laurels

LIBERAL ARTS DEAN PARVIZ H. ANSARI, G78, G83, is the new dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. He was previously associate dean for academic affairs and planning in the College of Arts and Sciences at Seton Hall University. Ansari earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in physics from Tufts.

top CHEF DAN BARBER, A92, was crowned chef of the year at this year’s James Beard awards, the highest accolade in the U.S. culinary world. He is known as a pioneer of the “farm-to-table” restaurant movement, with its emphasis on seasonal ingredients produced locally. His restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns is located on a farm in upstate New York; its sister establishment, Blue Hill, is in New York City. “The artisanal work he has been doing at Blue Hill and Stone Barns has received national attention, so we are not surprised that his peers have recognized his contribution,” said Susan Ungaro, president of the James Beard Foundation.

MAKING DENTAL HISTORY CHARLENE S. BERKMAN, D78, has been elected the first woman president in the 102-year history of the Alpha Omega International dental fraternity. She practices general dentistry in Forest Hills, New York.

CARDIOLOGY AWARD N.A. MARK ESTES, professor of medicine and director of the Adult Arrhythmia and Cardiac Electrophysiology Service at Tufts Medical Center, is the 2009 recipient of a prestigious award from the American Heart Association. Named in honor of one of Boston’s most revered cardiologists and a founding father of the heart association, the Paul Dudley White Award is given annually for distinguished contributions to reducing disability and death from cardiovascular disease and stroke.

HONORARY DEGREE LEWIS M. FELDSTEIN, F64, F65, president of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Keene State College on May 9. Under his stewardship, the foundation has become the largest funder of nonprofits in northern New England, with assets of $375 million. Previously, Feldstein worked to advance civil rights in Mississippi and served for seven years in senior staff positions under former New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay.

SERVICE TO TUFTS SOL GITTLEMAN, the Alice and Nathan Gantcher University Professor, who was Tufts’ provost and senior vice president from 1981 to 2002 (and is a columnist for this magazine), received the 2009 Robert J. McKenna Award from the New England Board of Higher Education in recognition of his service to Tufts.

ART DEPARTMENT CHAIR MICHAEL GRADY, A76, has been appointed chair of Appalachian State University’s department of art. He had been professor and chair of the department of arts and consciousness at John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley, California, since 1994. He is a painter whose work combines Asian, European, and American traditions of abstraction and landscape.

ACADEMY OF SCIENCES RALPH R. ISBERG, a professor of molecular biology and microbiology at Tufts School of Medicine, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Isberg uses genetic tools to learn how bacteria invade the cells of the body.

DARTMOUTH VP STEVEN KADISH, A78, has been named senior vice president of Dartmouth and strategic adviser to the university’s new president, Jim Yong Kim. Formerly director of global health equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Kadish was Massachusetts’ undersecretary for health and human services from 2003 to 2006.

GLOBAL LAW MAVEN DAVID KENNEDY, F77, F84, recently vice president for international affairs at Brown University, will lead the new Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School, where he is also a professor. The center will focus on new thinking about international law and transnational governance. A well-known scholar of international law, Kennedy had been on the Harvard faculty from 1981 to 2008. His latest book, due out soon, is Economic Development: An Intellectual History (Princeton University Press).

MEDICAL SOCIETY PRESIDENT MARIO E. MOTTA, M78, assistant clinical professor of medicine, has been elected president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, which comprises more than 21,000 physicians, residents, and medical students throughout the state. Motta has been on the faculty of Tufts Medical School since 1993 and is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology.

DENTAL ASSOCIATION HEAD KATHLEEN O’LOUGHLIN, D81, is the new executive director and chief operating officer of the American Dental Association, the world’s oldest and largest national dental association. The former president and CEO of Delta Dental Plan of Massachusetts, O’Loughlin is the first woman to hold the top post at ADA. “I have two very clear objectives: support the public’s health and promote the profession,” says O’Loughlin, a trustee of Tufts University.

NEW OVERSEERS Attorney VALERIE RENNERT, A13P, has been appointed to the School of Arts and Sciences Board of Overseers. DOROTHY MEADOW SOBOL, F66, F79, a professor in the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, has been named an overseer to the Fletcher School.

FRENCH EDUCATION HONOR EMESE SOOS, who has been teaching French at Tufts since 1982 and coordinates the French language program in the School of Arts and Sciences, has been made an officer of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques, a high honor given by the French government in recognition of her efforts to spread French culture through her teaching. In a ceremony on the Tufts campus in April, the French attaché noted that Soos not only teaches French but trains students to teach French. Membership in the order (which was founded by Napoleon to honor scholars at the University of Paris) is awarded by the French Ministry of Education. Soos, who was born in Hungary, first learned French as a child in Switzerland, where her family had fled in the aftermath of World War II. After resettling in the U.S., she says, “I started studying French again in high school in western North Carolina, and the French teacher had this wonderful Southern accent. And when he spoke French, the two clashed.” So she took to listening to French tapes—“there was a wonderful recording of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince in French”—to keep her accent.

ENGINEERING AWARD RICHARD M. VOGEL, professor of civil and environmental engineering, received the 2009 Julian Hinds Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Environmental and Water Resources Institute for his work in advancing the science of water resource planning and management.