When it comes to recruiting and retaining renowned scholars, Yale is on a roll. In the last year, the University has appointed 10 such scholars to tenured positions on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences -- some of them scholars who were recruited from outside the University, and some of them Yale junior faculty members who were offered tenure. "These appointments reflect our strong commitment to recruit and retain the world's leading thinkers, scholars and teachers in the arts and humanities and in the sciences," President Richard C. Levin said. "We are delighted to announce them." Most recently, for instance, Professor Glenda Gilmore, an award-winning historian of the American South, announced that she will stay at Yale rather than accept an offer to join the faculty at her alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The 10 new distinguished faculty members also include Professor of Statistics Joseph T. Chang, whose research ranges from probability and sequential analysis to genetics and evolution; Professor of Molecular Biology and Biophysics Jennifer A. Doudna, who is conducting path-breaking research on RNA; Professor of Sociology and African American Studies Paul T. Gilroy, whose cultural studies have questioned purist notions of Western civilization and rigid definitions of nationalism; and Professor of Economics Timothy Guinnane, whose work focuses on the financial and demographic history of the 19th- and 20th-century United States and Western Europe. Also appointed to tenured positions were Professor of French Naomi Schor, a prolific writer on French literature and a much sought-after lecturer; Professor of Sociology Ivan Szelenyi, whose wide-ranging work centers on the history of social thought, macro-sociology, urban sociology, and other subjects; Professor of Spanish Noël Valis, an authority on Spanish literature who has taught about such topics as 19th-century literature, the post-Civil War Spanish novel, and the theme of Spain in Spanish literature; C. BaldwinSawyer Professor of Electrical Engineering Jerry Woodall, a scholar-practitioner of electrical engineering who has secured scores of U.S. patents and has consulted widely; and Professor of History Ken Wrightson, who helped to develop the new "social history" by looking at such issues as hierarchy and authority and the concept of "social order." "These scholars," Provost Alison Richard said, "bring great distinction and diversity to all four divisions of our tenured faculty -- the biological sciences, the humanities, the physical sciences and engineering, and the social sciences. They ensure that we will not only retain, but build upon, Yale's leadership in the arts and sciences for years to come." These 10 appointments all came through Yale's rigorous national search process, which begins when a department requests a position and -- following a thorough review of the department's candidate by one of Yale's Tenure Appointments Committees and the joint boards of permanent officers of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences -- ends with a formal vote by the Yale Corporation. The search effort also includes the appropriate Divisional Advisory Committee, the Steering Committee of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, search committees, outside advisors, the Office for Equal Opportunity Programs, and the Provost's Office. The following are brief sketches of the 10 new appointees to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Joseph T. Chang Professor of Statistics A mathematician whose research ranges from probability and sequential analysis to genetics and evolution, Chang has attracted attention in both industrial and academic sectors. Chang is often invited to discuss his findings at national and international meetings. At Yale, he has held departmental and residential college administrative posts and has worked with colleagues to teach interdisciplinary courses of optimal benefit to students. In 1998, he won the William Clyde DeVane Medal, given to "faculty who have distinguished themselves as teachers of undergraduates in Yale College and as scholars in their fields." His other fields of interest include stochastic processes, renewal theory, change-point problems and quality control. Chang came to Yale as assistant professor of statistics in 1989, the year he received his Ph.D. in statistics from Stanford University. He was appointed associate professor in 1996. Now, he is a visiting associate professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Chang has worked at Pfizer and IBM, and he was a consultant for Siemens Corporate Research. He has been a cryptologic mathematician for the National Security Agency, from which he received a Mathematical Sciences Program Young Investigator Grant for 1996-98 and for which he now consults. Jennifer A. Doudna Professor of Molecular Biology and Biophysics The 1982 discovery of RNA's catalytic capabilities has helped shape Doudna's research. Since we can only determine new roles for RNA with more information about the structure of RNA molecules, Doudna has set out to uncover some of the unknowns. Working with a research team out of her Howard Hughes Medical Institute laboratory, Doudna uses X-ray crystallography and biochemical techniques to probe the atomic structure of ribozymes. "Ultimately," she says, "we hope to gain an understanding of the mechanism and evolution of these ribozymes and their potential relationship to the mechanisms of mRNA splicing and translation." Doudna's works-in-progress include such papers as "Crystal Structure of a Hepatitis Delta Virus Ribozyme," "Biochemical and Structural Studies of a Specific HDAg-HDV RNA Recognition," "Towards the Structure of a Large Ribozyme: Inhibition of a Group I Intron," and "Probing the Structure of Internal Ribosomal Entry Sites." Doudna received her bachelor's degree from Pomona College in 1985 and her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1989. