May 2001 University Reporter

Presentations, Conferences, and Lectures

Elsa Auerbach of the English Department participated in a panel entitled “Reconceptualizing Participatory Teacher-Researcher Relationships through Collaborative Dialogue” at the TESOL: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages convention in St. Louis in March.

Jim Campen of the Economics Department presented the paper “Boston’s Soft-Second Mortgage Program: Reaching Low-Income and Minority Homebuyers in a Changing Financial Services Environment” at a Federal Reserve System research conference on April 6 in Washington, D.C.

Albert P. Cardarelli, director of the Center for Policy Research in Family and Community Violence, presented the paper “Social Capital and Community Policing in Large and Medium-Sized Cities and Towns” on April 7 at the annual meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in Washington, D.C.

Susan Eisenberg, CPCS faculty, delivered the Sidore lecture at Plymouth State College in New Hampshire on March 1. The lecture was based on her book We’ll Call You If We Need You: Experiences of Women Working Construction. She read from her poetry book, Pioneering, at the People’s Poetry Gathering in New York City on March 30.

Jacqueline Fawcett, College of Nursing professor, presented the keynote address, “Middle-range Theories: Is this the Answer for Nursing Practice?,” at the Third International Conference on Nursing and Nursing Science in Nuremberg, Germany, in April.

CPCS Professor Jim Green of the Labor Resource Center has been invited by the History Department at UMass Amherst to speak about his book Taking History to Heart. He will use the book as the basis for keynote talks in May at the Working Out West Conference in Portland, Oregon, and the Massachusetts AFL-CIO’s state education conference in Falmouth.

Biology Department faculty member Joseph Gindhart presented the slide “The Kinesin-Associated Protein Unc-76 Is Required for Aoxonal Transport in the Larval Nervous System” at the 42nd Annual Drosophila Research Conference in Washington, D.C., on March 23.

Mari Koerner of the Graduate College of Education chaired the symposium, “What Makes a ‘Good’ Student Teaching Placement? A Closer Look at Assessment in Four Urban Teacher Education Programs,” at the American Educational Research Association meeting in Seattle, held April 16-23.

Anne McCauley, art professor, presented “An American Impresario in Paris: Edward Steichen’s Work for 291” for a National Gallery of Art symposium in Washington, D.C., on March 24.
Professor Siamak Movahedi, director of the graduate Applied Sociology Program, presented the paper “What is it to Which Words and Theories Point in Psychoanalysis? The Demand for Theoretical Conformity and the Structure of the Analytic Situation” at the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association meeting held on April 26 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

On March 14, Sherry H. Penney, the Sherry H. Penney professor of leadership in the College of Management, spoke to UCLA undergraduate student leaders and doctoral students in the College of Education on assuming successful leadership roles.

Sumner Rotman, director of the Center for Technical Education in the Division of Corporate, Continuing, and Distance Education, delivered a presentation at the Association for Career and Technical Education’s National Policy Seminar in Washington, D.C. on April 3.

Lorna Rivera, assistant professor in the College of Public and Community Service, presented “The Right to Literacy: An Ethnography of Popular Education and Homeless Women in the Era of Welfare Reform” at the 82nd Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association in Seattle on April 12.

Lloyd Schwartz of the English Department is organizing and moderating a panel called “Elizabeth Bishop in Boston: Poets Remember” for the American Literary Association (ALA) in Cambridge to be held on May 25.

Professor Nancy Stieber of the Art Department presented “Metaphor and Metropolis: Imag(in)ing Amsterdam Around 1900” at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University on March 14.

Paul M. Wright, Boston office editor for the University of Massachusetts Press, will be chairing the session, “Redesigning ‘Books’ for an Electronic Age” at the annual meeting of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing in Williamsburg, Virginia, in July.

Labor Resource Center faculty, staff, students, and alumni presented research at the United Association of Labor Educators (UALE) conference, held in Boston April 25 to 29. Participants included Alison Bowens, Pete Capano, Kathleen Casavant, Mary Jo Connolly, Tim Costelllo, Jeff Crosby, Tess Ewing, James Green, Pat Reeve, and Connie Nelson.

Publications

Elsa Auerbach of the English Department published her chapter “’Yes, but:’ Problematizing Participatory ESL Pedagogy” in Participatory Practices in Adult Education.
Sharon Bostick, director of libraries, recently published her article “The History and Development of Academic Library Consortia in the United States: An Overview” in Journal of Academic Librarianship.

Jacqueline Fawcett, College of Nursing professor, published the chapter “Integrating Conceptual Models, Theories, Research, and Practice” in Core Concepts in Advanced Practice Nursing.

Sherry H. Penney, College of Management, has published her article “Change and Collaboration: the Greater Boston Urban Collaborative” in the spring issue of the Metropolitan Universities Journal.

