Sean Wu among 7 WSU faculty ranked distinguished professor

President Irvin D. Reid, and the Wayne State University Board of Governors have named seven faculty members to the rank of Distinguished Professor.

The honorees are: Philip R. Abbott, professor of Political Science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Melba J. Boyd, professor of Africana Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Charles R. Schuster, professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences in the School of Medicine; Bonnie F. Sloane, professor of Pharmacology in the School of Medicine; Charles J. Stivale, professor of Romance Languages and Literatures in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Dennis J. Tini, professor of Music in the College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts; and Sean F. Wu, professor of Mechanical Engineering in the College of Engineering.

The university will provide a stipend of $5,000 for each faculty member holding the rank of Distinguished Professor. This stipend recognizes the significant scholarly contributions of Distinguished Professors and attempts to assist them in that scholarship by providing special university funding. The stipend is an annual grant rather than a recurring one. The stipend can be used for any purpose within the existing university regulations.

Abbott, of Grosse Pointe, joined Wayne State University in 1970. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Salford, the Thomas Jefferson Chair in American Studies at the University of Amsterdam, and a Ford Foundation Fellow in Political Science. Abbott is the author of 11 books and three edited volumes. His book, "Political Thought in America," is the leading text on American political theory. He has published 27 sole authored articles in prestigious journals such as "Perspectives on Politics," "Polity," the "Journal of Politics," "Political Research Quarterly," "Political Theory," and "Presidential Studies Quarterly." In the 1990s, Abbott began to receive national recognition for his research on the American presidency. Professor Abbott has been the recipient of every major scholarship award that Wayne State University bestows.

Boyd, of Detroit, joined Wayne State in 1993. She has won numerous awards including the 2004 Black Caucus Honor Award in Nonfiction (American Library Association) for "Wrestling with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press." Her inscription poem "This Museum Was Once a Dream" is engraved in bronze in the dedication plaque of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. She has 11 books published or in print, a documentary film/video ("The Black Unicorn: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press"), and numerous poems in anthologies and journals.

Schuster, of Grosse Pointe Farms, joined Wayne State University in 1995. He is the founding director of the Substance Abuse Research Division and director of the Addiction Research Institute within the School of Medicine. He served as the director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse and accompanied the U.S. Attorney General on Presidential trips to Asia and Europe curtail drug abuse and illegal smuggling of opiates. He has received a number of NIDA/NIH grants including one for the establishment of the Great Lakes Regional Node of the NIDA Clinical Trails Network (CTN). This program involves research to determine efficacy of treatment interventions. He is a mentor for the Robert Wood Johnson project for Leadership Development in the area of substance abuse, and he is a founding member of the International Network for Drug Policy Analysis. Shuster is co-author of three books and 19 journal articles including "American Journal on Addictions," "Drug and Alcohol Dependence," and "Journal of Psychoactive Drugs."

Sloane, of Grosse Pointe Park, joined Wayne State University in 1980. Chair of the Department of Pharmacology, she also has appointments with the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute and the Cancer Biology and Toxicology Graduate Programs in the University. She is an inaugural Host Awardee of the Avon Foundation/American Association for Cancer Research International Scholar in Breast Cancer Research (a national competition awarded to only four individuals in 2004). She has a distinguished history of 25 years of research grant support that includes four current grants from NIH and the Department of Defense. She has served on national planning committees including the NCI Think Tank on Inflammation and Cancer. She has 112 peer-reviewed articles published or in press.

Stivale, of Detroit, joined Wayne State in 1990. He has won numerous awards including a 1998 Choice (American Library Association) Outstanding Academic Book award for "The Two-Fold Thought of Delueuze and Guattari." He is the author of five books and over 50 scholarly articles in prestigious journals including "ADFL Bulletin," "L'Esprit createur," "Contemporary French Civilization, "Cultural Studies," and "South Atlantic Quarterly." He served as guest editor of "SubStance." Stivale brings a high mark of attainment in the application of theories of institutional and private memory, in the marshalling of film studies and in the study of music and dance. Stivale's methods represent a watershed initiative in creating a blend of Anglo-American cultural studies and "French Cultural Studies".

Tini, of Farmington Hills, came to Wayne State University in 1966 and received his Bachelor of Music degree followed by a Master of Music degree. He joined Wayne State faculty full time in 1972. He is an accomplished and versatile musician educator who is accomplished in two areas of music that are generally considered to be very disparate: jazz and classical music. His six-year term on the board of the 7000 member International Association for Jazz Education includes two years as president. He chaired the National Endowment for Arts Music Review Panels and served on the U.S. Information Agency International Arts Evaluation Committee. He has composed several dozen jazz compositions and made two fine CD recordings. Dennis Tini has conducted hundreds of choral performances and led student ensembles on national and global tours.

Wu, of Troy, came to Wayne State University in 1988. He was appointed as the Charles DeVlieg Professor of Mechanical Engineering in 2002. He holds the rank of Fellow in both the Acoustical Society of American and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He serves as Associate Editor for the "Journal of the Acoustical Society of America" and he is editor for the "Journal of Computational Acoustics." He holds eight U.S. patents which led to the creation of a new company, SenSound, LLC, with Wu as its Chief Technical Officer. Dr. Wu and his colleagues have won 32 grants and contracts totaling more than $3 million dollars from the National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, GM, Ford Motor Company and other organizations. He has published over 40 refereed journal articles.