May 3, 2024 - Four Lantis Award Recipients Announced

Dear Campus Community,

I am delighted to announce the selection of four faculty members as 2024 Lantis Endowed University Chairs. Chosen from a competitive pool of outstanding applicants, the recipients are Janine Stone and Anita Chaudhry, Economics; Michael Coons, Mathematics; and Marie Lippmann, Psychology. Each recipient will receive a financial award to advance their research and student-centered projects.

Professor David Lantis was a faculty member of the Department of Geography who understood that private giving would help enrich the teaching and learning environment of the University. Professor Lantis and his wife, Helen, donated $2 million to endow University Chairs annually in their name. Provost Leslie Cornick and I are grateful to the members of the Lantis University Chair Selection Committee for their rigorous analysis and selection of this year’s recipients for this prestigious honor, which comes with a financial award of $20,000-$40,000, as appropriate to the project.

With their award, Drs. Stone and Chaudhry will continue their exploration of water resiliency for rural California. They will recruit Chico State students to participate in the research project to explore alternative water supply sources for households with dry or declining wells and establish the next generation of researchers and policy makers in this important field.

Dr. Coons will use his Lantis Award to focus on how simple processes like waves hitting the beach can take mundane objects and produce rich structures with long-range order. He plans to integrate colleagues and students into the work with the goal of strengthening the culture of undergraduate mathematics research at Chico State, and to publish several papers and eventually a book.

With her Lantis Award, Dr. Lippmann will expand her study of consensual nonmonogamy, which refers to relationship configurations with the agreed-upon possibility of sexual or emotional expression outside the primary relationship. She hopes to develop a theoretical framework for relationship identity development and expand knowledge in this growing field. Dr. Lippmann will enlist student assistants to conduct research and draft papers for presentation at conferences.

To read more about each of these exceptional faculty and their visionary work, please visit Chico State Today.

Our Lantis Chair honorees represent the very best in innovation and student engagement while pushing the edges of their discipline. Please join me in congratulating them and thanking them for the richness they add to the academy and to Chico State through their passions and expertise.

Thank you,
Steve Perez