The College of Arts & Sciences Honors This Year’s Faculty Retirees
November 14, 2022 - Talullah Begaye
Those who have retired within the past year from departments across the College of Arts and Sciences put in a combined total of over 300 years at UNM. They spread across 10 different departments, conducting research that has impacted the state of New Mexico as well as their individual fields at a national and international level. UNM’s designation as the state’s only Carnegie-designated Research 1 University has facilitated a space for these professors to expand their research and provide a rich education for future leaders within their fields.
Patricia Crown, PhD
Anthropology
Crown served the university for 29 years, and her significant discovery of the first evidence of chocolate consumption in North American in 2009 brought her national recognition with her election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014. Her research interests lie with Southwestern archaeology, ceramic analysis, archaeology in childhood, and gender in archaeology. She became a Leslie Spier Distinguished Professor in 2009, and in 2015 she won a State of New Mexico Individual Achievement Heritage Preservation Award and a Presidential Award of Distinction from UNM. Crown chaired 18 PhD committees between 1990 and 2021, and she currently chairs six additional PhD committees. Her students have gone on to productive careers within and beyond the academy.
Patricia Covarrubias, PhD
Chicana & Chicano Studies
Covarrubias spent 17 years at the University, and served as Chicana & Chicano Studies’ inaugural program director where she helped get the MA and PhD programs launched. Her research interests explore cultural and intercultural communication, qualitative research methods, and the Ethnography of Communication. She published several books, including Among Cultures: The Challenge of Communication and Culture, Communication, & Cooperation: Interpersonal Relations and Pronominal Address in a Mexican Organization. Her research includes understanding Mexican & Chicanx communication, racialized communication, metaphors within communication, and communicative silence as generative.
Gail Houston, PhD
English Language & Literature
Scott Freundschuh, PhD
Geography & Environmental Studies
Dr. Freundschuh served the University for 12 years, researching cognitive geography and the use of novel map representations to perform spatial tasks. Dr. Freundschuh served as his department’s chair (2010-2014), and served in many leadership roles in professional associations for geographers, including his current position as Executive Director of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society. Dr. Freundschuh also became widely known to researchers as a Program Officer at the National Science Foundation (2008-2010, 2018-2022).
Margaret Connell-Szasz, PhD
History
Connell-Szasz served the University for 32 years and is a nationally and internationally recognized award-winning scholar of the history of Indian education in the United States and comparative Indigenous history. Through her research, teaching, and service she has helped make UNM a widely recognized leader in these fields. In addition to her scholarship, she was appointed as a Regents’ Professor and is an award-winning educator, having won the UNM College of Arts and Sciences Award for Teaching Excellence (2008-2009). She has also served as chair of 21 dissertation committees and was president of the Western Historical Association in 2013-2014.
Patricia Henning, PhD
Physics & Astronomy
Henning served the University for 29 years, acting as both the associate vice president for research and as an associate chair for her department. Her research specialized in the large-scale structure of the universe behind the Milky Way, where she and her various teams have discovered more than 1,000 galaxies. These discoveries were made in part by her research done with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the Parkes and Arecibo radio telescopes, and other international labs. Upon retiring from UNM, Henning became the assistant Director for New Mexico Operations in Socorro, NM, for NRAO.
Wolfgang Rudolph, PhD
Physics & Astronomy
Rudolph served the University for 31 years, looking into research interests which ranged from ultrafast lasers and spectroscopy to microscopy with femtosecond light pulses for applicants in the material science, which led him to receiving three UNM-affiliated issued U.S. patents. He was named a Regents’ Professor in recognition of his accomplishments. He was the chair of the Physics & Astronomy Department, is a fellow of the Optical Society of America, and sat on the Internal Advisory Board for Advance at UNM. Rudolph is a working retiree.
Gordon Hodge, PhD
Psychology
Hodge served the University for 46 years, pursuing his passion in teaching and learning at a university level. His research focused around cognition and brains and behavior. He was an associate dean for the College of Arts & Sciences, chairperson of the University’s Teaching Enhancement Committee, and a Presidential Teaching Fellow for UNM. Hodge is a past President of the Southwestern Psychological Association and won the National Institute of Teaching of Psychology Frank Costin Award.
Jeff Scott Tonigan, PhD
Psychology
Tonigan served the University for 33 years, working as the director of the Center on Alcohol, Substance Use, And Addictions (CASAA). His research areas focused on the behavior change in mutual help programs, measurement of treatment outcome, the readiness for change, and the application of advanced statistical techniques to model behavior changes over time. He also served on the National Institute of Health’s Clinical and Treatment Health Services review panel.
Bruce Perlman, PhD
School of Public Administration
Perlman served the University for 20 years, and was a Regent’s professor as well as director of the School of Public Administration. His career was not just in higher education, but also for both city and state government where he was chief administrative officer for Mayor Chávez and deputy chief of staff for Governor Bill Richardson. In 2018, he was honored by the University of Guadalajara and was a keynote speaker due to his part in the education of many of their Deans and Board members. He was also a Interdisciplinary Crime and Delinquency fellow from 1973 to 1976 and a Presidential Lecturer in Public Administrationfor the University from 1988 to 1990.
