Ellie Boron ‘09, Kristen Duthie ‘09, and Xun Li ‘09 attended the Penn State Primary Care Scholars Program, which is designed to expose students to the philosophy and practice of primary care within the disciplines of family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics.
Melissa Comber, assistant professor of political science and research fellow at the Center for Political Participation, gave three invited lectures in Germany this summer: “Civic Education and Youth Political Participation in the U.S.,” at the Trier Center for American Studies, Universit‰t Trier; “Working Mothers in America: Policies and Practicalities,” at the Universit‰t Rostock, Aspects of American Culture Lecture Series; and “Women, U.S. Social Policy, and the Dynamics of Reform and Reaction,” at the Universit‰t Leipzig, 2008 Leipzig-Fulbright Lecture Series. Dr. Comber was a Fulbright Guest Lecturer at the Universit‰t Duisburg-Essen, Germany. She also wrote a piece called “Following the American Presidential Election from Germany” published in Funnel Online, the news magazine of the German-American Fulbright Commission (June 2008). The article can be found here:
http://www.fulbright.de/funnel-online/issue-2008-03/our-fulbrighters/us-professor.html
In March, Professor of Psychology William A. DeLamarter presented a paper co-authored with Matthew S. Motyl ‘06, “The Politics of Gender in a Post-9/11 World: A Terror Management Perspective,” at the meetings of the Eastern Psychological Association meetings in Boston. The paper was based on data collected by Matthew for his senior project. Matthew is currently a graduate student at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.
In April, Director of User Services James Fadden presented on the panel “Sakai and the Small Liberal Arts College” at the NITLE Summit meeting held in San Francisco. James also helped organize a conference of the NITLE Sakai Users Group, which met at the University of Puget Sound in June, and he presented a session at this conference.
Xun Li ‘09 received a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship at Drexel University College of Medicine. He worked in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology on the therapeutic potential of antisense-oligonucleotides in the treatment of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.
Katy Orchowski ‘10 was awarded first place in the 2007-2008 Psi Chi/J.P. Guilford Undergraduate Research Award Competition for best empirical research paper. Her paper, “Effects of Abrupt Withdrawal of Valproic Acid in Sprague-Dawley Rats,” was the outcome of her independent study project from the Spring 2008 semester under the supervision of Rodney Clark, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience. In addition to her award, Katy received a cash prize of $1,000, and her biography, photograph, and paper’s abstract will appear in the Winter 2009 issue of Eye on Psi Chi, the organization’s quarterly publication.
Professor of Art George Roland had two works of computer art selected by juror John Carson for inclusion in the 98th Associated Artists of Pittsburgh Annual Exhibition. The exhibition is being held at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh through September 14. Professor Roland was awarded the Irene Pasinski Sailer Memorial Award. His work Diskfield was purchased by the Carnegie Museum of Art for its permanent collection.
Sarah Snider ‘09 and Molly Guest ‘07, accompanied by Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Rodney Clark, attended the 34th annual convention of the Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI), held in San Diego May 23-27. Sarah and Molly presented posters of their independent study and senior comprehensive research project respectively. Sarah’s work was titled “Effects of Mefloquine Hydrochloride on NMDA- and Kainate-Induced Drinking in Sprague-Dawley Rats.” Molly’s was titled “Classical Conditioning of Antiepileptic Drug Effects: Failure of Metrozol to Produce Convulsions and the Production of Convulsions From the Withdrawal From Chronic Valproic Acid.”
People & Places, published monthly during the academic year, reports on the professional activities of members of the College community and highlights student achievements. Please submit items to people@allegheny.edu. We reserve the right to edit copy for length.
Jaclyn Spirer ‘08 won both the Best Documentary Prize and the Grand Jury Award at the Ivy Film Festival, held at Brown University in April and billed as the largest student film festival in the United States. The Grand Jury Prize represents the festival’s top honor, with the competition for the award judged by Hollywood directors, writers, and producers. Jackie’s film, “Finding Mattie’s Voice,” which focuses on a teenage boy with autism and his family, beat out a final field of 34 films by other students, including graduate student filmmakers. “Finding Mattie’s Voice” has also received acclaim from autism organizations.
Michael Peroski ‘10 recently published an article titled “They (Might) Know What You’re Thinking” in Science Progress, a journal on science and technology policy. The article focuses on the current and potential uses of functional magnetic resonance imaging for lie detection and its implications for courts, interrogations, and job screening in national security. It is currently available at: http://www.scienceprogress.org/2008/04/they-might-know-what-youre-thinking/ .
Assistant Professor of Biology Brandi Baros, Steven Frese ‘08, and Emily Ricotta ‘09 attended the 29th Annual Undergraduate Biology Symposium for Western Pennsylvania, held at Washington and Jefferson College on April 12. Steven and Emily each presented posters of their senior comprehensive research projects. Steven’s was titled “Screening the Gut Microflora of Rainbow Trout for Organisms with Inhibitory Activity against a Fish Pathogen, Aeromonas salmonicida.” Emily’s was titled “Progress toward the development of Felix O1 as a reporter phage for the rapid detection of Salmonella.”
