Faculty and staff news
Azizah al-Hibri, professor of law, received the 2007 Virginia First Freedom Award from the Council for America’s First Freedom. She was one of four distinguished advocates of religious freedom who received awards from the council Jan. 25. The others included Madeleine Albright, former U.S. secretary of state, who received the First Freedom Distinguished Service Award. Dean Rodney Smolla said al-Hibri “has been a leading national and international voice on issues relating to Islam, the rights of Muslim women, Islamic jurisprudence, and legal, political and religious issues relating to the Middle East and Islam.”
Al-Hibri also spoke to The Woman’s Club in Richmond in January on the Islamic worldview with an emphasis on gender and human rights as well as the social, financial and other rights Muslim women have and must reassert in their communities and at home.
The National Science Foundation has transferred a multiple-year Career Award to the University for Lisa Gentile, associate professor of chemistry. Gentile initially received the five-year, $650,000 grant while at Western Washington University. This year’s grant and three subsequent-year grants will provide $504,558 to Gentile for her research at Richmond. Gentile’s project is titled “Macromolecular Recognition and Differential Ion Channel Functioning.”
The grant provides funding for summer research for Gentile and four undergraduate students each year, equipment, supplies and travel to present research results at professional meetings. In addition, several high school teachers and students will participate in the laboratory work. The Career Award is one of NSF’s most prestigious teaching and research awards.
Joe Hoyle, associate professor of accounting, will be the keynote speaker next summer at a conference of the Virginia Business Education Association. He will speak to approximately 400 high school educators.
A. Benjamin Spencer, assistant professor of law, has been selected as the “Rising Star” recipient in the 2007 Virginia Outstanding Faculty Awards, sponsored by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.
Spencer began teaching at Richmond’s law school in 2004 and has received rave reviews from students and fellow faculty every semester since.
“It is no exaggeration to rate him as one of the fastest-rising university professors in the country, a person who has made an extraordinary name for himself in an astonishingly short period of time,” said Rod Smolla, dean of the law school. “He has written a top-selling book, published in the most prestigious national law reviews, endeared himself to his students and been a generous contributor of service to the University and the community.”
Spencer is a graduate of Harvard Law School. He also holds a master of science degree with distinction in criminal justice policy from the London School of Economics, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar. As an undergraduate, he was valedictorian of his class at Morehouse College.
Before joining the faculty at Richmond, Spencer clerked for Judge Judith W. Rodgers of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and worked as a litigation associate at the law firm Sherman and Sterling, also in Washington. He teaches civil procedure and complex litigation and has published a popular student study guide, Acing Civil Procedure. Spencer also is the author of the forthcoming book Civil Procedure: A Contemporary Approach, a course book that features an accompanying electronic version with hyperlinked text that connects students to supplementary legal materials.