Faculty/Staff News of Note
December 2004
Several speech communication faculty members attended the National Communication Meeting in Chicago November 11-14: Dr. Colleen Kelley, Cathy Sargent Mester, Dr. Miriam McMullen-Pastrick, and Dr. Rod Troester.
Dr. Colleen Kelley, associate professor in speech communication, presented "Heroism or Hubris: Deconstructing a Protofascist Justification for War." She also presented "Waging Peace and Fighting for Justice in Cyberspace: Adversarial Rhetorical Strategies of MoveOn.org," which she co-authored with Dr. Rod Troester.
Cathy Sargent Mester, senior lecturer in speech communication, presented "Civil Language: The Challenge of Unlearning Old Habits" as part of a panel titled "The Culture of Conflict."
Dr. Rod Troester, associate professor of speech communication, received an award from the Peace Communication and Conflict Resolution Division of NCA in recognition of his years of service to that group.
Dr. Syed Saad Andaleeb, professor of marketing, presented a paper titled "When Doctors Fail: Perspectives on Healthcare Services in Bangladesh" to students and faculty at Cornell University November 29. His presentation was invited by Cornell's South Asia Program.
Dr. Michael Christofferson, assistant professor of history, had his article, "French Intellectuals and the Repression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956: The Politics of a Protest Reconsidered," published in After the Deluge: New Perspectives on the Intellectual and Cultural History of Postwar France. The book was edited by Julian Bourg and published by Lexington Books.
Dr. John Fizel, professor of economics and director of the Penn State Online MBA, attended the annual conference of the Southern Economic Association in New Orleans held November 21-23. He presented two papers at the conference: "Arbitration Decisions: Individual Arbitrators vs. Arbitrator Panels;" and "Athlete Endorsement Contracts: The Impact of Conventional Stars." The latter was co-authored with former Behrend faculty members Chris McNeil and Tim Smaby.
George Looney and Dr. Tom Noyes, assistant professors of English and creative writing, presented "The Primacy of the Sentence in Compressed Fiction and the Prose Poem" at the Mid-American Review's Winter Wheat Literary Festival and Conference, held November 13 at Bowling Green University.
Dr. Roger Knacke, director of the School of Science and professor of physics and astronomy, recently had an article published in Volume 128 of The Astronomical Journal. The article, titled "Near-Infrared Observations of KH 15D Through the 2003 February Eclipse," was co-authored by Sergio Fajardo-Acosta and A.K. Tokunaga.
Dr. Kenneth K.T. Louie, associate professor of business and senior research associate with the Economic Research Institute of Erie, was interviewed recently by Zhao Renfeng of the China Daily on the effect of new U.S. tax laws on China. His interview resulted in stories in the China Daily, the China Business Weekly, and Chinagate.com.
Dr. Christine Mangone, lecturer in theatre, taught students and theatre faculty a workshop titled "Theatre Productions: Creating the Ideal Ensemble" at the New England Theatre Conference. The conference was held November 12 in Portland, Maine.
On November 19, at the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), in Las Vegas, Mangone also presented a paper titled "Disney on Broadway: The Spectacle Beyond the Performance." This paper has also been requested for use at New York University in a business management class.
A book co-edited by Dr. Jeff Pinto, Andrew Morrow and Elizabeth Lee Black Chair in Management Technology, and D.P. Slevin and D.I. Cleland of the University of Pittsburgh, is due for release this month. The book, titled Innovations: Project Management Research 2004, is published by the Project Management Institute.
Dr. Clare Porac, professor of psychology, attended the 45th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society in Minneapolis, Minnesota, November 18-21. While there she presented a paper titled "Alterations in Muller-Lyer illusion magnitude with functional fovea placement changes." The co-author of this presentation was Dr. Alan Searleman, professor of psychology at St. Lawrence University.
Dr. Robert Roecklein, lecturer in English, presented "Thomas Hobbes' Theory of Equality as It Appears in 'De Cive'" at the Northeast Political Science Association annual meeting, held November 11-13 in Boston, Massachusetts. He also served as chair/discussant for the panel on "Religion and Political Philosophy."
Dr. Pam Silver, associate professor of biology, has accepted the position of managing editor of the Journal of the North American Benthological Society. Her duties begin in June 2005.
Dr. Darren Williams, associate professor of physics and astronomy, attended the American Astronomical Society Division of Planetary Sciences Meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, November. 10-12. While there he gave a talk on "Specular Reflection of Starlight off Distant Planetary Oceans."
Also while in Louisville, he gave an outreach talk to 100 students on the Mars rover missions and the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn at Desalle High School.
Dr. Leigh-Ann Bedal, lecturer in anthropology, presented "The Petra Garden and Pool Complex," a report on last summer's archaeological excavation in Jordan, at the annual meetings of the American School of Oriental Research. The meetings were held November 19 in San Antonio, Texas. Three Behrend student, Kristin Dressner, Allison Dzuricky, and Mathew Peters, participated in the 2004 field season.
Ron DelPorto, lecturer in computer science, Carla Torgerson, director of the Center for Teaching and Educational Technologies, and Stephanie Janson, educational consultant in the Center for Teaching and Educational Technologies, attended the 2004 Lilly Conference on College Teaching at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, from November 18-21. While there, DelPorto, Torgerson, and Janson presented a session titled "Using Active Problem Solving to Teach Computer Science."
Dr. Victoria Kazmerski, associate professor of psychology, and Linda Fanning, a recent Behrend alumna, completed the first phase of an assessment of the implementation of a new science curriculum in the elementary schools of Millcreek Township School District. Kazmerski and Glenn McKnight, the chairman of the science department for K-5 in Millcreek presented the results of this study, "Assessing long-term effectiveness of hands-on elementary science" at the Pennsylvania Science Teachers Association conference in Hershey, PA.
Dr. Al Warner, assistant professor of management, recently attended the annual conference for the Institute of Behavioral and Applied Management. The conference was held October 22-24 in Providence, Rhode Island. While there, he presented "An Egg-centric Approach to Teaching Strategic Types." He was also named an outstanding reviewer for this conference.
He later attended the Southern Management Association Conference, held November 3-5 in San Antonio, Texas, where he presented "Acquisition Timing in a Standards-based Industry: The effects of technical and acquisition experience." This paper is co-authored by Dr. James Fairbank, assistant professor of management.
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