Campus Notes

Presentations, Conferences, and Lectures

Sara Baron, director of the Instructional Technology Center and coordinator of library instruction, and Sarah Tudesco, systems and digital services librarian, presented “Designing an Interactive Online Information Literacy Tutorial” at the Association of College and Research Libraries New England Chapter joint meeting of the Library Instruction Group and Information Technology Group.

At the 98th annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Elizabeth Bussiere, associate professor of political science, participated in a roundtable discussion on the “The New Property and Modern Democracy” and presented a paper on “The ‘New Property’ and the Origins of Constitutional Welfare Rights in the Warren Court.”

Jane Cloutterbuck, associate professor in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, discussed elder health issues and health disparities in Boston as a panelist for the “Race and the Elimination of Health Disparities in the City of Boston: Promoting the Health of the Undeserved” Conference, sponsored by the Boston Public Health Commission.

Xiaogang Deng, associate professor of sociology, presented lectures on “Social Impacts of the Internet” and “Recent Development in Sociological Theories and Methodological Challenges” as a participant in the Centennial Celebration Guest Speaker Series in China.

At the 98th annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Professor Tom Ferguson of the Political Science Department chaired a panel on domestic politics and international relations of the Bush presidency and a panel on Walter Dean Burnham’s contributions to American political science.

Arthur Goldsmith of the College of Management published the article “Business Associations and Better Governance in Africa” in the journal Public Administration & Development.

Associate Professor of English Judith Goleman, director of the freshman composition program, spoke on “Teaching Alternative Discourses” at the University of New Hampshire Writing Conference.

In September, Harlyn Halvorson of Environmental, Coastal, and Environmental Sciences Department co-presented proposed management practices to the Maine Aquaculture Association and to shell fisherman at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. The research was part of a project for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration project conducted by The Policy Center for Marine Biosciences and Technology.

Carol Hardy-Fanta, director of the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy, served as a panelist for “Transnational Citizenship: Latino Politics Across Fortified Borders” at the 98th annual meeting of the American Political Science Association.

William Holmes, a faculty member in the College of Public and Community Service, presented a workshop on survival analysis at the national meeting of the Justice Research and Statistics Association in October.

Marie Kennedy, associate dean of the College of Public and Community Service, gave a presentation on “Learning from the Community: Service Learning” and led a workshop on “Preparing Students for Civic Involvement” at the Faculty Development Day held at Lesley University on September 3.

Marlene Kim, assistant professor of economics, presented two papers, “Exploring the Intersections of Race, Gender, and Class: Patterns from the Lives of Asian Americans,” and “Has the Race Penalty for Black Women Disappeared in the United States?” at the Annual Meetings of the International Association for Feminist Economics, held in Los Angeles.

The College of Management’s Tammy MacLean co-presented “Teaching Through Traumatic Events: Uncovering the Choices of Management Educators as They Responded to September 11” and “Out of Sight But Not Out of Mind: How People Manage Hidden Stigmatized Identities in the Workplace” at the 2002 conference for the Academy of Management.

Askold Melnyczuk, director of the Creative Writing Program, delivered the keynote address at an international conference, “Teaching American Literature,” which was held in Kiev in September.

Jon Mitchell, professor of music, presented a lecture, “Early Performances of Holst, Vaughan Williams, and Jacob at Kneller Hall,” at the IGEB (International Society for Wind Music) Conference, held in Lana, Italy.

Susan Opotow, associate professor in the Graduate Program in Dispute Resolution, attended the “Nurturing Morality” National Invitational Conference, held in Wisconsin in September, where her chapter “Conflict and Morals” was discussed.

Jean Rhodes, assistant professor of psychology, has coauthored Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology: Expanding Perspective in Methodology and Design, which is published by the American Psychological Association.

In September, Professor Mary Huff Stevenson of the Economics Department and the McCormack Institute presented her paper “Hours of Work as a Measure of Performance: Prospects and Pitfalls” at the Conference of the Ford Foundation Project on the Development of a New Cross-National Architecture for Labor Market Statistics, held in Italy.

At the 98th annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Professor Paul Watanabe of the Political Science Department chaired a panel entitled “From the Outside In: Immigrant Communities’ Politics and Power.”

Robert Weiner of the Political Science Department presented the paper “Postcommunist Moldovan and Romanian Foreign Policy at the United Nations: Dealignment and Realignment – A Neorealist Perspective” at the 98th annual meeting of the American Political Science Association.

