IRVINE : 2 UCI Professors Get Lectureship Awards

UC Irvine English professor J. Hillis Miller and engineering professor James Mulligan have been named this year’s recipients of the Academic Senate’s distinguished lectureship awards.

The awards are given annually to two individuals for their sustained and distinguished work in teaching and in research.

The research award goes to Miller, who came to UCI in 1986 after 14 years at Yale University. He is the author of several books and articles on literary criticism and is considered the American founder of deconstruction, a complex theory that analyzes words and texts for multiple, and often incompatible, meanings. He lives in Irvine.

The teaching award goes to Mulligan, who joined the UCI faculty in 1974 as dean of the School of Engineering, a post he held through 1977. Mulligan is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and has received numerous awards for more than 40 years of teaching in the field of engineering.

The awards were presented at UCI’s annual Lauds and Laurels banquet on April 20.

The Academic Senate also created a new award this year for distinguished university service. The two recipients of the award named for UCI’s first chancellor, Daniel G. Aldrich Jr., go to founding faculty member Spencer Olin, a history professor, and Julius Margolis, a professor emeritus of economics.

Olin, co-chair of a campus campaign to raise private support for the university from faculty and staff, is co-editor of the recently published “Post-suburban California: The Transformation of Orange County Since World War II.” He lives in Irvine.

Margolis, who lives in Laguna Hills, is the former director of UCI’s Global Peace and Conflict Studies program.