Three faculty named Board of Trustees Distinguished Professors

Three faculty members, Janine Caira, Joel Kupperman, and Sally Reis, have been named Board of Trustees Distinguished Professors.

The award honors faculty who have achieved exceptional distinction in scholarship, teaching, and service while at UConn.

“In a faculty that has more than its share of individuals of exceptional talent and commitment, it is extremely difficult to choose the small number entitled to this distinction,” said President Philip E. Austin. “I applaud the faculty-student committee that made these selections, and, as in years past, I am delighted that the board honors such outstanding members of our community.”

The designation, which is reserved for no more than five percent of the total of full professors in active service at the University, was recommended by a selection committee and endorsed unanimously last week by the Board of Trustees.

Caira is a professor of ecology and evolutional biology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the 2003 Alumni Association Distinguished Professor. She is an internationally recognized authority of the evolutionary relationships of animal parasites, particularly the tapeworm parasites of sharks, skates, and rays.

Through collections made in a series of expeditions to California, Colombia, the Caribbean, Madagascar, Thailand, Japan, northern Australia, Senegal, Papua New Guinea, Brazil, and Malaysian Borneo, Caira and her students have described 82 new species and 13 new genera of tapeworms.

In 1998, she was given the Henry Baldwin Award Medal of the American Society of Parasitologists. She also was recognized in 2004 by the University of Nebraska with its Alumni Achievement Award.

The winner of the Alumni Association’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 1999, Caira has worked with 31 undergraduates who have pursued independent research projects in her laboratory, 19 of whom are co-authors on papers published in major national or international journals.

Kupperman is a professor of philosophy whose scholarly work has both contributed to and challenged standard Anglo-American ethnic theory. He is the author of 55 articles that have examined and refined both consequentialism and Kantianism, and is the author of 10 books.