UNL announces Rosowski, Weaver, Douglas professorships

Names have been attached to professorships established earlier this year to recognize faculty research excellence or outstanding teaching at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. These professorships honor individuals with associations to the university: a beloved former English professor, a prominent alumnus and a pioneering botanist.

The Susan J. Rosowski Professorship will recognize faculty at the associate professor level who have achieved distinguished records of scholarship or creative activity and who show exceptional promise for future excellence. The Aaron Douglas or John E. Weaver Professorship for Teaching Excellence will be awarded to faculty holding the full professor rank who demonstrate sustained and extraordinary levels of teaching excellence and national visibility for instructional activities and/or practice.

The Rosowski Professorship is named in honor of the late Susan J. Rosowski (1942-2004), who at the time of her death was the Adele Hall distinguished professor of English at UNL. She established the (Willa) Cather Project, and was general editor for the scholarly edition of Cather's works published by the University of Nebraska Press, a multi-volume project. Rosowski is credited with igniting renewed regional, national and international interest in Cather's works. Rosowski was an award-winning author and well-respected teacher and scholar. A Kansas native, Rosowski earned her B.A. at Whittier College and her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Arizona. In 2004, she received the University of Nebraska's Outstanding Research and Creative Activity Award.

This professorship is open only to associate professors who have no other named professorship. It is a five-year professorship and carries a $3,000 annual stipend.

The Douglas professorship honors NU alumnus Douglas (1899-1979), who was the first African American to earn a degree in art from NU and is considered a pre-eminent artist of the Harlem Renaissance movement. A native of Topeka, Kan., Douglas earned a B.F.A. from the university in 1922. He founded the Department of Art at Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., where he taught from 1937 to 1966. Douglas's art captured the zeitgeist of his era, helping to establish a new black aesthetic. He combined traditional African and African-American images with the prevailing Cubist and Art Deco stylings, creating a distinctive and imaginative visual form. His work is considered seminal to the Harlem Renaissance and remains enduring and important. Douglas also earned a master's degree (1944) from Teachers College at Columbia College in New York. He received an honorary doctoral degree from Fisk.

Recently, the Sheldon Museum of Art acquired four Douglas works, a set of woodcuts on paper titled "Emperor Jones." Created in 1926, they are early examples of Douglas's oeuvre. The Sheldon also owns "Window Cleaning," a 1935 oil painting of an African-American man.

The Weaver professorship honors a leading expert on grasses, both as natural populations and as crops. During his career as a faculty member at NU, Weaver (1884-1956) published many works regarding vegetation and ecology of prairies and published the first American ecology textbook. His reputation as a world-renowned plant ecologist attracted students from Nebraska and beyond to study range management in agronomy. An Iowa native, Weaver earned his B.S. and master's degrees from the University of Nebraska, and his doctorate from the University of Minnesota. He joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 1915 and, became a full professor in 1917; he retired in 1952.

Weaver and Douglas professorships are open to faculty members who carry no other named professorships. They are five-year professorships, subject to renewal, and carry $5,000 annual stipends. Faculty selected for these professorships will choose either the Weaver or Douglas title; only the name is different as the professorships have identical selection criteria.

Applications and nominations should be forwarded to the Office of the Senior Vice Academic Affairs by Jan. 16. The Committee on University Professorships will review nominations and applications. The chancellor will make final selections and the goal is to announce the recipients in late spring. Details about application and nomination procedures can be found at www.unl.edu/svcaa/honors.