Francis Halzen, left, and Sharon Dunwoody.
Two faculty members in the University of Wisconsin-Madison's College of Letters & Science have received Hilldale Awards.
Hilldale Awards, which honor contributions to teaching, research and service each year, are based on UW-Madison's four divisions: biological sciences, physical sciences, social studies, and arts and humanities.
The awards are sponsored by the Hilldale Fund, which supports the advancement of scholarly activity at UW-Madison. The recipients will be honored at the April 8 meeting of the university’s Faculty Senate.
The two recipients from L&S are:
Physical Sciences: Francis Halzen, Gregory Breit Professor and Hilldale Professor, Department of Physics
UW-Madison’s influence stretches across the globe, but its farthest reach is probably its connection to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole.
IceCube, a huge telescope embedded into some of the world’s purest ice, is the longtime project of Francis Halzen, physics professor and principal investigator. The optics at the South Pole measure the properties of neutrinos from exploding stars in the Milky Way and far-away galaxies.
The experiment, one of the biggest in the university’s history, provides data of unprecedented quality on the highest-level neutrinos and cosmic rays, writes nominator Robert Joynt, professor and chair of the Department of Physics.
“Francis is clearly the leader in neutrino astrophysics worldwide,” Joynt writes. “His research is carried out with extraordinary insight and technical skill. ... He works with equal success in fields ranging from particle physics to astrophysics to cosmology.”
Halzen’s work is prominent in the classroom, too. He is the author of a classic graduate-level physics textbook, “Quarks and Leptons,” that is widely used internationally, and he was one of the early teachers of a popular class at UW-Madison, Physics in the Arts.
“Today, UW-Madison is known as a center, maybe the center, in high-energy astrophysics and astronomy on the international scene, and that is because of Francis Halzen more than any other person,” Joynt writes.
Social Studies: Sharon Dunwoody, Evjue-Bascom Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Sharon Dunwoody’s leadership in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication in the last 30 years has come on two fronts: science communication and leadership.
Before her career in academics, Dunwoody worked as a newspaper science reporter. That experience set her on a path to try to understand how popular science messages are constructed, and how people use and react to them. In her first year of teaching, she revitalized an existing science-writing course, and in the years since, she has worked to establish the prominence of the school’s science-writing program. She also has built a record of research that has earned an international reputation as a science-communication scholar.
“Professor Dunwoody has increased the visibility of the school’s science- communication offerings and established the school’s reputation as one of the primary locations in the United States for both professional and scholarly science-communication training,” writes nominator Greg Downey, professor and director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Dunwoody has taken on a number of leadership positions, serving as director of the journalism school, chair of academic programs for the then-Institute for Environmental Studies (now the Nelson Institute) and, most recently, as associate dean for social studies in the Graduate School.
During those years, she made sure her administrative responsibilities were never full time, allowing her to continue both teaching and doing research.
“She views herself as a faculty member who has the occasional opportunity to lead, and her work life at UW-Madison truly reflects this principle,” Downey writes.