CAS Highlights June/July/August 2007

The Thirteenth Annual WCU Poetry Conference convened June 6-9. Beginning with keynote reader Kay Ryan's presentation on Wednesday, and concluding with X. J. Kennedy's reading on Saturday, the conference was warmly received and actively attended. There were 275 participants from 33 states and four countries who immersed themselves in four days of poetry workshops, diverse panel presentations, and a concert of Austrian lieder. Professor Michael Peich, English, is the Poetry Center Director.

West Chester University hosted six graphing technology institutes this summer. A total of 105 mathematics teachers from around the country attended one or more institutes this past summer. Since 1995, the West Chester University Teachers Teaching with Technology Inservice/Preservice Training Program has helped to retrain nearly 2,000 mathematics, science, and elementary school teachers in the use of handhelds and other technologies. The program was founded by Professor Gail Gallitano, Mathematics.

Two CAS faculty members participated in The Summer Academy for Gifted Children held at WCU: Zhen Jiang, Computer Science, and Marc Gagne, Geology/ Astronomy. The courses offered were Foundations in Computer Science and Astronomy and Cosmology.

Writing Zones 12.5, a college-access partnership with the West Chester Area School District, is entering its third year. Writing Zones will re-open at East and Henderson High Schools on September 17. Professor Hannah Ashley, English, is the Director of Writing Zones 12.5.

Hannah Ashley, English, has published the article entitled "The Art of Queering Voices: A Fugue" in the Journal of Basic Writing (Spring 2007). Professor Ashley presented "Assessing Student Civic Engagement and Service Learning at WCU" at the national meeting of Association of State Colleges and Universities' American Democracy Project in Philadelphia in June.

Mahrukh Azam, Chemistry; Maureen Knabb, Biology; Loretta Rieser-Danner, Psychology; and Blaise Frost, Chemistry; were awarded $148,981 through a CCLI-NSF Phase I grant for a collaborative project entitled "An Integrative Project-Based Biochemistry Laboratory Curriculum at WCUPA."

Sharon Began, Biology, and Nicole L. Jones, Biology graduate student, have published "Juvenile gametophyte development in the Blasiales (Marchantiophyta; Metzeriidae). 2. Gemma/gemmaling ontogeny in Cavicularia densa" in The Bryologist, 110(3): 453-464. Also, Professor Began and B.J. Crandall-Stotler published the introductory chapter on mosses entitled "Morphology of mosses (Phylum Bryophyta)" in Flora of North America North of Mexico, Flora of North America Editorial Committee, eds. Vol. 27, New York and Oxford, pp. 3-13.

Maria Boes, History, has published the book chapter, "Unwanted Travellers: The Tightening of City Borders in Early Modern Germany," in Borders and Travellers in Early Modern Europe, ed. Thomas Betteridge, Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2007.

Deanne Bonifazi, Psychology, presented the paper entitled "Incorporating Exercise in the Treatment of Eating Disorders" at the convention of the American Psychological Association on August 19. The paper was co-authored by Steven J. Uhlenbrock, adjunct in Kinesiology, and Sandra Kerr, Psychology.

Mary Buckelew, English and PAWLP, presented "Strategies for Teaching Reading and Writing in Content Areas" at the New Jersey Juvenile Justice Commission's Spring Retreat on May 25. She also presented "Teaching Diverse Populations" at the New Jersey Juvenile Justice Commission's Statewide Staff Development Conference on June 22.

Giovanni Casotti, Biology, in conjunction with ADInstruments Inc., Colorado, has published a series of online experiments designed to measure the metabolic rate of animals. The experiments can be downloaded free of charge and are designed to be used with ADInstruments software. The experiments can be found at: http://www.adinstruments.com/education/experiments/teach_experiments/full.php?exp_id=190&name_id=248&template=teaching.

Cecelia Chien, History, presented a paper entitled "The Uses of Family History in Teaching: Context, Memory, Identity" at the International Conference on Global Perspectives in Higher Education in Guiyang, China, on May 19. The conference was part of the WCU Faculty-Staff Development Abroad Initiative-China 2007.

