Stay Connected
Bugs and bones
The inaugural Ardizzone awards enable pioneering faculty field work
By Rebecca Smith ’99
Examining dinosaur fossils in Beijing. Investigating ground beetles in Arizona. Today’s Holy Cross professors are straying far from their laboratories on Mount St. James to perform innovative research around the globe. Beyond the positive effects it has on campus, this research could lead to significant discoveries that have an impact on the entire scientific community—and it is all possible because of the Robert L. Ardizzone ’63 Funds for Junior Faculty Excellence.
A fitting remembrance
Established by Ardizzone’s longtime partner, Pamela Jones, and her brother and sister-in-law, Michael and Dorothy Jones, the Funds for Faculty Excellence support the research initiatives of junior faculty at the College. They were set up as a memorial to Ardizzone, who died unexpectedly in 2005.
The Joneses designed the commemorative funds to reflect Ardizzone’s inquisitive character. A Navy veteran and founder of the private investment advisory firm, Litchfield Global Advisers, Inc., Ardizzone had a true passion for knowledge.
“Bob loved to read into things, study and learn about everything—old or new,” explains Pam Jones.
“He was wonderfully curious,” adds Michael Jones. “If a question came up, he’d track down the answer.”
As a class agent and member of the President’s Council, Ardizzone had stayed connected with Holy Cross. He was proud of the College’s strong academic standing, but was concerned about a lack of faculty resources combined with the large number of highly qualified faculty members who were retiring.
To address his late friend’s concerns, Michael Jones—a major gift officer at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and former economics professor—came up with the idea of creating funds in Ardizzone’s name that would directly benefit junior faculty researchers.
“Institutions like Holy Cross have to prize research in order to recruit and retain world-class scholars,” he explains. “This is what Bob wanted.”
One of Ardizzone’s good friends, Frank Handler ’63, is delighted that the funds pay tribute to the man whom he “considered a brother.” As an alumnus, Handler concurs that the College needs to support its faculty in order to remain competitive.
“If we’re going to sustain the excellence of the school we need to provide the resources to faculty so they will stay,” says Handler. “Research is a big part of who they are, and good researchers excel as teachers.”
The funds in the field
The Robert L. Ardizzone ’63 Funds for Junior Faculty Excellence are made up of two components: the Junior Faculty Research award—which provides direct support to junior faculty members from any discipline—and the Summer Fellowships for Junior Faculty Scholarship—which provide a summer stipend to help a junior faculty member bring a research project or scholarly work to completion.
The inaugural Junior Faculty Research grant was awarded to Leon Claessens, assistant professor of biology, in the fall of 2007. The first Summer Fellowship for Junior Faculty Scholarship was also awarded to an assistant professor of biology; Karen A. Ober received her fellowship earlier this year. Both professors were chosen through a competitive application process monitored by the Faculty Committee on Fellowships, Research and Publication.
Although both recipients are biologists, their research encompasses very different subject areas.
Claessens investigates the evolution of breathing in archosaurs—reptiles including dinosaurs, pterosaurs and the modern crocodilians. In March, he traveled to China’s premier fossil research collection, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, in Beijing, where he examined fossil dinosaur, bird and pterosaur specimens. Through this project, Claessens aims to increase our understanding of the evolution of respiratory systems in vertebrate animals.
Without the Ardizzone funds, Claessens would not have been able to make the trip to China—an area he describes as “one of the most productive and important regions of fossil discovery of the last decade”—and gain access to the rare samples so crucial to his investigation.
“It takes a good researcher to make an excellent teacher,” he explains, “and my research allows me to stay at the forefront of my field and present the students with research, specimens and knowledge years before this information becomes incorporated into the textbooks.”
Like Claessens, Ober is undertaking interesting biological research that is made possible by the Ardizzone funds. But her work will be conducted on much smaller specimens—and a bit closer to home.
Ober will spend her summer conducting field work on ground beetles in the “Sky Islands” of Arizona, a unique complex of mountain ranges that are isolated from each other by intervening valleys of desert and grassland. In this region, evolutionary changes can occur within species in one location that differ from changes in the same species on a different “island.” Over time, these changes can be dramatic enough that the two populations can no longer reproduce with one another—the phenomenon known as speciation. Using a variety of genetic, topological and climatic records, Ober will study the patterns and process of speciation and evolution and ultimately contribute to our understanding of biodiversity on earth.
She stresses that funding for scientific research is highly competitive—especially at a small undergraduate institution like Holy Cross. She is pleased to receive the fellowship, as it will enable her to include students at every level of her research—from the field collecting beetles, to DNA analysis in the lab at Holy Cross, to writing papers for publication.
According to Ober, “The support that the Ardizzone funds provide for my research is critical. It not only moves my research program forward, resulting in published scholarship, but also provides hands-on opportunities for students to be involved in the scientific research process.”
Knowing that the Funds for Faculty Excellence are helping Holy Cross students, bolstering faculty and contributing to pioneering research around the world is comforting to Pam and Michael Jones.
“There are always good things that come out of tragedy,” says Handler. “And this fund is one of those. Bob would be—he is—thrilled with it.”
Rebecca Smith ’99 is a freelance writer from Auburn, Mass.