Michael Ganger, Ph.D., associate professor of biology, and Christopher Magno, Ph.D., program director and assistant professor of criminal justice, have been named to the second class of Gannon University’s Cooney-Jackman Endowed Professorships.

The Cooney-Jackman Endowed Professorship was created in 2011 to provide the recipients with the necessary time and resources to move their significant research forward, while also benefitting students, instruction, and the national reputation of Gannon University as a premier institution of higher education.

Dr. Magno will pursue research on neighborhood safety and signs of disorder in Erie, Pennsylvania. He will examine interrelationships among visible neighborhood characteristics that suggest deterioration–broken windows, vandalism, lack of street lights, graffiti, and abandoned buildings–social services available to neighborhood residents, neighborhood safety and security, and the incidence of crime and violence. Gannon students are participating in his research, which will be conducted in the neighborhood served by Erie GAINS (the Erie-Gannon Alliances to Improve Neighborhood Sustainability), and is thus an example of the kinds of community partnerships that are a part of Gannon’s strategic plan.

Dr. Ganger will continue his research aimed at understanding the decision-making process in plants that can choose their gender.  He will also complete the vascular plant flora of the Erie Bluffs State Park and prepare a set of specimens for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.  These specimens will serve as a historical record of the species that occur in this newly created state park.

The endowed professorships are funded by and named in honor of two Gannon alumni, C. Christopher Cooney and Brian Jackman. Both Cooney and Jackman graduated from Gannon in 1963 and both enjoyed long and successful careers with Tellabs, a designer and developer of telecommunications networking products for communications service providers globally. Cooney was one of the company’s co-founders.

This article was originally published on Apr. 19, 2013 on www.gannon.edu.