Spring 2013 Honor Roll

- Northwestern University controller Karl Turro will receive the 2013 Daniel D. Robinson Accounting Award from the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) at the organization’s annual meeting in July. The award recognizes excellence and leadership of an individual who demonstrates a continuous commitment to the advancement of college and university accounting and reporting.

- Nina Barrett, 2012-13 library fellow at Northwestern’s Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, won a James Beard Award in the radio show/audio webcast category for her “Fear of Frying” series for WBEZ 91.5, Chicago’s National Public Radio affiliate station.

The nominated stories were about Limburger cheese and women butchers on retreat at Grrls’ Meat Camp. Barrett, who is teaching a School of Continuing Studies graduate class this spring in creative nonfiction, has been nominated for a James Beard Award three times and won the award in 2012.

-President Morton Schapiro will receive the first Educational Leadership Award from Valley Torah High School in California. Schapiro is being recognized for “his encouragement of religious tolerance and sensitivity on the Northwestern campus.” Schapiro will accept the award on June 6, when he will deliver an address on “The Role of Faith in Secular Universities.”

- The Medill Justice Project received a 2013 Peter Lisagor Award for Best Feature Story Online for its published investigative articles and multimedia spotlight on shaken-baby syndrome. The award was given by the Chicago Headline Club, the largest chapter of the national Society of Professional Journalists.

-Two undergraduate and one graduate student have been awarded 2013 Critical Language Scholarships (CLS) from the U.S. Department of State to study one of 13 critical-need foreign languages. The scholarships provide fully-funded, group-based summer intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences. CLS program participants are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship and apply their critical language skills in their future professional careers. Leila Tayeb will study Arabic in Morocco, David Harris will study in China and Peter Krivicich will study in Russia.

-Winter Jade Werner, a doctoral candidate in English in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, has been named a 2013 Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. The Newcombe Fellowship is the nation’s largest and most prestigious award for Ph.D. candidates in the humanities and social sciences whose dissertations address questions of ethical and/or religious values. Each fellow will receive a 12-month award of $25,000. Werner’s dissertation, “The Gospel and the Globe: Missionary Enterprises and the Cosmopolitan Imagination, 1795-1910,” examines how British Protestant mission societies championed and indelibly shaped cosmopolitan idealism in the nineteenth century.

-Xinwen Zhu, an assistant professor of mathematics in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded the prestigious American Mathematical Society (AMS) Centennial Fellowship for the 2013-2014 academic year. The fellowship is presented annually to outstanding mathematicians who have held the doctoral degree for between three and 12 years. The primary selection criterion is excellence in research achievement. The stipend for the 2013-2014 Centennial Fellowship is $82,000, plus an expense allowance of $8,200. Fellows also receive a complimentary one-year AMS membership.

Zhu's research interests focus on geometric representation theory, in particular the geometric aspects of the Langlands program. He studies the geometry and topology of flag varieties of loop groups and applies techniques from the geometric Langlands program to arithmetic geometry. He will use the Centennial Fellowship to visit Columbia University for several months during the 2013-2014 academic year. In 2014 and 2015, he will use the fellowship to visit the University of California, Berkeley and will participate in the program “Geometric Representation Theory'' at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. 

-Julia Ng, Ph.D. in Comparative Literary Studies from The Graduate School, has been awarded the prestigious Charles Bernheimer Prize for the best dissertation of 2013, conferred by the American Comparative Literature Association. Her dissertation, “Conditions of Impossibility: Failures and Fictions of Perpetual Peace,” explores the mathematical foundations of the project for perpetual peace that has served as the frame of reference for modernity's view of law, justice and international politics. Ng is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University.

-Stephanie March, a graduate student in the Bienen School of Music, won top honors at the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Young Artist String Competition for cello performance. March has appeared as soloist with the Sioux City, South Dakota, Waterloo/Cedar Falls and Cherokee Symphonies. As a national competition winner, March received $3,000, provided by the MTNA Foundation Fund.

-Hannah Lee, a junior in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences majoring in art theory and practice, was selected to participate in the Launch Invitational Residency, a new residency program sponsored by the Chicago Artist Coalition. This summer residency will provide students access to the tools they need to craft their path to a successful career while widening their peer and professional network.