Campus Notes

Presentations, Conferences, and Lectures

Randy Albelda of the Economics Department and Public Policy Ph.D. Program presented at the “Welfare Reform: Where Have We Been, Where Are We Going?” conference held at Bryn Mawr College in March.

Professor Joan Arches and Suzanne Allmendinger, director of community outreach at the College of Public and Community Service, presented an urban service-learning workshop at the Massachusetts Campus Compact’s conference on civic engagement, held April 14 – 15. Jain Ruvidich-Higgins of the Office of Service Learning and Community Outreach facilitated the workshop.

Associate Professor Lilia I. Bartolome of the Applied Linguistics Program presented the keynote address “The Anti-Racist Umbrella: Latinos and the Brownification Factor” at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill’s third annual conference, “Let’s Talk RACE (Racial Attitudes and Conversations in Education),” held on March 2.

Associate Vice Provost Joan Becker, Project REACH Director Bill Pollard, and educational counselors Linda Velez, Elizabeth Dunn, and Kevin Johnson presented “Innovative After-School and Summer Academic Enrichment Programs for Students with Disabilities” at the 18th Annual Pacific Rim Conference on Disabilities, held in Hawaii on March 5.

Nguyen Ba Chung and Kevin Bowen of the Joiner Center presented at the “Postwar Communities, Identities, and Belief” conference sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation at the University of Virginia, held February 28 through March 5.

Douglas Currivan, senior research fellow in the Center for Survey Research, presented “Social Capital in Boston: Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey” and “Survey Methods 101” at the “Using Data to Drive Community Chance” conference held in Boston on March 19.

Charles Desmond, associate chancellor, and Joan Becker, associate vice provost, participated in the panel discussion “Establishing and Building Strong Relationships with Business Leaders” at the Council for Opportunity in Education’s Leadership Summit, held in Washington, D.C. on March 17.

On March 10, Professor Carroy U. Ferguson of the College of Public and Community Service presented “Futuristics and Human Relations” at the Eastern Sociological Society’s annual conference.

Dale H. Freeman of the Archives in Healey Library presented “Of Graceful Design, Lightsome and Elegant: A History of the West Boston Bridge, 1793-1907” on March 19 at the Medway Historical Society.

Kathleen Golden McAndrew, executive director of University Health Services and associate professor in the Department of Nursing, presented the keynote address, “Substance Abuse in the Workplace: Understanding the Occupational Healthcare Provider’s Role,” at the North of Boston Chapter of the American Association of Occupational Health Nurses on March 12.

Nina Greenwald and Steve Schwartz in the Graduate Program of Critical and Creative Thinking presented the workshop “Junk, Dots, and Paper Clips” for the National Collegiate Innovators and Inventors Alliance Conference (NCIIA) on March 14, in Washington, D.C.

Anne McCauley, professor of art history, presented the paper “Copying Right: Labor, Genius, and Imagination in the Age of Photography” at the annual meeting of the College Art Association, held in Philadelphia on February 22.

Professor Siamak Movahedi of the Sociology Department presented the paper “Social Reality and the Narrative Structure of Dreams” at the annual meeting of The Eastern Sociological Society, held in Boston on March 9.

Sherry Penney, professor of leadership in the College of Management, and Bernard Harleston, former director of the doctoral program in higher education administration, were part of a panel presentation on presidential leadership at the annual meeting of the American Council on Education, held on February 12 in San Francisco.

Alexia Pollack, assistant professor of biology, presented the seminar “Pharmacology of Sensitization in a Rat Model of Parkinson’s Disease” to the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at the Boston University School of Medicine on February 15.

Assistant Professor of English Gautam Premnath delivered the Mason-Sekora Lecture at North Carolina Central University on “V. S. Naipaul, Lonely Londoner.” On March 1 he spoke on “The Afterlife of National Liberation” at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Michael Rex, professor of biology, organized and chaired a symposium on deep-sea biodiversity for the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston. Biology’s Ron Etter was one of the featured speakers.

Gerontology’s Nina Silverstein, Marian Spencer, Jenia Murtha, Katherine Maquire, Jennifer Moorhead, Dena Schulman-Green, and Helen Miltiades participated at the annual meeting and educational leadership conference of the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education held from February 29 through March 3.

Professor Dan Simovici, and Ph.D. candidates in computer science Szymon Jaroszewicz and Dana Cristofor presented papers at the SIAM Data Mining conference held in Washington D.C., April 11-13.

Undergraduate Admissions’ Lisa Williams, Liliana Mickle, Patrick Dwyer, and Peter Schilling, with Michael Mahan of University Advising, were panel presenters at the College Board’s New England Regional Meeting.

Environmental, Coastal, and Ocean Sciences Department faculty members and students presented research at the American Geophysical Union/American Society for Limnology and Oceanography Ocean Sciences Meeting, February 11 through 15.

Publications

Peter Ittig, associate professor of management science and information systems in the College of Management, published “Comparison of Efficient Seasonal Indexes” in the Journal of Applied Mathematics and Decision Sciences and “The Real Cost of Making Customers Wait” in The International Journal of Service Industry Management.

Pamela Jones of the Art Department co-edited From Rome to Eternity: Catholicism and the Arts in Italy, ca. 1550-1650. Her essay “Female Saints in Early Modern Italian Chapbooks, ca. 1570-1670: Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Catherine of Siena” appears in the book, as well as the essay “Veronica Franco’s Poetics of Redempton” by Fiora Bassanese of the Department of Modern Languages.

