Three faculty members from the College of Letters & Science are part of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters' 2014 class of fellows. They are:
Chapman
Robin Chapman, professor emerita of communication sciences and disorders
Chapman has written five chapbooks and nine books of poetry, and her poems have appeared widely in journals and online, including The American Scholar, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, Hudson Review, OnEarth, Poetry, and Wilderness.
She is a former principal investigator at the Waisman Center, where she studied language learning in individuals with Down syndrome, work for which she received the 2006 Career Research Scientist award from the Academy on Mental Retardation.
Leary
James Leary, Birgit Baldwin Professor of Scandinavian Studies, professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and Folklore Studies
Leary is a recipient of the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Public Humanities Scholarship, a fellow of the American Folklore Society and co-editor of Journal of American Folklore. He was a co-founder of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures at UW–Madison.
Leary has done research since the 1970s on the cultural traditions of workers, Native peoples, European Americans, and new immigrants in the Upper Midwest, contributing to numerous folk ife festivals, museum exhibits, films, public radio programs, documentary sound recordings, and accessible archival collections.
Magnuson
John Magnuson, professor emeritus of zoology and limnology
Magnuson joined the UW-Madison faculty in 1968 and taught both limnology and ecology of fishes for more than 30 years. He was the first director of the Center for Limnology (1982-2000), was president of the American Fisheries Society (1981) and a founding member of its Wisconsin chapter, directed the Ecology Program (1976) at the National Science Foundation, and chaired National Academy Committees addressing marine fisheries and biodiversity.
He has served as the thesis adviser for 38 Ph.D. and 67 M.S. students, and published six books and more than 350 papers to date.
Established in 1981, the fellows program represents the highest level of recognition conferred by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters. Drawn from a pool of statewide nominees, fellows are elected for their extraordinary levels of accomplishment in their fields as well as a lifelong commitment to intellectual discourse and public service.
To read about all of the 2014 fellows and learn about the awards ceremony, visit the academy's website.