News Center

Zoe Aaron ’13 will perform with the Prairie Repertory Theatre in Brookings, South Dakota this summer. She will play Mimsey in Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite and be an ensemble member in two musicals.

Shane Downing ’11 has been selected to participate in the highly competitive Summer 2010 Freeman Indonesia Nonprofit Internship Program.

Jessica Kenemuth ’10, Allison Hensler ’11 and Associate Professor of Biology and Neuroscience Lee Coates presented research at the Association of Chemoreception Sciences meeting held in St. Petersburg, Florida in April. The title of the presentation was “Investigation of Olfactory CO2 Detection in Mice.” This research focused on the transduction mechanisms of olfactory CO2 receptors and is part of Coates’ research on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Kenemuth will be attending the University of Pennsylvania’s dental school in the fall, and Hensler will be applying to dental schools next year.

Twenty-five Allegheny students participated in the Sigma Xi Undergraduate Research and Creative Accomplishment Conference held at Penn State Behrend on April 10. They are (with their faculty advisors listed in parentheses): Ashley Adamson ’12 (Rodney Clark), Megan Atkinson ’10 (Calion Lockridge and Rodney Clark), Julianne Baron ’10 (Milt Ostrofsky), Kristin Blankemeyer ’10 (Rodney Clark), Chris Bonessi ’11 (T.J. Eatmon), Jessie Coven ’10 (Eleanor Weisman and Beth Watkins), Samantha Ford ’10 (Rodney Clark), Justin Gaudi ’11 (T.J. Eatmon), Blair Gleeson ’10 (Tricia Humphreys), Brandon Goeller ’10 (Scott Wissinger), Julien Gradnigo ’10 (Rodney Clark), Zachary Gray ’10 (Rodney Clark), Kristyn Gumpper ’10 (Catharina Coenen), Allison Hensler ’11 (Lee Coates), Sylvia Kauffman ’10 (Catharina Coenen), Jessica Kenemuth ’10 (Lee Coates), Adam Lessard ’11 (Rodney Clark), Zach Lindeman ’11 (Tricia Humphreys), Carlos Lopez ’11 (Rodney Clark), David MacAdam ’11 (Rodney Clark), Julia Muntean ’10 (Catharina Coenen), Pete Ondish ’11 (Rodney Clark), Eric Roginek ’11 (Rodney Clark), Lauren Strawser ’11 (Rodney Clark), Emily Thornton ’10 (Scott Wissinger). Baron, Goeller, Hensler, Kauffman, Kenemuth and Lindeman were given awards for best presentations in their sessions. A total of 216 students and 124 faculty from ten colleges in western Pennsylvania participated in the conference. Associate Professor of Biology Catharina Coenen was presented with the Sigma Xi Award for Faculty Mentorship of Student Research and gave the keynote address at the meeting.

Professor of French Phillip Wolfe was nominated by the French Embassy to serve on the selection committee for the prestigious Bourses Chateaubriand, a fellowship that grants funds for post-doctoral research in France. The French Embassy has also recognized the excellence of two Allegheny students, Paul Hendrickson ’10 and Deborah Burnett ’10, who have been selected to serve as teaching assistants in France next year.

Jessie Badach ’09, Davies program coordinator in ACCEL, presented at the Western Region Campus Compact Consortium’s 13th Annual Continuums of Service conference, March 30-April 2. The theme of the Portland, Oregon conference was “Vision, Courage, Leadership: Engagement to Strengthen Communities.” Jessie’s presentation, “Students as Co-Educators: Modeling Pedagogies of Partnership in the Classroom,” outlined the student leadership model of Allegheny’s INTDS 201-202 sequence. Forty educators, students and community partners, mostly from the West Coast, attended Jessie’s presentation, which was advertised as an opportunity to “learn how to practice pedagogies of reciprocity in the classroom that can translate into healthier, more mutually beneficial relationships both between professors/students and with community partners.”

Professor of Mathematics Michael Barry‘s paper “Decomposing Tensor Products and Exterior and Symmetric Squares” has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Group Theory.

Director of the Library Linda Bills received the Beacon Award from the Innovative Users Group — an association of libraries and librarians who use the premier library catalog and management system — on April 19 at their annual meeting in Chicago. The award is given “to honor exceptional service to the Innovative Users Community through presentations, collaboration, selfless dedication to libraries as a whole and sage advice to others.” Bills was honored for her contributions to the establishment and early success of the organization and assistance to other libraries.

Professor of Environmental Science Richard Bowden recently coauthored a paper in the journal Global Change. The paper, “Sources of plant-derived carbon and stability of organic matter in soil: implications for global change,” describes how soil carbon is stored differently by different types of forests. The work indicates that while soil can slowly remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, that same carbon can be released back to the atmosphere rapidly by alterations in ecosystem processes.

