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 Kalé Haywood is the recipient of funding from the Edwin Van Duesen Selden Fund for travel to Morelia, Michoacán, 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 Michoacán, 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.