Melissa Cichowicz, Chemistry, organized and presided over the symposium, "Microwaves in Organic Synthesis," at the 39th Middle Atlantic Regional Meeting (MARM) of the American Chemical Society at Ursinus College on May 17. She gave a talk at the symposium entitled "Application of Microwave-Assisted Chemistry to an Improved Total Synthesis of Furoventalene, a Sesquiterpene Natural Product." Also, at MARM, Professor Cichowicz, and students, Tanner Van Dell, Chemistry-Biology; and Tristan Colestock, Biology; presented the poster entitled "Investigation of the Microwave-Assisted Friedel-Crafts Reaction, and its Application Toward an Improved Total Synthesis of Furoventalene."

Richard Epstein, Computer Science, presented a paper, "Can Software Engineers Be Both Agile and Secure?," at the 11th annual CISSE (Colloqium on Information Systems Security Education) Conference held at Boston University on June 8th. In addition, Professor Epstein was one of the authors of "Pedagogical Framework for Ethical Development," a chapter in the newly published book Encyclopedia of Information Ethics and Security published by Information Science Reference in May.

Frank Fish, John Beneski, Biology, and Darlene Ketten of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, published the paper entitled "Examination of the three-dimensional geometry of cetacean flukes using computed tomography scans: Hydrodynamic implications" in The Anatomical Record, 2007, 290: 614-623. Professors Fish, Anthony Nicastro, Physics, and Dr. Daniel Weihs published the article "Mechanics of remora removal by dolphin spinning" in Marine Mammal Science, 2007, 23: 707-714. Also, Professor Fish published an invited book chapter, "Strouhal number and optimization of swimming by odontocete cetaceans," in the SSC San Diego Biennial Review, 2006, pp. 175-178. The chapter was co-authored with Dr. James Rohr of Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, San Diego. He published the article "Swimming kinematics of the Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris): hydrodynamic analysis of an undulatory mammalian swimmer" with Tricia Kojeszewski, Biology graduate student, in the Journal of Experimental Biology, 2007, 210: 2411-2418. Professors Fish, Nicastro, Beneski, and Sandra Bostic, Biology undergraduate student, published the paper "Death roll of the alligator: mechanics of twist feeding in water" in the Journal of Experimental Biology, 2007, 210: 2811-2818. In addition, Professor Fish was elected as the Program Officer for the Division of Comparative Biomechanics of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology.

Andrea Fishman and Mary Buckelew, English and Director, PAWLP, presented "All of Us Knowing Each of Us: Community as a Key to Minding the Gap" and "Closing the Opportunity Gaps: It's Everyone's Responsibility" at the University of Pennsylvania 2007 Annual Summer Conference on June 25. At the same conference, Professor Fishman presented "All of Us Helping Each of Us: The Wissahickon Middle School Collaborative Model for Closing the Minority Opportunity."

Claude R. Foster, History, gave an invited lecture on his biography of Pastor Paul Schneider, The Buchenwald Apostle, to the Lutheran congregation in Grimma, Germany, on June 22. Professor Foster was featured in an article on June 22, 2007, in The Thuringian Regional Newspaper when he donated valuable documents to the Chairperson of the Albert Schweitzer Memorial Museum. In July 2007, the Niepokalanow Franciscan Friary published the Polish language edition of Rycerz Maryi, Dr. Foster's biography of Saint Maksymilian Maria Kolbe.

Jonathan Friedman, History and Holocaust and Genocide Studies, has published Rainbow Jews: Jewish And Gay Identity in the Performing Arts, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007.

Marc Gagne, Geology/Astronomy, received awards from NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory and XMM-Newton Observatory as a joint venture to observe the giant star-forming region G305.

Dennis Godfrey, English, together with TESL students, Abdullah Al-Tuwiajiri, Emlyn Farinola, and Christine Vetre, as well as TESL alumnae, Valerie Baddorf, Mindy Cressman, and Mimi Nenno, presented a paper, "Developing Effective ESL Technology," to the Spring Conference of PennTESOL-East on April 21 at Penn State-Abington.

Joby Hillicker, Geology/Astronomy, received funding from AWS/WeatherBug, a private corpopration specializing in meteorological research, forecasting, and data maintenance. He and Girish Akasapu, a Computer Science graduate student, are collaborating with Penn State University and AWS/WeatherBug to develop a prototype system for improved short-term forecasting. Their prototype is expected to be implemented by energy and/or utility companies in an operational capacity. This project was initially funded by a CAS Entrepreneur Grant.

