October 2001 University Reporter

Presentations, Conferences, and Lectures

Praytush Bharati, assistant professor of management science and information systems, presented “Service Quality of a Choiceboard System: An Experimental Investigation” at the 2001 America’s Conference on Information Systems.

Margery O’Donnell of the McCormack Institute’s Center for Democracy and Development presented the results of UMass Boston’s partnership with the Université Gaston Berger de Saint Louis of Sénégal at the Synergy in Development 2001 Conference in Washington, D.C. Michael MacPhee, research associate, attended as well.

Debra Osnowitz, research associate in the Labor Resource Center, presented her paper “Making Gender Malleable: Home-Based Professionals and Household Work” at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting in August.

Sherry Rhyno of Marketing and Information Services and Tony Holmes of Corporate, Continuing, and Distance Education attended the Stamats conference “Generating Successful Integrated Marketing and Branding Strategies for College and Universities” held in Boston August 12 - 14.

On August 27 Gary N. Siperstein, director of the Center for Social Development and Education, presented a white paper at the Learning Disabilities Summit in Washington, D.C.

Publications

Randy Albelda of the Department of Economics published “Welfare-to-Work, Farewell to Families? U.S. Welfare Reform and Work/Family Debates” in the most recent issue of Feminist Economics.

James Bierstaker of the Accounting and Finance Department has co-authored “An Examination of Internal Auditors’ Utilization of Internally Developed and Commercial Software” in Internal Auditing.

Jay R. Dee, assistant professor in the Graduate College of Education, co-authored the book Smart School Teams: Strengthening Skills for Collaboration to be published with Rowman & Littlefield/University Press of America.

Xiaogang Deng of the Sociology Department co-authored an article, “Impact of Citizen Review Board on Complaints Against Police Brutality,” in Policing.

Jacqueline Fawcett of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences published the chapter “Conceptual Models of Nursing, Nursing Theories, and Nursing Practice: Future Directions” in Nursing Theory: Utilization and Application.

Enrico Marcelli of the Economics Department contributed “Informal Employment in California” for The State of California Labor – 2001 Report.

Elizabeth Sherman, senior fellow of the McCormack Institute, published the article “Comparable Worth: Opportunities for Gender and Racial Equity” in the summer 2001 issue of The Women’s Policy Journal of Harvard.

Nina Silverstein, associate professor of gerontology, and Jennifer Moorhead, a doctoral candidate of gerontology, published “Responding to Social Service and Health Care Needs of Aging Women Veterans” in the Journal of Women & Aging. The article was based on research conducted jointly in the Gerontology Institute and Joiner Center.

Philosophy’s Robert Swartz completed four articles, “In the Grips of Emotions,” “Skillful Decision Making,” “Teaching Thinking in Science,” and “Infusing Critical and Creative Thinking into Content Instruction,” in the 2001 edition of Developing Minds, which is scheduled for publication in November.

Associate Professor Dennis J. Stevens of the College of Public and Community Service completed the textbook Applied Community Policing, to be published in 2002. The textbook features data from surveys completed by the Boston Police Department and 900 Dorchester residents.

Julie Winch, professor in the History Department, published the article “‘A Person of Good Character and Considerable Property:’ James Forten and the Issue of Race in Philadelphia’s Antebellum Business Community” in the most recent issue of the Business History Review.

Xuchen Wang of the Environmental, Coastal, and Ocean Sciences Department published the paper “Contribution of ‘Old’ Carbon from Natural Marine Hydrocarbon Seeps to Sedimentary and Dissolved Organic Carbon Pools in the Gulf of Mexico” in Geophysical Research Letters.

William Robinson, professor in the Environmental, Coastal, and Ocean Sciences Department (ECOS), and ECOS Ph.D. graduate P. Satish Nair published “Cadmium Binding to a Histidine-Rich Glycoprotein from Marine Mussel Blood Plasma: Potentiometer Titration and Equilibrium Speciation Modeling” in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.

Performances

Peter Janson of the Music Department released his second solo recording, Sometimes From Here, in June. The recording ranked #2 on the New Age Voice Top 100 Airwaves chart for three months.
The “Workshop in Drama,” taught by Ron Nash of the Division of Communications and Theatre Arts this semester, will produce three short plays: Trifles, The Jewish Wife, and Incident at Vichy. The plays will open after Thanksgiving.

