Academic promotions announced
Promoted to the rank of professor were Lynne Cassimeris and Jill Schneider in biological sciences, Lee Kern in education and human services, and Geraldo Vasconcellos in finance and law. Promoted to the rank of associate professor were Amy Forsyth in art and architecture, Michael Gill and Gordon Moskowitz in psychology, and Richard Vinci in materials science and engineering.
Lynne Cassimeris, professor
Cassimeris came to Lehigh in 1992 as an assistant professor of molecular biology and a Dana Foundation Faculty Fellow after completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In 2002, she was named a Distinguished Graduate Alumnus of the UNC biology department.
Cassimeris was promoted to associate professor in Lehigh’s new biological sciences department in 1996 and was named a Distinguished Associate Professor, endowed by the Class of ’61. Cassimeris studies cell division by examining how the structure used to divide the genetic material is put together and taken apart. Her work is funded by the National Institutes of Health and past funding has included support from the National Science Foundation and NATO. She also serves on the American Cancer Society’s Cell Cycle and Growth Control Study Section.
Amy Forsyth, associate professor
Forsyth arrived at Lehigh in the fall of 2001 at the rank of associate professor in the department of art and architecture. She earned her bachelors degree in architecture from Penn State and her masters in architecture from Princeton University. At Lehigh, she teaches furniture design and beginning design and specializes in designing and building furniture. Her work has been shown in galleries and museums throughout the U.S.
She also writes about furniture for publications such as American Craft and Woodwork Magazine. A trustee of The Furniture Society, she is also the editor of the organization’s newsletter, Furniture Matters.
Michael Gill, associate professor
Gill came to Lehigh in 1998 after earning his Ph.D. in social-personality psychology from the University of Texas. Gill's primary research interest focuses on the factors that promote positive attitudes and/or empathy with regard to members of oppressed or devalued social groups. He has traveled to South Africa as part of an international delegation that focused on how social problems are addressed, and he has published his research in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and other top journals in his field.
He’s also presented his research at both national and international conferences. Recently, he was voted into the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, whose membership criteria include “evidence of substantial contribution to social psychology as an empirical science; significant publication in recognized journals or books.” He has earned several teaching awards both during his graduate school years and his time at Lehigh.
Lee Kern, professor
Kern is a professor of special education at Lehigh. She received her Ph.D in special education in 1993 from the University of South Florida and has worked in the area of special education for more than 20 years as a classroom teacher, behavior specialist, and consultant. Her research interests are in the area of severe challenging behavior, functional assessment, curricular interventions, and self-management.
She has published numerous articles and book chapters in these areas. In addition, she has received more than $7.5 million dollars in grant funding to research strategies to address children’s behavioral challenges. Kern is currently associate editor of Education and Treatment of Children, Journal of Behavioral Education, and the Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, and serves on the editorial boards of five journals in the area of education.
Gordon Moskowitz, associate professor
Moskowitz was drawn to social psychology as an undergraduate at McGill University, and followed these interests to New York University, where he received his Ph.D in 1993. While at NYU, he developed research programs on topics such as impression formation, automaticity, minority influence, accessibility effects, stereotypes, and the effects of goals on each of these processes. Following graduate training, he attended the Max Planck Institute in Munich for a one-year post-doc. After one year as a faculty member at the University of Konstanz, he returned to the United States to serve as assistant professor in the psychology department of Princeton University. He remained in that position from 1994 to 2001, when he joined the psychology department at Lehigh as assistant professor.
In addition to his research presented in psychology journals such as Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Moskowitz has edited a book on social cognition for Lawrence Erlbaum Associates titled Cognitive Social Psychology and written a textbook titled Social Cognition for the Guilford Press. He’s served on the editorial board of several journals, and has been awarded grants from the National Science Foundation, as well as from the German Science Foundation, for his research on stereotyping.
Jill Schneider professor
Schneider came to Lehigh in January 1992 as an assistant professor in the department of psychology. That year, she received the Frank A. Beach Award as the year's outstanding young investigator in the field of behavioral neuroendocrinology. She has received continuous funding since 1988 from the National Science Foundation and an RO1 Research Grant from the National Institutes of Health to support her research on nutritional influences on reproductive behavior and physiology.
