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The 1999 Philip and Ruth Hettleman Prizes for Artistic and Scholarly
Achievements by Young Faculty have been awarded to four associate professors at
the University in recognition of their outstanding achievements.
Mark Peifer, biology department; Allen Anderson, music department; Michael
McFee, English department; and Yue Xiong, biochemistry and biophysics
department each received a $5,000 stipend and were recognized Sept. 10 at a
Faculty Council meeting.
The Hettleman Prize, founded by the late alumnus Philip Hettleman, recognizes
the achievements of junior tenure-track faculty or recently tenured faculty.
Hettleman prize recipients will lecture about their work during the current
academic year.
Peifer
Peifer joined the faculty in 1992. He is currently studying how the body's
cells interact with each other during normal embryonic development, and how
disrupted cell interactions can lead to human disease. The fruit fly is used as
a model system, and the study results will be applied to human development and
physiology.
In a letter nominating Peifer for the Hettleman prize, biology department
chair Alan Feduccia wrote: "Mark's career is on a meteoric rise and there is
little question that at some point in the future he will be a candidate for a
distinguished chair. He is an excellent teacher, and his seminars are well
known for their lucid descriptions of complex experiments to a general
audience."
Peifer, a St. Olaf College graduate, earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University
and was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University. Peifer was recently
given a Career Development Award from the U.S. Army Breast Cancer Research
Program.
Anderson
Anderson, a faculty member since 1996, heads the composition area of the music
department. He has composed numerous pieces, including a string quartet and
Solfeggietti, a major work for piano solos.
"Anderson is one of our most effective teachers," said Thomas Warburton,
professor of music, in his letter of recommendation. "His classes are
well-organized, and like the scores of his compositions, the material is always
clear and precise. One of the chief evidences of his teaching effectiveness is
the fact that there has been a considerable increase of interest in music
composition among our undergraduates during the last three years. He is very
encouraging to young composers."
Anderson earned a Ph.D. from Brandeis University and has received many awards,
including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1991, a Meet the Composer Grant in 1997
and 1998 and the Junior Faculty Development Award in 1999.
McFee
McFee joined the faculty in 1995. He teaches poetry writing within the
creative writing program, and has written five collections of poetry and has
edited an anthology of contemporary N.C. poetry (UNC Press, 1994). McFee will
also begin teaching a new course in contemporary N.C. literature next fall.
William Andrews, English department chair, wrote in his nominating letter:
"McFee's achievements as a poet, editor and essayist, not to mention his
outstanding teaching and generosity as a colleague, make him a strong candidate
for the prize. In an era when too many poets seem to write for other poets or
to write about themselves in ways that even thoughtful readers find
self-indulgent and/or elusive and obscure, Michael McFee pays scrupulous
attention to the world around him - to this region, its landscape, its people
and their stories, its history and its literature."
The Carolina alumnus won the 1998 Johnston award for distinguished
undergraduate teaching, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in
Creative Writing.
Xiong
Xiong, a faculty member since 1993, is a member of the Lineberger
Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Program in Molecular Biology and
Biotechnology. He studies cell cycle control that is directly applicable to
cancer and many other diseases.
"He has quite literally taken the University of North Carolina by storm," said
David Lee, biochemistry and biophysics department chair; H. Shelton Earp III,
director of Lineberger; and William Marzluff, director of the Program in
Molecular Biology and Biotechnology in a nomination. "His productivity is
extraordinary, and the high visibility of his findings is marked not only by
publication in the world's best journals, but also by the quality of the data
and the intriguing nature of his findings."
Xiong earned a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester and completed a
postdoctoral fellowship at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Long Island, N.Y. He
was presented with the 1999 Gertrude B. Elion Award, a singular award given
annually to the nation's most promising young cancer researcher.
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