In Brief

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Campus News

In celebration of the life and contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the College sponsored a Week of Service from January 21–25, during which time a number of TCNJ students, staff, and faculty volunteered at local non-profit organizations. Reverend Dawn Adamy of Campus Ministries; Matthew Golden, director of communications and media relations in the Office of Public Affairs; Ron Golan (senior, biology); and Lauren Hering (senior, psychology/chemistry) tutored at at Hedgepeth-Williams Middle School in Trenton. Christian Toatley (junior, political science), Kimberly Carrar (freshman, civil engineering), Lynette Barnes (junior, psychology), and Liz Hannah (freshman, psychology/English) tutored at Trenton Central High School. Colette Shalhoub (freshman, accounting), Hannah Surowitz (sophomore, psychology), and Malorie Meshkati (sophomore, biology) volunteered at Visitation Home, a shared home in Yardville for people with developmental disabilities. Nancy Sai (junior, English) worked at El Centro, a multi-service family resource and community-building program in Trenton. Karen Paterson, program assistant, and Emily Weiss ’03, communications officer for media relations, both from the Office of Public Affairs, volunteered at Habitat for Humanity.

At the College’s third annual Governance Reception on Wednesday, January 30,John Karsnitz, professor and chair of technology studies; Joanne Popowski, director of math and science enhancement services; and Lauren Russo (senior, nursing), all pictured at left, were honored for their contributions to the College's governance system.

Faculty and Staff

Robert Anderson, assistant provost; Glenn Steinberg, associate professor of English; and Patrick Donohue, director of the Bonner Center, presented on “Connecting Intellectual Growth and Civic Engagement through the First Year Experience” at the 14th National Students in Transition Conference in Cincinnati in November 2007.

English professors David Blake and Michael Robertson have edited Walt Whitman, Where the Future Becomes Present, a book which is due out in April. The 10 essays in this volume come from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass: The Sesquicenntenial Symposium, which took place on campus in September 2005. Blake commented that “The book is a wonderful testament to all that TCNJ did for Whitman studies during the sesquicentennial of Leaves of Grass." (See below for information about the publication of Robertson's Worshipping Walt: The Whitman Disciples, which will also be published in April.)

For the second year, the Board of Governors of the National Conferences on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) and the Trustees of the Alice and Leslie E. Lancy Foundation have awarded TCNJ a competitive grant toward undergraduate research to examine community and environmental transitions in metropolitan Trenton. Following on the $40,000 received in 2007, this year's $21,500 grant will expand the project to fund stipends for students to do summer research and to present their work at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research in Spring 2009. Co-directors Elizabeth Borland and Diane Bates of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology will lead an interdisciplinary team that includes Martin Bierbaum, director of the Municipal Land Use Center; Curt Elderkin, assistant professor of biology; David Prensky, associate professor of business; Antonino Scarpati, assistant dean of the School of Nursing, Health, and Exercise Science; and other faculty. More information about the project can be found at www.tcnj.edu/~trenton.

Associate Professor of Sociology Tim Clydesdale’s book The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens After High School (University of Chicago Press, 2007), about the how the lives of college freshmen are focused around daily life management rather than intellectual enlightenment, was the feature of an article on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Web site in late January.

Leona Harris, assistant professor of mathematics and statistics, presented a talk titled “Modeling the Fate and Transport of a Common Household Chemical in the Body Following Oral Exposure,” on February 6 at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina.

TCNJ’s Upsilon Psi chapter of Sigma Delta Pi, the National Collegiate Hispanic Honor Society, was named recipient of this year’s Frida Kahlo Award by the society’s executive council. Founded in 2006 and named after a renowned 20th-century Mexican artist, the Frida Kahlo Award is presented annually to a chapter for its outstanding Web site. Selection is based upon the Web site’s information, navigability, appearance, innovation and current maintenance. TCNJ’s chapter was selected the best out of the 547 chapters of Sigma Delta Pi. Tulia Jiménez-Vergara, conversation hour coordinator in the Department of Modern Languages, serves as the adviser of the Upsilon Psi chapter. The Web site can be found here: http://cgi.tcnj.edu/~sigmapi/sdp/index.php.

At the North East Association for Institutional Research conference in New Brunswick in November 2007, Paula Maas, director of assessment in the Office of Institutional Research, presented, to a standing-room-only crowd, her competitively selected paper, “‘One Question/One Answer’—A Method For Organizing And Encouraging Student Learning Outcomes Assessment,” which provided an overview of the process by which TCNJ started a formal student learning outcomes assessment initiative, our current framework, future plans, and lessons learned. The paper has since been accepted for publication in the Conference Proceedings. Also at that conference, Paula and Jason Schweitzer ’02, research analyst in the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment, presented a competitively selected paper titled, “Student Withdrawal Study at a Highly Selective Public Four Year College.” That paper compared the undergraduate withdrawal rates of incoming transfer students to first-time, full-time freshmen and examined such variables as admission type, academic major, reason for withdrawal, and residency.

Staff members from the College’s Municipal Land Use Center will be on hand February 29 to assist with the New Jersey Future's Redevelopment Forum, a full day of workshops targeted at local leaders, citizen activists, and professionals interested in strengthening their communities through good planning and high-quality redevelopment. The forum will be held at the Hyatt Hotel and Conference Center in New Brunswick. More information is available at www.njfuture.org.

