College of Arts and Sciences 2001 Distinguished Alumni

Each year, the College of Arts and Sciences honors four alumni, one from each of the four academic areas of the college, who are recognized as exceptional representatives of their disciplines and the college. This year, the awardees are all outstanding teachers who have made a difference at local, national and international levels, both as distinguished scholars and concerned citizens!

The 2001 College of Arts and Sciences distinguished alumni recipients are: Brent O. Berlin, Social Sciences; Ronald K. Chesser, Natural Sciences; Frances Lay Morris, Professional Schools; and Azar Nafisi, Humanities.

Berlin received his Bachelor of Science degree from OU in 1959 and his Master of Science degree ('60) and doctorate of anthropology ('64) from Stanford University. He is currently the Graham Perdue Professor of Anthropology at the University of Georgia, where he serves as director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Berlin taught for many years at the University of California - Berkeley and after his retirement in 1994, he moved to the University of Georgia. His major research areas are cognitive anthropology and ethnobiology (people's knowledge and use of their natural biological resources). Over the last decade he has been working on traditional herbal medicine in Chiapas, Mexico where he currently leads a multidisciplinary comparative research project on ethnomedicine, medical ethnobotany, and ethnopharmacology. Berlin has also carried out ethnobotanical and ethnozoological fieldwork among the Aguaruna Jivaro of Amazonas, Peru. He is the founder andcurrent director of the Herbario Ethnobotanico de Chiapas, a specialized ethnobotanical herbarium whose holdings exceed 10,000 specimens of medicinal plants for the highlands of Chiapas,located at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur where he has held a visiting research appointment since 1992. Berlin is one of only 58 anthropologists who are members of the prestigious National academy of Science. He is past president of the International Society of Ethnobiology and serves on the editorial boards of a number of professional journals.

Although Ronald R. Chesser came to OU as an all-state athlete, he soon turned his attention to natural history, in which he had a strong interest. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from OU ('73), a Master of Science degree from Memphis State University ('76), and returned to OU to complete a Ph.D. ('81), all three in zoology. Chesser's professional life has led him into a career as a statistical modeler of population structure, combined with field studies to verify statistical predictions. He currently holds a faculty position at Texas Tech University in the Department of Biological Sciences. Chesser is recognized as a leading population biologist whose work has contributed in significant ways to studying research problems that are of both
applied and theoretical interest. These contributions have been international in scope. Over the past few years he has used his unique combination of talents to study small mammals near the destroyed Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine. This work is important because animals provide data about the general environmental health of the region. His research caught the attention of Vice President Al Gore, and he subsequently worked with Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma to establish an International Radioecology Laboratory at Chernobyl.

Frances Lay Morris has made child advocacy both her vocation and her avocation. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature ('52) and a Master of Arts degree ('71), both from the University of Oklahoma. Following a career in radio and television as a writer, producer and host of children's programs, she joined the staff and later the faculty of the Child Psychiatry training program at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. After 26 years as "Miss Fran" and 10 years as the director of the Diagnostic-Therapeutic Nursery at OUHSC, she is currently semi-retired. She holds the faculty position of associate clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and teaches one-half day a week as a volunteer. Morris has written a column called "Speaking For Children" for The Oklahoma Gazette for 18 years and consults and coordinates training for the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services' network of therapeutic nurseries. She does volunteer work for several education and child welfare groups and has received numerous awards for her contributions, the most recent being the C.V. Ramana Award for "outstanding contributions to the mental health of Oklahoma's children."

Azar Nafisi earned three degrees from OU: a bachelor of arts in English literature and philosophy ('72), a master of arts degree in English literature ('74), and a doctoral of philosophy in English and American literature ('79). She taught in the Department of English at the University of Tehran from 1979-1982, in the Free Islamic University from 1988-1993, and at Tabatabaii University, before returning to the United States. Although she was forced to resign after 15 years of teaching in Iran because of the controversial methods and content of her teaching, she earned national respect and international recognition for advocating on behalf of Iran's intellectuals, youth and women. In addition, she conducted workshops for women students on the relationship between culture and human rights. Although Nafisi teaches literature, not politics, she contends that literature reveals more about human politics than any textbook. "Until your right to imagination is taken away from you, you cannot understand. Without basic human rights, you can't have political rights." She currently holds the position of visiting fellow and director of the School of Advanced International Studies at the Foreign Policy Institute at the Johns Hopkins University. She has lectured and written extensively in English and Persian on the political implications of literature and culture as well as on the human rights of Iranian women and the important role they play in the process of change. Nafisi's latest book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, published in English by Random House, will be released this year.

Each awardee will present a public lecture during the afternoon of Feb. 23 and also make brief remarks during the Kaleidoscope dinner that evening. The dinner is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the ballroom of Oklahoma Memorial Union, 900 Asp Ave. While on campus, each awardee will meet with students and faculty in the department from which he or she graduated.

Dinner tickets are $100 each. A donation of $1,200 will sponsor a Leadership Scholarship in the name designated by the donor and provide the donor with two dinner tickets. Tickets for the Kaleidoscope Evening may be purchased by contacting Vivian Russell at (405) 325-2347. Also contact Russell for information or accommodations on the basis of disability.