Assistant Professor of English Kerry Neville Bakken has been named one of three finalists for the Texas Institute of Letters Best Short Story Award for her story “Careless,” which appeared in the journal Arts & Letters. Recently, her story “Indignity” appeared in the Gettysburg Review. In June, she will serve as fiction faculty for the University of Missouri-Columbia’s Graduate Creative Writing Summer Seminars Program in Serifos, Greece.
Visiting Scholar T.J. Eatmon is a co-author on a paper, “Reconciling Technological Viability with Social Feasibility: The Case of Natural Pozzolans for Sustainable Development,” published in the journal World Review of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development. The paper is based on an appropriate technology project focused on rice production in the Philippines and was funded by the National Science Foundation and Daimler Chrysler/UNESCO.
Associate Professor of Economics John Golden’s paper “A Simple Geometric Approach to Approximating the Gini Coefficient” has been published by the Journal of Economic Education (Volume 39, Number 1, Winter 2008).
On April 10 and 11 Judson Herrman, assistant professor of classical studies, was an invited visitor at Kenyon College, where he gave a public lecture titled “Recycling and preservation: the rediscovery of lost speeches of Hyperides in the Archimedes Palimpsest” and led a seminar on Athenian funeral orations. On April 17 he delivered a paper at the annual convention of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in Tucson titled “What does an information-literate classics major need to know?,” in which he outlined his plans for a new guide to computer literacy for classicists.
Associate Professor of Mathematics Tamara Lakins and Rebecca Egg ‘09 spoke on Undergraduate Summer Programs for Mathematics Majors at the Allegheny Mountain Section NExT (New Experiences in Teaching) meeting on April 11. The meeting was held as part of the Allegheny Mountain Section Mathematical Association of America meeting at the University of Pittsburgh. Professor Lakins spoke on the George Washington University Summer Program for Women in Mathematics, where she taught during the summers of 2001 and 2002. Rebecca, who was a summer 2007 participant, spoke on the Carleton College Summer Mathematics Program for Women.
A paper by Associate Professor of Political Science Shannan Mattiace, Associate Professor of Economics Tomas Nonnenmacher, and Lee Alston (University of Colorado, Boulder), “Coercion, Culture and Debt Contracts: The Henequen Industry in Yucatan, Mexico, 1870-1915,” has been published as a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper (#13852). It can be downloaded at www.nber.org. Professor Mattiace presented her work on Yucatan and ethnic mobilization at the Midwest Political Science Association Meetings in Chicago on April 2.
Assistant to the President for Institutional Diversity Terrence Mitchell was among the presenters and panelists at the Third Annual Youth Workforce Development Conference, jointly presented by YouthWorks and Urban Youth Action, on April 21 in Pittsburgh. The conference theme was “Thinking Forward: Preparing Youth for a Global Economy.”
Associate Professor of Economics Tony Moskwa gave a talk titled “Hopes and Fears of Globalization,” sponsored by the World Culture Club at Pennsylvania State University at Hershey.
Robert Raczka, professor of art and gallery director, will have two large-scale photography projects included in the “Pittsburgh Biennial” at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and Pittsburgh Filmmakers, May 3-August 24. Each project is a sequence of 33 color photographs shot in one night, with one project depicting downtown Meadville and the other depicting downtown Pittsburgh. Professor Raczka will also exhibit new collages at “Media Tonic 3,” a one-night media arts event at Pittsburgh Filmmakers, on June 3. He’s organizing “You Are Here” for SPACE Gallery in downtown Pittsburgh, June 27-August 9. This exhibit of 11 artists addressing place will include Professor Raczka’s color photography sequence of the business strip in Vernon Township at night. He’s also curating a show of art and objects purchased in thrift stores for the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia.
Mike Richwalsky of the Office of Public Affairs was interviewed for the weekly radio program College Connection, produced by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education and broadcast on radio stations across Oklahoma. He spoke about the uses of social networks by colleges and universities to reach prospective students, current students and alumni. The interview is available here.
Professor of Art George Roland’s computer-based artwork Keokee was chosen by juror Dave Hickey for inclusion in the 85th Annual Spring Show at the Erie Art Museum. The exhibition is open to the public through June 22.
The Department of History is pleased to announce this year’s recipients of funding from the Jonathan E. and Nancy L. Helmreich Research and Book Grant Fund, the Edwin Van Duesen Selden Fund, and the Bruce Harrison ‘45 History Department Fund.
Professor Barry Shapiro will utilize funding from the Helmreich Grant to travel to the Newberry Library in Chicago and the Widener Library at Harvard University this summer to conduct research in their archives on the French Revolution for completion of his book Traumatic Fallout: The Deputies and the King in the Early French Revolution.
Assistant Professor Elisabeth KalÈ Haywood is the recipient of funding from the Edwin Van Duesen Selden Fund for travel to Morelia, Michoac·n, Mexico, to visit the Archivo Casa de Morelos. There she will explore documents on the reaction of clerics to royal mandates promulgated between 1795 and 1810. This will enable her to extend research begun in her dissertation, “A Climate of Confrontation: The Cathedral Chapter in the Diocese of Michoac·n, 1770-1795.”
