Published October 22, 2013
Six professors at the University of Louisiana at Monroe have been selected to hold
Endowed Professorships in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Mary Adams, Dr. Jana Giles, and Dr. Rebecca Stephenson from the department of
English; Dr. Joshua Stockley from political science, Dr. Christine Strunk from mathematics,
and Dr. Christopher Mapp from communication, will all receive support for their research
and service projects.
Dr. Ruth Smith, director of the School of Humanities said, “The projects supported
by these professorships reflect the depth of scholarship and quality of teaching that
take place on the ULM campus.”
Dr. Mary Adams, associate professor in the School of Humanities and director of freshman English,
is the new Endowed Professor in English.
She proposed a service learning project to engage world literature students in the
working lives of global citizens. Students will learn about the cultural conditions,
goals, and hardships of people from around the world.
Adams will use the endowment funds to establish an account at the ULM Foundation from
which funds will be drawn to help projects identified by Kiya, a non-profit organization
with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty.
“This professorship affords me the opportunity to embark upon and to fund a very important
educational experience,” said Adams.
“I am allowing my world literature students to donate a portion of my funds through
microloans. This experience will help reinforce much of the social and cultural information
we learn in world literature. But perhaps more importantly, it will connect my students
and these global communities in a very real and indelible way.”
Students will select borrowers who will receive the loans, as small as $25. The goal
will be to establish a continuing fund to allow students to identify worthwhile projects
and become directly involved in helping others create a better life.
Dr. Jana Giles, assistant professor of English in the School of Humanities, was selected for the
McKneeley Professorship in English Literature. Giles has planned a book project which
will examine six British and Anglophone novels.
“I am humbly honored by this distinguished award, which demonstrates a great show
of support for my current book project on several British and Anglophone postcolonial
novels,” Giles said.
“The funds from the professorship will allow me to dedicate my summers to this project,
to travel to conferences and major libraries nationally and internationally, and to
acquire any necessary supplies and services. At this early stage in my career it is
a very special honor to have the university validate my contribution to the community
as well as to the greater endeavor of widening the global scope of enlightenment and
understanding.”
Giles’ work argues that the novels challenge British colonialism through their use
of the sublime, which is a theory of aesthetics—a branch of philosophy concerned with
human responses to art, beauty, and physical experience.
Dr. Christopher Mapp, assistant professor of communication and director of student publications, has been
awarded the Vernon W. “Bodie” McCrory Professorship in Mass Communications.
Mapp plans to use his funds to attend conferences and further his research in mass
communication and interpersonal communication.
“It’s an honor and a privilege to receive this award, which supports the kind of research
and scholarship that is critical to our mission at ULM and allows us to provide the
best possible education to our students,” Mapp said.
“[My] conference presentations will center on reality television and cultural narcissism
and a quantitative research study on forgiveness and imagined interactions.”
Mapp also has plans to visit Los Angeles in the spring for script development as part
of his creative work with Hollywood Casting and Film, and has a book chapter on Dr.
Drew's ‘Celebrity Rehab’ coming out early next year.
Dr. Rebecca Stephenson is the new Barham Endowed Professor in English.
An associate professor and graduate coordinator for the department of English, Stephenson
will use her funding for travel and research materials for her current book project
tentatively titled “Finding Literature in Computus and Scientific Writing: Discourses
of Identity in Anglo Saxon England.”
Stephenson’s work will analyze medieval English scientific writings as a literary
form that works primarily not by imparting factual scientific and medical knowledge
but by figuring an identity for the medieval monks who created and read the materials.
Stephenson plans to use the funds from the professorship for two trips to England,
in 2015 and 2016 for further work with manuscripts. She will also present some of
her research at the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists conference at Glasgow
in 2015 and the International Medieval Congress at Leeds in 2016.
“My research involves working with 1000-year old manuscripts,” remarked Stephenson.
“This professorship gives me the opportunity to travel to libraries in Cambridge,
Oxford, and London. I am grateful for this opportunity.”
Dr. Joshua Stockley, associate professor of political science, has been selected as the L. M. McKneely
Endowed Professor in the Humanities.
His project will be a book chapter about the 2014 Louisiana Senate race between Senator
Mary Landrieu and Representative Bill Cassidy for the Roads to Congress series. He
will also serve as the lead editor on a book about the 2015 state elections.
“I am deeply humbled and honored to receive the L.M. McKneely Endowed Professorship
in the Humanities,” said Stockley.
“It is always a privilege to be recognized by your peers and by the university for
your hard work and academic accomplishments; I am excited by the opportunity this
fellowship gives me to expand upon my research and to produce significant publications
in the discipline of political science.”
Dr. Christine Strunk holds the Capital One Professorship in Mathematics. Her project will be the investigation
of the core of an ideal.
According to Strunk, the core is the simplification of an ideal. The concept was introduced
in 1988 and appears in the Briançon Skoda Theorem relating ideals to reductions.
The theory also has a connection to Kawamata’s Conjecture of line bundles in Algebraic
Geometry. Strunk seeks to produce a general formula during her research.
Strunk said, “I am greatly humbled to be named the Capital One Professor of Mathematics.
I am also grateful for the award to fund my research and to help me travel to present
this important work.”
For more information on endowed professorships, visit ulm.edu/foundation/professorships.html