Kurt Kolasinski, Chemistry, has been named to the Editorial Advisory Board of The Open Condensed Matter Physics Journal in May. He was named a referee and panel evaluator for the Nanoscience Panel for the newly formed European Research Council. He had the article entitled "Pillars formed by laser ablation and modified by wet etching" published in Proc. SPIE , 6586, 65860H, 2007, with M.E.Dudley, Chemistry undergraduate student, B.K. Nayak, and M.C. Gupta. In May, Professor Kolasinski had two articles published in Appl Surf. Sci. 253: "Surface texturing of Si, porous silicon and TiO2 by laser ablation" with D. Mills, T. Kreouzis, A. Sapelkin, B. Unal, and N. Zyuzikov; and, "Ultrafast-laser-assisted chemical restructuring of silicon and germanium surfaces" with B. Nayak, and M.C. Gupta. In July, he gave two invited seminars at the Universitat Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany: "Energy and Sustainability" and "Formation of Mesoscale and Nanoscale Pillars & Pores with Laser Ablation and Wet Chemical Etching." In August, he presented "Dynamics of Mesoscale and Nanoscale Structure Formation by Means of Laser Ablation and Wet Etching" at the Gordon Research Conference, Dynamics at Surfaces, in New Hampshire.

V. Krishna Kumar, Psychology, published the article, "Emotional Creativity, Alexithymia, and Styles of Creativity," with G.L. Fuchs and J. Porter in Creativity Research Journal, 2007, 19(2), 233-246. He had several presentations at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association in August: "Seven styles of creativity: Implications for designing hypnotic strategies"; "Imagery vividness before and during a phenomenological assessment procedure" with R.J. Pekala; "Anticipated hypnotic responsiveness and hypnotic performance" with J. Mohl, WCU graduate student, and R.J. Pekala; and, "Desire to be hypnotized: Intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation" with J. Mohl and R.J. Pekala. Professor Kumar was elected Fellow of the American Psychological Association in August.

Graham MacPhee, English, presented a paper entitled "Kruger on the Liffey: Nation, Race and Place in Joyce and Arendt" and contributed to an invited plenary roundtable on "The Politics of Settler Colonialism," at the Settler Colonialism Conference, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland, in June. At the beginning of this semester, he also took on the role of Reviews Editor for the journal College Literature.

Paul Maltby, English, has published the book chapter, "Postmodernism in a Fundamentalist Arena," in The Mourning After: Attending the Wake of Postmodernism, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. He has also published a novel, An Exalted House, London: Superscript Press, 2007.

John Mohl, Psychology graduate student, received the Nicholas Spanos Best Student Paper Award from Division 30, Society for Psychological Hypnosis of the American Psychological Association, at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association in August.

Garrett Molholt, English and Director of ESL Program, presented a paper with MATSEL student, Jinah Park, at the CALICO International Conference in May. The title of the paper was "Implementation of Automatic Fluency Checking using Freely Available Tool Kits." Professor Molholt served on the scientific review committee for the International Conference on Spoken Language Processing held in Antwerp, Belgium, in August.

Roopa Muddana and Girish Akasapu, Computer Science graduate students, presented the poster, "On reducing the moving distance in approaching optimal configuration in MANET's ,"at the 4th Annual International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking, and Services (Mobiquitous '07) in Philadelphia, August 6-10. Professor Zhen Jiang, Computer Science is their faculty supervisor.

Viorel Nitica, Mathematics, has published "Max-plus convex sets and max-plus semispaces. II" in Optimization, 2007, 56, 293-303; "The structure of max-plus hyperplanes," with I. Singer in Linear Algebra and its Applications, 2007, 426: 382-414; and, "Rigidity of higher rank abelian cocycles with values in diffeomorphisms groups," with A. Katok, in Geometriae Dedicata, 2007, 124: 109-131. Professor Nitica presented "Rigidity of higher rank abelian cocycles with values in the diffeomorphism groups" at the 6th International Congress of the Romanian Mathematicians held in Bucharest, Romania, June 28-July 4, 2007.

Kate Northrop, English, has published four poems in Raritan, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Spring 2007), 151-54: "Night Skiers," "The Dog," "The Ghost Crab," and "View of the Farm."

