Three Liberal Arts faculty members named distinguished professors

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Three faculty members from Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts are part of this year’s group of newly designated distinguished professors.

Suzanna Linn, Liberal Arts professor of political science, Jeffery Ulmer, professor of sociology and criminology, and Adrian Wanner, Liberal Arts professor of Slavic languages and comparative literature, were among 10 faculty members across the University to receive the honor.

The distinguished professor or distinguished librarian title recognizes outstanding academic contribution to the University. The honor is bestowed upon a limited number of faculty who are leaders in their fields and who have demonstrated significant accomplishments in teaching, research or creative activity and service. 

Distinguished Professor of Political Science Suzanna Linn

Linn said being elevated to distinguished professor status is “incredibly meaningful.”

“I have been touched by the many, many people who have reached out to congratulate me and share stories of their interaction with my work, telling me how well-deserved the promotion is,” she said. “I've heard from colleagues I hadn't spoken with in years, and even from people I don't know personally. It gives you faith in humanity and is very humbling.”

A Penn State faculty member since 1993, Linn is a leading scholar on time-series analysis of politics and has been widely lauded for her seminal work incorporating temporal dynamics to quantitative analyses of politics.

She just finished her newest book, "A Practical Guide to Time Series Analysis” (Cambridge University Press), with co-authors Clay Webb and Matthew Lebo.

“I love the puzzles that time-series analysis presents, and most of my reputation is in this field,” Linn said. “The challenges of understanding how variables change over time and how we can make sense of these patterns continues to fascinate me. There's always a new methodological problem to solve, which keeps the work intellectually stimulating.”

Linn is currently working on a project that follows large random samples of social media users' expressed sentiment about the economy, in hopes of learning more about public opinion in the digital space and how it compares to traditional survey-based methods.

“This is important because people — perhaps especially the media and politicians — have come to view digital expressions of opinion as representative of the population, even though those who express themselves in the digital space are far from a random sample of users,” she said.

Linn said Penn State has proven to be a great long-term academic home, especially during the period when health issues curtailed her work.

“This kind of personal investment and belief in faculty is what makes Penn State special as an institution,” she said. “Throughout my career, I've had opportunities to go to other universities, but I've always been well-supported by the dean and my colleagues, so much so that choosing to stay put has always been easy.”

Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Criminology Jeffery Ulmer

Ulmer said he was “astonished” to receive the news of his promotion.

After receiving his doctorate from Penn State in 1993, Ulmer was a faculty member at Purdue University for seven years before returning to the University in 2000.

“When I came to Penn State as an associate professor, the Criminology program was brand new,” he said. “It has been very fulfilling to have played a part in its growth and great success over the past 25 years.”       

Ulmer serves as director of the University’s Criminal Justice Research Center and primarily focuses his research on the sociology of criminal punishment, criminological theory, religion and crime, and racial/ethnic inequality and violence rates. He produced two of the first studies that considered how racial and immigrant contexts influence decisions that disadvantage Hispanic individuals in relation to incarceration, as well as the only empirical study examining how judges’ sentencing decisions are influenced by their punishment attitudes and moral foundations.

Ulmer said he is now studying prosecutors' decisions to seek the death penalty in Pennsylvania, with a specific focus on the wide variation across county courts and DA's offices in practices and organizational culture. He and his colleagues are also researching racial, ethnic and geographic disparities in the practice of courts giving out consecutive sentences for multiple convictions, compared to giving out sentences that would be served concurrently. In addition, he’s working with others on a study of the implementation of the 8th edition of Pennsylvania's Sentencing Guidelines.

“I have always been fascinated by human social life and organization, and its problems. Crime — and society's response to crime — is a vital window onto the fabric of society,” Ulmer said. “The connections between research in criminology and sociology and ‘real world’ problems and policies are very strong. My main research area focuses on courts, prosecution, and criminal sentencing; a crucible where every core area of sociology interacts — stratification/inequality, social control, organizations, social psychology, etc. But equally important, research in courts and sentencing has direct implications for policy and practice that very much affects real people's lives.”

Distinguished Professor of Slavic Languages and Comparative Literature Adrian Wanner

Wanner said he was caught by surprise when Clarence Lang, Susan Welch Dean of the College of the Liberal Arts, called to inform him of the good news.

“It is always gratifying to receive recognition for your hard work,” Wanner said. “I was also touched by the large number of colleagues in and outside the College of the Liberal Arts who reached out to congratulate me after the news became public.”

A Penn State faculty member since 1996, Wanner is an internationally renowned scholar focused on the literary relations between Russia and Western Europe. He’s the author of four monographs, seven volumes of poetry translations, and numerous articles and chapters in edited volumes.

Wanner said his passion for language and literatures comes naturally, given he’s lived, studied and worked in multiple countries — Switzerland (where he grew up), France, the Soviet Union, Germany and the United States.

“My fluency in several languages has allowed me to investigate literary phenomena across linguistic boundaries and to tackle questions of transnational belonging,” he said. “In part, I think that my scholarly work is also a kind of self-exploration, since I see myself as a person with more than one national identity. I have a particular interest in the theory and practice of literary translation, especially the translation of poetry.”

Wanner’s primary research project for the past two years has been the multilingual works of Karolina Pavlova, Russia’s foremost female poet of the 19th century. Pavlova was trilingual in Russian, German and French and wrote poetry in all three languages, as well as translated between them in both directions.

“Her fluid ethno-linguistic identity unfortunately made her a target of Russian Slavophile nativists and eventually drove her into exile,” Wanner said. “I think this has a sad resonance with the times we currently live in. As a reaction to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I have set myself the goal to become fluent in Ukrainian. I have studied the Ukrainian language for three years now and have become active as a translator of Ukrainian poetry.”

Beyond his research and teaching, Wanner said he’s proud to have served as a former head of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, as well as his more recent service on the Liberal Arts Promotion and Tenure Committee.

“I feel lucky and proud to be part of this great intellectual community, which has helped me grow as a scholar, teacher and administrator,” he said.