Associate Professor Kenneth M. Pinnow will receive funding from the Bruce Harrison ‘45 History Department Fund to lead nine Allegheny College students to the Ukraine this summer. His Experiential Learning course, “Transitions from Communism: A Case History of Ukraine,” will expose students to Ukrainian history, culture, and identity through excursions to a number of sites throughout the region. In addition, the Harrison Fund will also subsidize Professor Pinnow’s travel to New York and Washington to visit archives for completing revisions to his manuscript The Loneliness of the Collective: Suicide and the Social Science State in Bolshevik Russia, 1920-1929. This study has been accepted for publication by Cornell University Press.
People & Places, published monthly during the academic year by the Office of Public Affairs, reports on the professional activities of members of the College community and highlights student achievements. Please submit items to people@allegheny.edu. We reserve the right to edit copy for length.
The American Red Cross honored Matt Cellini ‘09 at the awards ceremony acknowledging the Eighth Annual Heroes of Mid-Fairfield County in Connecticut on March 26. Matt was honored for helping to revive a girl who nearly drowned in a pool where Matt was a lifeguard last summer.
Assistant Professor of Psychology Sarah Conklin published a paper in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine titled “High omega-6 and low omega-3 fatty acids are associated with depressive symptoms and neuroticism.” She has also been invited to speak as a distinguished researcher at the University of Southern Maine’s Summer Health Institute. She will give a talk on her research involving lipids, brain, and behavior.
Judson Herrman, assistant professor of classical studies, presented two papers by invitation at the University of Colorado in Boulder on March 7: he led a seminar for classics faculty and graduate students on the new Hyperides in the Archimedes Palimpsest and delivered a public lecture titled “Divided reactions: Athenian politics after Chaeronea.”
Assistant Professor of Computer Science Gregory M. Kapfhammer was appointed the program co-chair for the Testing: Academic and Industrial Conference – Practice and Research Techniques (TAIC PART 2008). In collaboration with the conference chair, program co-chair, and an international program committee, Kapfhammer will organize the conference and handle the reviewing of submitted papers. Matthew Engel ‘02, systems administrator in the Department of Computer Science, was chosen to serve as the information systems chair for TAIC PART 2008. Engel will manage the software infrastructure that supports both the conference Web site and the paper review process. TAIC PART is an IEEE-affiliated conference that brings together industrialists and academics in an environment that promotes meaningful collaboration on the challenges of software testing. More information about the conference is available at http://www.taicpart.org/.
Mike Richwalsky of the Office of Public Affairs was interviewed in the February 2008 issue of University Business for an article exploring institutional uses of Facebook and the new Facebook developer platform. The article is available at http://www.universitybusiness.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=1005.
Professor of History Barry Shapiro will be presenting two very different papers at two very different conferences during the weekend of April 4-6. On Friday, April 4, he will present “Conflict Resolution Theory in the Post-14 July Political World” to the annual meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. On the following day, he will present “Poisoning Chicago’s Waters: Psychedelic Magic and the Specter of the Other’ at the 1968 Democratic Convention” to a conference on “The Legacy of 1968″ at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia.
Associate Professor of Political Science Sharon Wesoky has two new publications on her research on Chinese rural women’s organizing. Her article “Rural Women Knowing All: Transnational Influences on Rural Women’s Organizing in China” was published in the September 2007 issue of International Feminist Journal of Politics. Her chapter “A Story of Suicide and Social Change in Contemporary China” is forthcoming in May in Telling Stories to Change the World, edited by Rickie Solinger, Madeline Fox, and Kayhan Irani (New York: Routledge).
Computer science majors Tierney Wirth ‘09, James Devine ‘10, Jim Kukunas ‘10, and Joseph Shaffer ‘09 took part in the 2008 Carnegie Mellon Spring Programming Contest held on March 29 at Carnegie Mellon University.
People & Places, published monthly during the academic year by the Office of Public Affairs, reports on the professional activities of members of the College community and highlights student achievements. Please submit items to people@allegheny.edu. We reserve the right to edit copy for length.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Carla Bluhm and Nathan Clendenin ‘07 have been contracted by Praeger Press to write a book on face transplants and matters of identity, to be released in early 2009.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science Gregory M. Kapfhammer recently presented a paper at the ACM India Software Engineering Conference in Hyderabad, India. “Database-Aware Test Coverage Monitoring,” co-authored with Mary Lou Soffa (University of Virginia), describes a testing technique that tracks a program’s interaction with a relational database. The paper is available for download at http://www.cs.allegheny.edu/~gkapfham/research/papers/. While in India, Dr. Kapfhammer also gave three technical presentations at industrial and academic locations. He delivered the talk “The Theory and Practice of Software Testing” at the offices of SGT Global in Chennai. This presentation identifies the fundamental challenges of software testing and then explains different approaches to efficient and effective testing. The second presentation, “Set Covers, Knapsacks, and Regression Testing Techniques,” was given at Madras Christian College. This talk establishes a connection between the NP-complete 0/1 knapsack and minimal set cover problems and two methods for improving the regression testing process. His presentation at the Chennai Mathematical Institute, “Using Synthetic Coverage Information to Evaluate Test Suite Prioritizers,” presents algorithms that support experimental studies by automatically generating test coverage and timing information. All of these presentations are available for download at http://www.cs.allegheny.edu/~gkapfham/research/present/.
Director of Financial Aid Sherry Proper is technical reviewer for a new book, Mr. Cheap’s Guide to Paying for College: Go to School Without Going Broke, published in January 2008 by Adams Media, an F+W Publications Company. The book contains material adapted and abridged from a book that Sherry co-authored in 2005, The Everything Paying for College Book.
