News Center

Ryan Brindle ’12, Leonard Costantini ’10, David Domachowski ’11, Annie Ginty ’09, Catherine Vance ’11 and Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Sarah Conklin all presented papers at the American Psychosomatic Society’s national conference held March 10-13 in Portland, Oregon. The students were part of a sleep research group at Allegheny that Conklin led in spring and summer 2009. In addition, Domachowski, Vance and Ginty — who is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Birmingham in England — each received a prestigious Young Scholar Award from the APS. Only 12 awards were conferred in the competition, in which undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral scholars submitted abstracts for review by international experts in psychosomatic medicine.

Kaitlin Mackenzie ’11 received the first-place award in the national Undergraduate Scholar Award program of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. Kaitlin wrote her paper, “The Innovation of Adaptation: The History and Artistic Contributions of Shared Experience Theatre Company,” in Professor of Theatre Beth Watkins‘ CA 582: Theatre Junior Seminar in Devising, Adaptation and Community-Based Theatre last fall. The award carries a cash prize of $1,000.

Marin Ping ’12 presented a paper at the 6th Undergraduate Research Symposium at the University of Pittsburgh on March 26. Her presentation, titled “La literatura como capital político: el uso de Rubén Darío como justificación de la revolución en la novela Margarita, está linda la mar,” explains part of the research Marin is completing for her Senior Project.

Richard Shafranek ’10 and Maya Brod ‘10, student fellows with the Center for Political Participation, led a discussion on civility and politics at Harvard University’s Emerging Leaders Conference on February 28. College students from throughout the country participated in the discussion to better grasp the effects of a growing incivility in our national politics. Students discussed the influence of the media and our technology culture—as well as the entrenched two-party system—on our civil discourse and explored the role of higher education in solving the problem. The Emerging Leaders Conference was held at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. Colleges in attendance are members of the IOP’s National Campaign for Political and Civic Engagement. CPP Program Coordinator Mary Solberg also attended the conference, meeting with  administrators of campus political engagement centers like the CPP.

The Edinboro University Biennial Art Educators Conference on Art, Education and Social Justice included a number of Allegheny presenters.  Jude Shingle ’08, now working at the Erie Art Museum, presented on “Youth Voice in Video.” Assistant Professor of Dance and Movement Studies Eleanor Weisman, along with Jessie Coven ’10, gave a workshop on “Collaboration and Dialogue: Arts Education Strategies to Promote Social Justice in the Classroom.” Zachary Fradeneck ’11 and Matthew Reilly ’11 hosted a session on “Art and the Personal Experience.” Professor of Art Amara Geffen presented on “Engineering Eden: Art, the Environment, and Social Change.”

Sarah Wurzbacher ’11 is a co-author, with Nedzad Ajanovic ’95 and others, of two recently published articles. “Fish Hatchery in the Municipality of Bosanska Krupa in Northwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Sustainable Development Pilot Project” is featured in the Bosnian magazine Fondeko Svijet, No. 30. “Pilot Recirculating Aquaculture System: The First of Its Kind in Bosnia and Herzegovina” appears in the March/April 2010 issue of Hatchery International.

Associate Professor of English Christopher Bakken will travel to this year’s Associated Writing Program Conference in Denver with the three senior editors of The Allegheny Review, Kara Martin ’10, Natalie yon-Erikkson ’10, and Bryant Davis ’10.  In addition to promoting the magazine at the conference bookfair, Martin and Davis will participate in a conference panel for FUSE: the Forum for Undergraduate Student Editors on the subject of funding undergraduate literary journals.

Professor of Environmental Science Richard Bowden recently coauthored a paper in the journal Biogeochemistry. “Sequential Density Fractionation across Soils of Contrasting Mineralogy: Evidence for both Microbial- and Mineral-Controlled Soil Organic Matter Stabilization” describes ways that soil organic matter and carbon are stored on soil particles and furthers understanding of means by which soil can sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Associate Professor of Communication Arts Mark Cosdon‘s book The Hanlon Brothers:  From Daredevil Acrobatics to Spectacle Pantomime, 1831-1933 has been nominated for the Theatre Library Association’s George Freedley Memorial Award. Dance Gazette, the journal of London’s Royal Academy of Dance, published Cosdon’s essay “Band of Brothers,” excerpted from his book on the Hanlons. At the March gathering of the Mid-America Theatre Conference in Cleveland, Cosdon presented a paper titled “Up in Flames: The Hanlon Brothers, Fire, and a Theatrical Legacy” in addition to chairing a session.

Assistant Director of Student Involvement Kate Gullatta was awarded the Vision Award from Delta Delta Delta. Recipients of the Vision Award are selected by Tri Delta’s executive board in recognition and appreciation for significant contributions made to Tri Delta and the interfraternal movement. Kate will be presented with the award at the Tri Delta Convention in Orlando, Florida, in July.

Assistant Professor of Classical Studies Judson Herrman recently published a refereed journal article. “Hyperides’ Against Diondas and the rhetoric of revolt” appears in the 2009 issue of the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London (volume 52, pages 175-185).

