FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Dann Hayes, Director of Media Relations, 641-269-4834

January 18, 2001

Silva, Levandoski awarded Harris Fellowships by Grinnell College

GRINNELL, Iowa - Two Grinnell College faculty members have been awarded Harris Fellowships to aid their research for the 2002-2003 academic year. Mark Levandoski, assistant professor of chemistry, and Pablo Silva, assistant professor of history, have each been awarded a fellowship which will provide a leave at full salary for one academic year and up to $6,000 in research and/or travel funds.

Levandoski was awarded a fellowship for his proposal "Single Channel Analysis of the Effects of Levamisole on Human Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors." Levandoski says that understanding of the levamisole pharmacology is incomplete without single channel analysis of the mechanism, which cannot be performed at Grinnell College. The grant will help him continue his research in the laboratory of Dr. Richard Martin, professor and chair of the department of biomedical sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Iowa State University.

Silva will use his fellowship to conduct research in Chile to further develop a scholarly monograph, White-Collar Revolutionaries: Middle-Class Unions and the Rise of the Chilean Left," in which he challenges the assumption that middle classes play a moderating role in politics. In particular, he says, the study will explain why, in the Chilean case, important white-collar groups actually helped consolidate some of the strongest leftist parties in Latin America.

Started in 1986, the Harris Fellowships are funded by a gift from Jack ('39) and Lucile Hanson ('40) Harris, and seek to encourage untenured faculty to complete research by providing funding for expenses during the leave and paying for a temporary replacement within the awardee's department.

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