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School 1989-91 and the University of Colorado 1991-94, and she has been a Lucille P. Markey Scholar in Biomedical Sciences since 1991. She joined the Yale faculty in 1994. Among Doudna's many honors is the National Academy of Sciences Award for Initiatives in Research, which she received this year. Glenda Gilmore Professor of History In 1996, Gilmore's award-winning Ph.D. dissertation was published as a book, "Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920" -- and American political and women's history hasn't been the same since. Gilmore's work has received praise in academic circles and the popular press. Among its awards, the book garnered the Organization of American Historians' prestigious Frederick Jackson Turner Prize for an author's first book and its James A. Rawley Prize for the best book on the history of race relations in the United States. A North Carolina native, Gilmore taught high school history in South Carolina 1970-73 before returning to North Carolina to hold managerial positions in, and serve as a consultant for, private industry. She received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1992. She taught history at Queens College in Charlotte, North Carolina, from 1992 until 1994, when she came to Yale as an assistant professor. She was appointed associate professor of history in 1998. Gilmore is a member of several organizational governing bodies, including the Advisory Board of Yale's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition. Paul Gilroy Professor of Sociology and African American Studies Coming to Yale in 1990 as a visiting professor, Gilroy was well-known for his cultural studies questioning purist notions of Western civilization and rigid definitions of nationalism. In his often-cited articles and books -- most notably "The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness," "Small Acts: Thoughts on the Politics of Black Cultures" and "'There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack': The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation" -- he examines what he considers the structurally porous nature of cultural boundaries. "There is no pure culture," Gilroy has said. "Itinerancy is the rule." The groundbreaking scholar plans to continue his work in political sociology and political philosophy; the development of popular cultures; and the formation of ethnic and racial identity. In addition to his books, Gilroy has authored dozens of essays and journal articles, and has served as a consultant for BBC and film productions as well as other projects. Gilroy received his Ph.D. from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Birmingham University, in 1986. He has taught at various universities and colleges in the United Kingdom -- most recently Goldsmiths' College at the University of London -- and has lectured throughout Europe and the United States. Gilroy is on the editorial boards of Young, African Philosophy, Social Identities, and Cultural Studies. Timothy Guinnane Professor of Economics Guinnane's work focuses on the financial and demographic history of 19th- and 20th-century United States and Western Europe, including Ireland and Germany. He has researched demographic change in Ireland between the Famine and World War I and land tenure and land reform in the 19th century. His book "The Vanishing Irish" won the 1999 Donald Murphy Prize of the American Conference for Irish Studies. Much of his current research focuses on Germany. "There are two distinct projects," he notes. "One deals with the development of credit cooperatives in 19th-century Germany. The second studies the fertility decline in Munich in the period 1860-1914 or so." This year, Guinnane and his colleagues are presenting an economic history workshop -- a forum for graduate students and faculty at Yale and elsewhere to present their research on topics in economic history and other fields. Guinnane received his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 1988. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania 1988-89 and assistant professor of economics at Princeton University from 1989 to 1993, when he came to Yale as an assistant professor of economics. Three years later, he was appointed as associate professor. In 1998, Guinnane won Yale's Les Hixon '63 Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Social Sciences. Naomi Schor Professor of French This Yale alumna has written five books about French literature -- including "Zola's Crowds" and "Breaking the Chain: Women, Theory and French Realist Fiction" -- and scores of articles and reviews for such journals as Littérature, Romantisme, Representations, and Critical Inquiry. A much sought-after lecturer, Schor has also served on selection, monitoring, and search committees for organizations such as the Camargo Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Pembroke Center. Schor was a Yale acting instructor while completing her Ph.D. in French, which she received from the University in 1969. She then went to Columbia University and remained there until 1978, when she was named associate professor at Brown University. She was appointed a professor at Brown in 1984 and the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor a year later. Schor left Brown in 1989 to become the William Hanes Wannamaker Professor of Romance Studies at Duke University. In 1995, she joined the Harvard University faculty as professor of French and was named Harvard's Smith Professor in 1998. Her many honors include a 1990 Guggenheim Fellowship and her 1997 election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Ivan Szelenyi Professor of Sociology Szelenyi's wide-ranging research and teaching center on the history of social thought, macro-sociology, urban sociology, socialist and post-Communist societies, Marx and Weber, critical theory and theories of urbanization, and class analysis. Szelenyi has authored dozens of journal articles, book chapters, and books, the latter of which include "The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power," "Urban Inequalities under State Socialism," "Social Conflicts of Post-communist Transitions," and "Socialist Entrepreneurs: Embourgeoisement in Rural Hungary," co-winner of the 1989 C. Wright Mills Award. The Hungarian-born Szelenyi holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and sociology, a D.Sc. from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and a master's degree in economics from the University of Economics at