• Geology department remembers founder

William Buscemi, professor of political science, gave a panel presentation at the Midwest Political Science Association meeting titled “Teaching Numbers in the Introductory Course.” He also gave a panel presentation titled “The Politics of Teaching: Henry Giroux and Paulo Friere” at the American Political Science Association meeting, Sept. 3-6.

Kent Dixon, associate professor of English, was awarded a Midwest Faculty Occasional Fellowship grant to visit the Oriental Institute at University of Chicago to examine the 3,500-year-old tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh (in cuneiform writing), use the 21-volume Assyrian Dictionary and consult with Assyriolgists on his “translation” of the epic, actually a rendition from other translations with significant research behind it. Dixon was also finalist in Quarterly West’s biennial novella contest, placing among the top seven out of more than 200 entries.

Scott Graham, director of organization studies, gave an interactive presentation titled “The Power of Humor” to the Kiwanis Club of Springfield, Oct. 12. Graham also won the competitive Larry Murphy Scholarship from ACE/Alliance for Adult Educators during the organization’s annual conference, Oct. 20-23. Graham and Barbara Mackey, director of community programs, will attend a conference on marketing programs online to see how instructional technology can fit into Wittenberg’s adult programming needs.

Curt Holder, instructor of geography, Ralph Lenz, professor of geography and department chair, Olga Medvedkov, professor of geography, and Sunita Reddy, instructor in geography, all attended the East Lakes meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Nov. 5-6. During the meeting, Holder presented a paper titled “Fog Precipitation in a Guatemalan Tropical Cloud Forest,” and Lenz participated in a meeting of the Ohio and Michigan chairs.

Lora Lawson ’72, assistant professor of education, published a research report titled “Phonics Instruction and Student Achievement in Whole Language First-grade Classrooms” in the July/Aug./Sept. 1999 edition of Reading Research Quarterly, A Journal of the International Reading Association.

April Lindner, visiting assistant professor of English, received an honorable mention in the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize for Poetry for her poem “Fontanel,” one of five poems chosen from more than 1,700 entries. She also has two essays forthcoming in Paintbrush. One is a review of the annual West Chester Poetry Conference and the other an analysis of poet Joseph Langland.

Amy Livingstone, assistant professor of history, has had three essays published, two of which appeared in French publications. They included: “Pour une révision du “mâle” Moyen Âge de Georges Duby,” in Clio: Histoire, Femmes et Sociétés, a journal dealing with the history of women; “Diversity and Continuity: Family Structure and Inheritance in the Chartrain, 1000-1200” in Mondes de l’Ouest et Villes du Monde, Regards sur les Sociétés Médiévales: Mélanges en l’honneur d’André Chédeville; and “Aristocratic Women in the Chartrain,” in Aristocratic Women in Medieval France. She also has attended several conferences, including the annual meeting of the Haskins Society and the annual meeting of the Midwest Medieval History Conference.

Stanley Mickel, professor of languages and department chair, has written a chapter titled “Asian Language Study and Liberal Arts Colleges” in Asia in the Undergraduate Curriculum: A Case for Asian Studies in Liberal Arts Education. The book, published with a grant from the Luce Foundation by M.E. Sharpe, a leading publisher of educational materials about Asia, is due out in early 2000.

At the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion /Society of Biblical Literature, Nov. 20-23, Rochelle L. Millen, associate professor of religion, chaired a session titled “The Holocaust, Philosophy, and Literature” and gave a presentation in the Women and Religion Section titled “Congratulations and Conflict: The Birth of a Girl in Rabbinic Tradition.”

Robert Morris, professor of geology, published an article in Ohio Archaeologist titled “The Great Ice Age - A Lithic Legacy for Prehistoric Indians of Ohio and the Midwest.” The Ohio Archaeologist is the quarterly publication of the Archaeology Society of Ohio.

Jim Noyes, professor of computer science, presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Parallel Computing in Education Consortium meeting in October. The paper, “An Introductory Computational Science Course,” dealt with the material and resources necessary to teach computational science at the undergraduate level. Noyes currently teaches such a course at Wittenberg. The meeting was held in Columbus at The Ohio Supercomputer Center and was attended by representatives from colleges and universities throughout Ohio.

Jerry Pankhurst, professor of sociology, has published an essay titled “Russia’s Religious Market: Struggling with the Heritage of Russian Orthodox Monopoly” in Religion in a Changing World: Comparative Studies in Sociology. He also presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in Boston, Nov. 5-7, titled “Religious Values, Monopoly Status and the State in Post-Communist Societies: Putting Survey Evidence in Perspective.” In addition, he received a curriculum development grant from the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Michigan. The grant supported a week of work in Ann Arbor that was spent consulting with University of Michigan faculty and gathering teaching resources to upgrade and revise his sociology course titled “Post-Soviet Societies and Cultures.”

Sunita Reddy, instructor in geography, attended the South Asian Studies Conference, Oct. 15-17, and the Conference on Diaspora and Border Studies, Oct. 29-31. She also presented a paper, “Human Geography Today: A Critique,” at the Conference on Critical Geography at the University of Cincinnati, Oct. 23.

Don Reed, associate professor of philosophy, presented “Genes, memes, and Kohlberg: On What a Kohlbergian Account of Moral Development Can Offer a Theory of Cultural Evolution” at the 25th annual meeting of the international Association for Moral Education. The AME conference was held at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis-St. Paul, Nov. 18-21. Reed also served as emcee for the closing plenary session of the conference, which involved a panel discussion titled “The Future of Research in Morality and the Implications for Moral Education.”

Staci Rhine, associate professor of political science, presented a paper at the Southern Political Science Association meeting, Nov. 3-6, titled “Change and Continuity of Americans’ Interest in the News.” She also has some forthcoming articles, including: “‘Video-Malaise’ Revisited: Reconsidering the Relation between the Public’s Views of the Media and Trust in Government” in the Harvard Interti, Oct. 23.

Cynthia Richards, assistant professor of English, and Robin Inboden, associate professor of English, presented papers at the annual meeting of the Aphra Behn Society, dedicated to the study of British women writers from 1660 to 1830, Nov. 11-14 in Philadelphia. Richards gave a paper on rumor and reputation in the biographies of Mary Hays, and Inboden presented on the connection of medieval thinker Cornelius Agrippa's declamation on the superiority of women to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

James Swindler, professor of philosophy and department chair, presented commentary on a paper by Eric Markus of the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Utah titled “On the Sortal Dependence of Event Identity” at the meeting of the Southwestern Philosophical Society in Houston, Texas. Swindler also participated in the deliberations of the Society’s Executive Committee and Nominating Committee, and he gave the annual report of the society’s journal, Southwest Philosophy Review, which he edits.

Catherine Waggoner, assistant professor of speech communication, chaired a session and presented a paper titled “Preserving the Pedestal: The Paradoxical Performance of Femininity in the South,” at the National Communication Association Convention in Chicago, Nov. 4-7.