News Center

A Monthly Newsletter Reporting the Professional Activities of the Allegheny Community

Associate Director of Public Affairs Penny Frank is chair of the 40th Annual University and College Designers Association Conference. The annual conference, which brings together creative professionals from across the country and Canada, focuses on issues related to marketing and communication as they relate to higher education. The event features speakers including Richard Wilde from the School of Visual Arts, Brad Ward from Blue Fuego, Julie de Jesus-Evans from the National Basketball Association, and Fritz McDonald from STAMATS. Frank was elected to the UCDA board in 2009.

Associate Professor of Spanish Wilfredo Hernandez delivered a paper at the 23rd Annual Pennsylvania Foreign Language Conference, at Duquesne University, on September 25. His presentation, “Puerto Rico drogado: Cualquier miércoles soy tuya, de Mayra Santos Febres,” dealt with illicit drugs in contemporary Puerto Rico and is part of a larger project in which he is analyzing recent Latin American narratives depicting the production, distribution, and consumption of narcotics since the mid-1970s.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Gregory M. Kapfhammer served as a guest editor of a special section of the Journal of Systems and Software (Elsevier). In collaboration with Leonardo Bottaci (University of Hull) and Neil Walkinshaw (University of Leicester), Kapfhammer supervised the publication of journal papers that were extensions of articles previously presented at the Testing: Academic and Industrial Conference in 2009. He has also recently reviewed research papers for Transactions on Software Engineering (IEEE), Science of Computer Programming Journal (Elsevier), and Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (World Scientific).

Chaplain Jane Ellen Nickell has been elected to the board of directors of Pennsylvania Interfaith Power and Light, part of a national network of faith communities responding to climate change. She will head up the committee on education and outreach.

Associate Professor of Economics Tomas Nonnenmacher and Associate Professor of Political Science Shannan Mattiace presented their paper “Labor on Henequen Haciendas in Revolutionary Times: Yucatan, Mexico, 1914-1923” at the Western Economic Association International Meeting in Portland, Oregon on July 3, 2010.

On June 17, Professor of Religious Studies Carl Olson delivered the annual endowed Wahlstrom Lecture, titled “Radical Monotheism of the Qur’an and the Equitheism of the Bhagavata Purana: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Allah and Krishna,” during Trinity Term 2010 at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies at Oxford University. During his sabbatical leave, he was invited to contribute essays to three works that have been accepted for publication: “The Environmental Beauty of Dogen’s Rice Cake: An Aesthetics of Buddha Nature” for inclusion in Comparative Environmental Aesthetics, edited by Hwa Yol Jung; “Technology, Violence and Nonviolence: A Gandhian Type of Response” for Professor Rukmani’s Feliocitastion Volume, edited by Jonathan Duquette; and “Indian Philosophy and Postmodernism” for the journal Sophia. While residing at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge during his sabbatical, Olson was interviewed by a reporter for Veja, the largest circulating magazine in Brazil, about celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church and its possible connection to child abuse.