her mastery of the two areas of Classical Late Antiquity and Latin America of the 16th and 17th centuries. She links these two fields, at first sight to disparate, by her interest in the process of contact and selective assimilation between Christian and non-Christian societies. She has used her multidimensional learning to an excellent effect in the classroom, winning an Amoco Teaching Award in 1994.”

Prof. Platz, Dean Goldenberg said, “is a specialist in modern Armenia, and has been trained by both anthropologists and historians. She write as a contemporary historian, deeply concerned with national symbols and their evolution. She is firmly embedded in the history of the Soviet Union, and uses her intimacy with its political system to examine how conceptions of the Armenian past and Armenian identity changed in the wake of the Soviet collapse in 1991. Her dissertation, ‘Pasts and Futures: Space, History, and Armenian Identity, 1988-94,’ is viewed as a brilliant portrait of a society in tumultuous transformation, based on field work carried out under the most strenuous of circumstances.”

Prof. Deardorff is “one of the most productive and distinguished international trade scholars of the time,” Dean Goldenberg said. “His contributions are both deep and broad, spanning the most important topics in trade theory. The U-M Department of Economics has long been famous for its strength in international economics. Prof. Deardorff is a large part of that strength. It is most appropriate that a scholar who has contributed to every aspect of international economics—trade and finance, theory and policy—should inaugurate the John W. Sweetland Professorship of International Economics.”

Prof. Greden “plays a prominent role in the field of psychiatry,” said A. Lorris Betz, interim dean of the Medical School. “He has published more than 260 scientific papers and his delivered over 150 lectures nationally and internationally. He is an active member of numerous professional societies and is recent past president of the Psychiatric Research Society and the Society of Biological Psychiatry. His expertise is further recognized through his position as co-editor in chief of the Journal of Psychiatric Research, and he has editorial responsibilities for publications including the American Journal of Psychiatry and Biological Psychiatry.”

Prof. Tremper, Dean Betz said, “is nationally recognized for his research activities on invasive and noninvasive monitoring of hemodynamics and oxygen transport. Clinically, he has subspecialty interests in intensive care and cardiac anesthesiology. He is a reviewer for numerous journals and serves on six editorial boards. His expertise is further recognized through his national society activities, including chair of the subcommittee on equipment, monitoring, and engineering technology for the American Society of Anesthesiologists.”

More information:

• Jane E. Dutton
• Alan V. Deardorff
• Kevin K. Tremper