The College of Arts and Sciences Research Proposal Review Committee (RPRC) has announced this year's Outstanding College Researchers: Professor Karen Coats, Department of English; Professor Rajeev K. Goel, Department of Economics; and Professor Cynthia Langrall, Department of Mathematics. Each year, the committee selects one winner from each of the College's three divisions: sciences, humanities, and social sciences. Winners of the award are eligible to be nominated in future years for the Outstanding University Researcher Award. “Selecting this year's Outstanding College Researchers was extremely difficult due to the range and depth of the work being done by all the nominees,” said Associate Dean Ann Beck. “The researchers selected are truly contributing tremendously to the body of knowledge in their fields.”   

Cynthia Langrall's research agenda pertains primarily to students' cognitions, especially as they apply to elementary children's probabilistic and statistical reasoning and middle school students' algebraic reasoning. Currently she is involved in a collaborative project that merges data collected in the United States, Australia, and Thailand to examine the role of context, cross-culturally, in the development of students' statistical literacy. Results of this research will have implications for state, national, and international instruction and assessment practices.

Rajeev K. Goel's research agenda since coming to ISU has been applied microeconomics, with a particular focus on the economics of technical change. Specifically, he is conducting research on international trends in tobacco consumption and regulation, determinants of cross-country corruption, and determinants of software piracy. His research is nationally and internationally recognized and he has been ranked among the 400 most prolific economists world wide on the basis of his publications from 1990-2000.

Karen Coats' research seeks to make connections between books, children, and the cultures in which children find themselves. She employs primarily theories of psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan, as well as a wide range of linguistic, psychological, sociological, aesthetic, and literary theories to explain these connections. Coats' 2004 book Looking Glasses and Neverlands: Lacan, Desire and Subjectivity in Children's Literature was selected as a both a Choice Outstanding Academic Title and the Children's Literature Association Honor Award for Best Book of Literary Criticism in the same year it was published. In addition, she has a second co-edited book that will be published in 2008, has published 13 other refereed pieces, and has presented 35 conference papers and talks.