Washington College Magazine
Faculty/Staff Achievements
Joshua Wolf Shenk's book, Lincoln's Melancholy, named an "Editor's Choice" at The New York Times Book Review and a best book of 2005 by the Washington Post, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the St. Louis Post Dispatch, has been released in paperback. Shenk is director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House.
Kevin Brien, professor of philosophy, traveled to Tunisia this summer to present his paper, "Two Bodhisattvas: Buddha and Marx," at the New Directions in the Humanities Congress. His paper, "Buddhismus," appeared in the book Marx-Glossar published by Edition Freitag, Berlin, and his paper, "Humanistic Marxism and the Transformation of Reason," appeared in the Indonesian journal Melintas. On October 12, 2006, he was interviewed about his book, Marx, Reason, and the Art of Freedom, on the Marc Steiner Show, WYPR 88.1 FM, Baltimore.
Peter Campion, assistant professor of English, published a review in The Boston Globe titled, "Harsh Light of Reality Heats Heaney's Poems."
Frank Creegan delivered a talk, "The POGIL Laboratory: Using Student-Generated Data to Teach Organic Chemistry," at the 232nd National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Franciso. This was his 22nd presentation on the POGIL (Process-Oriented Guided-Inquiry Learning) Project since Fall 2002 when the Science Foundation awarded him and his co-principal investigators $1.5 million to develop and disseminate guided-inquiry materials for chemistry classrooms and laboratories. In mid-October, NSF awarded an additional $1.9 million to the POGIL Project to continue its work through 2010, and $1.3 million to support four new POGIL-based initiatives.
Tom Cousineau, professor of English, presented the paper "Soleil Trompeur/Burnt by the Sun" at the Beckett et les Quatre Eléments conference hosted by the Université de Provence to mark the centenary of Samuel Beckett's birth.
Melissa Deckman, associate professor of political science, presented her paper "Cleavages, Camps, and Parties: Interest Group Affiliation in the Mass Public," at the American Political Science Association's Meeting in Philadelphia.
C.V. Starr Center Director Adam Goodheart's article on the renovation and the reopening of the U.S. Patent Office, "Back to the Future," appeared in the July 2006 issue of Smithsonian. His article "Seasons of Smoke"—about Great Smoky Mountains National Park—was published in the August 2006 issue of National Geographic.
Meredith Davies Hadaway was a featured author at the annual "In Celebration of Books," hosted by Gunston School in Centreville, MD. She has three new poems appearing in the Fall/Winter issue of Poet Lore, as well as work forthcoming in The California Quarterly and Spillway.
Hugh Jarrard, assistant professor of biology, served as chair and organizer for the symposium, "Physiology of Olfactory and Chemosensory Communication in Fish: From Mechanisms to Behavior," held at the VII International Congress on the Biology of Fishes, in St. Johns, Newfoundland. At the same conference he also presented the paper, "Impacts of the organophosphate malathion on olfactory behaviors and AChE activity in striped bass (Morone saxatilis)."
Charlie Kehm, assistant professor of physics and earth and planetary science, co-authored the paper, "Noble Gas Space Exposure Ages of Individual Interplanetary Dust Particles," for Meteoritics & Planetary Science.
A lecturer in English and director of the college's journalism intern program, John Lang published an OP/ED in The Baltimore Sun, "President Bush could learn a lot from Sun Tzu," which appeared September 13, 2006.
Austin Lobo, associate professor of mathematics and computer science, served as co-chair of the Posters and Software Exhibitions Committee for the International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computing (ISSAC 2006) held in Genova, Italy. He also served on a Theoretical Foundations (TF) Cluster Review Panel in Computer Science for the National Foundation.
Anne Marteel-Parrish, assistant professor of chemistry, attended the 10th Annual Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference in Washington, DC, and gave a talk on her research titled "Towards a more environmentally benign synthesis of a doped perovskite, barium titanate."
James Martin, assistant professor of German, presented the paper, "Disjunction and Dysfunction in Christoph Ransmayr's 'The Dog King,'" at the Modern Austrian Literature and Culture Association's annual conference.
Donald McColl, associate professor of art history, presented two talks this past summer: "Sign of the Times (Then and Now): The Cleveland Marbles," given at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, DC, and "Drowning Hosts, Drowning Jews," presented at the Annual Convention of the Renaissance Society of America.
