John J. Bukowczyk, of Royal Oak, a noted Polish-American scholar and author, has been invited to attend a White House state dinner on Wednesday, July17th in honor of Aleksander Kwasniewski, the President of the Republic of Poland. Bukowczyk is a professor of history and director of the university's Canadian Studies Program.

Bukowczyk, a New Jersey native, joined Wayne's faculty in 1980, and he now specializes in U.S. immigration and ethnic history and urban history. He received his B.A. from Northwestern University in 1972; and his A.M. in history in 1973 and Ph.D. in history in 1980 from Harvard University.

Bukowczyk is the author of And My Children Did Not Know Me: A History of the Polish-Americans and editor of Detroit Images: Photographs of the Renaissance City and Polish Americans and Their History: Community, Culture and Politics. Bukowczyk is the editor of the Ohio University Press Polish and Polish-American Studies Series. In addition to his books, Bukowczyk is also the author of numerous articles and essays, which have appeared in wide variety of scholarly journals.

In addition to extensive service within the university, Bukowczyk is past president of the Polish American Historical Association, a 700-member non-profit scholarly organization founded in 1942 by Polish-American historians and émigré scholars who had fled to the America after the outbreak of the Second World War. Currently, he is a member of that body's board of directors and the editorial board of its journal, Polish American Studies. He is also on the editorial board of the Journal of American Ethnic History. In addition, Bukowczyk has served on the boards of directors of the Urban History Association, the Immigration and Ethnic History Society and Preservation Detroit, a local historic preservation society.

Bukowczyk has been awarded Wayne State President's Award for Excellence in Teaching (2000), a Charles Gershenson Distinguished Faculty Fellowship and a Wayne State Board of Governors Faculty Recognition Award. He held a Wayne State Career Development Chair, and his work has been recognized widely beyond the university.

Recently, Bukowczyk was awarded the Gold Cross of Merit of the Republic of Poland (2000), presented to honor outstanding public and professional service to the Republic of Poland and won the Detroit 300 Polish Heritage Award.

In addition to publication prizes from the New Jersey Historical Commission and the Polish American Historical Association, in 1996 he also won the American Historical Association's inaugural William Gilbert Award for the Best Article on Teaching History. The American Historical Association is the16,000-member national organization of historians in the United States.

Bukowczyk has won grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Michigan Council for the Arts, the Michigan Humanities Council, the Detroit Council of the Arts, the Kosciuszko Foundation and the Government of Canada.

Wayne State University is a premier institution offering more than 350 academic programs through 14 schools and colleges to more than 31,000 students in metropolitan Detroit.