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OCTOBER 2000

NEW EPPES PROFESSORS ARE AT THE TOP OF THEIR FIELDS

Francis Eppes VII, who chipped his name into immortality about 150 years ago by crusading for higher education in Tallahassee, would be impressed in 2000 at his accomplishments.

Five more renowned Eppes scholars - a computer scientist, a business psychologist, an expert on speech disorders, a legendary ballerina and a Pulitzer Prize- winning writer - have joined the faculty this fall at FSU.

The first two Eppes Professors arrived last year: Charles McClure in the School of Information Studies, an expert in electronic communication information, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, a Pulitzer-prize-winning composer.
The scholars are paid by a $10-million endowment, enriched, in part, by revenue generated by another distinguished Florida State researcher, Robert Holton, who discovered a process for producing the cancer-fighting drug Taxol.

The addition of the new scholars will add more prestige to FSU's faculty line-up, and should help bring equality among different fields.
"With our great success in our capital campaign, we still have some areas which have received too few special resources to recruit distinguished scholars," said FSU President Sandy D'Alemberte. "The Eppes program will allow us to correct this uneven distribution."

Moreover, D'Alemberte said, by teaching in the classroom, the Eppes scholars will restore the "student-faculty ratio to a level which will permit FSU to carry out its mission of research without impairing classroom teaching."
Like their predecessors, the newcomers hold credentials that are lengthy and, some might say, dazzling.

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Fox

Geoffrey Charles Fox is known internationally for his work in computer science.
The native of Scotland left his post as director of the Northeast Parallel Architectures Center at Syracuse University this summer to join FSU's computational sciences faculty.

Since he received his 1964 bachelor's in mathematics from Cambridge University - where he studied quantum mechanics under the Nobel winner Paul Dirac - Fox has spent his life blending math and theoretical physics with computer hardware, software and navigation.
His research is profilic.

In a news account of one of Fox's presentations on Java and distance learning applications, he was described as so dynamic that many of those at the conference stayed "glued for the entire first day of the conference."

Ferris

Another master of several fields, Gerald R. Ferris, has combined the study of psychology and business management to develop expertise in human resources management. For more than 20 years, Ferris has studied the influence of politics and personal relationships on hiring, evaluating job performance and promoting.

He has held joint positions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and, 10 years before that, at Texas A&M University, where he was professor of both business and psychology.

For his work in the combined fields, Ferris received one of the highest research awards given at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also one of the few Caterpillar Foundation University Scholars.

Recognizing his leadership in management development, companies such as ARCO, Borg-Warner, Eli Lilly, and PPG have called on him for advice.

Ferris' work has also led him to travels throughout the world where he has lectured academic audiences and management executives.

LaPointe

The arrival of Leonard "Chick" LaPointe has excited the faculty in the department of communication disorders. LaPointe is an expert on research in treating speech problems that people suffer after a stroke or other brain damage. He has been hailed by the American Speech-Hearing-Language Association as a visionary in communication disorders.

"He's delightful, he's fun to work with, and he's very creative," said Carole Hardiman, director of the Speech and Hearing Clinic at Florida State. Furthermore, "he's a plus for the development of the medical school," she said.

Traditionally FSU's communication disorder students work in nursing homes and rehabilitation centers. But with the arrival of LaPointe from Arizona State University in Tempe, they will work with patients in hospitals.

LaPointe showed in the 1960s how patients with damage on the right side of the brain could be treated; he documented apraxia (an inability to make coordinated movements) in the 1970s and how to assess it; he created the Reading Comprehension Battery for speech disorders in the 1980s; and he presented ways to control different aspects of speech disorders in the 1990s.

LaPointe, a graduate of Michigan State University in 1961 and the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1966 and 1969, has written three books, 30 book chapters and more than 80 journal articles.

Butler

Robert Owen Butler won a Pulitzer in 1993 for a short story, "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain." His adaptation of it as a screenplay is now in pre-production as an Oliver Stone movie.
His accomplishments go much further.

At McNeese State University in Lake Charles, La., he was "the sole teacher of fiction writing."
While he taught there, he wrote novels, short fiction, short nonfiction, screenplays (American Gothic and The Blood of the Lamb), teleplays and a narration for the ABC-TV production of "The Wedding," an Oprah Winfrey Presents production.

Of the numerous awards Butler has received, he notes one in particular, the 1996 Lotos Club Award of Merit. Among those on the list of former recipients are luminaries such as Mark Twain and Fiorello LaGuardia.

Butler left the states for six years in Vietnam as a U. S. Army counter-intelligence special agent and Vietnamese linguist.

His most recent novel is "Mr. Spaceman," described by the publisher as "brimming with insight and humor."

Like many writers, Butler has put in time as an ordinary working man: taxi driver, day laborer, reporter and a labor gang member of the blast furnace operation at Granite City Steel.
He is married to Elizabeth Dewberry, a novelist and playwright.

Farrell with Balanchine in 1968.

The fifth of the new Eppes scholars is Suzanne Farrell, muse to the great George Balanchine and the embodiment of American ballet. Farrell has been a tireless teacher of the art form since retiring from the stage in 1989.

"Our dance program is already so highly regarded across the nation," D'Alemberte said, "adding Suzanne Farrell to the faculty underscores our commitment to the future of the program and to maintaining its national reputation."

Jerry Draper, dean of the School of Visual Arts and Dance, called her "a thrilling performer with a unique and transcendent combination of technical, musical and dramatic gifts that have elevated her to a status all her own among classical dancers,"
Farrell joined the New York City Ballet in 1961, quickly moving beyond the distinction as Balanchine's most prominent ballerina to actually symbolize one of ballet's most exciting eras.

Her autobiography, "Holding on to the Air," was made into the Academy Award- nominated documentary, "Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse."

During her 28 years on the stage, Farrell's repertoire included more than 100 ballets, nearly a third of which were composed expressly for her by Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and Maurice Bejart. Farrell performed more than 2,000 times with Balanchine's company, toured extensively and appeared on television and in movies to become one of the most recognizable and es-teemed artists of her generation.

For the past eight years, she has led "Exploring Ballet with Suzanne Farrell" an annual intensive ballet course for young dancers at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Perform-ing Arts.

In 1999, Farrell's reputation as director was firmly established with the 10-city tour of the Kennedy Center's Mil-lennium Project, "Suzanne Farrell Stages the Masters of 20th Century Ballet."
"Suzanne Farrell is the pinnacle of classical artistry," said Libby Patenaude, chairwoman of the dance department.

"This department has always believed in the mutual support of modern dance and ballet, and we wanted to take advantage of the Eppes opportunity for our ballet program."

- Dana Peck and Mark Riordan