Boston College faculty members Michael Naughton, Rev. James Bernauer, SJ, and Mary Crane are the University’s newest endowed professors. (Photo by Lee Pellegrini)
Three Faculty Members Appointed to Endowed Professorships
Boston College faculty members Michael Naughton, Mary Crane and Rev. James Bernauer, SJ, are the University’s newest endowed professors
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Boston College has affirmed its commitment to academic excellence with the recent appointment of veteran Boston College faculty members Michael Naughton, Mary Crane and Rev. James Bernauer, SJ, as three of the University’s newest endowed professors.Naughton, chairman of the Physics Department, was appointed as the Evelyn J. & Robert A. Ferris Professor of Physics, and Fr. Bernauer, director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning, was named the Kraft Professor. Both professorships were established recently at BC.
Crane, who chairs the English Department, succeeds colleague John L. Mahoney as the Thomas F. Rattigan Professor. Mahoney served as the inaugural Rattigan Professor from 1994 until his retirement from full-time teaching in 2002.
The Boston College administration regards endowed professorships as critical to the University’s academic mission: Promoting excellence in teaching by helping retain the finest among Boston College’s faculty, and ensuring that undergraduates, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows continue to interact with and learn from the very best. Administrators say the professorships also permit the University to honor intellectual leadership and scholarly excellence, and to recognize those BC faculty who perform special roles in the community.
“Professors Bernauer, Crane and Naughton are highly-respected presences on the Boston College campus,” said Provost and Dean of Faculties Cutberto Garza. “Their impact on many BC undergraduate and graduate students, their distinguished teaching and research, and their leadership of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning and the English and Physics departments, respectively, document scholarship and service of extraordinary caliber and dedication.
“I am pleased that they have been recognized for their many contributions to intellectual life at BC and indeed beyond the campus.”
Rev. James Bernauer, SJ
Fr. Bernauer has been a member of the Philosophy Department since 1980 and last year was named director of the Christian-Jewish Learning Center of Boston College. A New York City native, he was ordained to the priesthood by Cardinal Terence Cooke in 1975.
His published works include studies on French philosopher Michel Foucault, the thought of Hannah Arendt, and various topics in Holocaust studies. His current research is devoted to two major concerns: a study of the spiritual and moral formation of German Catholics prior to the rise of National Socialism; and the investigation of the historical encounters between Jews and Jesuits. He was an original member of the “Jesuits in Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” an association established by the Jesuit order in 1998.
“I’m honored at being connected with the Krafts, who are such a highly regarded family,” says Fr. Bernauer. “But more importantly, I think it’s a tribute to where we’ve come in the Christian-Jewish conversation that a Jewish family would donate to a Catholic university, with a Jesuit priest taking the professorship.”
Fr. Bernauer said the establishment of the professorship will aid the center’s cross-disciplinary work, which will include a major international conference on the history of Jesuit and Jewish relations.
“The Krafts’ gift is a recognition of how important this conversation is, and the center looks forward to helping to continue promoting it.”
Mary Crane
Crane joined the English Department in 1986 and became department chairwoman in 2004. She has taught such classes as Critical Reading and Writing, Studies in Poetry, Practice of Criticism, Introduction to British Literature and Culture and Critical Approaches to Shakespeare.
Her scholarly interests center on early Modern England, and she is the author of Framing Authority: Sayings, Self, and Society in Sixteenth-Century England and Shakespeare’s Brain: Reading with Cognitive Theory, and co-editor, with Associate Professor of English Amy Boesky, of Form and Reform in Renaissance England: Essays in Honor of Barbara Kiefer Lewalski. Crane’s forthcoming book will be on the scientific revolution in literature.
“I’ll never live up to John Mahoney’s example, but I hope to try, and I’m certainly honored to be holding the professorship he held,” says Crane. “As the first endowed professorship to be directly established in the English Department, the Rattigan Professorship recognizes Boston College’s distinguished tradition in English and the liberal arts. I am very proud to be associated with it.”
Michael Naughton
Naughton, who joined the Physics Department in 1998 and became its chairman in 2006, is an expert in such fields as nanotechnology and superconductivity, and is chief technology officer and co-founder of Solasta, Inc., a venture-funded company established to commercialize new advances in nanostructured solar cells.
The winner of a Boston College Distinguished Research Award in 2005, Naughton was selected as a American Physical Society Fellow in 2003 and a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award winner in 1992. He currently holds or co-holds 10 patents, with 17 more pending.
Naughton served as interim academic vice president for research from 2005-06, and has been a judge for the Boston College Venture Competition the past three years. He received his doctorate in physics from Boston University in 1986 and a bachelor’s degree in physics from St. John Fisher College in 1979.
“I am honored to be named to the Ferris Professorship, and thankful to the Ferris family for their continued contributions to the University,” said Naughton. “I also take this as recognition of important role of physics and all scientific research and education in the continued strengthening of BC, and look forward to doing my part to keep us on that road to excellence.”
Sean Smith can be reached at sean.smith.1@bc.edu