In 1994, she received tenure, was promoted to associate professor in the department of psychology, and received a Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Mental Health. She joined the newly formed department of biological sciences in 1995 and held the Lehigh Class of 1961 Distinguished Professorship from 1995 to 1998. She is the author of more than 40 research and review articles and co-editor of the book, Reproduction in Context: Social and Environmental Influences on Reproductive Physiology and Behavior. Her latest review article, published in the journal Physiology and Behavior, explains the physiological and evolutionary connections between body weight, food intake, sex and reproduction.
Geraldo Vasconcellos
Vasconcellos came to Lehigh in 1988 as an assistant professor of finance. His research and teaching have been primarily in international finance, and his publications include topics such as foreign currency markets, portfolio approach to export diversification strategies, privatizations, and cross-border mergers and acquisitions. He serves as peer reviewer for more than a dozen academic journals, as well as associate editor of the Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies, and as a member of the editorial board of the Lehigh University Press.
In 1994, he was awarded the Sue and Eugene Mercy, Jr. Professorship in Business and Economics, a two-year award. In 1996, he earned a joint appointment in the department of economics. In 2000, he received the Arthur F. Searing Professorship in Finance and Economics, a three-year award. Recently, he was awarded the Allen DuBois Distinguished Professorship in Finance and Economics. In addition to his academic duties, Vasconcellos currently serves as director of the business minor program that is offered through Lehigh’s College of Business and Economics.
Richard Vinci, associate professor
Vinci joined Lehigh in 1998 as an assistant professor, and is currently director of the Mechanical Behavior Laboratory in the department of materials science and engineering. Prior to this appointment, he held an appointment as an acting assistant professor in the department of materials science and engineering at Stanford University, from which he received his Ph.D. in 1994. He received his undergraduate degree in materials science and engineering from M.I.T. in 1988. Vinci and his group conduct research focused on the processing and properties of thin films and small-scale metal structures, with an emphasis on mechanical behavior.
He received an NSF CAREER Award for a fundamental experimental study of fatigue behavior in free-standing metal thin films for small-scale structures. Other active areas of research include strengthening mechanisms in platinum and gold thin films, mechanical behavior of lead-free solder materials, and stress relaxation mechanisms in nano-scale thin metal films. From 2001 through 2003, Vinci held a P.C. Rossin Assistant Professorship. He has also received the ASM International Bradley Stoughton Award for Young Teachers, the Outstanding Young Member Award from the Lehigh Valley Chapter of ASM, the Lehigh University Junior Award for Distinguished Teaching, the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award, and his department's Gilbert E. Doan Award given by the graduating senior class.
--Linda Harbrecht
Lynne Cassimeris, professor
Cassimeris came to Lehigh in 1992 as an assistant professor of molecular biology and a Dana Foundation Faculty Fellow after completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In 2002, she was named a Distinguished Graduate Alumnus of the UNC biology department.
Cassimeris was promoted to associate professor in Lehigh’s new biological sciences department in 1996 and was named a Distinguished Associate Professor, endowed by the Class of ’61. Cassimeris studies cell division by examining how the structure used to divide the genetic material is put together and taken apart. Her work is funded by the National Institutes of Health and past funding has included support from the National Science Foundation and NATO. She also serves on the American Cancer Society’s Cell Cycle and Growth Control Study Section.
Amy Forsyth, associate professor
Forsyth arrived at Lehigh in the fall of 2001 at the rank of associate professor in the department of art and architecture. She earned her bachelors degree in architecture from Penn State and her masters in architecture from Princeton University. At Lehigh, she teaches furniture design and beginning design and specializes in designing and building furniture. Her work has been shown in galleries and museums throughout the U.S.
She also writes about furniture for publications such as American Craft and Woodwork Magazine. A trustee of The Furniture Society, she is also the editor of the organization’s newsletter, Furniture Matters.
Michael Gill, associate professor
Gill came to Lehigh in 1998 after earning his Ph.D. in social-personality psychology from the University of Texas. Gill's primary research interest focuses on the factors that promote positive attitudes and/or empathy with regard to members of oppressed or devalued social groups. He has traveled to South Africa as part of an international delegation that focused on how social problems are addressed, and he has published his research in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and other top journals in his field.
He’s also presented his research at both national and international conferences. Recently, he was voted into the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, whose membership criteria include “evidence of substantial contribution to social psychology as an empirical science; significant publication in recognized journals or books.” He has earned several teaching awards both during his graduate school years and his time at Lehigh.
Lee Kern, professor
Kern is a professor of special education at Lehigh. She received her Ph.D in special education in 1993 from the University of South Florida and has worked in the area of special education for more than 20 years as a classroom teacher, behavior specialist, and consultant. Her research interests are in the area of severe challenging behavior, functional assessment, curricular interventions, and self-management.
