UA Celebrates Special Honors for Four Faculty Members
Bruce Tabashnik became the University's 98th Regents' Professor last spring, and Vicente Talanquer, Etta Kralovec and Frans Tax also were recognized.

University Relations – Communications
Dec. 9, 2015

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From left: Vicente Talanquer, Frans Tax, President Ann Weaver Hart, Provost Andrew Comrie, Etta Kralovec and Bruce Tabashnik.
From left: Vicente Talanquer, Frans Tax, President Ann Weaver Hart, Provost Andrew Comrie, Etta Kralovec and Bruce Tabashnik. (Photo: John de Dios/UANews)


A newly minted Regents' Professor, a University Distinguished Professor and two University Distinguished Outreach Faculty were formally recognized and celebrated by the University of Arizona on Wednesday.

The appointment of Bruce Tabashnik and Julia Clancy-Smith as Regents’ Professors, approved earlier this year by the Arizona Board of Regents, brought to 99 the UA’s number of Regents' Professors since the designation was created in 1987. The honor is reserved for faculty scholars who have achieved national and international distinction for their work. Clancy-Smith, of the Department of History, was unable to attend the campus ceremony and will be honored in 2016.

Vicente Talanquer was named as a University Distinguished Professor for his contributions to educational excellence and undergraduate education. Henrietta "Etta" Kralovec and Frans Tax were named as University Distinguished Outreach Faculty for their sustained commitment to community and academic outreach.

Bruce Tabashnik

Tabashnik, a professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, has served as head of the Department of Entomology since 1996 and is a member of the BIO5 Institute

Called "the cotton farmer's best friend," he has spent decades conducting pioneering research on strategies to delay insect resistance to proteins produced by the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that kill some key insect pests but are not toxic to most other organisms, including humans and even most beneficial insects. Cotton genetically engineered to produce Bt proteins accounts for most of Arizona's 100,000 acres of cotton. 

The use of such environmentally friendly methods has essentially eliminated an invasive pest known as the pink bollworm, which had plagued cotton farmers in the Southwest for more than a century. The effort has helped reduce insecticide use by more than 75 percent and saved farmers hundreds of millions of dollars.

Tabashnik also has been an enthusiastic participant in the Arizona Insect Festival, an annual fall event that draws thousands from the community to the UA campus. He has served an editorial board member for six scientific journals, and his funded extramural research grants total more than $9 million.

Vicente Talanquer

Talanquer’s research centers on the improvement of chemistry education and science teacher preparation.

Talanquer, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, is co-principal investigator on the UA's grant for the STEM Undergraduate Education Initiative. In 2013, the UA was selected by the Association of American Universities as one of eight project sites funded by the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust to usher in dramatic improvements to instruction and learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the STEM fields.

For more than 15 years, Talanquer has worked with the Science Teacher Preparation Program in the UA College of Science. The program's aim is to prepare undergraduate students to become successful secondary science and math teachers. Talanquer has published more than 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals and 10 textbooks, four of which are used by science students throughout Mexico.

Talanquer also is co-developer of the Chemical Thinking curriculum, which uses engaging activities to encourage students to think differently about general chemistry.

Etta Kralovec

Kralovec is an associate professor of teacher education and director of the secondary education program at UA South.

In 2011, she received a $2.2 million Department of Education grant for the UA's Transition to Teaching program, which prepares STEM teachers for Title I schools in Arizona's Cochise and Santa Cruz counties. The teaching initiative is designed to encourage interested professionals to consider a teaching career.

Kralovec, the author and co-author of three books, has received numerous awards and honors, including a Fulbright Fellowship in 1996 to establish a teacher education program at Africa University in Zimbabwe. In 2014, she received a faculty grant from the University South Foundation to support her travel to Finland, where she worked with educators to identify best practices to aid in students' academic success.

Kralovec's research interests include innovation within alternative teacher certification programs for schools along the U.S.-Mexican border and the impact of military service on learning to teach.

Frans Tax

Tax is a professor of molecular and cellular biology in the College of Science and a member of the BIO5 Institute. His research areas include cell and developmental biology, genetics and epigenetics, and genomics, bioinformatics and systems biology. 

Tax's research is focused on plant development, especially stem cells and their differentiation into specialized cells, as well as the application of developmental genetics to crop plants. Outside of the lab, he is dedicated to community outreach efforts that expand research experiences to K-12 students. He has a national reputation for his development of creative, engaging and effective outreach activities.

Tax is one of the founders of the Partnership for Research and Education in Plants, or PREP, an outreach program designed to teach high school students about genetics, genomics and the scientific method. Since its inception, PREP has involved more than 20,000 students across the country in hands-on research experiences and has been recognized for its value by the National Science Foundation. 

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