Four Philip H. Knight Professorships awarded to University of Oregon faculty

EUGENE, Ore. -- (Oct. 17, 2007) -- Four University of Oregon professors were each awarded the Philip H. Knight Professorship this fall.

Katherine V. Cashman, professor of geological sciences; Warren Ginsberg, professor of English; James C. Mohr, professor of history; and Tom H. Stevens, professor of chemistry were presented the award by Wendy Larson, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

The Knight Professorships are awarded to full professors in the College of Arts and Sciences who have demonstrated an extraordinary level of achievement over a sustained period of time and have had impacts in their fields of study that go well beyond the existing high expectations for full professors on campus.

Evidence for these achievements includes recognition by professional organizations for outstanding contributions to the field or other endorsements by the academic community. All four professors previously had been recognized with a College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor Award -- Cashman and Ginsberg in 2003, Mohr in 1998, and Stevens in 2006.

Last year, Cashman was awarded the Bowen Award, the highest honor of the Volcanology-Geochemistry-Petrology (VGP) section of the American Geophysical Union, the top international scientific organization in her field. Cashman served for four years as president of the VGP section of the American Geophysical Union and has been a member of the Women in Physical Sciences Committee.

Cashman has authored or co-authored 94 scientific publications in the top international journals in her field and is also an associate editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research, one of the top journals in all of earth science. Cashman has collaborated with many other well-known volcanologists around the world.

Ginsberg has been at the UO since 2000. He was a 1999-2000 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and has achieved international distinction as a writer of highly influential critical works. His many and varied contributions to the field of medieval literary study have earned widespread recognition among his peers for their meticulous scholarship, theoretical sophistication, acute close readings of complex texts and for their sensitivity to the human situations.

A U.S. historian, Mohr has achieved national recognition in several fields. He is recognized as a national authority on the history of medicine, public health and law and has been called to testify as an expert before the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate. His publications are noted as extraordinary in both their range and quantity. Mohr has been a professor at UO since 1992 and has sat on the editorial boards of the Journal of Negro History and the Journal of American History.

Stevens, who arrived at the UO in 1982, is known for his work in the field of vacuolar protein sorting in yeast. He has been awarded grants for his research in sorting and transport of yeast membrane proteins and the study of cell biology of eukaryotic organelle assembly. His findings have been widely published in scientific journals.

He is best known for his work on the vacuole ATPase, on protein splicing, and on the trafficking pathways to the vacuole in yeast, in which he was a pioneer. Stevens has been called one of the very best cell biologist/biochemists of his generation.
"We are delighted to recognize the talents and accomplishments of these four professors," said Dean Wendy Larson. "They have done a great deal to further our educational and research missions, and to enrich the intellectual environment for students and for their colleagues."

About the University of Oregon
The University of Oregon is a world-class teaching and research institution and Oregon's flagship public university. The UO is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization made up of 62 of the leading public and private research institutions in the United States and Canada. Membership in the AAU is by invitation only. The University of Oregon is one of only two AAU members in the Pacific Northwest.

Media Contact: Pauline Austin, 541-346-3129, paustin@uoregon.edu

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