Amy Weisman, Psychology Department, coauthored the article “Parent’s Reactions to the Identity Disclosure of a Homosexual Child” with J. Armesto in Family Process.

Performances

Professor John Conlon, Communication and Theatre Arts, has been cast as Polonius in a forthcoming production of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead to be presented by Unpremeditated Productions at the Boston Center for the Arts, from June 20 through July 2.

Isle of Hope for chorus and organ by Professor David Patterson of the Music Department was commissioned for the Ellis Island Medals of Honor Awards Gala and was performed at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City on May 12.

Grants

Jeffrey Burr and Jan Mutchler have been awarded a grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to investigate the roles of health and functional ability in shaping living-arrangement choices of older Americans.

The Division of Corporate, Continuing, and Distance Education has received three awards totaling $190,000 to support its distance learning initiatives from the UMass System’s Distance Learning IT Bond Fund and eCollege.

Gopal Rao of the Physics Department was awarded a three-year research contract of $420,000 by the US Army Natick Research Labs for work on nonlinear optics. Rao is developing materials that can be used to coat eyeglasses to protect the eye from laser light.

Appointments and Honors

Herbert P. Bix, former member of the History Department, won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction for his book Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. Bix taught at UMass Boston in the ‘70s and is scheduled to teach the history of modern Japan here in the summer and fall.

Anita Miller, assistant vice chancellor, and co-presidents of the UMass Boston chapter of the Golden Key International Honor Society Helenmary Hotz and Phaly Walker, presented at the Society’s Northeastern Regional Conference at UMass Amherst from March 30 to April 1 and received the three top honors: “Outstanding Chapter of the Year;” “Regional Student Leader Award” (Hotz), “Northeastern Regional Advisor of the Year” (Miller).

Oscar Gutierrez, associate professor and former chair of the Management Science and Information Systems Department of the College of Management has been appointed a senior fellow at the McCormack Institute of Public Affairs.

Peter Schilling of the Admissions Office has been appointed to serve a three-year term as the New England Admissions Representative of NAFSA, the Association of International Educators.
Elaine Bauer of the Admissions Office has been selected to serve on Fisher College’s Program Advisory Committee for Liberal Arts.

Visiting Lectures

Lorraine Tulman, associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, shared the results of a review of more than 5,500 studies of women’s functional status as part of a distinguished scholar guest speaker series for the College of Nursing Ph.D. Program.
The Music Department invited pianist Jeffrey Jacob to lecture and perform George Crumb’s Makrokosmos at Snowden Auditorium on April 6.

Dissertations

Stephanie Carr, Ph.D. candidate in Environmental, Coastal and Ocean Sciences, defended her dissertation, “A Demographic Anaylsis of Mytilus edulis Populations in Boston Harbor,” on April 9.

Beth Rosner, Ph.D. candidate in the clinical psychology program, defended her dissertation, “Empathy and Personal Distress in Young People with Williams Syndrome,” on April 25.

In the News

Professor Jennifer Radden of the Philosophy Department discussed her new anthology, The Nature of Melancholy, on WBUR’s The Connection on March 14. Her work was complimented for its “lyrical language” in the February 19 - 26 issue of The New Yorker.

Jean Rhodes, an associate professor of psychology at UMass Boston, wrote an editorial, “Finding the Right Mentors,” which appeared in the New York Times on April 2. Her editorial, which focused on government-sanctioned mentoring programs, drew on her work included in her forthcoming book Older and Wise: The Risks and Rewards of Youth Mentoring.

Jack Looney, professor of earth sciences, was quoted in the March 30 Patriot Ledger story about the recent flooding epidemic in Massachusetts.

Carole Upshur, director of the Program in Public policy, and the recent joint study released by the program and the Gastón Institute on math and science enrollments of Massachusetts Latino and African American students, were featured in the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Christian Science Monitor, Associated Press, NPR’s Morning Edition, WLVI-TV, WCVB-TV, and NECN, April 11- 12.

Obituary

Joann P. Stewart, professor emerita of economics, passed away on April 9. She was a member of the faculty from 1982 to her retirement in 1993. In 1997, the Economics Department established the Joann P. Stewart award for the outstanding female economics major in recognition of Stewart’s achievements.

Miscellaneous

Professor Philip Hart, director of the Trotter Institute, initiated a master planning effort in Hollywood, CA, in concert with the Urban Land Institute, the American City Coalition, and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

On March 24, the Department of Hispanic Studies conducted a technology workshop for high school teachers of Spanish in the Instructional Technology Center. Twenty-seven Spanish teachers from sixteen Boston-area schools learned new technological applications to incorporate into their Spanish language classes.

April Corrections

John Warner is professor of Chemistry, not an associate professor as reported on page 7.
Chanyeong Kwak is a Ph.D. student of nursing, not gerontology, as reported in the Campus Notes section.