People & Places, published monthly during the academic year by the Office of Public Affairs, reports on the professional activities of members of the College community and highlights student achievements. Please submit items to people@allegheny.edu. We reserve the right to edit copy for length.
Melissa K. Comber, assistant professor of political science and research fellow at the Center for Political Participation, presented a paper on January 12 at the conference “Latino/a Images for the 21st Century: Interethnic Relations and Politics of Representation” at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research, Universit‰t Bielefeld, in Bielefeld, Germany. The paper is titled “Latino Youth Participation in American Democracy: Voice and Education.” Dr. Comber is a Fulbright Guest Lecturer at the Universit‰t Duisburg-Essen.
TJ Eatmon, visiting scholar in the Department of Environmental Science, was one of only ten graduate students selected to receive the K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award, sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. The award recognizes graduate students who are committed to developing academic and civic responsibility in themselves and others and who show exemplary promise as future leaders of higher education. Recipients of the award were honored at AAC&U’s 2008 Annual Meeting in Washington, DC January 23-26. AAC&U received approximately 150 nominations from across the country, and all of those associated with the award noted the impressive credentials of this year’s nominees. “They represent the finest in the new generation of faculty who will teach and lead higher education in the next decades,” said Carol Geary Schneider, AAC&U’s president.
James Ellenberger ‘09 has been awarded a full FreemanASIA scholarship and a Benjamin Gilman Scholarship. James will be attending the Allegheny-Capital Normal University Exchange program in spring 2008.
Vice President for Enrollment and Communications Scott Friedhoff was invited to speak at the College Board’s 2008 Colloquium in Southern California (Laguna Niguel). The session title was “Four Different Institutional Perspectives on Return on Investment – Follow the Money!” The panel also included the academic dean and vice president for academic affairs at Earlham College, the vice president of finance at North Carolina Wesleyan College, and the vice chancellor of student affairs at UCLA.
Martyn Inkley ‘07, Professor of Biology and Environmental Science Scott Wissinger, and Assistant Professor of Biology Brandi Baros recently coauthored a paper published in the journal Freshwater Biology titled “Effects of drying regime on microbial colonization and shredder preference in seasonal woodland wetlands.” The paper was based on Martyn’s senior project conducted at Allegheny’s Bousson Environmental Research Reserve.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science Gregory M. Kapfhammer presented a paper at the 18th Workshop on Analysis, Slicing and Transformation, hosted by King’s College, University of London. “Towards Regression Testing for Database Applications” describes several techniques that solve minimal set cover problems in order to reduce and reorder a database application’s test suite. The paper also includes empirical results that evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the approaches to database-aware testing. More information is available at:
http://www.cs.allegheny.edu/~gkapfham/research/diatoms/.
Associate Professor of Biology and Biochemistry Ann M. Kleinschmidt is the first author of a paper, “Sequences in intron 51 of the VWF gene target promoter activation to a subset of lung endothelial cells in transgenic mice,” in press in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. A coauthor on the paper, Molly Stitt ‘99 worked on the project as an undergraduate and continued it as a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh in the laboratory of Bruce Pitt, also a co-author. Additional co-authors are Marjan Nassarie and Nadia Jahroudi, University of Alberta, and Karla Wasserloos and Simon Watkins, University of Pittsburgh.
Aisha Damali Lockridge, assistant professor of English, has been invited to give a lecture on February 18 at Earlham College on the impact of male gaze in Spike Lee’s film She Hate Me.
Over winter break, Michael Peroski, a second-year student who is double majoring in biochemistry and philosophy, coauthored a book chapter titled “Bioethics and National Security” with Jonathan D. Moreno, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. The chapter will appear in the University of Pennsylvania Handbook of Bioethics, to be published later this year. The work focuses on the connection between human subjects of experiments and national security, bioterrorism preparedness and bioethics, triage in mass casualty medicine, and the role of doctors in interrogation.
People & Places, published monthly during the academic year by the Office of Public Affairs, reports on the professional activities of members of the College community and highlights student achievements. Please submit items to people@allegheny.edu. We reserve the right to edit copy for length.
Pete Gifford and Jason Ramsey ‘98, from Administrative Information Systems (AIS), presented an information session at the first annual Pennsylvania Area Datatel Users Group conference at Juniata College. The session focused on the use of the Entrinsik Informer system for web-based reporting by administrative departments at Allegheny. Rich Metzger, director of AIS, was on the conference-planning committee and was instrumental in getting the conference off the ground.
During fall break, Professor of Economics Don Goldstein led a workshop at the National University of Ireland (NUI) – Galway on the environmental performance of Irish manufacturers. Goldstein and Rachel Hilliard of NUI – Galway are in the third year of a research grant from the Irish Environmental Protection Agency. Workshop participants from five countries discussed preliminary results from this grant in light of their own research.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science Gregory M. Kapfhammer recently published two papers in the proceedings of the ACM Workshop on Empirical Assessment of Software Engineering Languages and Technologies. “Using Coverage Effectiveness to Evaluate Test Suite Prioritizations,” co-authored with Mary Lou Soffa (University of Virginia), explains a metric for characterizing the quality of a test suite and is accompanied by a software tool for calculating coverage effectiveness values. “Efficient Time-Aware Prioritization with Knapsack Solvers” — co-authored with Sara Alspaugh, Kristen Walcott ‘05 and Mary Lou Soffa (University of Virginia) and Michael Belanich ‘07 — reports on the results of an experimental study that measures the efficiency and effectiveness of time-aware test suite prioritizers that solve 0/1 knapsack problems. Information about these research papers and a downloadable version of the software tool are available at http://cs.allegheny.edu/~gkapfham/research/kanonizo/.