One Pagan, Biology, has published, "Molecular properties of local anesthetics as predictors of affinity for nicotinic acetylcholine receptors," with K. Sivaprakasam and R.E. Oswald in J Neurosci Res., June 28, 2007; (Epub ahead of print).

Rebecca Pauly, Foreign Languages, has published an IPOD cast French grammar book, Painless French Grammar, Boston: Thomson Heile, 2007.

Matthew Pierlott, Philosophy, accompanied four students, David Mickens, Geology/Astronomy undergraduate; Alejandro Carrillo, Political Science undergraduate; Vicki Mainer, WCU undergraduate; and, Jennifer Keller, Philosophy graduate student; on a 5-day trip in May to Reynosa, Mexico to learn about the labor conditions at the border factories, the living conditions of the workers, and the political actions they are taking to improve the situations.

Timothy Ray, English, led two sessions at the Writing Programs Administrators summer conference in Tempe, AZ, in July-one for all editorial board members and another for prospective authors. As a co-editor of the WPA Journal, he attended the executive board meeting.

Helen Schroepfer, Philosophy, participated in the inaugural meeting of a three-year project focused on the teaching of religion at state colleges and universities at Indiana State University of PA in May. Professor Schroepfer served as moderator for a session and presented a paper entitled "Religion and Political Engagement: Poison or Promise" at the national meeting of Association of State Colleges and Universities' American Democracy Project in Philadelphia in June.

Andria Styborski, Chemistry undergraduate, has been awarded the 2007 Eastern Analytical Symposium Student Award for research performed in Professor Karyn Usher's lab. The research for the project was funded by a spring 2007 CAS Undergraduate Student award.

Karyn Usher, Chemistry, received an Agilent Technologies Chromatography Grant in the amount of $10,000 in support of her ongoing research. She had an Agilent 1200 series instrument installed in her lab as a loan from Agilent Technologies which is part of a collaborative project initiated by funds from a CAS Entrepreneur Grant. On June 27, Professor Usher gave an invited seminar entitled "Dispersion: following a band of molecules through the chromatographic system" at the American University of Beirut, Beirut Lebanon.

Karen Vanlandingham, Geology/Astronomy, presented, "Optical and GALEX Observations of V4743 Sgr" at the 210th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu, HI, in May.

Maria Van Liew, Foreign Languages, published, "Importing Love: Transnational Subjectivity in Flores deotro mundo (1999) by Iciar Bollaín," for a special issue of Letras Femeninas, "Global and Local Geographies: the (Dis)locations of Contemporary Feminisms," Summer 2007.

Andrea Varricchio, Foreign Languages, presented "Meeting the English Language Needs of the Hispanic Immigrant Population: Service Learning Projects and Strategies in Spanish Courses at West Chester University" at the American Democracy Project National Meeting of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities in June.

Matthew Waite, Physics, published an invited book chapter entitled "Sputtering Sources" in Celebrating 50 Years of the Society of Vacuum Coaters, Society of Vacuum Coaters, 2007, coauthored with S.I. Shah and D.A. Glocker. Professor Waite and S.I. Shah published the paper, "Target Poisoning During Reactive Sputtering of Silicon with Oxygen and Nitrogen," in Materials Science & Engineering B, 2007, 140: 64-68.

Jerry Williams, Foreign Languages, has published, "Peralta Barnuevo and the Influence of Calderon's Operatic Legacy to Viceregal Peru," in Bulletin of the Comediantes, Vol. 58, No. 1 (2006): 245-62 and "How Far is America From Here?" in Selected Proceedings of the First World Congress of the International American Studies Association 22-24 May 2003, New York: Rodopi, 2005: 369-81.

Joan Woolfrey, Philosophy, chaired a session on environmental ethics and presented the paper entitled "The Importance of Group Moral Agency on Environmental Responsibility" at the 24th International Social Philosophy Conference at Millersville University, July 12-15.

Stephani Yorges, Psychology, has published the article entitled "Absenteeism: Is 10% causing 90% of your problem?" in The CEO Refresher, June 2007. In addition, she published "Great Expectations? Student reactions when courses don't measure up" with A.J. Bloom, Psychology; K. DiFonzo, Psychology undergraduate student and E. Chando, Psychology graduate student; in Psychology and Education, 2007, 44: 18-29.