She has published numerous articles and book chapters in these areas. In addition, she has received more than $7.5 million dollars in grant funding to research strategies to address children’s behavioral challenges. Kern is currently associate editor of Education and Treatment of Children, Journal of Behavioral Education, and the Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, and serves on the editorial boards of five journals in the area of education.
Gordon Moskowitz, associate professor
Moskowitz was drawn to social psychology as an undergraduate at McGill University, and followed these interests to New York University, where he received his Ph.D in 1993. While at NYU, he developed research programs on topics such as impression formation, automaticity, minority influence, accessibility effects, stereotypes, and the effects of goals on each of these processes. Following graduate training, he attended the Max Planck Institute in Munich for a one-year post-doc. After one year as a faculty member at the University of Konstanz, he returned to the United States to serve as assistant professor in the psychology department of Princeton University. He remained in that position from 1994 to 2001, when he joined the psychology department at Lehigh as assistant professor.
In addition to his research presented in psychology journals such as Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Moskowitz has edited a book on social cognition for Lawrence Erlbaum Associates titled Cognitive Social Psychology and written a textbook titled Social Cognition for the Guilford Press. He’s served on the editorial board of several journals, and has been awarded grants from the National Science Foundation, as well as from the German Science Foundation, for his research on stereotyping.
Jill Schneider professor
Schneider came to Lehigh in January 1992 as an assistant professor in the department of psychology. That year, she received the Frank A. Beach Award as the year's outstanding young investigator in the field of behavioral neuroendocrinology. She has received continuous funding since 1988 from the National Science Foundation and an RO1 Research Grant from the National Institutes of Health to support her research on nutritional influences on reproductive behavior and physiology.
In 1994, she received tenure, was promoted to associate professor in the department of psychology, and received a Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Mental Health. She joined the newly formed department of biological sciences in 1995 and held the Lehigh Class of 1961 Distinguished Professorship from 1995 to 1998. She is the author of more than 40 research and review articles and co-editor of the book, Reproduction in Context: Social and Environmental Influences on Reproductive Physiology and Behavior. Her latest review article, published in the journal Physiology and Behavior, explains the physiological and evolutionary connections between body weight, food intake, sex and reproduction.
Geraldo Vasconcellos
Vasconcellos came to Lehigh in 1988 as an assistant professor of finance. His research and teaching have been primarily in international finance, and his publications include topics such as foreign currency markets, portfolio approach to export diversification strategies, privatizations, and cross-border mergers and acquisitions. He serves as peer reviewer for more than a dozen academic journals, as well as associate editor of the Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies, and as a member of the editorial board of the Lehigh University Press.
In 1994, he was awarded the Sue and Eugene Mercy, Jr. Professorship in Business and Economics, a two-year award. In 1996, he earned a joint appointment in the department of economics. In 2000, he received the Arthur F. Searing Professorship in Finance and Economics, a three-year award. Recently, he was awarded the Allen DuBois Distinguished Professorship in Finance and Economics. In addition to his academic duties, Vasconcellos currently serves as director of the business minor program that is offered through Lehigh’s College of Business and Economics.
Richard Vinci, associate professor
Vinci joined Lehigh in 1998 as an assistant professor, and is currently director of the Mechanical Behavior Laboratory in the department of materials science and engineering. Prior to this appointment, he held an appointment as an acting assistant professor in the department of materials science and engineering at Stanford University, from which he received his Ph.D. in 1994. He received his undergraduate degree in materials science and engineering from M.I.T. in 1988. Vinci and his group conduct research focused on the processing and properties of thin films and small-scale metal structures, with an emphasis on mechanical behavior.
He received an NSF CAREER Award for a fundamental experimental study of fatigue behavior in free-standing metal thin films for small-scale structures. Other active areas of research include strengthening mechanisms in platinum and gold thin films, mechanical behavior of lead-free solder materials, and stress relaxation mechanisms in nano-scale thin metal films. From 2001 through 2003, Vinci held a P.C. Rossin Assistant Professorship. He has also received the ASM International Bradley Stoughton Award for Young Teachers, the Outstanding Young Member Award from the Lehigh Valley Chapter of ASM, the Lehigh University Junior Award for Distinguished Teaching, the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award, and his department's Gilbert E. Doan Award given by the graduating senior class.
--Linda Harbrecht
Posted on:
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
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