Grants

Xiaogang Deng of the Sociology Department has been awarded a $30,000 grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation to conduct a comparative study of shame and deviant behavior in Taiwan and the United States.

Professors Robert Morris of Computer Science and Rob Stevenson of Biology received a $620,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Biological Infrastructure as renewed funding for their “Electronic Field Guide.” In addition, the team has received more than $640,000 in NSF grants for their projects in biodiversity data discovery and ecoinformatics.
Juanita Urban-Rich of the Environmental, Coastal, and Ocean Sciences Department received a contract within a larger NASA-EPSCOR-funded project to examine optical characteristics in the Gulf of Mexico. She will be collaborating with scientists from Louisiana and Mississippi to look at the coastal optical characteristics in a river-dominated shelf for the next three years.

Appointments and Honors

James Bierstaker, assistant professor of accounting and finance, has been awarded tenure.
The Environmental, Coastal, and Ocean Sciences (ECOS) Department has appointed Assistant

Professor Daniel Brabander director of the new environmental science undergraduate department and hired new faculty member Meng Zhou, a physical oceanographer and modeler.

Carla Byers has been appointed director of major gifts for the College of Management.

Robert Crossley, professor of English, accepted the first Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award on behalf of the late Olaf Stapledon at the World Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia on September 2. Crossley is Stapledon’s biographer, editor, and literary executor.

Virginia Harvey of the Department of Counseling and School Psychology was elected to fellowship status at the American Psychological Association’s annual convention held in San Francisco in August.

Eric Hayden, professor of accounting and finance, Sylvia Dorado, assistant professor of management and marketing, Edward Romar, lecturer in management and marketing, and Praytush Bharati, professor in management science and information systems, received Dean’s Faculty Scholarship awards from the College of Management.

Vicki Milledge, assistant professor of management and marketing, has been appointed program manager for the Emerging Leaders Program in the Center for Collaborative Leadership.

Laura O’Leary, a recent graduate of UMass Boston’s Applied Sociology program, joined the Office of Institutional Research as associate research analyst.

Alexia Pollock, assistant professor of biology, received a proposal development grant of $6,000 from UMass Boston for her project “Regulation of Striatal Neuropeptides Following Dopamine Agonist Priming.”

Jennifer Raymond of the Center for Social Policy was selected as one of 30 individuals in the state to participate in the Massachusetts Campaign Leadership Training, sponsored by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Elizabeth Sherman, senior fellow at the McCormack Institute, has been appointed research associate at the Center for Public Leadership of the Kennedy School of Government for her work in progress on women’s political leadership in the United States.

Adrienne Vigilante has been appointed assistant director and international transfer credit evaluator in the Undergraduate Admissions Office. Adrienne has worked at the university for seven years, primarily with international students.

Lin Zhan of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, the only nurse from Massachusetts chosen this year. Zhan will be inducted with 67 new fellows during an induction ceremony at the Academy’s 2001 Annual Meeting, held in Washington, DC on October 27.

Events

On September 5, the McCormack Institute hosted a luncheon and roundtable discussion with the President’s Office in the Chancellor’s conference room for a delegate from Hesse, Germany. The twenty members of that parliament’s Committee of Higher Education, Research, and the Arts examined the role of state government in the management of institutions of higher learning and the role of public-private partnerships in Massachusetts universities.

Miscellaneous

The Urban Land Institute published a report of the Downtown Advisory Panel visit to Hollywood, CA. The visit was organized by Philip Hart, director of the Trotter Institute, through The American City Coalition (TACC) and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. The report will guide the multi-billion dollar facelift now underway in Hollywood.

In the News

On August 15, Marlene Kim of the Department of Economics was a guest on Business 1060’s morning show to discuss her research on earnings discrimination against black women. She was also a plenary speaker at the Union of Radical Political Economists summer conference on August 20. The title of her talk was “The Working Poor in the U.S.”

Jan Mutchler, professor of gerontology, is quoted in the Boston Globe on September 10 in an article about the loneliness of elderly men who are widowed and its effects on their well-being.
Richard Delaney, director of the Urban Harbors Institute, is quoted in a September 4 Boston Globe article on the revival of environmental protests during the Bush administration.

James Green, professor of labor studies, was quoted on the history of working people in the Boston Globe on September 1 and the Patriot Ledger on September 3.

Campus Notes