Assistant Professor of English M. Soledad Caballero has been selected to attend a five-week seminar sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) titled “The Aesthetics of British Romanticism Then and Today.”  The fourteen scholars selected from a national pool of applicants will work together on both individual and collective research and teaching projects in the areas of 18th- and 19th-century British literature at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln under the direction of Professor Stephen C. Brehrent.

Associate Professor of Theatre Mark Cosdon published “‘Introducing Occidentals to an Exotic Art’: Mei Lanfang in New York” in the book China’s Greatest Operatic Male Actor of Female Roles: Documenting the Life and Art of Mei Lanfang, 1894-1961, edited by Min Tian and published by Edwin Mellen Press.

The International Bandmasters’ Fraternity Phi Beta Mu, Nu Chapter (Pennsylvania) presented its Outstanding Bandmaster Award to Professor of Music Lowell Hepler, who also serves as music department chair, on April 22. This award is given annually to a chapter member whose talent, abilities, unyielding standards and work ethic have brought honor not only to himself but also to the instrumental music and band director profession.

On March 10, Library Head of Technical Services Brian Kern gave a presentation at the Educause/Nercomp annual meeting in Providence, Rhode Island.  The presentation, “Open-Source CUFTS for Electronic Resources/Serials Management,” explained how Allegheny College has been pioneering the use of open source software to meet new resource management challenges.

John (Jack) F.  Meeder, an adjunct professor in the Department of Environmental Science, has had four professional presentations accepted for the Greater Everglades Ecosystem Restoration Annual Conference in Naples, Florida in July: “Accelerated near Future Sea Level Rise(slr), a given, based upon the Florida Stratigraphic Record”; “Coastal Hypoxia in South Florida associated with projected Sea Level Rise and Holocene Organic Carbon sediment export,” with co-author Leonard J. Scinto; “Historic surface water discharge to Biscayne Bay via the Transverse Glades (TG),” with co-author Peter W. Harlem; and the poster “Common Peat-Over-Marl Sedimentary Sequences in South Florida — A Much Different Hydrologic History than Better-Known Examples from Temperate Climates,” with co-authors Peter A. Stone, Patrick J. Gleason, Michael J. Duever, Michael S. Ross,  Maria-Theresia Graf and Gail L. Chmura. Meeder also sits on the Science Committee of the Miami-Dade County Climate Change Task Force. The committee — appointed by the governor of Florida — will issue two new policy statements within the next few months:  “Statement on critically important recent findings on climate change and anticipated sea level rise” and “Assessment of Current Best Knowledge regarding future tropical cyclone activity.”

Manager of Printing Services Mark Pritchard attended the 45th conference of the Association of College and University Printers, held in Charlotte, N.C., April 11-15. Founded in 1964, ACUP is an international association with members representing hundreds of universities and colleges throughout the United States, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

Ten Allegheny employees from four administrative departments attended this year’s Datatel Users Group conference in Washington, D.C., in March. The conference centers on the use of technology at institutions of higher learning. Jason Ramsey ’98 in Administrative Information Services presented two sessions regarding managing enrollment data, one specifically regarding interfacing with the Common Application, the other on a program he built to be flexible and import mass prospect data from any source. Director of Development Resources P. Todd Fox presented three sessions focusing on Allegheny’s recent conversion of development and alumni data into the central college administrative database and the improvements in business practices that conversion has offered. Fox was also awarded her second SHINE award, recognizing her ongoing contribution to Datatel User Group planning and participation.

Associate Professor of Psychology Patricia Rutledge presented a poster at the annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association in Brooklyn, New York, in March. The title of the poster was “The incongruous alcohol-activity association: Physical activity and alcohol consumption on college students.” The co-author of the poster was Jessica R.B. Musselman of the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Epidemiology/Clinical Research, at the University of Minnesota.

Instructor Richard Sayer received a second place award at the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association’s annual Keystone Awards in the Online Special Project category for a story he did on breast cancer survival and awareness. Sayer was also recognized in 2009 with four regional awards for individual photographs that appeared in the Meadville Tribune. Pennsylvania is in Region 3, which includes Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, West Virginia and Delaware. Sayer also was accepted into the Erie Art Museum’s 87th annual Spring Show, juried by Roger Shimomura. The piece that was accepted, titled “I gave myself far too much credit,” is a digital print that combines black and white and color photographic images and text.

Professor of Biology and Environmental Science Scott Wissinger and collaborator Hamish Greig recently published the peer-reviewed article “Reinforcing abiotic and biotic time constraints facilitate the broad distribution of a generalist with fixed traits” in the journal Ecology. The paper is the result of a long-term collaboration to compare the ecology of alpine ponds and wetlands in North America and New Zealand.

Assistant Director of the Learning Commons Lynn Zlotkowski was accepted for publication in the Campus Notes section of The Journal of College Orientation and Transition. Her article “Where the Students Are: Using Social-Networking Sites in Summer Communication” will appear in the Fall 2010 issue of JCOT (Volume 18, Issue 1), scheduled to be printed in October.

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