Publications

An article by Sara Baron, director of the Instructional Technology Center and coordinator of library instruction, “Problem or Challenge? Serving Library Customers that Technology Left Behind,” was published in the book Helping the Difficult Library Patron: New Approaches to Examining and Resolving a Long-Standing and Ongoing Problem and in the journal Reference Librarian.

An article co-authored by Dan Brabander, director of the undergraduate Environmental Studies Program and assistant professor in the Environment, Coastal, and Ocean Sciences Department, “Use of Physical, Chemical, and Biological Indices to Assess Impacts of Contaminants and Physical Habitat Alteration in Urban Streams,” appears in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.

Tammy MacLean of the College of Management published “Reframing Organizational Misconduct: A Study of Deceptive Sales Practices at a Major Life Insurance Company” in Business & Society.

Thomas O’Grady, professor of English and director of Irish Studies, has a chapter entitled “Seamus Heaney’s ‘At a Potato Digging’ Revisited” in Ireland’s Great Hunger: Silence, Memory, and Commemoration, which is published by the University Press of America.

Laurel E. Radwin, assistant professor in the Department of Nursing, has published “Refining the Quality Health Outcomes Model: Differentiating Between Client Trait and State Characteristics” in the current issue of Nursing Outlook.

Essays by Rajini Srikanth, assistant professor of English, have been published in two new books Race in the College Classroom: Pedagogy and Politics and Re/Collecting Early Asian America: Readings in Cultural History.

Lin Zhan, professor in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, published the chapters “Information Technology in Health: Improving Life for the Elderly” in Information Technology in Health and “Nursing Education in the 21st Century: Trends and Opportunities” in International Nursing Education.

Exhibits, Readings, Performances

Bernadette Levasseur, supervisor of the Wheatley Hall Copy Center, displayed her paintings and prints in a one-woman show held at the Mansfield Music and Arts Society’s Cote Gallery in Mansfield, MA, in August.

“Saving Daylight Time,” a piece by TenBroeck Davison ’82 and Professor David Patterson of the Music Department, was performed by tenor Brendan O’Brine in a recital held at the Park Presidio United Methodist Church in San Francisco on September 29.

Jon Mitchell, professor of music, guest conducted the Longy Summer Orchestra in a concert of works by Schumann and Mendelssohn held in Cambridge on August 9.

Lloyd Schwartz, Troy Professor of English and Creative Writing, read his poems at WordsWorth Books in Harvard Square on October 1 and read poetry in the musical program “The Song That Is Irresistible,” which was held at Skidmore College on October 31.

Appointments and Honors

Jonathan Chu has been appointed interim dean of the Graduate College of Education. Chu has worked for UMass Boston since 1978, most recently as associate professor of history. He will serve as interim dean until the appointment of a permanent dean.

Marlene Kim, assistant professor of economics, won the first Rhonda Williams Prize in Economics.
Kelly Matthews, lecturer in the College of Public and Community Service, received a finalist award in fiction in the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s 2002 Artist Grants Competition.

Margaret McAllister, coordinator of the Family Nurse Practitioner Master’s Concentration, was inducted as a fellow of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners and as a national consultant for Q NONP, the quality assurance arm of the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties.

William Joseph Moore of the Harvard University Graduate School of Education has been appointed visiting senior research associate at the Trotter Institute’s Center for Community, Technology, Democracy and Public Policy. He will be involved in research on race, technology, and public policy issues facing people of African descent.

Kevin Murphy, public policy doctoral candidate and employee with the Office of Institutional Research, has been nominated for the steering committee of the Northeast Association for Institutional Research.

Michael Novak, chair of the Management and Marketing Department, won a “Best Paper Award” at the European Applied Business Research Conference for his paper “Simon Pearce: A Teaching Case.” It will be published in an upcoming issue of the International Business & Economics Research Journal.

Nancy Stieber, associate professor and chair of the Art Department, has been appointed editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Her appointment will run through the end of the 2006 academic year.

Deborah Whaley, assistant professor of American studies, has been appointed faculty associate and research fellow at the Trotter Institute. She will be conducting research to explore the relationship between national belongings and black cultural politics in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Lin Zhan, professor in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, was recently honored as a guest and honorary professor by Sichuan University and Macau Kiang Wu College of Nursing.

Grants and Research

Lisa M. Abdallah, coordinator of the Nursing Learning Resource Center and doctoral candidate in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences Doctoral Program in Nursing, was awarded a dissertation support grant from Graduate Studies and Research for her project “EverCare Nurse Practitioner Practice Activities: Similarities and Differences Across Five States.”

