IRVINE : UCI Professors to Get Guggenheim Awards

Two UC Irvine professors are among those who will receive Guggenheim Fellowships, awards given each year to help outstanding scholars, artists and scientists further their work, the Guggenheim Foundation announced Tuesday in New York.

David Carroll, a professor of French and specialist in 20th-Century French literature, and Richard E. Lenski, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, will each receive $27,000, UC Irvine officials said.

Carroll and Lenski are among 143 selected this year to receive awards totaling $3.8 million from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation of New York. They were among 3,900 applicants competing for the award, foundation officials said. The awards, which are given “on the basis of unusually distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment,” provide winners with a year of independent study or creative work, officials said.

The Guggenheim Fellowship is the second major award Carroll has received to help him finish a critical study of the French literary tradition and why so many intellectuals and writers were tempted by fascism from the late 1920s through the early 1940s.

The American Council of Learned Societies, another New York-based foundation, awarded him $15,000 toward the completion of his book, which Carroll plans to entitle “French Literary Fascism.”

“I feel very good about the awards because (they) will give me the time to complete the book,” said the professor from South Laguna. “When you are in the middle of a project like I am, you immerse yourself in a lot of material. . . . I want to free myself from it.”

Together, the awards will allow Carroll to take a year off teaching, beginning in January, 1992. But he plans to continue his research in Paris this summer.

Lenski, a 34-year-old associate professor from Irvine, already has attracted national attention for his research into the relationships between host and parasite organisms. Several years ago, he was awarded a Presidential Young Investigator Award, a grant from the National Science Foundation aimed at rewarding promising young scholars.

He remains a source of great pride for his department at UC Irvine.

“The scientific community has already recognized that Lenski’s research is important, and the Guggenheim Fellowship reflects that,” said Walter Fitch, chairman of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology. “This award increases visibility for him, the department and the university.”

UCI spokesman Randall Black said Lenski plans to use the $27,000 fellowship for a special research project while on sabbatical at Oxford University.