IN BRIEF

Faculty and Staff 

David Blake, associate professor of English, participated in an hour-long radio program on Walt Whitman that aired on WNYC, New York Public Radio, November 24, 26, and 27. Other guests participating in the discussion included composer John Adams, novelist Michael Cunningham, Puerto Rican poet Martín Espada, choreographer Bill T. Jones, Whitman scholar Karen Karbiener, and writer Phillip Lopate. WNYC is the most listened to public radio station in the country.

Cynthia Curtis, associate professor of mathematics, has co-authored a paper with H.U. Boden, titled “The SL_2Casson Invariant for Seifert Fibered Homology Spheres and Surgeries on Twisted Knots,” and is to be published in The Journal of Knot Theory and its Ramifications.  Another paper by Cynthia entitled “Fields Institute Communications” was published in December by the American Mathematical Society.

Harold W. Eickhoff, distinguished professor of humanities and president of the College from 1980 to 1998, was been elected to the board of directors of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. Harold has served on the American Council  on Higher Education (ACE)  and was an advisor/mentor in ACE’s Office for Women. He also headed the board of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. For a time he served as chief operating officer at Zayed University, a women’s institution in the United Arab Emirates, and has travelled extensively in China.  

Christopher Fisher, assistant professor of African-American studies and history, was awarded the Student Life Faculty Award at the Feast of the Golden Lion, an annual event held to honor outstanding students, student organizations, faculty, and staff who constantly contribute to the advancement of the College.

Tom Hagedorn, associate professor of mathematics, has had a new paper titled “Zeros of a Real Linear Recurrence of Degree at Least Four” published in C.R. Rep. Academy of Science of Canada. Tom also was an invited speaker at this month’s annual meeting of the American Mathematical Society in San Antonio, TX, where he and Karen Clark, assistant professor of mathematics, presented a poster describing their work developing software models for teaching linear algebra.

Lincoln Konkle, associate professor of English, was appointed executive director of the Thornton Wilder Society in November 2005, which means TCNJ has become the official home of the society. In his new role, Linc will maintain the society’s Web site, financial accounts, and membership rolls; edit society publications (Wilder/FYIs and the annual newsletter); and organize Wilder panels at the annual American Literature Association Conference. Long-term plans include establishing a Wilder scholarship prize and holding an international Wilder conference on campus. Linc’s new book, Thornton Wilder and the Puritan Narrative Tradition, was published this month by the University of Missouri Press and carries a glowing recommendation on the back cover by American playwright Edward Albee.

Miroslav Martinovic, associate professor of computer science, recently presented some results of his information retrieval research at two workshops in Europe. In July, he spoke at a meeting in Split, Croatia, presenting two papers. One was co-authored by Louis Rofrano ’05, a computer science major, and introduced a new algorithm for transforming word inflections into their root form in a variety of languages, thereby simplifying the operation of an informational retrieval system. At the same workshop, Miroslav presented a two-day tutorial on open domain question-answering systems. In September, he presented a paper at the 8th International Conference on Speech, Text and Dialogue in Carlsbad, Czech Republic. The paper, “AARLISS – an Algorithm for Anaphora Resolution in Long-Distance Inter-Sentenial Scenarios,” was co-authored by TCNJ computer science majors Anthony Curley ’06 and John Gaskins’05.  The algorithm assists in clarifying the antecedent of a pronoun in a text with several sentences.  

Janet Morrison, associate professor of biology, was invited to participate in a federal interagency meeting of principal investigators in invasive species grants funded by the United States Department of Agriculture, National Science Foundation, and Environmental Protection Agency. The sessions were held in Washington, D.C., Sep. 17 and 18. Janet’s grant is supported by the Biology of Weedy and Invasive Species Program of the USDA, and her presentation dealt with “Escape from Disease: Its role in Broomsedge Invasiveness and Weediness.” The main purpose of the meeting was to help the funding agencies promote invasive species research so basic science, applied science, and resource management achieve greater connection.

Carole Shagon, adjunct professor of writing, was included in the Ninth Edition of Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers in 2004 and 2005. Carole also serves as a clinical hematology scientist at Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington.

Felicia Steele, assistant professor of English, will participate in an evening-long centenary symposium celebrating the work of the late Henry Roth, a giant among American novelists, and supporting the establishment of the Henry Roth Memorial Scholarship Fund at The City College of New York. The event will be held at the New York Public Library, 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, Tuesday, Feb. 7 from 5:30 to 9 p.m. Felicia worked with Roth from 1989 to 1998 and, after his death in 1995, for Robert Weil, Roth’s editor during the completion of Roth’s four-volume series, Mercy of a Rude Stream. Felicia is one of 11 writers, editors and associates of Roth taking part in two discussion panels.

Joseph Sullivan, director of facilities, has been named a member of Governor Jon Corzine’s Energy Policy Group. The group, whose 16 members were drawn from the private sector, higher education, law, and environmental policy, will identify critical energy issues in the state and propose budgetary and policy recommendations for the first six months of the Corzine administration. The project is expected to be completed by the end of January. Joe has worked at the College for six years and is serving a second two-year appointment on New Jersey’s Clean Energy Council, a division of the New Jersey State Board of Public Utilities. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics, with a minor in engineering from Wilkes University.

Morton Winston, professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion, was an invited panelist for a conference held on December 7 at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C. The topic of his panel was "NGOs and TNCs: Beyond Confrontation?" and his paper dealt with examples of successful collaborations between human rights nongovernmental organizations and transnational corporations in the extractive industries.

Students

Karen McCready, a senior mathematics major, presented a paper she co-authored at the national joint meeting of the American Mathematics Society and Mathematics Association of America on January 15 in San Antonio, TX. Titled "Generalizing Kirk-Livingston Type 1 Link Invariants," the paper was co-authored by Matthias L. Youngs, a student at SUNY-Geneseo. Last summer the two attended the Research Experience for Undergraduates at Lafayette College. During the fall 2005 semester, Karen attended the Mathematics Advanced Study Semester program at Penn State University.  Only a dozen math majors from U.S. colleges are invited to participate in this program.