Dan Brabander, director of the undergraduate Environmental Studies Program and assistant professor in the Environmental, Coastal, and Ocean Sciences Department received a $28,200 grant for his project “Environmental Biomonitoring of Cr and As in Shallow Groundwater: Do Red Oak Trees Preserve Long Term Records of Contaminant Loading?”

While researching democratic development in Nigeria, Darren Kew, assistant professor in the Dispute Resolution Program, met with the president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, as well as a number of leaders of Nigeria’s National Assembly and civil society groups.

Jamie McCarty, master’s student in the Environmental Sciences program, received a NASA graduate student fellowship award for $24,000. He is working with Professor Juanita Urban-Rich on the effects of copepod grazing on chromophoric dissolved organic matter in seawater.

The Trotter Institute’s Center for Community, Technology, Democracy and Public Policy has received a $10,000 grant from the CTC VISTA program at the College of Public and Community Service to evaluate VISTAS’ training, mentoring, and support services. Regina Rodriguez-Mitchell, director of the Trotter Institute, is the principal investigator, and Research Associate Malo Hutson is a lead field evaluator.

Environmental, Coastal, and Ocean Sciences’ Sarah Oktay and graduate student Joseph Smith recently conducted two research cruises: one in New York Harbor investigating the spatial and temporal distribution of the “geochemical fingerprint” of the World Trade Center collapse found in harbor sediments; and one down to Chesapeake Bay investigating carbon inputs and sediment dynamics throughout the bay. An Environmental Sciences undergraduate Michael Trepanier, provided support for both cruises.
Environmental, Coastal, and Ocean

Sciences’s Meng Zhou, associate professor, and graduate students Jay Peterson and Di Wu recently conducted two three-week cruises in the northern California current to study the coastal ecosystem. This research project is funded by the National Science Foundation, as a part of the US Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics Program (US GLOBEC)-Northeast Pacific Study.

The Division of Corporate, Continuing and Distance Education received a $50,000 National Science Foundation grant to develop a navigational tool that inventories regional technology training and aligns knowledge and skills with the requirements of business and industry. The “Roadmap of Opportunities” project focuses on skill standards identified by the National Workforce Center for Emerging Technologies.

Miscellaneous

Richard Delaney, director of the Urban Harbors Institute, hosted a breakfast round table meeting for the president and vice chancellor of the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, Professor Gerry McKenna, and colleagues. The September 10 meeting explored opportunities for collaborative research between UMass Boston and the University of Ulster’s recently opened Coastal Research Center.

On August 20, Jane Oates, senior education advisor for Senator Edward M. Kennedy, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, visited UMass Boston to meet with the students in pre-collegiate programs, including Urban Scholars, Admission Guaranteed, GEAR UP, Project Reach, and Upward Bound. She also met with Chancellor Jo Ann Gora and Associate Vice Provost Joan Becker.

In the News

On August 19, Donna Haig Friedman, director of the Center for Social Policy, was interviewed for a WBUR feature on recent state budget and policy decisions impacting the growth in family homelessness in the state.

Carol Hardy-Fanta, director of the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy, provided commentary on the gubernatorial election that was featured in the Boston Herald on August 29 and the Metrowest Daily News on September 6. She appeared on WGBH’s “Greater Boston with Emily Rooney” on September 13.

Avery Faigenbaum, associate professor of exercise science and physical education, was featured in the cover story, “Strength Exercises Aren’t Just for Adults Any More: Tykes in Training,” in the August issue of BioMechanics.

Dick Hogarty, professor emeritus, was interviewed about his new book, Massachusetts Politics and Public Policy, on WBZ-TV for “The John Henning Show” on September 15. The book was published by UMass Press.

Peter Janson of the Music Department received positive reviews from Worcester Magazine, New Age Retailer, NAPRA ReView, Taunton Daily Gazette, and The Instrumental Weekly for his CD “Sometimes from Here.”

Michelle Kahan, senior research associate with the Center for Social Policy, was quoted in a September 8 Boston Globe article on the use of food stamps by Massachusetts residents. The article highlighted a Center for Social Policy report released on September 6, commissioned by Project Bread.

Askold Melnyczuk, director of the Creative Writing Program, published an op-ed, “The Consequences of Survival,” in the Boston Globe on September 9.

Andres Torres, director of the Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy, published an editorial on Latino voters in the Boston Globe on June 1.

The inauguration of Chancellor Jo Ann Gora as sixth chancellor received media coverage by the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and WBZ-TV 4 on September 26, 27, and 28.

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