Budapest. He headed the Department of Regional Sociology at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Sociology 1970-75 and was Foundation Professor of Sociology and Department Chair at The Flinders University of South Australia 1976-80. In 1981, Szelenyi joined the University of Wisconsin at Madison faculty, holding the Karl Polanyi Professorship of Sociology 1985-86. He then went to the Graduate School of the City University of New York, where he was Distinguished Professor of Sociology, director of the Center for Social Research and executive officer of the sociology program. In 1988, he joined the University of California at Los Angeles faculty as professor of sociology, chairing the department 1992-95. Noël Valis Professor of Spanish An authority on modern Spanish peninsular literature, Valis has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in such topics as 19th-century literature, the post-Civil War Spanish novel, the theme of Spain in Spanish literature, modern Spanish theater, contemporary Spanish women novelists, and the Spanish novel of the 19th and 20th centuries. Valis' books include "The Decadent Vision in Leopoldo Alas," "The Novels of Jacinto Octavio Picón," and "In the Feminine Mode: Essays on Hispanic Women Writers," which she co-edited. She has published her research in numerous English- and Spanish-language academic journals, has served on the editorial boards of such publications, and has also published some of her creative works of short fiction and poetry. Valis is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Douglass College in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She received her Ph.D. in Spanish and French from Bryn Mawr College in 1975 and served on the University of Georgia faculty 1977-85. She was professor of Spanish at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1986 until 1991, when she joined the Johns Hopkins University faculty, chairing the Hopkins department of Hispanic and Italian studies 1994-96. Valis has received honors for her scholarship and teaching, including the Creative Research Award and the Outstanding Honors Professor Award from the University of Georgia in 1982. Jerry Woodall The C. Baldwin Sawyer Professor of Electrical Engineering Woodall may be the consummate scholar-practitioner, having published 283 academic works and secured 67 U.S. patents before he arrived at Yale. Among his patents are photonic devices commonly used in remote control and data link equipment, CD players, short-link optical fiber communications, and transistors used in cellular phones. Woodall, whose research has made him a key figure in the field of photonic device technology development, joined the Yale faculty because, he says, "I wanted to form interdisciplinary teams to do 'real' engineering of semiconductor devices. Yale was the most user-friendly to this concept." Woodall was educated at MIT and Cornell University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1982. He comes to Yale from Purdue University, where he held the Charles William Harrison Distinguished Professorship of Microelectronics for five years. Previously, Woodall was associated with IBM Research for 31 years, first as a research staff member, then as an IBM Fellow. Woodall has served as a consultant for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Keithly Instruments. His numerous awards include several IBM Outstanding Invention and Outstanding Innovation awards and 30 IBM Invention Achievement Awards. In 1992, he received an IBM Corporate Award for his invention of the GaAlAs/GaAs heterojunction. Woodall was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1989 and is a former president of the Electrochemical Society and the American Vacuum Society. Keith Wrightson Professor of History An expert in British history, Wrightson helped to develop the "new social history." Wrightson examines history from an economic and social perspective, looking at issues such as hierarchy and authority and the concept of "social order." His first book, "Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling 1525-1700" (with demographer David Levine) is considered a classic and was recently reissued with a new conclusion that examines the latest literature. His "English Society, 1580-1680" is considered the best social and economic history on that era. Colleagues note that, in the words of Yale history department chair Robin W. Winks, Wrightson's work "has shifted the debate a very great distance from courts and intrigue, the royal treasury, pipe rolls and diplomacy, and even from the matter of the gentry, to the common people." Wrightson spent both his undergraduate and graduate years at Cambridge, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1974. He was a lecturer in modern history at the University of St. Andrews 1975-84 and joined the University of Cambridge faculty in 1984. Wrightson has been a consultant for universities around the globe; a board member of the European Graduate School of Training in Economic & Social Historical Research; a member of the advisory panel of the Commonwealth Scholarships Commission; and an assessor of project grants for the British Academy and other organizations. He was elected to the British Academy in 1996. T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S Yale strengthens Faculty of Arts and Sciences Nobel laureate to visit Yale as Chubb Fellow Biologists unravel genetics of fruit flies' sense of smell Yale announces moderate increase in term bill for the seventh straight year Endowed Professorships: Margot E. Fassler and Rogers M. Smith Exhibits, symposium look back at the Pop art of the Sixties Area performers to lift voices in memory of noted conductor Slifka Center celebrates new Media Arts Endowment with preview screening . . . Lecture series will explore role of technology in today's culture Noted Scottish sociologist will be featured speaker in campus events Special program at ISM marks publication of Bryan Spinks' book . . . Area artists invited to participate in second annual 'City-Wide Open Studios' . . . 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PHOTO BY MICHAEL MARSLAND  Among the new members of the senior faculty is award- winning historian Professor Glenda Gilmore.