Associate Professor of Political Science Shannan Mattiace and Associate Professor of Economics Tomas Nonnenmacher presented papers at the First Annual Yucatan in Pennsylvania round table held at Penn State University October 24 and 25, 2007.
Senior neuroscience majors Tabitha Novosat and Katherine Proch and their advisor, Associate Professor of Biology and Neuroscience E. Lee Coates, presented research results at the Society for Neuroscience meetings held November 3-7 in San Diego. The presentation was titled “TRPV1 knockout mice exhibit EOG and NMP responses to nasal CO2.” This research, which Tabitha and Katy conducted during their junior year, is part of Coates’s ongoing research project investigating the mechanisms and possible triggers for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
Professor of Religious Studies Carl Olson’s book Hindu Primary Sources: A Sectarian Reader has been published by Rutgers University Press. The book contains classical Hindu texts in translation by Olson and others along with texts from the various sectarian religious traditions. Olson has also published Celibacy and Religious Traditions, with Oxford University Press. Professor of Religious Studies Glenn Holland was one of fifteen scholars from four continents who contributed essays to the book. Holland wrote on celibacy in the early Christian tradition.
Professor of Political Science and Environmental Science Mike Maniates authored a perspective piece, titled “Going Green? Easy Doesn’t Do It” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/21/AR2007112101856.html), that appeared in the Washington Post on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 22. The article has also appeared in the Madison (Wisconsin) Capital Times, Delaware Journal, Tallahassee Democrat, and China Post, among other newspapers, as well as on the climateark.org site and in numerous blogs.
Professor of Art George Roland’s 2007 computer artwork Keokee was awarded the Irene Pasinski Sailer Memorial Award by New York artist and juror Polly Apfelbaum. The work is on display at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh through January 21 in conjunction with the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh’s 97th Annual Exhibition. Roland has also been invited to give a gallery talk at the museum. His presentation, at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 16, is open to the public.
Associate Professor of Art Richard A. Schindler has just published an article, “William Morris and the Art of the Illuminated Manuscript,” in the Autumn 2007 issue of Faerie Magazine.
Instructor of Modern Languages Nancy Smith was elected in September to a three-year term as a member-at-large to the Executive Council of the Pennsylvania State Modern Language Association. The purpose of the PSMLA is to promote the study and teaching of foreign languages and to increase active public interest in them. Members work at the state level with legislators and organize a yearly conference for those teaching languages in the state.
Assistant Professor of History Guo Wu had an article, “Rethinking the Critique of Chinese National Character as an Intellectual Discourse,” and a book review published in The Chinese Historical Review 14, no. 2 (Fall 2007). He has also begun serving as an outside reader for the journal Twentieth Century China (Ohio State University Press).
People & Places, published monthly during the academic year by the Office of Public Affairs, reports on the professional activities of members of the College community and highlights student achievements. Please submit items to people@allegheny.edu. We reserve the right to edit copy for length.
Joshua Geiger ‘08 gave a poster presentation at the Conference on Undergraduate Research at the State Capitol in Harrisburg. “Using Test Suite Prioritization to Avoid Database Restarts” explains a method for reordering a test suite in order to minimize the costly restarts of a relational database. Adam Smith ‘08 gave a poster presentation at the Allegheny College Summer Research Symposium. “Using Call Trees for Test Suite Reduction and Prioritization” reports on the implementation and evaluation of five regression testing algorithms. Both of these posters describe research that was conducted in collaboration with Assistant Professor of Computer Science Gregory M. Kapfhammer. Further information is available at: http://cs.allegheny.edu/~gkapfham/research/kanonizo/.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science Gregory M. Kapfhammer recently gave a presentation in the colloquium of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Pittsburgh. “The Measured Performance of Database-Aware Test Coverage Monitoring” describes the results from an empirical study with software testing techniques for database applications. These experiments measured the costs that are associated with instrumenting the program and the tests and monitoring coverage. Information about this research project and an online version of the presentation are accessible at: http://cs.allegheny.edu/~gkapfham/research/diatoms/.
Professor of Environmental Science Eric Pallant authored two guest essays in Grist: Environmental News and Commentary in October. Dr. Pallant, who is co-director of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Integrated Water Resources Management, reported from the National Disasters and Water Security conference in Yerevan, Armenia. One of Dr. Pallant’s essays can be found at http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/10/22/18035/652/.
Associate Professor of History Kenneth Pinnow’s article “Lives out of Balance: The Possible World’ of Soviet Suicide during the 1920s” recently appeared in Angela Brintlinger and Ilya Vinitsky, eds., Madness and the Mad in Russian Culture (University of Toronto Press, 2006).
