In Brief

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Faculty/Staff

Diane Bates, associate professor of sociology and anthropology, and Dave Harker ’05 co-authored a paper, “The Black Bear Hunt in New Jersey: A Constructionist Analysis of an Intractable Conflict,” which was published in the October issue of Society & Animals. Harker, who was lead author on the article, is working toward his PhD in Sociology at Boston College.

Dan Crofts, professor of history, contributed a review of two books, Middle Tennesse Society Transformed, 1860–1870: War and Peace in the Upper South and A Separate Civil War: Communities in Conflict in the Mountain South, to the October 2007 issue of Journal of Military History.

Jeffery Erickson, assistant professor of biology, was lead author on a paper, “Arrest of 5HT neuron differentiation delays respiratory maturation and impairs neonatal homeostatic responses to environmental challenges,” which was published in the October issue of Respiratory Physiology & Neurobiology.

The Philadelphia Chapter of Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) announced that Jacob C. Farbman, adjunct professor of communication studies, won the 2007 Anthony Fulginiti Outstanding Public Relations Educator Award. The award honors an individual who helps shape future PR professionals through their contributions in the classroom or PRSA. Greg Howe ’06, currently a graduate student at Rowan University, nominated Farber for the award.

Robert Guarino, associate professor of music, was the tenor soloist   for a performance at Carnegie Hall of Johann Sebastian Bach's “Christmas Oratorio” on Friday, December 7. Robert was recently praised in The Newark Star Ledger for his imaginative production of TCNJ Lyric Theatre's production of Henry Purcell's “Dido and Aeneas.”

Leona Harris, assistant professor of mathematics and statistics, was co-chair of the recent Infinite Possibilities Conference, which was held November 2–3 at North Carolina State University. The purpose of this conference was to promote, educate, encourage and support minority women interested in mathematical and statistical sciences. Harris was accompanied to the conference by Gina-Maria Pomann, a TCNJ mathematics major.

Jinmo Huang and John Allison, associate professor and professor of chemistry, respectively, presented research seminars at the Eastern Analytical Symposium at the Garden State Convention Center on November 12–15, 2007.  Huang’s presentation was titled, “Determination of homocysteine using capillary electrophoresis” and Allison's presentation was called, “Analysis of Pigments in Pen Inks and Automotive Coatings by Laser Desorption Mass Spectrometry.”

Janet Morrison of the biology department participated in a roundtable discussion at Bryn Mawr College with four other ecologists from the area and a program officer from the National Science Foundation on November 16. The purpose of that event was to examine NSF’s role in funding faculty research at undergraduate institutions. The following day, Morrison presented a talk to the Delaware Valley Fern and Wildflower Society at the group’s semi-annual meeting. The title of that lecture was “The Impact of Invasive Species on Native Plants.”

David Reimer, associate professor of the mathematics and statistics at The College of New Jersey, presented a talk on the mathematics of Ancient Egypt. The talk took place on Wednesday, November 14, and was sponsored by the TCNJ Astronomy Club & Physics Department.

Barbara K. Strassman, professor of deaf education, co-authored an article, “Authoring With Video,” which appears in the December 2007 issue of The Reading Teacher. She also co-authored a related series of lesson plans on the use of captioning technology to increase student engagement in writing. These publications were an outgrowth of her US Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs grant awarded to WGBH, public television of Boston.

Suriza van der Sandt, assistant professor of mathematics and statistics, along with Beth Johnson of the University of South Carolina, spoke on November 28.  Their topic was “The Effects of Math Anxiety on the Self-Efficacy of Pre-Service K-5 Teachers.”

Michele Lise Tarter, associate professor of English, spoke at the 40th Annual Training Convention of New Jersey Public Defenders in Atlantic City in September. She spoke to a group of over 300 public defenders about her memoir-writing program for women inmates, ongoing for seven years in the maximum-security wing of the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women. In October, Michele also spoke about her program to hundreds of educators, activists, released and exonerated prisoners, poets, scholars, and students at the ABC Literacy Conference in Princeton.

