NewsRelease

(Posted 5-13-04)
Contact: Steve Gilliam, 336-334-5371

UNCG Faculty Members Score Prestigious Fellowships
 

Dr. Stuart Dischell	Dr. Russ McDonald
Michael Parker	Dr. Michael Zimmerman

GREENSBORO – Four faculty members at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro have hit the jackpot with hard-to-obtain fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

The recipients include three from the Department of English – poet Stuart Dischell and author Michael Parker, who both teach in the department’s MFA Creative Writing Program, and Dr. Russ McDonald, a Shakespearean scholar who was named North Carolina’s top professor last fall by the Carnegie Foundation. The fourth is philosophy faculty member Dr. Michael Zimmerman. All will be on leave next year through their fellowships.

Dischell’s fellowship is from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation of New York. He is North Carolina’s lone Guggenheim recipient this year, and is among 185 fellows selected from 3,200 applications from the United States and Canada. Dischell will work on a new collection of poetry, and will divide his year of research and writing by spending fall semester at home and spring semester in France.

Parker will do research and work on a new novel, based on the life of Aaron Burr’s daughter Theodosia, on an NEA Fellowship. He is among 42 recipients – and the only North Carolinian – selected from more than 1,400 applicants in the agency’s literature fellowships program. Most of his work will be done in Greensboro.

Zimmerman and McDonald received the NEH Fellowships, and the two are among 180 U.S. scholars chosen from almost 1,300 applications. Zimmerman will focus on “The Morality of Risk,” and he plans to spend the fall semester at Oxford University in England. His project will examine the relationship between risk and morality, a broad topic in philosophy which has issues that have been around for centuries. He received another NEH Fellowship in  1998.

McDonald will work on “Shakespearean Poetics and the Culture of Symmetry,” a study that will examine the Bard’s dramatic poetry in the context of his culture’s devotion to pattern and symmetry. He will travel to London to do his research at the British Library.

The uniqueness of the honors was noted by Dr. Rosemary Wander, who marveled that three faculty members in the same department, and four at the same university, have received funding. Added up, the three foundations had almost 6,000 applications.

“People don’t realize how scarce funding is for research in the liberal arts and sciences, or how hard it is to obtain,” said Wander, who oversees research administration at UNCG. “Private foundations and the NEA and NEH are inundated with applications for all kinds of worthwhile projects. You prepare and submit a proposal, but there are no guarantees.

“One fellowship alone is worth celebrating, but four at a single institution in one year boggles the mind. It’s like finding four needles in the proverbial haystack. This a great honor for these scholars and artists, and for the university as well.”

Dischell, in 1996, was among 21 poets nationally who received Creative Writing Fellowships in from the NES. His books of poems are “Good Hope Road,” “Evenings and Avenues” and most recently, “Dig Safe.” His work has received awards from the NEA, the National Poetry Series and the N.C. Arts Council. In 1999, he was invited to read his work at the Library of Congress.

Zimmerman joined UNCG in 1988. His areas of specialization are ethics and action theory, and he has taught courses in applied ethics, metaphysics, epistemology and the history of modern philosophy. His books include “An Essay on Human Action,” “An Essay on Moral Responsibility,” “The Concept of Moral Obligation” and, most recently, “The Nature of Intrinsic Value.”

Parker’s newest novel, “Virginia Lovers,” is being released this month. His first novel, “Hello Down There” (1992), was selected as a New York Times Notable Book and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Fiction Prize. His collection of short stories and novellas, "The Geographical Cure,” won the 1994 Sir Walter Raleigh Prize. Awards for his fiction include the Henry Hoyns Fellowship at the University of Virginia and the Transatlantic Review Award. One of his essays was included in the 1995 Best American Essays collection.

In November, McDonald was named the 2003 North Carolina Professor of the Year in the annual competition conducted by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. He has won all of UNCG’s faculty teaching awards. His book, “The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: an Introduction with Documents,” is widely used in undergraduate courses in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.
 
 

Back to the Latest News Releases
Return to the University News Service Home Page