Professor of Art and Gallery Director Robert Raczka is guest curator for an exhibit titled “Taste Matters” that will run from January 18 to February 15 in the Future Tenant Gallery (www.futuretenant.org) in Pittsburgh. The exhibit will consist of approximately 50 artworks, mostly paintings and drawing but photographs and sculptures as well, that were purchased in thrift stores specifically for the exhibit. “Taste Matters” was conceived as an exhibit that embraces the ambiguity of “found” art.
Mike Richwalsky, of the Office of Public Affairs, recently presented two webinars as part of HigherEdExperts.com’s Social Networking Websites Week. The sessions were geared toward technology and marketing professionals in higher education and covered institutional uses of Facebook and MySpace. Mike reports that he will gladly share his presentation materials. If you are interested in these topics, please e-mail him (mrichwal@allegheny.edu).
Mike Richwalsky and Josh Tysiachney, both of the Office of Public Affairs, presented at the HighEdWebDev conference in October. Their presentation, “Game Changer: The Facebook Platform,” discussed how colleges and universities can build applications in Facebook to reach the millions of constituents using the popular social networking site.
Sam Rigotti ‘08, an intern with Kathleen M. Greely, who is director of the Commonwealth Community Energy Project, gave a talk at the Earth Force Youth Training Day at Gannon University in October. Earth Force asked Sam to address the 150 participants about the Carbon Conscious Consumer award he received earlier this month, and WSEE-TV in Erie also presented him with an Earth Friend Award.
Professor of History Barry Shapiro has just published “Conspiratorial Thinking in the Constituent Assembly: Mirabeau and the Exclusion of Deputies from the Ministry,” in Peter R. Campbell, Thomas E. Kaiser, and Marisa Linton, eds., Conspiracy in the French Revolution (Manchester University Press, 2007).
People & Places, published monthly during the academic year by the Office of Public Affairs, reports on the professional activities of members of the College community and highlights student achievements. Please submit items to people@allegheny.edu. We reserve the right to edit copy for length.
Note: This issue of People & Places includes several items that were received shortly after we finished publication for the academic year at the end of April 2007.
Assistant Professor of English Kerry Bakken’s book “Necessary Lies” won the Bronze Award in the short story collection category from ForeWord magazine, a national publication that reviews independently published books. Last year “Necessary Lies” won the USABooks Best Books 2006 National Book Award for Short Fiction.
Chemistry major Amanda Bolger ‘07 and her advisor, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Alice Deckert, both presented work related to Amanda’s senior project on March 27 at the National American Chemical Society meeting in Chicago. Amanda’s poster presentation was titled “Kinetics and Mechanism of Glucose Oxidase Reaction with a Surface Tethered N-Hydroxysuccinimide Ester Using Surface Plasmon Resonance.” Dr. Deckert’s poster presentation was titled “Kinetic Investigation of Glucose Oxidase Reaction with a Surface Tethered N-Hydroxysuccinimide Ester Using Surface Plasmon Resonance.”
Two Allegheny biology students presented their senior research projects at the 2007 Penn State Behrend Sigma Xi Undergraduate Student Research and Creative Accomplishment Conference held on April 28 at Penn State Erie. Jessica Brazelton ‘07 received the “Best Poster Presentation” award in the Biochemistry, Biology, Ecology, Geology, and Neuroscience section for her poster “2,4-Diacetylphloroglucinol, an Antibiotic Produced by Biocontrol Bacteria, Alters Plant Root Development.” Katherine Restori ‘07 won second place in the Biochemistry and Biology section for her presentation “Arbuscular Mycorrhiza Formation by Nicotiana plumbaginifolia and Glomus intraradices in vitro — A role for auxin.”
Alexander Brown ‘09 and Associate Professor of Physics James Lombardi Jr. performed computer simulations and created visualizations of a stellar collision that were featured in a recent episode, “The Life and Death of Stars,” in the History Channel series “The Universe.” A similar visualization by Lombardi is playing in the planetarium show “Cosmic Collisions” at the American Museum of Natural History, the National Air and Space Museum, the Museum of Nature and Science, and the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum.
Assistant Professor of Political Science Melissa Comber and Assistant Professor of Environmental Science Jennifer DeHart co-wrote a paper called “The Effects of Place on Voter Turnout,” which Dr. Comber presented at the American Political Science Association annual meeting in Chicago. They received research assistance from Danielle Gray, Marco Attisano, and Ted Zimmer. Their data was collected through the Center for Political Participation’s Voter Turnout Archive project.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science Gregory M. Kapfhammer has published a paper in the proceedings of the 22nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering. “Test Suite Reduction and Prioritization with Call Trees” was co-authored by Adam Smith ‘08, Joshua Geiger ‘08, and Professor Mary Lou Soffa (Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia). The paper presents a technique for constructing tree-based models of a program’s behavior and using these models to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of regression testing. Information about this research project and an online version of the paper are at http://cs.allegheny.edu/~gkapfham/research/kanonizo/.
Dara Levendosky ‘08 was selected as one of four finalists for the Centre Stage South Carolina’s 2007 New Play Festival. Dara’s play “Over the Break” was selected from more than 120 plays submitted for the prestigious festival. The Centre Stage New Play Festival is the annual culmination of a national search for promising new works for the American stage. This year’s finalists were presented in a readers’ theater format, one play per night, at Centre Stage. Each reading was followed by a talkback session at which the playwright, director, and readers were present.