Chamont Wang, professor of mathematics and statistics, spoke on “Data Mining and Hot-spot Detection for Business Applications on November 28. This talk first presented a number of gems in the mining of business data. Then, a case study that involves 1.4 million cases, 14 predictors and a binary response variable was discussed. Special attention was placed on the marginal effect, response surface, and variable importance scores of the Neural Network model. Finally, the talk discussed the use of charts and simple statistics in a highly efficient way to extract useful information from very complicated data sets.

Alan Waterman, professor of psychology, published the article “Doing Well: The Relationship of Identity Status to Three Conceptions of Well-Being” in the October issue of “Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research.” Alan served as organizing editor for the special October issue, and also is currently editor in chief of the journal through 2010. 

Thulsi Wickramasinghe was invited by the Inter-University Center for Astrophysics in Pune, India, to present his findings on gamma-ray bursts as cosmological tools in astrophysics this December. In his presentation, he is proposing that gamma-ray bursts can be used to measure the global geometrical properties of the universe. In January, Thulsi and his student, junior physics major Justin Nieusma, will present a paper to the International Conference on Microlensing in the Jodrell Bank Observatory in England at the University of Manchester. They will report their findings on microlensing toward the galactic bar due to white  dwarfs in the disk of the Milky Way. Their presentation is titled “Is the Microlensing Toward the Galactic Bulge Bimodal?”.  While in England, Thulsi will travel to Oxford to participate in discussions with colleagues in archeoastronomy.

Jean Wong, associate professor in the Department of Special Education, Language, and Literacy, was an invited speaker at Columbia University, Teachers College last June. The title of her talk was “Connecting Conversation Analysis with Applied Linguistics: What is the Payoff in the 10-Year Debate? “ Jean also presented a paper at the 10th International Pragmatics Association Conference held in Goteborg, Sweden, in July. Her talk was titled “Conversation Analysis as a Resource in Language Pedagogy.”

Professor of Communication Studies Gary C. Woodward presented the paper “A Kind of Social Intelligence: A Preliminary Conceptual Map of the Rhetorical Personality” on November 16 at the National Communication Association in Chicago. This initial study has also been published online by the Hall Institute of Public Policy in New Jersey, and is part of a new and expanding project to “map” the rhetorical and psychological traits of leaders who thrive in the public forum.

Professor and Department of Modern Languages Co-chair Simona Wright and Assistant Provost Karen Jenkins will present at the 25th Annual Academic Chairpersons Conference in Orlando, FL, February 6-8, 2008.  The title of their presentation is “Internationalizing the Curriculum: The Role of the Chairperson.”

Students

Lemor Bar-or, senior elementary education and sociology double major, Caitlin Bonner, senior special education major, and Kelly Halldorson, senior elementary education and history double major, co-presented a paper with Suriza van der Sandt, assistant professor of mathematics, at the annual two day conference of the Association of Mathematics Teachers of New Jersey in Somerset, NJ.

Ryan Biczo, junior chemistry major, and Alex Fuchs, sophomore biology major, under the research mentorship of assistant professor of chemistry, Donald Hirsch, made poster presentations at the 10th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium in the Chemical and Biological Sciences. The symposium was sponsored by Procter and Gamble and the National Institutes of Health (NIGMS) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, on October 13, 2007.

Beta Beta Beta, the national biology honors society, presented senior biology majors Ermal Bojdani and Joshua Schoenfeld with Fellowships for research projects the two had done. Josh's research was under the guidance of Amanda Norvell and Ermal worked with Janet Morrison. The students will use the funds for future research and travel to scientific conferences.

