IU professors, couple win lifetime achievement award

Professors Elinor "Lin" and Vincent Ostrom will receive a lifetime achievement award Friday from the Atlas Economic Research Foundation's Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Orders. \nWhen the Ostroms were informed they would be receiving a lifetime achievement award, Lin said it was a surprise.\n"It came out of the blue, totally unexpected," she said. \nPart of the award is a cash prize of $50,000. \nThey intend to put this money toward the Tocqueville Endowment for the Study of Human Institutions, a fund they established. The money from the endowment will go toward funding visiting professors and students to study at their Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. \nThe Ostroms have worked in the IU political science department for more than 40 years, and one of their most prominent contributions to the research community has been this workshop, which they founded in 1973.\n"A lot of people have gone through the workshop," Vincent said. "Since the '80s we've had five to 10 visiting scholars each year."\nProfessor Roger B. Parks in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs has worked with the Ostroms since he came to IU as a graduate student in the early 1970s.\n"The workshop has been a locus of intellectual exchange among faculty and students from many departments at IU and from around the world," Parks said. "Its research programs range from metropolitan organization and public services in the U.S. to sustainable forestry in Africa and Latin America, irrigation systems in the Himalayas, game theoretic experiments in laboratory settings and others."\nSPEA professor Matt Auer said he has collaborated with the Ostroms before, and has been impressed by the uniqueness of the workshop. \n"The Ostroms have imprinted their intellectual stamp on thousands of graduate students from throughout the world," Auer said. "That imprint signifies innovative approaches to complex problems, demands for high quality policy analysis and a premium on integrating different streams of knowledge." \nThe Ostroms said they like to bring people to the workshop from very diverse backgrounds. One of the concepts they find invaluable to their work is interdisciplinary study. \n"There is a very strong interdisciplinary tradition at IU," Lin said. \nParks said interdisciplinary research is important in fields such as political science or the environment.\n"Most public policy questions of interest today are interdisciplinary in nature, requiring contributions from the social sciences, natural sciences and law if they are to be addressed in research and resolution," Parks said. \n"The Ostroms were among the first scholars to recognize (these) complex problems -- for example, environmental and natural resource management problems -- require integrative thinking," Auer said. \nThe Ostroms emphasized the importance of involving students in research. \n"There has not been enough emphasis on fundamental problems that could be of interest to students," Vincent said. "Research and teaching -- they should not be separate."\nAuer said the Ostroms are a one-of-a-kind pair.\n"The Ostroms are a rare breed among the world's finest scholars. They are first-rate intellectuals, enormously successful and productive researchers, completely unpretentious and wonderfully generous with their time and energy with students and faculty colleagues alike," Auer said.\nWhen looking back at all the achievement he and his wife have made in the senior years of their lives, Vincent said he continues to be productive.\n"The period of my 70s was probably the most productive year of my lifetime," he said with a laugh. "In my 80s, I'm slowing down."\n-- Contact staff writer James E. Klaunig Jr. at jklaunig@indiana.edu.