Professor of Religious Studies Carl Olson’s “The Many Colors of Hinduism: A Thematic-Historical Introduction” has been published by Rutgers University Press (2007). In addition, his essays “Structuralism” and “Orientalism” have appeared in “Studying Hinduism: Key Concepts and Methods,” edited by Sishil Mittal and Gene Thursby (London: Routledge, 2007). An interview of Dr. Olson by Gabriel Stanescu — translated into Romanian and titled “Mircea Eliade n-a incetat nieiodata a sa fie roman sis a-si iubeasca tinuturile natale: Professorul Carl Olson in dialog cu Gabriel Stanescu” — was published in “Agnes: Revista de culture” (Iulie 2007).
The national Carbon Conscious Consumer (C3) campaign has awarded Sam Rigotti ‘08 a grand prize for his work related to the compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) give-away on the Allegheny campus during orientation week. Sam won a bike tour of Oregon for two. In conjunction with the Environmental Science Club, Sam distributed 500 100-watt equivalent CFLs to Allegheny’s incoming freshman class. He also signed up 586 people for C3’s “Downshift Your Driving” campaign, in which participants pledged to carve out one car-free day a week in their schedules.
Melissa Robelo ‘10, a student in ES 110 last spring, had a letter to the editor published in the leading newspaper in Nicaragua. Melissa wrote the letter, which laments the loss of Managua’s bus system as a blow to the country’s battle against climate change, as part of a final assignment in the class.
People & Places, published monthly during the academic year by the Office of Public Affairs, reports on the professional activities of members of the College community and highlights student achievements. Please submit items to people@allegheny.edu. We reserve the right to edit copy for length.
Associate Professor of English Christopher Bakken and Assistant Professor of Political Science Melissa Comber are the recipients of 2007-2008 Fulbright Awards. Comber received a Junior Lecturing Award to the Universitat Duisburg-Essen in Essen, Germany for the 2007-2008 academic year. She will teach classes in the university’s North American studies department related to American government, American social welfare policies, women and politics in America, and American social policies. Bakken, whose book of poetry Goat Funeral recently received the Texas Institute of Letters Helen C. Smith Memorial Prize for the Best Book of Poetry in 2006, was awarded a Fulbright to teach and do research in Romania during the spring semester of 2008. He will divide his teaching assignment between Romanian University and the University of Bucharest.
Nathan Clendenin ‘07 and Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Carla Bluhm have had their manuscript “Le Stade du Dinoire: Grazed a-natomy and Surgical Hysteria” accepted for publication by the online journal of cultural studies SubjectMatters. The article, which offers a Lacanian reading of facial transplantation, is tentatively scheduled for publication in fall 2007.
Rebecca Egg ‘09 has been selected to participate in the Summer Mathematics Program for Women Undergraduates at Carleton College in summer 2007. This highly selective NSF-funded program is an intensive four-week experience designed to encourage and support talented undergraduate women in their study of mathematics, provide them with the tools they need to succeed in a mathematical career, and connect them with a network of female mathematicians.
Tara Fortier ‘08, an environmental studies major currently studying in Israel, has been awarded a Udall scholarship for 2007. This is the second year in a row that an Allegheny student has been awarded a Udall scholarship. The Udall Foundation annually awards 80 scholarships of up to $5,000 to outstanding students who are either committed to an environmental career or to Native American or Alaska Native students who are seeking careers related to tribal policy or health care. Justine Law ‘08, who is majoring in environmental science, was selected as a 2007 Honorable Mention.
Computer science major Joshua Geiger ‘08 was the winner of this year’s Harold State Research Fellowship, awarded annually to third-year students majoring in any one of the natural science departments. Geiger’s research project, “Avoiding Database Restarts to Reduce Regression Testing Costs,” will be undertaken during the summer of 2007 and the following academic year.
Instructor Gregory M. Kapfhammer successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation on April 19 at the University of Pittsburgh to an audience consisting of his thesis committee, more than a dozen students and faculty from the Allegheny College Department of Computer Science, and guests from the University of Pittsburgh community. Kapfhammer’s dissertation, “A Comprehensive Framework for Testing Database-Centric Software Applications,” was supervised by Mary Lou Soffa, University of Virginia. The technical contributions of Kapfhammer’s dissertation include database interaction fault models, test adequacy criteria, test coverage monitoring techniques, and regression testing algorithms. More details are available at: http://cs.allegheny.edu/~gkapfham/research/diatoms/.
Professor of Religious Studies Carl Olson’s essay “The Human Body as a Boundary Symbol: A Comparison of Merleau-Ponty and Dogen” has been accepted for publication in a forthcoming book titled Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism, edited by Gereon Kopf and published by Lexington Press. His essay “Ontology, Altarity, and Difference: A Comparison of Eliade’s Method and the Postmodern Philosophy of Deleuze” has been published by Studia Philosophia of Babes-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca (2006): 53-62. This journal is published in Romania. A third essay, “The Concept of Power in the Works of Eliade and van der Leeuw,” has been accepted for publication, along with an interview of Olson on the subject of Mircea Eliade. They will appear in a yet-untitled collection of essays and interviews being edited by Gabriel Stanescu in Romania. Olson’s essay and interview will be translated into Romanian. Olson also did outside evaluations of two departments at SUNY, Old Westbury in April.
