By Elena Watts

Hamilton Book Awards

On Oct. 28, eight faculty members of the University of Texas at Austin left a formal cocktail reception and dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel with their colleagues’ admiration and thousands of dollars in their pockets.

The University Co-op co-hosted the 13th annual Hamilton Book Awards with the University of Texas. It was the “Oscars” of UT academia, where five of 100 faculty who penned books in the last year earned Professor Robert W. Hamilton Book Author Awards. Three others were recognized and amply rewarded as University Co-op Fine Arts, Best Research Paper and Career Research Excellence awardees.

Like the promenade made by Hollywood’s elite down the red carpet at the biggest movie event of the year, guests sauntered along accordion-style screens built of 100 giant-sized covers of the nominated books that spanned opposite sides of the cocktail reception.

“I wanted to recognize our faculty for the work they accomplish,” George Mitchell, president of University Co-op, said. “There are some awards on campus, but I do not think they are enough for the caliber, quality and quantity of faculty and staff members we have at this great University.”

The University of Texas at Austin’s faculty and research staff who published books between September 2007 and December 2008 were eligible for the $10,000 grand prize and four $3,000 runners-up book awards. The research paper, which earned a $5,000 award, had to be composed the preceding year and the career research excellence award, also worth $10,000, was based on work spanning many years. The $3,000 fine arts award recognized outstanding exhibition, performance or other forms of professional creativity.

The 2009 Hamilton Book Awards review committee, composed of 13 faculty and staff members from different departments and schools, was appointed by Vice President for Research Juan Sanchez.

“We select a representative group capable of evaluating the pool of nominations any given year, so the [review committee] membership varies depending on the represented areas each year,” Liza Scarborough, coordinator for the vice president of research, said.

The award is named for Dr. Robert W. Hamilton, Minerva House Drysdale Regents Chair Emeritus in UT’s School of Law for his 40 years of service in the classroom and his contributions to the University Co-op’s success during his 12-year reign as the board’s chairperson.

“It is Dr. Hamilton’s vision and cutting edge thinking that brought us here today, what makes the Co-op the successful institution it is,” Mitchell said.

Hulan Swain, assistant to the president and corporate secretary for University Co-op, said Mitchell had the idea to honor Hamilton because the Co-op, which had for years been in the red or barely surviving, grew a lot during the years Hamilton served on the board.

The ceremony, which was moved from the spring to the fall for the first time this year, needs little publicity, said Swain. Most faculty and staff know to submit their work. All of the nominees are invited to the ceremony and dinner, and their photos and book titles appear in the program.

“They don’t know until that evening who the winner is.  A lot are disappointed, but then at the same time they have this as a nice evening,” Swain said. “Even if they are not celebrating their own win, they are celebrating their colleague’s win.”

Margo Sawyer, committee review member and professor in the Department of Art and Art History, said committee members were given a stack of books and a certain amount of time to rank and give them back before getting another stack. She said the facets of the reviewing process exposed her to areas of scholarship that were unfamiliar and exciting.

“Discussions of the deliberations of the committee were such a joy to be in because it was about the pure essence of scholarship on campus and the vitality and importance, it was as esoteric as the subject matter, the book we were looking at,” Sawyer said. “You’re looking at scholarship from your peers and you’re really trying to find who rises to the top.”

She championed a book, “Reforming the Moral Subject: Ethics and Sexuality in Central Europe, 1890-1930,” by the Department of History’s Tracie M. Matysik that made it into the top five.  “For me, it was a book I wanted to go out and buy. It was dense and poetic with a lot of interesting questions,” Sawyer said. “It was a fantastic subject that has broad implications to not only that time but today, and gives historic insight into issues that  affect us now.”

Sawyer pushed to include Matysik’s book because she said the awards are not only about the

stars, but also about nurturing the next generation of stars. Her stand was that a cross section of careers should be represented.

“[It’s a ] broader acknowledgement of excellence, it’s about celebrating careers: one in full bloom and one about to bloom,” she said. “And I would say that all of them in that top tier were all really exciting books and it was really hard…there were a number of them that should have been in it so it was a really interesting deliberation.”

Thomas O McGarity and Wendy E Wagner with Victoria Rodriguez and Mechele Dickerson

Hamilton Book Award

Grand Prize Winners

“Bending Science: How

Special Interests Corrupt

Public Health”

By Thomas O. McGarity

and Wendy E. Wagner

The subject matter of the winning book, “Bending Science: How Special Interests Corrupt Public Health,” written by two professors in the School of Law was omni-pertinent to the current debate and posed interesting questions, Sawyer said.

“How of the moment that research is—I think everyone was really excited and you want that book and award to make an impact and [have] momentum,” she said.

Paulo Ferreira, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and book award committee review member, said that coming up with criteria was an interesting procedure and exercise because the books were generally so diverse.

“We were looking for impact in an academic setting and broadly, and in community and even worldwide,” he said. “Some books could be narrow in terms of topic but extremely well written, and some were broad but more shallow.  So we tried to look at those things.”

Ferreira said he went back and forth between two books: “Bending Science” and “The Origin of Speech.”

“Depending on the argument, I would go to one side or the other,” he said. “I was in favor of the one that won, it was timely, [and] a bit controversial because it exposes a big problem nowadays, in general, in science, and also can generate quite a bit of discussion about things that happen that people don’t want to discuss.”

Although the grand prize-winning book had a broader impact, Ferreira said “The Origin of Speech” by Peter F. MacNeilage represents a lifetime of work.