Wendy Miller, Geographic Information Systems program coordinator, presented an invited paper, "GIS at a Liberal Arts College: Community Inspired Projects," at the ESRI Education User Conference in San Diego. She was one of four attendees awarded the Tele Atlas/EdUC scholarship. She also defended her dissertation, "Comparison of Methodological Approaches to Identify Features in the Natural Environment," to earn a doctorate in geography with a certificate in geographic information science from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Kate Moncrief, assistant professor of English, has signed a contract for her book, Performing Maternity in Early Modern England. The book is forthcoming from Ashgate Press in 2007. She and Jeff Chaffin, director of public services for the Miller Library, were invited speakers and co-presenters of the paper, "O Brave New World: Text and Technology in Early Modern English Literature Courses," at the Bringing Text Alive: Future of Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Electronic Publication Conference in Ann Arbor, MI.
Lisa Noetzel, assistant professor of Spanish, served as chair and presenter for the Syntax and Morphology Session, "Spanish NPs and 'Default' Case," at the AATSP Conference, in Salamanca, Spain, July 2006. She also presented the paper, "El caso abstracto en inglés y en español," at the IV Congreso de la Asociación hispánica de humanidades, Madrid, Spain, June 2006.
Sean O Connor, professor of education, presented the paper, "Teaching and Promoting Interaction: What We Think Do and Do—Holding A Mirror Up To Our Teaching, or Seeing Ourselves as Others See Us," at the WACRA (World Association for Case Study Research and Application) Annual Conference in Brisbane, Australia. He also presented his paper and conducted a workshop, "Learning Pathways—How Do Individuals Learn? Meeting of New and Old Roads: Knowledge Creation Technology (KCT)." Along with several Washington College students—Timothy Kerr '06, Leslie Meredith '06, Ronald Young '06, and Kimberly Boughan '04—he presented "Bridging The Gap—Teaching Academies: In between the College Classroom and the Teaching Internship, a Practical Imperative," at the ATE (Association of Teacher Educators) Annual Conference in Atlanta, GA.
Andrew Oros, assistant professor of political science and international studies, presented two conference papers on Japan's recent security policies to the annual meeting of the Association of Asian Studies Japan in Tokyo and to a workshop on the changing nature of risk perception in developed states at the East-West Center in Honolulu. He also briefed future diplomats at the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Service Institute about recent trends in Japanese politics and foreign policy, and was quoted in the Tokyo Shimbun about recent Japanese security politics.
Howard Ponzer, assistant professor of philosophy, presented the paper, "The Place of the Analytic in Hegel's Dialectic," at the 1st International Hegel Workshop held at the University of Cologne in Germany. He also presented his paper, "Hegel's Speculative Idealism: Return to Realism," at the Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World at Western Carolina University.
Joshua Wolf Shenk, director of the College's Rose O'Neill Literary House, took part in an authors' discussion of the "Anatomy of Melancholy" at Cooper Union's Great Hall in New York City in October. Shenk is the author of The New York Times Notable Book, Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness. He shared the stage with Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. Earlier this fall, he was interviewed on Baltimore's WYPR 88.1 FM radio's weekly program, "The Signal," regarding Lincoln's Melacholy.
Leslie Sherman, assistant professor of chemistry, was a co-author of the article "Arsenic contamination in the soils and sediments of Zimapan, Mexico," published in the journal Environmental Pollution.
Karen Smith, professor of physical education, presented the paper, "From The Village To Theater: Shaping traditional dance for the concert venue," at the World Dance Alliance Global Assembly held at York University in Toronto, Canada, in July.
Aileen Tsui, assistant professor of art, had her article, "Phantasm of Aesthetic Autonomy in Whistler's Work: Titling The White Girl," published in the June 2006 issue of Art History.
Susan Vowels, assistant professor of business management, presented her paper, "Space Enhanced: An Interdisciplinary Look at a Parking Garage," at the 18th Annual Conference on Systems Research, Informatics, and Cybernetics in Baden-Baden, Germany. Her paper will be published in the proceedings of the conference,
Michele Volansky, assistant professor of drama, discussed drama and the relationship between artist and audience on WHYY 91 FM radio in Philadelphia.
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