Robert Raczka, professor of art and gallery director, recently presented “Road Trips,” a one-person exhibit of collages of advertisements addressing how SUVs are marketed, at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. He also presented “American Brain,” a large one-person exhibit of color photographs depicting symbols and representations found in public space, at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. In conjunction with this exhibit, he presented lectures about his work at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and at Pittsburgh Filmmakers.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science Andrew Thall has been accepted as a participant in the NSF-sponsored Media Computation Workshop to be held at Georgia Tech on June 11-13. Thall will share some of the work he has done in the area of multimedia approaches to introductory computer science, including numerical and scientific computing in interactive simulation, real-time image and music creation, and computational probability and statistics in game creation and analysis.
The Department of History has announced this year’s recipients of funding from the Jonathan E. and Nancy L. Helmreich Research and Book Grant Fund.
Assistant Professor KalÈ Haywood will utilize funding from the Helmreich Grant to extend research begun in her dissertation, “A Climate of Confrontation: The Cathedral Chapter in the Diocese of Michoac·n, 1770-1795,” to include the dozen years before Napoleon invaded the Iberian Peninsula. She will be working in the Archivo Casa de Morelos in Morelia, Michoac·n, looking at the official correspondence between the bishop, cathedral chapter, and royal authorities, to better understand the destruction of the Spanish colonial system there.
Professor Barry Shapiro will use funds from the Helmreich Grant to facilitate final revisions of his manuscript Living the Revolution: Trauma and Denial in the French Constituent Assembly, 1789-1790. He will travel to the Newberry Library in Chicago to consult some of the revolutionary pamphlets housed there.
Helmreich research funds will permit Assistant Professor Guo Wu to travel to the East Asian Library at the University of Pittsburgh. There he will work with their Chinese language sources to revise his paper “Rethinking the Critique of Chinese National Character.” This paper was presented at the American Historical Association annual conference in Atlanta in January and will be submitted to the Chinese Historical Review for publication.
The Department of History has also announced this year’s recipient of funding from the Bruce Harrison ‘45 History Department Fund. Associate Professor Kenneth M. Pinnow will utilize the fund to travel to Moscow this summer to continue his research on the early Soviet approach to criminality. There he will explore the Laboratories for the Study of Crime and the Criminal Personality, which the Soviets created in the early 1920s. Pinnow hopes to answer questions about the sources of Soviet criminology, the treatment of the criminal, and the relationship between scientific research and state policy in the Soviet Union during the 1920s.
People & Places, published monthly during the academic year by the Office of Public Affairs, reports on the professional activities of members of the College community and highlights student achievements. Please submit items to people@allegheny.edu. Although this is the last issue of People & Places for this academic year, we are accepting submissions for September. We reserve the right to edit copy for length.
The Pennsylvania Newspaper Association recognized the work of four Campus journalists through the 2007 Scholastic and Collegiate Keystone Press Awards program. Cody Switzer ‘07, Greg Gaudio ‘07, and Dan Imperiale ‘08 received first-place awards in the spot news category. Melissa Muenz ‘08 received an honorable mention in the review category. Allegheny students competed for the awards against journalists from schools such as Penn State, Temple, and the University of Pittsburgh. The winners were recognized at an awards luncheon on March 14 in Hershey. Lenore Skomal advises the Campus.
Nathan Clendenin ‘07 delivered a paper, “The Enigma Machine: Henry Darger and the Gesture of Opacity,” at the 4th annual Case Western Reserve University Undergraduate Art History Symposium on March 2 in Cleveland. This was the second consecutive year that Nathan presented a paper at this symposium. Last year he presented “Architecture From Within: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater and the Uncanny.”
Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Carla Bluhm and Nathan Clendenin ‘07 delivered a paper, “Like Peas in an iPod: Technology as Campus Neighborhood,” at the Popular Culture in the Classroom: “Teach, Think, Play” Conference 2007, hosted by Teachers College, Columbia University, March 24-25, in New York City. The paper, which explores classroom uses of podcasting in light of psychoanalytic theory and Formalist literary criticism, was given as part of a two-day conference that featured talks from figures such as Pulitzer Prize-winning author/comic strip artist Art Spiegelman and actor/rapper Ice-T.
David Jortner’s article “Remembered Idylls, Forgotten Truths: Memory and Geography in the Drama of Shimizu Kunio” came out in the book “Inexorable Modernity: Japan’s Grappling with Modernism and the Arts” (Lexington Press, 2007).
Chaplain Jane Ellen Nickell was among recipients of the Bishop James C. Baker Graduate Awards presented by the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry’s Office of Loans and Scholarships of the United Methodist Church. She is pursuing a Ph.D. in sociology of religion at Drew University.
Environmental Science and Geology lab technician Sam Reese received an “e-chievement” award from etown, a nationally syndicated radio show. The award recognizes people who are working to make a lasting difference in their communities and beyond. Sam was recognized for his work with the Cambridge Community Radio Association and WXCS-92.9 FM in Cambridge Springs-Edinboro, which he helped found and which recently celebrated its third anniversary.
People & Places, published monthly during the academic year by the Office of Public Affairs, reports on the professional activities of members of the College community and highlights student achievements. Please submit items to people@allegheny.edu. We reserve the right to edit copy for length.