“It is an outstanding scholarly work … it is really a compilation of the author’s career,” he said. “It’s thick reading, so it is not something someone outside would pick up and read—it’s going to be a little more focused on the academic setting.  But the implications are very broad and those are the kinds of books that influence.”

At the ceremony, Ernst & Young Professor of Accounting and University Co-op Board Chairperson Michael Granof said, “Our grand prize-winning book suggests that the high regard in which we hold our scientists may be misguided.”

In his introduction, he said the book argues and documents with compelling evidence that sound science is undersold by special interests seeking search results that favor their products and public policies.

“It makes it clear that when the scientists join forces with politicians, lawyers and corporate executives to promote a common cause, they create, quite literally, a deadly combination,” Granof said.

McGarity said that he and Wagner hope the book generates a greater concern for manipulation of the scientific process in academia.

“We hope that shining a light on how outsiders affect research in universities and medical schools will encourage academic institutions to do a better job of preventing abuse by academic scientists and of protecting academic scientists from harassment by outsiders,” McGarity said. “We also hope that the book will encourage academic scientists who tend to shy away from controversial scientific research with public policy implications to become more actively involved in helping policymakers avoid relying on manipulated [“bent”] science.”

Michele Habeck

University Co-op

Fine Arts Award

Michelle Habeck,

assistant professor in the

Department of Theatre

and Dance

Dean of the College of Fine Arts Doug Dempster, who names a jury of four adjudicators from the college to select the winner, presented the University Co-op Fine Arts award to Michelle Habeck for her lighting design.

“The college [of fine arts] is home to many artists and musicians who sometimes feel like resident aliens in the culture of a research university where the hard currency is exchanged in terms of research and experimentation and scholarship,” Dempster said.

Among her credits for the past year, Dempster said Habeck designed the lighting for five major theatrical productions including the world premier of off-Broadway’s “Fifty Words” by playwright Michael Weller and the lighting design for the 50th anniversary revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s “Raisin in the Sun,” which toured several of the most prestigious theatres in the country and was directed by legendary Lou Bellamy.

“Habeck is one of the very few lighting designers that the estate of the recently deceased August Wilson has authorized as a lighting designer who is allowed to design for his shows, and he was very particular about who could direct or design for his shows, and you have to actually be licensed to do that,” Dempster said. “And Habeck is one of the very few lighting designers who has that authority.”

Habeck said she is the first female faculty member in 13 years to receive the award, and only the second ever from the Department of Theatre and Dance.

“It is important for the University to continue its support of working artists in their given artistic fields,” Habeck said. “We are the makers of work, be it light in my case, or clothes, or sets, or sound, sculpture, prints, movement, gestures, music or voice.”

Habeck said artists’ contributions to the expression of our humanity sits as high on the shelf as any of the most excellent book contributions rightly honored during the same celebration.

“Congratulations to all who where nominated and to all who won,” Habeck said. “I am humbled and honored to be in their company.”

Julian Vasquez

University Co-op Best

Research Paper

“Accountability Texas-Style: The Progress and Learning of Urban Minority Students in a High-Stakes Testing Context”

By Julian Vasquez Heilig

Sanchez also appoints four faculty members to the Research Excellence Awards Committee, this year including Dean Judy Ashcroft of the Division of Instructional Innovation and Assessment, to select a faculty or staff researcher who was the principle or sole author of a peer reviewed scholarly paper.

“Dr. Heilig’s publication is a ground breaking study that calls for caution and federal reauthorization of No Child Left Behind. It was published in the premier journal of the American Educational Research Association where it was the ninth most frequently read article for 2008,” said Victoria Rodriguez, vice provost and dean of graduate studies, who presented the award to Heilig.

“This study found that high-stakes testing policies that rewarded and punished schools based on average student scores created incentives for schools to ‘game the system’ by excluding large numbers of African American and Latino students from testing, school and, ultimately, graduation,” Heilig said. “The study inferentially demonstrates that sharp increases in ninth-grade student retention and the students’ subsequent disappearance were associated with increases in exit test scores and related accountability ratings.”

Heilig also found that students typically found to be low achieving were disproportionately excluded from taking the high-stakes,state-mandated achievement tests. This exclusion resulted in gains not found when district scores were compared to nationally normed tests.

Ashcroft said that this subject is one that impacts not only the future of Texas but of all other states due to eight years of No Child Left Behind.

“Because a well-educated population is imperative for success in a global knowledge economy, the implications of this study will be far-reaching in education, government and business,” Ashcroft said. “We must learn how to educate all students so they are prepared to succeed if they choose higher education or skill-specific training.”

J Tinsley Oden

University Co-op Career

Research Excellence Award

J. Tinsley Oden,

Cockrell Family Regents Chair

in Engineering No. 2,

vice president for research

The same research committee of four selected the winner of this award based on who has maintained a superior research excellence program over many years at the University.

“Oden is one of the country’s most respected scientists and academic administrators in the fields of engineering, computation and applied mathematics,” Rodriguez said. “He is also one of the most cited researchers in the world and a member of the national academy of engineering, as well as the national academies of Mexico and Brazil.”

This prolific author and the winner of many national and international honors, she continued, is admired by colleagues and students alike and is widely praised for his teaching, research and public service.

“I would say that I hope the greatest contribution of my research has been the development of new areas of computational science that have demonstrated how computer modeling and simulation can significantly expand and enrich scientific discovery and engineering analysis,” Oden said. “I hope the fact that this work has used methods and principles drawn from many traditional disciplines of science and engineering and that I have attempted to provide it with a sound mathematical foundation has given it some permanence and value for the community at large.”