Lawrence Today magazine, Fall 2003
Michael Orr and Alan Parks have been promoted to the rank of full professor by the Board of Trustees, and four other faculty members — Jerald Podair, Matthew Stoneking, Timothy Troy, ’85, and Dirck Vorenkamp — have been promoted to associate professor and granted tenured appointments.
Professors
Orr, a specialist in medieval art and illuminated manuscripts, joined Lawrence
as an art historian in 1989. A native of England, he has served as an exhibition
consultant to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California, and been awarded
two research grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1992,
Orr was recognized with Lawrence’s Young
Teacher Award.
Parks has taught mathematics and computer science at Lawrence since 1985. A member of the American Mathematical Society, his research interests in applied mathematics include dynamical systems and differential equations. He has also worked on problems of theoretical computer science, including coding theory and the analysis of various computer algorithms. He was cited for his teaching in 1987 as the recipient of Lawrence’s Young Teacher award.
Associate professors
Podair, a 20th-century American historian specializing in race relations,
joined the faculty in 1998. His doctoral dissertation was recognized that
year with the Allan Nevin Prize of the Society of American Historians,
which honored his work as the single
most
outstanding dissertation in American history that year. It was published
as the book The Strike That Changed New York last fall by Yale University
Press.
Podair also served as a consultant scholar for the recent Joseph
McCarthy exhibition at the Outagamie County Museum.
Stoneking, a
physicist whose research interests focus on plasma physics and magnetic
confinements of non-neutral plasmas, came to Lawrence in 1997. He was the
recipient of a $225,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and a $37,000
grant from Research
Corporation to support construction of his plasma physics laboratory, including
a toroidal vacuum chamber.
Troy returned to his alma mater’s theatre arts department from 1989-92 and again in 1997. He directs Lawrence operatic, dramatic, and musical productions, as well as the “Plays on History” series staged at the Outagamie County Museum. In addition, he serves as community artist-in-residence for the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre and wrote the libretto for Samuel Barber’s “Excursions,” Opus 20, which premiered in January.
Vorenkamp, a member of the Lawrence religious studies department since 1997, specializes in Asian religions, especially Buddhism. His teaching was recognized with the Lawrence Freshman Studies Teaching Award in 2000 and his scholarly research has been published in the Encyclopedia of Monasticism, the Journal of Asian Studies, and the Journal of Chinese Philosophy, among others.
