From Tree Islands in the Everglades to Merging Stars: Faculty Present Their Work

Feb. 4, 2013 – Faculty and staff at Allegheny College have recently authored works or participated in professional activities in a broad range of subject matter.

Professor of Environmental Science Richard Bowden and Director of Physical Plant Cliff Willis attended the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium. Willis, an invited panelist, presented “External and Internal Communication Needs for Sustainability Initiatives,” which addressed the need for involvement of the entire campus community in planning and executing environmental sustainability initiatives. Bowden stepped down after completing his second term as president of the organization.

Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Political Participation Brian Harward has received the 2013 CQ Press Award for Teaching Innovation in Political Science. The award — presented by the American Political Science Association — recognizes the work that Harward has done to link his teaching with the college’s newly developed partnership with the Robert H. Jackson Center, the world’s preeminent resource for materials related to the life, work and legacy of Robert H. Jackson. A leading lawyer of the New Deal Era, Jackson served as solicitor general, attorney general, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and the chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal.

A paper co-authored by Associate Professor of Physics James Lombardi, “Identification of the Long-Sought Common-Envelope Events,” was published in the January 25th issue of Science. The work investigates how the brightness and color of two merging stars change as the stars become one. The research was done in collaboration with Natasha Ivanova (University of Alberta), Stephen Justham (Chinese Academy of Sciences), and José Avendaño Nandez (University of Alberta).

A paper by Jack Meeder in the Environmental Science Department was accepted for publication in the journal Wetlands. “Compositional effects of Sea-level rise in a patchy landscape: The dynamics of tree islands in the South-eastern coastal Everglades” was co-authored with Mike Ross, Jay Sah, and Pablo Ruiz. This is contribution number 595 from the Southeast Environmental Research Center at Florida International University.

Associate Professor of French Laura Reeck’s article “The Law/laws of hospitality chez Zahia Rahmani” has appeared in the most recent issue of Contemporary French and Francophone Studies. In it, Reeck examines the Franco-Algerian writer’s conversation with Jacques Derrida’s hospitality, looking specifically at the tension between the unconditional Law of hospitality, bound to the ethical and affective registers, and the context and condition-specific laws of hospitality.

The third edition of a sophomore-level inorganic chemistry textbook by Professor Emeritus Glen Rodgers, Descriptive Inorganic, Coordination, and Solid-State Chemistry, was published last year by Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning. An international edition was also published in 2012.

Assistant Professor of History Guo Wu’s article “Imagined Future in Chinese Novels at the Turn of the 21st century: A Study of Yellow Peril, The End of Red Chinese Dynasty and A Flourishing Age: China, 2013” appears in ASIANetwork Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2013), pp. 47-56.