Report of the Honors Committee

Southeastern Geographer Vol. XXXV, No. 1, May 1995, pp. 98-101 REPORT OF THE HONORS COMMITTEE Tyrel G. Moore Criteria for the special awards presented by the Honors Committee can be found in the Southeastern Geographer, Vol. 28 (1988), pp. 51-52. HONORARY LIFE MEMBERSHIP AWARD Julian V. Minghi The University of South Carolina While no clearly defined eligibility criteria exist for the Honorary Life Membership Award, it seems that the award commemorates sustained threads of leadership, scholarly achievement, teaching, and service that are collectively implicit in the faculty honors granted by the Southeastern Division. It is most appropriate therefore, that we recognize the distinguished career of Julian V. Minghi of the University of South Carolina. Julian's formal geographic training began in his native England, where he earned a Bachelor ofArts degree with Honors at King's College, Durham University . After completing his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Washington , he held faculty appointments at the University ofWashington, the University of Connecticut, and the University of British Columbia. He came to South Carolina in 1973 to assume duties as Departmental Chair, beginning a tenure of leadership that would extend until 1990. Beginning in 1960 and continuing actively to the present, Julian has maintained an internationally recognized reputation as a leader in research and teaching in political geography. His 1969 Structure of Political Geography, co-authored with Roger Kasperson, became the standard graduate-level text used in the training of a generation of political geographers. Julian's publications in scholarly journals have focused on the politically and spatially charged issues of international and ethnic boundaries. His recent articles dealing with the reunification ofGermany and Vietnam and territorial tensions in the former Yugoslavia suggest that societal needs for his research and expertise are more timely than ever. Dr. Moore is Assistant Professor of Geography and Earth Sciences at the University ofNorth Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223. Vol. XXXV, No. 1 99 Throughout the years, Julian has managed to balance an active research program with responsibilities to his department, and to somehow find the time to meet the demands ofvisiting lectureships across North America and Europe. His presence and service to SEDAAG have been equally unselfish. In the realm of collegiality, a geographer outside his department characterized Julian as "professionally inclusive" and remarkably approachable, a fitting statement to his leadership and to the outstanding contributions Julian has made to his discipline. The Southeastern Division extends its warm regards and respect for Julian V. Minghi by granting him Honorary Life Membership in our organization. RESEARCH HONORS AWARD Gerald F. PyIe The University ofNorth Carolina at Charlotte The hallmarks of the Research Honors Award are a significant record of quality research and publication in scholarly journals and books, as well as evidence of leadership in research. These attributes define the contributions of Gerald F. PyIe, of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, who we honor this year. Beginning with his experience as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Jerry seems to have had a special knack for identifying and developing a research agenda that addressed serious societal issues in a timely and applied manner. Over the past two decades, he has established an international reputation for his research in the spatial dynamics ofcrime and the diffusion ofdisease. With Jerry as author or co-author, those topics have been carried to a broad readership in 7 books and more than 40 articles in scholarly journals. The impact ofhis research has been substantial. His 1974 Spatial Dynamics of Crime cast a theoretic framework that translated into policy formulation by law enforcement agencies. He is better known for work in medical geography, where he has become one of the most prominent practitioners within that subdiscipline of geography. He was co-founder of the AAG's Medical Geography Specialty Group, and his Diffusion ofInfluenza exists as the standard in the literature on disease diffusion. His more recent investigations into the diffusion of AIDS, and particularly its epidemic spread into rural areas of the U.S., have been useful policy tools in the prevention and facility location strategies for those in the medical community. Jerry's demonstration ofspatial perspectives and the...