March Faculty and Staff Features

Melvin I. Urofsky, Ph.D., professor emeritus of history and director of the doctoral program in public policy and administration
Urofsky received the Supreme Court Historical Society’s 2011 Erwin Griswold Prize for authoring “Louis D. Brandeis: A Life,” a biography of the influential early 20th century Supreme Court associate justice.

The winner of the prize is also invited to lecture about the book. Urofsky lectured to a capacity crowd of about 300 people in the Supreme Court chamber on Feb 22. Justice Elena Kagan introduced him as the world authority on Louis Brandeis.

Urofsky has written or edited more than 50 books, including an earlier seven-volume set on Brandeis’ legal writings.

The Supreme Court Historical Society, a private nonprofit organization, is dedicated to the collection and preservation of the history of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Society awards the Erwin N. Griswold Prize on an occasional basis when a book about the history of the Supreme Court is published that is considered sufficiently noteworthy to merit that degree of recognition.

Laura McLay, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Statistical Sciences and Operations Research, VCU College of Humanities and Sciences
McLay has received a nearly $430,000 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, one of the foundation’s most prestigious awards, which is given to faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research.

Through the five-year grant, which begins June 1, McLay will investigate the development of discrete optimization and models and algorithms for designing and operating emergency medical services in a way that maximizes their effectiveness in responding to medical emergencies during extreme weather events.

McLay’s operations research interests include homeland security, emergency medical services, heuristics and approximation algorithms and knapsack problem variations.

Joel Silverman, M.D., professor and chair in the Department of Psychiatry, VCU School of Medicine
Silverman has been appointed to the Board of Regents of The American College of Psychiatrists, a not-for-profit honorary association dedicated to providing continuing education to its members and promoting the latest advances in the field. The Board of Regents is the executive council of the association.

Silverman, who has served as chair of the VCU Department of Psychiatry for nearly 30 years, has been instrumental in building an academic department with strong research, teaching and clinical programs. The department’s faculty conducts research in many countries and is widely respected for having psychiatric research frequently cited in medical journals. He has also played a significant role educating the next generation of health practitioners and has developed strong residency training and medical student education programs in psychiatry within the VCU School of Medicine. He joined the faculty in the VCU School of Medicine in 1975.

Silverman has been actively involved in patient advocacy and protecting the rights of individuals with mental illness. In 1988 he founded Virginians for Mental Health Advocacy, a multidisciplinary advocacy group that was responsible for writing Virginia parity legislation.

As a member of the American Psychiatric Association, Silverman has served as vice chair on its Council on Advocacy and Public Policy. In 1990, he received a Psychiatric Society of Virginia Distinguished Service Award from the American Psychiatric Association district branch.

From 1986 to 1995, Silverman served as assistant editor of the journal Psychosomatics, and has been a reviewer for several high impact journals including the American Journal of Psychiatry, Archives of General Psychiatry and the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Silverman specializes in emotional problems secondary to physical disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as general and forensic psychiatry.