• Raymond Alden III, who has served as UNLV provost for nearly three years, has been promoted to the position of executive vice president and provost. Alden will be responsible for overseeing more of the daily internal university operations, allowing UNLV President Carol C. Harter to devote more time to university-community relations. As provost, Alden already is the university’s chief academic officer, overseeing UNLV’s colleges, professional schools, and libraries. Alden joined UNLV in 1997 as dean of the College of Sciences.
  
  
• Eric Sandgren was selected as dean of the Howard R. Hughes College of Engineering. Sandgren was the founding chair of Virginia Commonwealth University’s mechanical engineering program. Sandgren has been a mechanical engineering professor at VCU since 1997. From 1990 to 1997, he was director of advanced engineering at TRW Steering and Suspension Systems in Sterling Heights, Mich. He previously taught at Purdue University and the University of Missouri, Columbia. He also has been a consultant for numerous companies, including General Motors, General Electric, IBM, and Xerox.
  
  
• Ronald E. Yasbin is the new dean of the College of Sciences. Yasbin had been a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of Texas at Dallas since 1995 and previously taught at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, the University of Rochester’s School of Medicine and Dentistry, and at Penn State University. He earned his bachelor’s degree in zoology from Penn State, a master’s degree in genetics from Cornell University, and a doctoral degree in microbiology from the University of Rochester.
  
  
• History professor Joseph "Andy" Fry was named a UNLV distinguished professor, the highest honor awarded to a faculty member. Nominees must demonstrate extraordinary qualities both as teachers and scholars while achieving national and international recognition in their fields. Fry joined UNLV in 1975 and teaches courses on foreign relations, the history of the South after 1850, and the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. A prolific author, he is working on two books. The first is a comparison of the Fulbright Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings opposing the war in Vietnam and the Stennis Senate Armed Services Preparedness Subcommittee hearings supporting a more vigorous prosecution of the war. The second is a study of the American South and the Vietnam War (see Books section).
  
  
• Wole Soyinka, the Elias Ghanem Chair of Creative Writing at UNLV, was the focus of the fall 2002 edition of Modern Drama, the preeminent journal for theater criticism. The special issue, titled “Soyinka and Postcolonialism,” featured papers and reviews of Soyinka’s work by leading scholars in theater theory and criticism.
  
  
• Civil engineering professor David James received the 2002 Engineer of the Year Award from the Southern Nevada chapter of the National Society of Professional Engineers. The Southern Nevada branch of the American Society of Civil Engineers also named him Engineer of the Year for the Public Sector. The awards were made in recognition of his service to the engineering societies and to the profession.
  
  
• UNLV preschool director Catherine Lyons recently received two awards from the Southern Nevada Association for the Education of Young Children. She received the organization’s Super Nova Award as preschool director of the year and its Zenith Award for her contributions to the field of early childhood education. Lyons has worked at the UNLV/CSUN preschool for nine years, serving as director for the last seven. The school serves children with and without disabilities, ages 12 months to 5 years. UNLV’s new state-of-the-art preschool facility is expected to open in January with expanded programs.
  

Coburn Receives Alumni Association's Faculty Award

W. Leon Coburn, associate professor of English, received the UNLV Alumni Association’s Outstanding Faculty Award.

“During his long career at UNLV, Dr. Coburn has never let down his standards,” said John Irsfeld, chair of the English department. “His career as a teacher is marked by his insistence that students learn no matter how difficult it is for some of them to do so. It takes courage to stand by those standards one holds as inviolable. Dr. Coburn has done that.”

Coburn, who retired in May, joined the campus in 1969 and taught a range of English courses. His research has focused on composition and rhetoric, particularly imitation and modeling in the teaching of writing. He recently completed research on Restoration writers John Dennis and William Congreve.

“I can think of no other profession in which the work one does aligns so well with the principles of courtesy, friendship, and civil behavior that make life pleasant,” Coburn said. “To be chosen for this award by the board of directors of the Alumni Association is an honor. It is also a surprise, considering the many outstanding faculty with whom it has been my privilege to work for the last 30-odd years.”

Coburn served on a variety of campuswide committees and community service groups, including the Southern Nevada Writing Project, National Council of Teachers of English, and the Nevada Humanities Council.