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Professorships go to three faculty members


Three faculty members have been named to endowed professorships. They are:

* Jeffrey L. Dangl, John N. Couch associate professor of biology;

* J. Charles Jennette, Kenneth M. Brinkhous professorship of pathology; and

* James H. Johnson Jr., William Rand Kenan Jr. distinguished professor of management in the Kenan-Flagler Business School.

Dangl

Dangl teaches courses in genetics and molecular biology and host-microbe interactions. He has been involved in the department's expansion of genetics and genomics research in model organisms.

In his lab, Dangl studies how plants recognize and fight off infection by microbes such as bacteria and fungus.

Dangl is a member of the National Science Foundation Eukaryotic Genetics Panel and has been elected to the North American Steering Committee for Arabidopsis Research.

Two recent articles in the journal Science about the plant arabidopsis are among his most significant.

Dangl is an associate or reviewing editor for Cell, The Plant Journal, Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions and Trends in Plant Science.

Last year, he received the John L. Sanders Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching and Service.

Dangl received his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Stanford University, earning a doctorate in genetics in 1986.

The John N. Couch Professorship in Botany was established in 1984 in honor of Couch, an internationally renowned botanist who specialized in the study of fungi. Couch was a Kenan professor of botany and a faculty member for more than 50 years.

Jennette

Chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the School of Medicine and a faculty member since 1978, Jennette teaches medical students and other health-affairs students about inflammation and repair, immunopathology and nephropathology.

His research focuses on understanding the causes and improving the diagnosis and treatment of kidney diseases, especially those caused by inflammatory and immunologic mechanisms.

Along with Ronald J. Falk of the medicine department, he has pioneered research on autoimmune vasculitis.

Jennette is director of the Nephropatholgy Laboratory, which provides diagnostic services for patients with kidney disease in the southeastern United States, and is co-director of the Glomerular Disease Collaborative Network, which coordinates kidney disease research in the United States.

Author of more than 400 publications, Jennette serves on the editorial boards of seven pathology or kidney-disease journals.

A recipient of a Jefferson Pilot Fellowship in Academic Medicine, Jennette also has received awards from the Renal Pathology Society and the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology.

After receiving a bachelor's degree in zoology at Carolina, he completed medical studies and a pathology residency here, as well as a research fellowship at Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla, Calif.

The Kenneth M. Brinkhous Professorship in Pathology was established in 1988 by medical alumni and former house staff members at UNC Hospitals. In 1946, Brinkhous joined the Carolina faculty as professor of pathology and chair of the department. A leader in the fields of clotting and hemorrhage, his pioneering studies led to control of hemophilia. Brinkhous stepped down as department chair in 1973.

Johnson

Johnson co-directs the Management Academy for Public Health, a joint venture between the business school and the School of Public Health, which offers business training to public health officials.

An expert in entrepreneurship, diversity, urban economics, venture financing and welfare reform issues, Johnson launched the Urban Investment Strategies Center in 1996, which aims to revitalize economically distressed communities.

He oversees the Durham Scholars Program, designed to foster college access and matriculation among disadvantaged youth; Triangle Night Flight, a midnight basketball league that seeks to reconnect idle minority males to mainstream educational and employment opportunities; and the Urban Enterprise Corps, which recruits newly graduated MBAs from top business schools to assist under-performing minority- and women-owned businesses.

Johnson received a bachelor of science degree from N.C. Central University in 1975, a master of science degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1977 and a doctoral degree from Michigan State University in 1980.

The William Rand Kenan Jr. professorships, the largest group of professorships bearing the Kenan name, were established in 1965 by a bequest from William R. Kenan Jr. Born in Wilmington in 1872, Kenan received a bachelor's of science degree in chemistry from Carolina in 1894. He became an internationally known chemical and engineering adviser who participated in the discovery of calcium carbide and its use in the production of acetylene gas.

Dangl and Johnson began their appointments July 1. Jennette's began Oct. 1.


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