For the Record

Divine deans

Richard Rosengarten, AM'88, PhD'94, senior lecturer in religion and literature, succeeded W. Clark Gilpin, AM'72, PhD'74, as dean of the Divinity School on July 1. Gilpin, a historian of American Christianity, was dean for ten years. Rosengarten, an expert on narrative theory and 18th-century religious thought, has been the Divinity School's dean of students since 1991.

Winning fight

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences and the National Cancer Institute have awarded more than $11 million to the U of C-based Pharmacogenetics of Anticancer Agents Research Group, chaired by U of C professor of medicine Mark Ratain. The group will use the grant to study how a person's genes influence his or her response to anti-cancer drugs.

Computers in theory

Dieter van Melkebeek, PhD'99, received the Association for Computing Machinery's 1999 Doctoral Dissertation Award, the top such award in computer science. His dissertation, "Randomness and Completeness in Computational Complexity," will be published in the ACM Distinguished Dissertation Series by Springer-Verlag. Van Melkebeek is a postdoctoral researcher at Rutgers University and the Institute for Advanced Study.

Computers in practice

R. Ben Sutherland, AM'97, received the 1999-2000 George B. Walsh Award, a Humanities Division grant that encourages innovative use of computer technology in research and teaching. A Ph.D. student in the music department's Computer Music Studio, Sutherland will use the grant to develop a real-time, interactive, computer-music performance system.

The new academic economy

According to the American Association of University Professors' 1999-2000 salary report, full professors at Rockefeller University have the nation's highest average salary-$129,800-followed by Harvard, the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Stanford, Princeton, and Yale. The University of Chicago comes in seventh at $118,500. The average salary for a full professor at a doctoral institution is $87,022, with assistant professors earning an average of $50,703. The University of Colorado Health Sciences Center has the highest-paid assistant professors at $72,500 average, but Chicago comes in a close fourth at $68,500.

Top of the class

In April, the Council of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected seven U of C faculty members as fellows: astronomer John Carlstrom, director of the University's Center for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica; paleontologist David Jablonski; Law School professor Saul Levmore; religious historian Jonathan Z. Smith; GSB professor Richard Thaler; physicist Robert Wald; and humanities professor Anthony Yu, PhD'69.

Some words on Tave

Stuart Tave, the William Rainey Harper professor emeritus in the College and the English department, received the 2000 Norman Maclean Faculty Award during reunion. The award recognizes an emeritus or senior faculty member for outstanding contributions to teaching and student life. Tave-a former dean of the Humanities Division, chair of the English department, master of the Humanities Collegiate Division, associate dean of the College, and a noted Austen scholar-retired in 1993.

Young, gifted, and here

Bruce Lahn, assistant professor in human genetics, and Daphne Preuss, assistant professor in molecular genetics & cell biology, will join seven other U of C faculty member as Howard Hughes investigators. An expert on the evolution of the X and Y chromosomes, Lahn was recently named a 2000 Searle Scholar. Preuss-a former Packard Fellow and Searle Scholar-studies plant pollination.