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Four honored with Hettleman

The 2000 Philip and Ruth Hettleman Prizes for Artistic and Scholarly Achievements by Young Faculty have been awarded to four University faculty members in recognition of their outstanding achievements.

Winners are:

* Michael Harris, art;

* Eric Muller, law;

* David Pfennig, biology; and

* Otto Zhou, physics and astronomy.

Winners each received a $5,000 stipend and were recognized Sept. 15 at a Faculty Council meeting. The Hettleman Prize, founded by the late alumnus Philip Hettleman, recognizes the achievements of outstanding junior tenure-track faculty or recently tenured faculty. Hettleman prize recipients will lecture about their work during the current academic year.

Harris

Harris, who joined the faculty in 1996, is an assistant professor of art history teaching African and African-American art. His research focuses on racial stereotypes and cross-cultural dialogues. He is a member of the Africobra art movement and his artwork has been exhibited around the country.

In a letter nominating Harris for the Hettleman prize, Jerry Bolas, director of the Ackland Art Museum, wrote: "Michael's achievements at Carolina are both scholarly -- as a widely published expert on African and African American art and curator of museum exhibitions -- and artistic -- as a practicing artist whose work is exhibited around the country. It is his special gift that he communicates to an extremely broad range of on- and off- campus audiences through his classroom lectures, public presentations, publications, artwork and exhibitions he frequently organizes."

Harris received a 2000 Outstanding Faculty Award from the Alumni Association and the Division of Student Affairs. He has served as curator of numerous exhibits of African and African-American art, and his writings, which include two volumes of poetry, have been published nationwide.

Muller

In a letter nominating Muller for the Hettleman award, law professor Michael Corrado wrote, "Eric Muller is an asset to the law school, to the university and to the academic community. He has only begun to fulfill his promise, but what he has done so far marks him, in my estimation, as one of the outstanding young scholars in our field."

Muller has been an associate law professor since 1998. He has published articles in the three leading law reviews in the country and is finishing work on a book on the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, to be published next year by the University of Chicago Press.

"He is generally acknowledged among members of the academy who track young legal scholars to be one of the bright stars in criminal law, criminal procedure and constitutional law," Corrado wrote.

Muller has received several honors, including a U.S. Department of Justice Special Achievement Award for Sustained Superior Performance of Duty in 1992. He also was recently selected as a grant recipient from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program.

Pfennig

Pfennig, an associate professor of biology, joined the faculty in 1996. His work focuses on natural selection and adaptation, especially kin recognition and the development of polyphenism - the expression of different traits within the same life stage and population of a species. His research has been published in numerous periodicals and textbooks.

"Dr. Pfennig's work is groundbreaking, and is recognized by his peers as outstanding," Alan Feduccia, biology chair, and Professor William Kier wrote in their nominating letter. "David is an extremely valuable member of the UNC and Chapel Hill community. He has served as a research mentor to a number of undergraduates, several of whom have graduated with honors or received research commendations."

Pfennig was recently named subject editor of Ecology, an international journal. He also has won several awards, including the Pitelka Award for Excellence in Research from the International Society for Behavioral Ecology in 1996.

Zhou

In his letter of nomination for Zhou, Department of Physics and Astronomy Chair Bruce Carney wrote, "Otto is an outstanding teacher, always ranked at the very top by student written evaluations. His mentoring skills are revealed by the trail of students' footprints leading to his laboratory."

Zhou, a faculty member since 1996, is the associate chair of the curriculum in applied and materials sciences and an assistant professor of materials science and physics. He studies the production and application of new materials, called nanotubes, constructed from individual carbon molecules. Zhou serves as director of the North Carolina Center for Nanoscale Materials.

"Otto deserves the Hettleman prize not only because he is an internationally-renowned pioneer in superconductivity and carbon nanotechnology, but because he is showing his colleagues and students what is required to become first-class teachers and researchers," Carney wrote. Zhou, who is being promoted to early tenure, has one patent granted in nanotechnology and six pending. He received the Junior Faculty Development Award and the University Research Council Award in 1997.

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