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News Release

Last modified: Tuesday, April 17, 2012

IU President McRobbie, professors Carmines and Sanders elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 17, 2012

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University President Michael A. McRobbie is one of three Indiana University faculty members to be elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for 2012. McRobbie, who became IU's 18th president in July 2007, is the first sitting president of the university to be elected to the prestigious academy, whose members include some of the world's most accomplished leaders from academia, business, public affairs, and humanities and the arts.

Also elected from IU were Scott Russell Sanders, novelist, essayist and Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus; and Edward G. Carmines, Warner O. Chapman Professor and Rudy Professor of political science. Both are faculty members in the College of Arts and Sciences at IU Bloomington.

McRobbie, a native of Australia, joined Indiana University in 1997 as the university's first vice president for information technology. He also served as vice president for research and IU Bloomington interim provost before becoming president. He holds faculty appointments in computer science, philosophy, cognitive science, informatics, library and information science, and computer technology, and has been an active researcher in information technology and logic.

"President McRobbie's election to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences is a fitting acknowledgment of his scholarly accomplishments and, equally important, his vigorous support of quality research at Indiana University. I can think of no one more deserving of this honor than this scholar, teacher and educational leader," said Bruce Cole, a member of the IU Board of Trustees and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and IU Bloomington Distinguished Professor of art history and professor of comparative literature.

McRobbie is the fourth Indiana University president to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The previous three, John Merle Coulter (1891-93), Herman B Wells (1938-62) and Thomas Ehrlich (1987-94) were all elected after their terms as IU president.

This is the first time since 2000 that three IU faculty members have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the same year. Forty-three IU faculty members have been elected to the academy; 24 are current members.

"I am deeply appreciative of this recognition and honored to be placed in the company of other Indiana University presidents as members of this distinguished academy," McRobbie said of his election. "Likewise, I am extremely proud to be joining Scott Sanders and Edward Carmines as members of the newest class of IU faculty in the academy. Scott and Edward are renowned in their respective fields, and both have made outstanding contributions to the university."

Under McRobbie's leadership, IU has seen a major expansion in the size and quality of the student body, a billion-dollar expansion of university facilities and notable progress toward the goal of raising $5 billion in philanthropic support by the bicentenary year of 2020. These fundraising initiatives include the completed Matching the Promise campaign for IU Bloomington, current fundraising campaigns for IUPUI, IU Kokomo, IU Southeast and IU East, and new campaigns to be announced.

He received a Ph.D. from the Australian National University in 1979 and has honorary doctorates of science from Southeastern European University in Macedonia, the University of Queensland, Sung Kyun Kwan University in Korea and the Australia National University. In 2010 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia, Australia's national honors system.

The other two IU selections for academy membership, Carmines and Sanders, are longtime faculty members who are highly regarded for their research, teaching and creative activity.

"Both Scott and Ted personify the distinguished and exceptional scholars, from multiple disciplines, who comprise the academy's membership," said Larry Singell, dean of the IU College of Arts and Sciences. "This is a richly deserved personal recognition for both of them, and follows their decades of outstanding scholarship and teaching here in the College. We congratulate them on this recognition and commend the academy for honoring Ted and Scott for their extraordinary intellect."

Carmines directs the Center on American Politics and is research director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University. He has published widely in major political science journals, focusing on American politics, especially elections, public opinion and political behavior.

He is currently a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, where he is working on a book about the increased polarization of party politics in the United States and the mismatch between political elites and the American public. He earned a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1975.

Sanders is an essayist and fiction writer whose concerns include nature, community, family, ethics and place. He writes about Bloomington, the hill country of southern Indiana and the Midwest, often addressing issues such as social inequity, militarism and the degradation of Earth's living systems.

His 22 published books include "A Conservationist Manifesto," "A Private History of Awe," "Wilderness Plots: Tales About the Settlement of the American Land," "The Force of Spirit" and the recently published essay collection "Earth Works." He received the 2011 Cecil Woods Award for Nonfiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the 2010 Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award. He earned a Ph.D. from Cambridge University in 1971.

Members of the 2012 class of the academy include winners of the National Medal of Science; the Pulitzer and the Shaw prizes; the Fields Medal; MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships; the Kennedy Center Honors; Grammy, Emmy, Academy and Tony awards; the Avery Fisher Prize; and election to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

McRobbie, Carmines and Sanders will enter the academy with such well-known figures as playwright and screenwriter Neil Simon, film icons Clint Eastwood and Mel Brooks, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, television journalist Judy Woodruff, philanthropist Melinda F. Gates, Amazon founder Jeffrey Bezos and retired Citigroup Chairman Sanford I. Weill. The academy also elected 17 Foreign Honorary Members, including recording artist Paul McCartney.

The class will be inducted Oct. 6 at the academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Mass. An alphabetical list of the 220 new members is online at www.amacad.org/news/alphalist2012.pdf. The new class listed by discipline is available at www.amacad.org/news/classlist2012.pdf.

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