Assistant Professor of Biology Tricia L. Humphreys was invited to give a talk at the Sigma Xi Faculty Research Symposium on February 24 at the Tom Ridge Environmental Center.  The talk was titled “Haemophilus ducreyi: A Classy STD?”

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Matt Jadud‘s presentation “Plumbing: Parallel Programming for Artists and Makers” was accepted to the annual O’Reilly Open Source Convention. This large (1500+) gathering of open source practitioners and educators will be an excellent venue for sharing the software, hardware, book, and pedagogy that are being developed in collaboration with Radu Creanga ’11, Christian Jacobsen at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and many others. More information can be found at https://www.oscon.com/oscon2010/public/schedule/detail/13829.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Gregory M. Kapfhammer recently gave a research presentation in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Nanjing University, located in the Jiangsu province of China. The presentation, “Practical Suggestions for Improving and Empirically Studying Greedy Test Suite Reduction and Prioritization Methods,” explains how to use both real world case study applications and synthetic coverage reports to experimentally evaluate methods that reduce and reorder test suites. In particular, the talk shows how to use tree and random forest statistical models to identify the most efficient and effective method for regression testing. The presentation also describes a collection of easy to use testing techniques that are available as free and open source software from https://raise.googlecode.com/. Additional information about Kapfhammer’s research in software testing is available at https://www.cs.allegheny.edu/~gkapfham/research/.

Director of International Programs and Services Jenny Kawata and Director of Career Services and Pre-Law Advisor Michaeline Shuman presented a program at the 92nd annual NASPA conference (Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education) in Chicago in March. The program, titled “Promoting Student Success: The Center for Experiential Learning,” was one of 400 selected programs for the conference, which was attended by more than 4,000 professionals.

Assistant Professor of Psychology Aimee Knupsky facilitated a session at the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U), Faculty Roles in High-Impact Practices conference on March 26 in Philadelphia. The session, titled “Developing Student Research Communities to Deepen the Undergraduate Research Experience,” focused on her efforts in the psychology department to broaden the research roles of students. Specifically, the formation of Cognitive Group and the use of Peer Undergraduate Research Mentors was examined as well as how these programs support the Essential Learning Outcomes identified by the Liberal Education & America’s Promise (LEAP) initiative.

The paper “Ramsey’s theorem for trees: the polarized tree theorem and notions of stability,” coauthored by Associate Professor of Mathematics Tamara Lakins, Jeffry Hirst (Appalachian State University) and Damir Dzhafarov (University of Chicago), was recently published in the journal Archive for Mathematical Logic. Lakins gave a talk on the paper at the Association for Symbolic Logic 2010 North American Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. in March. She was awarded an Association for Women in Mathematics AWM-NSF Travel Grant to support her attendance at the meeting.

On March 23 Assistant Professor of English and Black Studies Program Co-Coordinator Aisha Lockridge presented at the annual American College Personnel Association with former director of diversity Mounira Morris, who is now assistant dean of ALANA student support at Clark College in Massachusetts. The talk, “Sisters United: Moving ALANA Women from Insight to Foresight,” revealed successful strategies for supporting and retaining self-identified women students of color at small liberal arts PWIs (predominantly white institutions) using Sister Circle as a model of that success. A program developed by Lockridge and Morris in 2006 for self-identified women of color at Allegheny College, Sister Circle is funded exclusively through the offices of the Dean of the College and the Dean of Students.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Lauren Paulson presented at the American Counseling Association’s Annual Conference and Exposition in Pittsburgh on March 20 and 21.  The first presentation, “Preventing Burnout:  Supervision and Support Strategies for Rural Counselors and Supervisors” outlined specific strategies to minimize burnout of rural mental health workers. Paulson co-presented a second presentation with William Casile, associate professor of counseling at Duquesne University. The presentation, “Collaborative Supervision: Enhancing the Professional Development of Counselors,” provided attendees with a conceptual map to guide in the journey toward supervisor maturity and counselor competence. In addition, Paulson will be featured in Counseling Today, a monthly American Counseling Association publication. She was interviewed for a feature article on the unique challenges faced by rural counselors and supervisors.  The article, “Learning the ropes of rural counseling,” written by Jonathan Rollins, will be published in the April 2010 issue.

Associate Professor of History Kenneth Pinnow had an interview about his book Lost to the Collective: Suicide and the Promise of Soviet Socialism, 1921-1929 (Cornell, 2010) featured at the website rorotoko.com.

Professor of Biology and Environmental Science Scott Wissinger and co-authors  Miranda Mumford ’04 and Howard Whiteman ’89  recently published the article “Consumptive and Non-consumptive Effects of Cannibalism in Fluctuating Age-Structured Populations” in the journal Ecology. The research proposes an alternative mechanism to that of acid rain for population fluctuations in salamanders observed over the past two decades at remote study sites in central Colorado.

People & Places, published monthly during the academic year, reports on the professional activities of members of the College community and highlights student achievements.