May 22, 1998 Contact John R. Crosiar (541) 346-3135 EUGENE--Four University of Oregon doctoral degree candidates are recipients of 1998 UO Doctoral Research Fellowships. Each award includes a $16,000 stipend and a UO tuition waiver. Graduate students Paul Thiers, political science; Timothy Rawson, history; Arthur Kirkpatrick, computer and information science; and Mikhail Blinnikov, geography, are this year's fellowship recipients. The fellowship stipends support exceptional, advanced doctoral degree candidates as they complete their research and write their dissertations. The fellowship program, a collaborative program of the Graduate School and the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, is designed to support outstanding doctoral students and promote excellence in research at the University of Oregon. The funding begins in the 1998 summer or fall quarter and is available to recipients for up to 12 months. Each year since the UO began the program in 1991, three to six UO doctoral degree candidates have received the doctoral research awards. The fellowships are available to eligible doctoral degree candidates in all academic disciplines at the university. The recipients must be entering their final year at the UO. Each department nominates one candidate for the fellowship, and a subcommittee of the UO Graduate Council evaluates the applications, in consultation with Steadman Upham, vice provost of research and dean of the Graduate School. Thiers, of Salem, is studying the political economy of organic agriculture with his dissertation, "Green Food: The Political Economy of Sustainable Agriculture in China." "This topic allows me to study the intersection of politics, markets and ecosystems in Chinese agricultural development," Thiers says. Currently, he is finishing a year of field research in China supported by a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies/Committee on Scholarly Communication with China. Previously, Thiers received an International Trade and Development Fellowship from what is now the Oregon University System and a fellowship from the University Club Foundation of Oregon. After finishing his doctoral degree, Thiers plans to work in both academia and applied research. Rawson, of Fairbanks, Alaska, will use his award for the summer term only while he studies the common bond between different groups of people in Oregon and Washington in his dissertation, "In Common with All Citizens: Fish, Native Americans, Sportsmen, and Conservation in Oregon and Washington." In the fall, he will join Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage as a faculty member. After receiving his bachelor's degree from Luther College in biology and philosophy in 1980, Rawson spent 10 years as an outdoor educator with the National Outdoor Leadership School based in Lander, Wyo. When he can, he still works with them in the summer as "a healthy break from academic work." In 1994, he completed his master's degree in northern studies at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. While at the UO, Rawson has held several Graduate Teaching Fellow positions with Services for Student Athletes, the history department and the Office of International Education and Exchange as an immigration advising specialist. Rawson also revised his master's thesis for publication by the University of Alaska Press as "America's First Wolf Controversy: Wolves, Wild Sheep, and the Balance of Nature in Alaska." Kirkpatrick, of Ventura, Calif., is working on his dissertation titled, "Supporting Exploratory Activity with Haptic Computer Interface." Kirkpatrick received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Pennsylvania State University in 1977 and his master's degree in computer science in 1985. He has 12 years of programming experience in commercial and research environments and he also taught undergraduate computer science courses for three years. After coming to the UO in 1993, Kirkpatrick began doing research with his adviser, Sarah Douglas, on the use of color in computer systems and on comparisons of computer input devices such as mice and joysticks. Kirkpatrick has published two articles with Douglas and is working on a third. His research with Douglas grew into his thesis work with the fellowship. Blinnikov, of Eugene, is researching the history of the grasslands in his dissertation, "Late Pleistocene History of the Columbia Basin Grasslands Based on Phytolith Records in Loess." Blinnikov's fellowship research grew out of his thesis on silica when he was at Moscow University where he got his master's degree. He entered the UO as an environmental studies doctoral degree student but decided to change to geography after talking with Professor Cathy Whitlock about her research in geography. His research centers around a new method to extract data from soil samples containing silica that previously could only be extracted from lakes. Blinnikov is working in southeastern Washington and eastern Oregon. According to Blinnikov, the method and discipline are still considered "fairly new" and "can be applied in many places in the world" compared to the older method used before to extract the silica soil samples. -30- #H-2220/Local,Hometowns,OrSci/eb