People & Places: April 2020
People & Places is published monthly during the academic year by the Office of College Relations. It reports on the professional activities of members of the College community and highlights student achievement.
Laura Branby, the Pittsburgh-area educator for Allegheny College’s award-winning Creek Connections watershed education program, has received the 2020 Outstanding Environmental Educator Award from the Pennsylvania Association of Environmental Educators. Branby has taught watershed programs and developed new programs for the schools and public to introduce the Pittsburgh area to the wonder of the area’s streams and wildlife. She is the first and only Pittsburgh educator for Creek Connections. She has steadily connected thousands of students/teachers with their local creeks, encouraging stewardship by finding and providing people and resources to support their work.
Professor of Political Science Shannan Mattiace presented a workshop/lecture at the Center for Indigenous Studies in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, on March 12, 2020, entitled “Una Mirada a Movimientos y Organizaciones Sociales en México: 25 años practicando etnografía política” (Looking at Social Movements and Organizations in Mexico: 25 years of practicing political ethnography).
Professor of Philosophy Eric Palmer has co-edited a volume with Krushil Watene, Reconciliation, Transitional and Indigenous Justice, published with Routledge Press this April. The collection, which largely draws upon a previously published issue of the Journal of Global Ethics, considers the separate politics of Indigenous resurgence, linguistic justice, environmental justice, law, and the conceptual foundations of contemporary discussions of transitional justice. Palmer also recently published a general characterization of value (axiology) at the foundation of ethics, social philosophy, and political philosophy. “What is development?” appeared in Stacy J. Kosko & Lori Keleher, editors, Agency and Democracy in Development Ethics, published with Cambridge University Press in 2019.
Associate Professor of English and Director of Writing Alexis Hart will be a workshop leader in a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant-funded Dialogues on the Experiences of War program. The Dialogues on the Experience of War program is part of the NEH initiative, Standing Together: The Humanities and the Experience of War, which “supports the study and discussion of important humanities sources about war, in the belief that these sources can help U.S. military veterans and others think more deeply about the issues raised by war and military service.” As one of 17% of proposals that were funded in this award cycle, the workshop titled “We are Veterans Too: Women’s Experiences in the U.S. Military” is being directed by Dr. Sarah Myers of Messiah College and will be held at The Women in Military Service for America Memorial (WIMSA) in Arlington, Virginia.
The research carried out by Kyle McGee (Physics, 2020) and Eddie Opalko (Physics, 2020) as part of their senior project under the supervision of Professor of Physics Doros Petasis was accepted for an oral presentation at the 8th Annual International Conference on Physics in Athens, Greece, that will take place on July 20-23, 2020. The title of their presentation is “Low Temperature EPR and Magnetic Susceptibility Studies of Cerium Nitrate Triphenylphosphine Oxide and Cerium Vanadate Complexes”. This research will also be published as a peer-reviewed paper in the conference proceedings.
Allegheny junior Delaney Lacey, a biology major and psychology minor, has been selected for a 2020 Goldwater Scholarship. The scholarship program honoring the late Senator Barry Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue research careers in the fields of the natural sciences, engineering and mathematics. Lacey is one of 396 college students from across the United States selected this year for a Goldwater Scholarship. They were selected from a pool of 1,343 natural science, engineering and mathematics students nominated by 461 academic institutions. Lacey plans to pursue a Ph.D. in microbiology and conduct research into the molecular basis for antimicrobial drug resistance to aid in the early development of antimicrobial compounds.
Catharina Coenen, professor of biology and biochemistry, and Megan Arnold ’19, who majored in biochemistry and minored in psychology, were among 12 individuals selected for a 2020 Science as Story Fellowship from Creative Nonfiction, a nonprofit organization in Pittsburgh. The Science and Story fellows will take part in a series of writing workshops, led by writer Katie Booth, exploring the use of narrative in their science-focused stories. The workshops explore the structure and narrative arc of excellent science essays and address such topics as ethics in nonfiction writing, the process of revision and how to publish works. Fellowship recipients also have opportunities to workshop works-in-progress and get feedback from peers and the instructor. Coenen and Arnold both were drawn into creative writing through taking Associate Professor of English Matt Ferrence‘s Creative Nonfiction class at Allegheny.