Randolph-Macon College President Robert R. Lindgren is pleased to announce that two RMC professorships will be awarded at a ceremony on November 22, 2019. The event will take place at 11:30 a.m. in the McGraw-Page Library. 

Professor James Foster will be named the Paul H. Wornom, M.D. Professor in Biological Sciences; and Professor Adrian Rice will be named the Dorothy and Muscoe Garnett Professor in Mathematics.

“Recognizing distinguished faculty with endowed professorships is always a special occasion,” says Lindgren. “We are delighted to honor Professors Foster and Rice, whose teaching, scholarship and service eminently qualify them for these professorships.”

Biology Professor James A. Foster
The Paul H. Wornom, M.D. Professorship in Biological Sciences was established in 1999 by Dr. Paul Wornom ’37. 

Foster earned his B.S. in biology from Lebanon Valley College, his Ph.D. in anatomy and cell biology from University of Virginia, and he did a post-doc at the University of Pennsylvania. He joined the RMC faculty in 1998.

Foster’s research focus is reproductive cell biology, and much of his work has focused on understanding the structure and function of the acrosome, a vesicle at the tip of mammalian sperm cells that is essential for sperm-egg interactions during fertilization. Recent projects have studied the effects of gene mutations on fertility in mice. Foster’s lab has shown that the G protein-coupled receptor 56 protein (GPR56) is important for multiple processes in male fertility. 

During his tenure at RMC, Foster has mentored 21 Schapiro Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) students; supervised numerous student internships; and was involved in the expansion of internship opportunities in healthcare fields. He has also supervised 17 student presentations at national and international conferences. The author of 23 peer-reviewed journal articles (several co-authored with students), and a book chapter, Foster was in 2015 the recipient of the Samuel Nelson Gray Distinguished Professor Award. He currently serves as chair of RMC’s Pre-Medical Advisory Committee and chair of the Wornom Fellows selection committee.

Foster has received major research instrumentation funding from the National Science Foundation, and research funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Thomas F. and Kate Miller Jeffress Memorial Trust Grant. He was a recipient of the Virginia Foundation of Independent Colleges Mednick Fellowship; and the recipient of a Rashkind Endowment Grant, a Chenery Research Grant, and a Walter W. Craigie Teaching Endowment.

Mathematics Professor Adrian C. Rice
The Dorothy and Muscoe Garnett Professorship in Mathematics was established in 2008 through the bequest of Dorothy and Muscoe Garnett ’30.  

Rice, who joined the RMC faculty in 1999, earned his B.S. in mathematics from University College London and his Ph.D. in the history of mathematics from Middlesex University, London.

His research focuses on 19th-century and early 20th-century mathematics, on which he has published four books and over 45 papers and articles. He has given more than 100 talks and presentations across the United States and abroad. 

His books include Mathematics Unbound: The Evolution of an International Mathematical Research Community, 1800–1945 (edited with Karen Hunger Parshall) and The London Mathematical Society Book of Presidents, 1865–1965 (written with Susan Oakes and Alan Pears). He also edited the 2011 Oxford University Press book Mathematics in Victorian Britain (with Raymond Flood and Robin Wilson). His latest book, which he co-wrote with his colleagues Dr. Christopher Hollings and Professor Ursula Martin of the University of Oxford, is Ada Lovelace: The Making of a Computer Scientist.

In 2007, Rice received the Trevor Evans Award for Outstanding Expository Writing from the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) for an article he co-wrote with RMC Mathematics Professor Eve Torrence on the mathematics of Lewis Carroll. In 2010, Rice received a second Trevor Evans Award for his article, “Gaussian Guesswork (or Why 1.19814023473559220744… is Such a Beautiful Number).”

He received the MAA’s Carl B. Allendoerfer Award in 2013 for the paper “Why Ellipses are not Elliptic Curves,” co-authored with Professor Ezra Brown of Virginia Tech. And in 2019 he was presented with the Paul R. Halmos – Lester R. Ford Award by the MAA for his paper “Partnership, Partition, and Proof: The Path to the Hardy–Ramanujan Partition Formula.”

Rice is a two-time recipient of RMC’s Thomas Branch Award for Excellence in Teaching, and in 2013 he received the John Smith Award for Distinctive College or University Teaching from the MAA. He was elected to a fellowship of Queen’s College, Oxford in 2014, and in 2019 he was elected a corresponding member of the prestigious Académie Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences.