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Two professors receive awards for teaching, research

September 12, 2002

Bruce Branchini, Hans and Ella McCollum '21 Vahlteich Professor of Organic Chemistry at Connecticut College, is the recipient of the 2002 Nancy Batson Nisbet Rash Faculty Research Award. Presented annually at Convocation, the award provides a research fund to one of the most outstanding and highly regarded members of the faculty.

Eugene Gallagher, Rosemary Park Professor of Religious Studies, was given the John S. King Memorial Faculty Teaching Award. It recognizes high standards of teaching excellence and concern for students.

Branchini, who received his doctoral degree from Johns Hopkins University, joined the CC faculty in 1986. His academic interests are focused in two areas: the biochemistry of bioluminescence (the emission of light by living organisms); and the determination of protein structure using nuclear magnetic resonance instrumentation. He has worked with undergraduates, research assistants and research scientists for approximately 25 years investigating the basic biochemistry leading to the emission of light by the firefly. Branchini's work with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) instrumentation has been conducted in collaboration with scientists at the University of Washington-Seattle and Pfizer Central Research and the Center for Magnetic Resonance at the University of Florence, Italy.

Gallagher joined CC in 1978. His interests focus on new religious movements with a comparative and historical perspective. His intellectual interests in this area shape how he teaches a series of case studies, including courses on "New Religious Movements," "Cults and Conversion in Modern America" and "Religions of the Caribbean." He uses the development of the early Christian movement in the Greco-Roman world as a paradigm of how an initially obscure and suspicious cult movement can enter the social mainstream and achieve a position of power.

He is the author of two books, Divine Man or Magician? Celsus and Origen on Jesus and Expectation and Experience: Explaining Religious Conversion. He is also the co-author of Why Waco? Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America.

Gallagher is the recipient of teaching awards from the Student Government Association and the Sears Roebuck Foundation. He holds a doctoral degree from the University of Chicago.

View Bruce Branchini's faculty profile.

ViewGene Gallagher's faculty profile.

For media inquiries contact: Amy Martin (860) 439-2526; a.martin@conncoll.edu