For the third year in a row, TCNJ communication studies students have won the Stephen Smith award for best co-authored student paper in the nation at the annual conference of the National Communication Association (NCA), held November 15–18 in Chicago. Titled “Nationwide Newspaper Coverage of Global Warming: A Community Structure Approach”, the paper was co-authored by seniors Rowena Briones, Dana Ricci, Danielle Catona, Brian Keefe, and Molly Lloyd, and junior Lauren Moreno. The students received the award personally from the University of Arkansas’ Stephen A. Smith. In addition, senior Joshua Wright was elected national vice president of Lambda Pi Eta, the national communication student honor society, the 12th TCNJ student elected to one of the society’s national offices since 1996. With over 2,000 members, the NCA is the largest association of communication scholars in the United States.

The paper “Nationwide Coverage of Islam in the Fourth and Fifth Years after 9/11: A Community Structure Approach,” by seniors Connor Buttner, Victoria Cullen, and Jason Katz won a Top Three paper award for communication on religious issues when presented at the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication (AEJMC) last August in Washington, DC.

Keith Chomsky, senior chemistry and Spanish double major, under the research mentorship of Professor of Chemistry David Hunt, gave a presentation at the Bristol Meyers Squibb Student Research Symposium on October 12, 2007 in Princeton, NJ. Chomsky's research is entitled “Halogen-Metal Exchange Reactions of Bromoaryl-substituted beta-Lactams.”

Overall, more refereed papers were accepted for presentation at the National Communication Association  (NCA) conference from TCNJ students (five in total) than were accepted from any other college or university. In addition to the “Global Warming” paper mentioned above, these papers included “Cross-National Coverage of Intervention in Darfur: A Community Structure Approach,” by seniors Victoria Cullen and Amber Palmer, junior Adam Mamawala, and Thomas Hipper ’07, who is now in the master’s program in health communication at Penn State; “Nationwide Newspaper Coverage of Plan B (The Emergency Contraceptive Pill): A Community Structure Approach,” by seniors Stephanie Berzinski  and Rachel Bloch,   and Lauren Wanko ’07; “Nationwide Newspaper Coverage of Abortion: A Community Structure Approach,” by senior Brigitte McNamara and Brittany Hammer ’07 and Jillian Nash ’07 (Hammer is studying for a master’s in media studies at Texas–Austin, and Nash is studying for a master’s in communication at the University of Delaware); “Cross-National Coverage of Stigma and HIV/AIDS: A Community Structure Approach,” by seniors Jason A. Katz and Cora Berchem and Amanda Walzer ’07.

Senior Mathematics major Michael Davidoff gave his capstone presentation in mathematics on Tuesday, December 11. Michael spoke on “Units and Primes in Z[sqrt(p)],” which will extend our notion of prime numbers to other number fields. It is his goal to be able to establish if a number in Z[sqrt(p)] is prime or not just by looking at its norm, which he will define.

Senior political science majors Joseph Hassell and Alicia Polkowksi reached the quarterfinals of the American Collegiate Moot Court Association regional tournament held Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 at Fitchburg State College in Fitchburg, MA. By reaching the quaterfinals, they qualified for the national ACMCA tournament, which will be held January 18 and 19 at Drake University School of Law in Des Moines, IA. Joe and Alicia won all three of their matches on the first day of the tournament and also won their first match on the second day (the round of 16) to reach the quarterfinals, where they lost to a very strong team from Patrick Henry College. This was the first year TCNJ competed in the tournament.

Senior international studies major Joleen Ong’s short film about the roots of the Fair Trade campaign at TCNJ won the top prize in a contest sponsored by Trans Fair USA, Joleen won a trip to Peru to visit Fair Trade farms. Her video can be seen here www.connectwithfairtrade.org  or http://joleenong.blip.tv.

Christina Timmes, senior elementary education/history major, was the exhibit curator of “World War I: The War to End All Wars” exhibit by the Ewing Township Historic Preservation Society. The exhibit took place on December 2 at the Benjamin Temple House in Ewing and featured local memorabilia and history from WWI to commemorate those who fought to keep the nation free.