Susan M. Mraz of the Department of Hispanic Studies co-authored the second edition of the introductory Spanish language and culture program, Caminos published by Houghton Mifflin.

Jean Rhodes, associate professor of psychology, published Stand by Me: The Risks and Rewards of Mentoring Today’s Youth with Harvard University Press.
Edith Shillue of Academic Support Services recently published Peace Comes Dropping Slow: Conversations in Northern Ireland with UMass Press.

Philosophy’s Mitchell Silver recently published the articles “Who is a Jew?” in the February 2002 issue of Jewish Currents and “The Ethics of Psychiatric Suspicion” in The Harvard Review of Psychiatry.

A research party was held for Changing Communities, Changing Lives: Oral Histories from Action For Boston Community Development (ABCD), a work by Ann Withorn and Robert C. Hayden of the College of Public and Community Service, with members of ABCD on March 27.

Exhibits, Readings, Performances

Professor John Conlon of the Division of Communication and Theatre Arts played the role of Atticus Finch in the Theatre Company of Saugus’ production of To Kill A Mockingbird in April.

Dick Lourie of University Communications and Community Relations played saxophone in the backup band for the G-Clefs at Symphony Hall on March 15.

On March 8, Jon Mitchell, chair of the Music Department, guest-conducted the Sudenten Philharmonic in a concert at Walbrzych, Poland.

Music of Professor David Patterson was featured in a spring celebration honoring Ellen Hunt, music director of Pilgrim Congregational Church in Lexington, which included his piece Isle of Hope.

English Professor Lloyd Schwartz read poetry as a special guest for a musical evening at the Market Theatre in Cambridge on March 28 and 30.

Appointments and Honors

Professor Kamal Bawa was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science on February 16. He was honored for his pioneer work on population biology of tropical forest trees and conservation biology.

James Bennett, assistant professor of accounting and finance in the College of Management, received the AAII Best Paper Award in Investments for “Spreads and Depths of ETFs” from the American Association of Individual Investors. The award is shared with co-author Francis Kernis Jr.

James E. Blackwell, professor emeritus of sociology and previous winner of the UMass Boston Chancellor’s Medal, received Washington State University’s Distinguished Alumnus Award on January 25.

WUMB’s General Manager Pat Monteith was selected by the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) to peer review the 2002 Public Telecommunications Facilities Grants program.

Professor Michael E. Stone of the College of Public and Community Service, the McCormack Institute, and the Ph.D in Public Policy Program, was selected as an Atlantic Fellow in Public Policy, the first to receive the award at UMass Boston.

Grants and Research

Professor Phil Hart, director of the Trotter Institute, working with the American City Coalition, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, and the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Foundation, completed a report on “A Strategy for Hollywood’s Comeback.” ULI has asked Hart and the American City Coalition to carry out a similar planning study in Harlem, New York.

Curtis Olsen, Sarah Oktay, and Joe Smith of the Environmental, Coastal, and Ocean Sciences Department received grant funding from the National Science Foundation for their research “Geochemical Fingerprints Associated with the World Trade Center Terrorist Attack May Serve as New Research Tools for Understanding Sediment Dynamics and Quality in New York Harbor.”

Associate Professor Meng Zhou, Research Associate Yiwu Zhu, and graduate students Ryan Dorland and Joe Smith of the Environmental, Coastal, and Ocean Sciences Department are leaving for a research cruise in Marguerite Bay, Antarctica. This is one of four cruises in a research project funded by the Polar Program at the National Science Foundation.

Visiting Lectures

On March 7, Joseph Abboud, well-known fashion designer and newly appointed distinguished visiting professor of marketing, met with invention class students from the Graduate Program in Critical and Creative thinking. He also led a marketing class in discussions of creativity and an entrepreneurship seminar.

On March 7, the William Joiner Center, in conjunction with the Irish Studies Program directed by English Professor Thomas O’Grady, hosted prize-winning Irish poet and author Macdara Woods, who read selections from his works including his new book of poetry, The Nightingale Water.

Dissertation

Public Policy student Emily Douglas successfully defended her dissertation, “The Influence of Public Policies on Human Behavior: The Effect of a New Hampshire Law Stating a Presumption for Joint Custody on Father Involvement in Divorced Families,” on February 21.

In the News

The Graduate Program in Critical and Creative Thinking (CCT) was featured in the March edition of MTA Today, the leading publication of the Massachusetts Teachers Association.
Professor Lorna Rivera of the College of Public and Community Service and the Gastón Institute was a guest commentator on WHAV 1490 AM Radio’s Sabado Espectacular on March 2. Professor Rivera discussed her research on educational achievements of Latino students in Massachusetts public schools.

An editorial by Carol Hardy-Fanta, director of the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy, on women in the gubernatorial race was published in The Boston Globe on February 22.

Robert Crossley, professor of English, was quoted extensively on H.G. Wells and The Time Machine in a March 3 New York Times article.

John Warner, chair of the Chemistry Department, participated in a WHDH Channel 7 news story on the boiling point of water and microwave ovens. The piece aired on March 15, 16, and 18.

Greg Huber, associate professor of physics, was interviewed by science correspondent Ned Potter on the science of coffee stains for a story on the mysteries of science which aired on ABC Nightly News on March 20.

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