Richard W. Bailey, University of Michigan Press Book Award
As associate editor of The Oxford Companion to the English Language, and author of such works as Dictionaries of English and Varieties of Present-Day English, Richard Bailey has once again drawn on his vast expertise in the English language to write Images of English: A Cultural History of the Language. Described as an “important and original contribution to the history of ideas,” this is the first book to focus exclusively on opinions about the language as they have evolved through time, providing historical perspective on contemporary attitudes and issues.
Bailey’s focus is not on the language, but rather on ideas about language and how these ideas can both develop from and confirm social and political structures. He cites the example of the American colonies being “the first to wrest political freedom from Britain, so the United States was the first to declare linguistic independence,” and Webster’s created quite a stir when An American Dictionary of the English Language was first published in 1828. Bailey concludes, “Observations about English are a mirror that commentators hold up to themselves; they reflect prejudice and hope, bigotry and pride, scorn and celebration.”
In Images of English, Bailey offers a fascinating view of how native speakers of English regard their own language. He examines past efforts at spelling reform and attempts to have English serve as a universal language, various interpretations of the term “standard English,” and literary uses of English in post-colonial societies. Receiving international acclaim, Images of English is recognized as “original, important, well-written, knowledgeable, and interesting,” full of “exhilarating material” which “will compel those who teach and involve themselves with the English language to examine and challenge their own beliefs.”
The University of Michigan is proud to present Richard W. Bailey with the 1993 University of Michigan Press Book Award for Images of English: A Cultural History of the Language.
Robert C. Ball, University Research Scientist Award
An outstanding research scientist, Robert C. Ball has contributed to fundamental advances in the fields of physics and computer science.
Professor Ball was the sole technical force behind the effort to build a parallel computing resource at Michigan. This computer links 23 different computer processors into a single, immensely powerful system. Few other researchers would have had the tenacity and dedication to bring such a system single-handedly into operation. This computer is a central part of the huge L3 experiment based at the European Laboratory for Partial Physics (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, the largest particle physics laboratory in Europe. The L3 experiment, where millions of particle events are simulated, could not realistically take place without systems like Professor Ball’s around the world. A large fraction of the L3 publications have relied on simulations from the computer at Michigan. The parallel system is now used extensively by other research groups at the Michigan Physics Department.
His work on the computer network that supports the L3 experiment was extremely important. At its inception in 1983, national and international computing networking for scientific research was far less common than it is today. Professor Ball played a key role in the resolution of a broad range of hardware and software problems in those groundbreaking days.
Professor Ball was also deeply involved in a software project called Cooperative Process of Software (CPS), which allows many different computer workstations to cooperate when analyzing a physics problem. He was instrumental in creating a complementary program that eliminated software errors. Today CPS is one of the shining software gems at Fermilab, the largest U.S. physics laboratory.
Currently, Professor Ball is playing a leading role in developing the on-line data acquisition software for the SDC detector, one of two large experiments planned for the fifty-five-mile Superconducting Super Collider now being built near Dallas, Texas. His involvement will be particularly important to all of the University of Michigan’s future interactions with this major experiment.
The depth of his computing knowledge and his commitment to implementing new software and to testing new hardware has made him a vital part of the University of Michigan’s computing program. He has an uncanny ability to integrate seemingly incompatible components together to create a smooth-running system. Without Professor Ball’s time, persistence and skill, numerous important programs and debugging tools for finding errors in computer programs would not exist today.
The University of Michigan is honored to present Robert C. Ball with its University Research Scientist Award.
George Bornstein, Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award
George Bornstein is internationally recognized as one of the leading scholars of Modern and Romantic poetry. His first book, on Yeats and Shelley, was among the first important attempts to put a theory of poetic influence to creative scholarly use. In this and later works he has pioneered a whole new area of Yeats’ criticism, showing how the poet was influenced by Romantic poetry, and helping to change the previously accepted truism that Modernism was a reaction against Romanticism. His work on T.S. Eliot was particularly revolutionary, for he argued that Eliot, despite his ardent and influential dislike of the Romantics, was in fact deeply and profoundly indebted to them.
In recent years, Professor Bornstein has turned his attention to editing, and has completed three volumes of Yeats’ works. Along with a few other major scholars, he has revitalized an area of literary thinking that had become moribund, bringing to editing many of the questions that have animated literary theory over the last few decades. He has joined literary theory and textual scholarship into a partnership that changes the way we think about writers and their work.
Professor Bornstein possesses the key attribute of all major literary scholars: he reads poems acutely, drawing out surprising and convincing implications from the smallest details and largest structures. As no poem stands wholly apart from all other poems, his brilliant command of a large number of literary traditions allows him to understand the place of a poet’s work in relation to much of literary history. He is alive to his subject and unabashed in his own enthusiasm.
Honored recently for his teaching of younger undergraduates (his “Introduction to Poetry” course is a campus favorite), he is also one of the most sought-after dissertation directors in the English Department. Professor Bornstein is that rare teacher-scholar who makes that dash into a two-way arrow. He not only does good work, but has the gift of inspiring good work by other scholars. His genuine concern for his students throughout their academic lives is demonstrated by his own words: “I finally stop worrying about them,” he says, “after they get tenure.”
The academic community at large has benefited greatly from Professor Bornstein’s contributions. He was instrumental in numerous conferences, such as Palimpsest, and has served on editorial boards and executive committees at the University. He has been a strong advocate of the University of Michigan Press, and his efforts as a member of the Executive Committee and as a founder of the Finance Committee were instrumental in the Press’ recent success. The revitalization of the English Department is indebted to his key contributions.
In recognition of his notable achievements, the University of Michigan is proud to bestow upon George Bornstein the Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award.
Donald R. Brown, Distinguished Faculty Governance Awardard.
A professor of psychology with a deep commitment to education, Donald Brown has made significant contributions both to educational programs and to theory.
When he began doing research, psychological theory was largely committed to the idea that the most important areas of one’s personality were already developed by the age of five or six. Professor Brown and his colleagues have worked on the more reasonable assumption that people continued to grow throughout their lives, and that the four years of college were critically important formative years. Over time, he has been involved in some of the most extensive longitudinal studies ever attempted on the effects of college, following the concerns of a number of Vassar women from the sixties to today. His recent work has had to do with life-span development, particularly in women. He has also done extensive research on Michigan’s Inteflex medical program.
His deep interest in student development explains his efforts to develop living-learning programs. An influential member of the committee that formed the Pilot Program and the Residential College, he acted as chair of the Pilot Standing Committee for a full decade. The Pilot Program, originally the pilot for the Residential College, combines the personal and academic advantages of a small liberal arts college with the nearly unlimited intellectual resources of the University of Michigan. It is still going strong today in Alice Lloyd hall, a testament to Professor Brown’s steady commitment.
Professor Brown also helped found the Inteflex Program, and has been Co-Director for twenty years. In Inteflex, students are admitted simultaneously to Michigan’s undergraduate and M.D. programs, receiving both in six years. Insights gained from the study of the humanities and the social sciences are applied to the practice of medicine. The goal of the program is the education of physicians who are competent, compassionate, and socially conscious. Under Professor Brown’s guidance, the program has proved to be extremely successful.
Through all these projects, Professor Brown acted as Director of the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, examining practical issues of teaching development at the university level.
In recognition of his efforts to improve and enhance our country’s educational system while improving the lives of our students, the University is proud to confer upon Donald Brown the Distinguished Faculty Governance Award.
