Leifer Receives Distinguished Service Award
Professor Leslie Leifer (Chemistry)
is the recipient of the 2001 Faculty Distinguished Service Award.
"I'm pleased and honored
to get the award," he said. "I am sure I had good competition;
there are a lot of deserving people. And I feel that this may reflect
my firm beliefs about being a professor: if you don't have anything to
profess, there's no reason to be a professor."
Leifer was nominated in large
part for his efforts to improve benefits for MTU employees. "He has
been very active in the University Senate, working on a number of issues
that have benefited all of us," said Pushpalatha Murthy, interim
chair of chemistry, who supported Leifer's nomination. "He helped
establish the sick leave pool."
Leifer also lobbied for increasing
the University contribution to TIAA-CREF retirement accounts from 10.55
percent, said Associate Professor Patricia Heiden (Chemistry), who nominated
him for the award. The University subsequently instituted a 2+2 program,
matching employee contributions to their TIAA-CREF accounts up to 2 percent
of salary. He also proposed that surviving spouses of employees who die
before reaching 80 points receive health benefits.
"Les has been a long-term
advocate and educator on the importance of planning for retirement and
the costs and actions required to have a reasonable quality of life and
health care in retirement," Heiden wrote in her nomination.
"I feel very strongly
that people should be able to have a decent retirement," Leifer said.
"They have earned that after working many years."
He defines a decent retirement
as having "the same standard of living you had the last year you
were working," including income and health-care for both the retiree
and the spouse.
When asked why he put forth
the efforts that led to his receiving the award, Leifer replied, "In
an academic environment, you should try to lead your life so that your
community is better for your having been there. If I've done something
to make the University a better place, then I feel I've accomplished something.
"I feel you can't only
do good chemistry," said Leifer, who came to MTU in 1966 and received
the Research Award a few years later. "I've seen too many people
who are good in their field but aren't good human beings. I feel it's
important to be both."
Members of the Faculty Distinguished
Service Award Committee are Carl Anderson (ME-EM), Barry Pegg (Humanities),
Dennis Lewandowski (Mathematical Sciences), Bogue Sandberg (Civil and
Environmental Engineering), and Susan Martin (Social Sciences).
Leifer will receive the Distinguished
Service Award, which includes a $2,500 prize, at President's Convocation
on September 19.