On the heels of the St. Louis Cardinals’ appearance in the World Series, one of baseball’s greatest fans and noted presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin will give the keynote address at Washington University in St. Louis’ annual Founders Day celebration.

In planning this year’s gala that will be held Saturday, Nov. 5 — within days of the conclusion of the World Series — the WUSTL Alumni Association was either remarkably prescient or very optimistic.

In addition to the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s remarks, Founders Day 2011 will feature the presentation of the Distinguished Faculty Awards, the Distinguished Alumni Awards and the Robert S. Brookings Awards.

Founders Day commemorates the university’s founding in 1853. The celebration will begin at 6:30 p.m. at the St. Louis Union Station Marriott. For ticket information, call (314) 935-6503.

Known for her monumental, bestselling biographies of U.S. presidents, Goodwin’s first published work, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, covered the president she knew best. She served as an assistant in Johnson’s administration and later helped prepare his memoirs.

The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys followed in 1987; it was made into a mini-series in 1990. In 1995, she received the Pulitzer Prize for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The American Home Front During World War II.

Taking a break from political biographies, Goodwin published Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir, focusing on growing up in 1950s New York and on her beloved Dodgers, detailing the beginning of her lifelong love of America’s pastime.

She is, however, best known for the highly acclaimed and insightful Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Published in 2005, Team of Rivals won a slew of prizes and awards and is being made into a film by Steven Spielberg. Currently she is at work on a book about the Progressive Era.

In addition, Goodwin’s broad knowledge of politics — as well as baseball — are widely sought after by news publications and television programs. She has served as consultant for several PBS documentaries, most notably for Ken Burns’ The History of Baseball.

Distinguished Faculty Awards

The 2011 Distinguished Faculty Awards are given to faculty members who have demonstrated strong commitment to the intellectual and personal growth of their students. They are:

• Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD, the Dr. Robert J. Glaser Distinguished University Professor and director of the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology in the School of Medicine;
• Barton Hamilton, PhD, the Robert Brookings Smith Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship in the Olin Business School;
• Charles R. McManis, JD, the Thomas and Karole Green Professor of Law in the School of Law; and
• Martha Storandt, PhD, professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences.

Jeffrey I. Gordon

Gordon’s path-breaking research into the genomic and metabolic foundations of mutually beneficial host-microbial relationships in the human gut have contributed to the creation of metagenomics, a field of research that is accelerating human microbiome discoveries.

His findings have implications for the future study and practice of medicine, shedding light on disease prevention, providing new definitions of health, understanding the origins of individual biological differences, and developing new approaches for understanding how changes in our cultural traditions, lifestyles, technology and biosphere are impacting human microbial ecology and human evolution.

Gordon earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Oberlin College and a medical degree from the University of Chicago. After completing his clinical training in internal medicine and gastroenterology at WUSTL, he joined the faculty in 1981 as professor of medicine and biochemistry and molecular biophysics.

Ten years later, he became chair of the Department of Molecular Biology and Pharmacology, and, in 2004, was named director of the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology. During this period, Gordon also directed the university’s Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences. Gordon received the first Faculty Mentor Award, in 2000, given by WUSTL’s Graduate Student Council.

Gordon has published more than 430 papers in professional journals, and he holds 23 U.S. patents. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

Barton Hamilton

Hamilton is a leading authority on entrepreneurship, health economics and health-care management, and personnel economics. Since joining WUSTL in 1996, his teaching and research in entrepreneurship have contributed to the Olin Business School’s growth in programs, curricula and reputation. Last year, Olin’s entrepreneurship programs entered the top ten in rankings by The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine.

Indicative of his innovative teaching style is a course he created and co-teaches with medical school faculty called “Olin Grand Rounds: The Business and Practice of Medicine,” which studies the American health-care system from a variety of viewpoints.

A popular teacher with both undergraduate and graduate students, Hamilton has received the Reid Award as teacher of the year. His findings on the determining factors for entrepreneurial success and the pecuniary and non-pecuniary returns to self-employment are among the most often cited in the field.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and his doctorate, also in economics, from Stanford University. Hamilton also taught at McGill University in Montreal.

From 1999 to 2001, he served as director of the Hatchery entrepreneurship program; he also served as academic director of the executive MBA program in health services management. Currently, he serves on the academic advisory board for the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

Charles R. McManis

McManis is an intellectual property scholar with a broad global perspective. His teaching and research have taken him to China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Oman and the Netherlands.

As a Fulbright Fellow in the early 1990s, he conducted research at the International Intellectual Property Training Institute in Taejon, Korea, which served as a foundation for his expertise in East Asian intellectual property. His strong international reputation continues to grow as a consultant for the World Intellectual Property Organization.

His contributions to the WUSTL law school include establishing the intellectual property and technology law program, which he also directed; serving as founder and former director of the Center on Law, Innovation & Economic Growth; and serving on the Faculty Advisory Board for the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute.

McManis also participates in the university’s McDonnell International Scholars Academy as ambassador to Korea University.

In the classroom, he is valued as a dedicated teacher known for his innovative approaches to learning and his generosity with career advice. He also serves as faculty adviser to the Washington University Journal of Law & Policy.

After graduating from Birmingham Southern College, McManis earned a master’s degree and a juris doctorate from Duke University. He joined the WUSTL law school faculty in 1978 after brief stints at Vanderbilt University and Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

He has co-authored a book on licensing intellectual property, edited a volume on biotechnology and published Intellectual Property and Unfair Competition in a Nutshell, now in its sixth edition. McManis is a member of the American Law Institute and serves on the Executive Committee of the International Association of Teachers and Researchers of Intellectual Property.

Martha Storandt

When Storandt began studying the psychology of aging in the late 1960s, the body of knowledge on Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of geriatric cognitive impairment was in the early stages of development. Since then, her research and scholarship have contributed to the relative wealth of information available today, and have helped advance the understanding of dementia.

One of her most striking findings identified dementia as a disease, not a part of the normal aging process — the generally accepted notion at the time. A more recent focus involves understanding the transition from healthy aging to dementia.

A pioneer in aging research, Storandt edited the first textbook on the subject, published in 1978. Since then, she has published several publications, as well as numerous book chapters and more than 100 articles in scholarly journals.

The Department of Psychology in Arts & Sciences has been Storandt’s intellectual home base since her years as a WUSTL student. After earning a doctorate in 1966 from Washington University, she joined the faculty and continued her teaching and research. Recognizing the need for promoting productive aging, she helped establish WUSTL’s Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging at the medical school, and she is a founding faculty member of the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and serves as its director of psychometrics.

For more than two decades, Storandt directed the aging and development program in the psychology department, helping to create what is widely recognized as one of the best graduate research programs in the field.

For her outstanding contributions to the study of aging, Storandt has received widespread recognition and awards from professional organizations. She is a former member of the National Advisory Council on Aging and a former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Gerontology. She has also served as the chief editorial adviser for the American Psychological Association’s journals and publications program.

Editor’s Note: This is the first of three parts covering 2011 Founder’s Day. Profiles of Distinguished Alumni Awardees, as well as those of the Brookings Award recipients, were published in separate editions of the Record.