Note: This issue of People & Places includes several items that were received shortly after we finished publication for the academic year at the end of April 2007.
Assistant Professor of English Kerry Bakken’s book “Necessary Lies” won the Bronze Award in the short story collection category from ForeWord magazine, a national publication that reviews independently published books. Last year “Necessary Lies” won the USABooks Best Books 2006 National Book Award for Short Fiction.
Chemistry major Amanda Bolger ‘07 and her advisor, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Alice Deckert, both presented work related to Amanda’s senior project on March 27 at the National American Chemical Society meeting in Chicago. Amanda’s poster presentation was titled “Kinetics and Mechanism of Glucose Oxidase Reaction with a Surface Tethered N-Hydroxysuccinimide Ester Using Surface Plasmon Resonance.” Dr. Deckert’s poster presentation was titled “Kinetic Investigation of Glucose Oxidase Reaction with a Surface Tethered N-Hydroxysuccinimide Ester Using Surface Plasmon Resonance.”
Two Allegheny biology students presented their senior research projects at the 2007 Penn State Behrend Sigma Xi Undergraduate Student Research and Creative Accomplishment Conference held on April 28 at Penn State Erie. Jessica Brazelton ‘07 received the “Best Poster Presentation” award in the Biochemistry, Biology, Ecology, Geology, and Neuroscience section for her poster “2,4-Diacetylphloroglucinol, an Antibiotic Produced by Biocontrol Bacteria, Alters Plant Root Development.” Katherine Restori ‘07 won second place in the Biochemistry and Biology section for her presentation “Arbuscular Mycorrhiza Formation by Nicotiana plumbaginifolia and Glomus intraradices in vitro — A role for auxin.”
Alexander Brown ‘09 and Associate Professor of Physics James Lombardi Jr. performed computer simulations and created visualizations of a stellar collision that were featured in a recent episode, “The Life and Death of Stars,” in the History Channel series “The Universe.” A similar visualization by Lombardi is playing in the planetarium show “Cosmic Collisions” at the American Museum of Natural History, the National Air and Space Museum, the Museum of Nature and Science, and the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum.
Assistant Professor of Political Science Melissa Comber and Assistant Professor of Environmental Science Jennifer DeHart co-wrote a paper called “The Effects of Place on Voter Turnout,” which Dr. Comber presented at the American Political Science Association annual meeting in Chicago. They received research assistance from Danielle Gray, Marco Attisano, and Ted Zimmer. Their data was collected through the Center for Political Participation’s Voter Turnout Archive project.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science Gregory M. Kapfhammer has published a paper in the proceedings of the 22nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering. “Test Suite Reduction and Prioritization with Call Trees” was co-authored by Adam Smith ‘08, Joshua Geiger ‘08, and Professor Mary Lou Soffa (Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia). The paper presents a technique for constructing tree-based models of a program’s behavior and using these models to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of regression testing. Information about this research project and an online version of the paper are at http://cs.allegheny.edu/~gkapfham/research/kanonizo/.
Dara Levendosky ‘08 was selected as one of four finalists for the Centre Stage South Carolina’s 2007 New Play Festival. Dara’s play “Over the Break” was selected from more than 120 plays submitted for the prestigious festival. The Centre Stage New Play Festival is the annual culmination of a national search for promising new works for the American stage. This year’s finalists were presented in a readers’ theater format, one play per night, at Centre Stage. Each reading was followed by a talkback session at which the playwright, director, and readers were present.
Professor of Religious Studies Carl Olson’s “The Many Colors of Hinduism: A Thematic-Historical Introduction” has been published by Rutgers University Press (2007). In addition, his essays “Structuralism” and “Orientalism” have appeared in “Studying Hinduism: Key Concepts and Methods,” edited by Sishil Mittal and Gene Thursby (London: Routledge, 2007). An interview of Dr. Olson by Gabriel Stanescu — translated into Romanian and titled “Mircea Eliade n-a incetat nieiodata a sa fie roman sis a-si iubeasca tinuturile natale: Professorul Carl Olson in dialog cu Gabriel Stanescu” — was published in “Agnes: Revista de culture” (Iulie 2007).
The national Carbon Conscious Consumer (C3) campaign has awarded Sam Rigotti ‘08 a grand prize for his work related to the compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) give-away on the Allegheny campus during orientation week. Sam won a bike tour of Oregon for two. In conjunction with the Environmental Science Club, Sam distributed 500 100-watt equivalent CFLs to Allegheny’s incoming freshman class. He also signed up 586 people for C3’s “Downshift Your Driving” campaign, in which participants pledged to carve out one car-free day a week in their schedules.
Melissa Robelo ‘10, a student in ES 110 last spring, had a letter to the editor published in the leading newspaper in Nicaragua. Melissa wrote the letter, which laments the loss of Managua’s bus system as a blow to the country’s battle against climate change, as part of a final assignment in the class.
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.