Anne Marie Nicolosi, associate professor of history/gender studies, gave a talk, “The Most Beautiful Suffragette: Inez Milholland and the Political Currency of Beauty,” at the 23rd annual meeting of the Alice Paul Institute on January 13.

Assistant Professor of Art Liselot van der Heijden was curator of the Dress Code exhibition, which was held January 10 through February 9 at the LMAK Projects Art Gallery in New York City’s Chelsea district. The exhibition, which first showed in the College Art Gallery last year, emphasized the social and emotional impact of clothing.

Nagesh Rao, assistant professor of English, delivered a talk titled “Globalization and the Politics of Genre: The Essays of Arundhati Roy,” to campus on January 31.

In his transatlantic group biography of Walt Whitman, Worshipping Walt: The Whitman Disciples, due out in April, Professor of English Michael Robertson explores the highly charged connections between Whitman and his followers. Worshipping Walt presents a colorful portrait of an era of intense religious, political, and sexual passions, shedding new light on why Whitman’s work continues to appeal to so many.

On February 29, the Small Business Development Center at TCNJ will host “Boomers and Beyond: Work Matters Over 60.” The program will include networking and panel discussions showcasing the turnabout of retirement for economic benefits. Full details are available at www.tcnj.edu/~sbdc/.

Students

Three students had their proposals accepted for the 2008 Mid-Atlantic Writing Centers Association Conference, to be held April 12 at Temple University. Trista Altstadt (senior, English/secondary education) and Alison King (sophomore, English/secondary education) will hold a workshop titled “Developing Independence and Freedom in Revision through Tutor-led In-class Peer Responding Groups.” Diane Gruenberg, director of the Humanities and Social Science Enhancement Center, will assist them. Rachel Scupp (sophomore, English) and Harriet Hustis, associate professor of English, will present a paper titled “An Emersonian Approach to the College Thesis: A Writing Fellow’s Work Bridging the Gap Between High School and College Writing.”

Autumn Breese, a junior computer science major, was awarded an all-expenses-paid trip to the 2008 Google Workshop for Women Engineers, which rewards deserving female students in computer science and inspires them to become active participants and leaders in creating technology. Breese was selected because of here academic excellence, her leadership in the computing field, her GPA, and a project proposal essay that she submitted. The workshop will be held February 21–23 at Googleplex in Mountain View, CA, in conjunction with Celebration of National Engineers' Week and Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day.

Brendan Kelly, a senior mathematics major, won a cash prize for his poster at the Joint Mathematics Meetings of the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematics Association of America, the main research and teaching societies for mathematics in the country. Brendan's poster, “Investigating the Algebraic Structure of Zero-Divisor Graphs,” was one of 171 entries, from which 37 awards were given. The content of the poster is the result of research done by Brendan, in collaboration with Elizabeth Wilson, during a Research Experience for Undergraduates last summer at Wabash College, Indiana. Mathematics REUs are intensive summer programs sponsored by the National Science Foundation and various colleges and universities. The Joint Mathematics Meetings were held at the San Diego Convention Center from January 6–9.

In December 2007, 14 TCNJ students took part in the Putnam Mathematics Competition. The Putnam, which began in 1938, is considered the most prestigious and challenging mathematics competition for undergraduate students in the nation. The six-hour examination consists of 12 mathematical problems that test originality as well as technical competence. The participating students were sophomore Glen Wilson (mathematics); juniors Scott Binski, (mathematics), Jeff Hatly (mathematics), Erica Messmer (mathematics), and Samuel Taylor (mathematics); and seniors Christopher Canik (mathematics/teaching), Elizabeth Connelly (mathematics), Michale Davidoff (mathematics), Brendan Kelly (mathematics), Theodore Moskalenko (computer engineering), Amanda Nappi (mathematics), Scott Steele (philosophy), Michael Stein (mathematics), and Robert W. Wilson (computer science). The students spent the fall semester preparing under Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics Qifu Zheng. Results from the test will be announced in March.

Jessica Wong (senior, psychology—biopsychology concentration) was named the recipient of the first Honors Program Outstanding Scholar award.

The cheerleading and dance teams recently competed in the 2008 Universal Cheer and Dance Association's National Championships in Orlando, Florida. The cheerleaders placed 4th amongst all-girl cheer squads. The dance team competed in two dance categories, hip-hop and jazz, and placed 8th and 10th respectively. Highlights from the competition can be seen on the Web at www.varsity.com and will be broadcast on ESPN2 in late spring.

The cheerleading team is made up of seniors Courtney LeBlon (captain) and Lauren Mosior (captain); juniors: Jaclyn Bain, Melissa Canfield, Michelle Fickas, Melissa Griglak, and Alexandra Reed; sophomores Rachel Scupp (captain), Stacie Batten, Jennifer Bennett, Shea Hutchinson, Jodi Price, Kaitlin Reiman, Danielle Sauro, and Dominique Sauro; and freshmen Tara Dragotta, Kristen Kulcyk, Jennifer Randolph, Kristen Randolph, and Brittany Brown-Webster.

The dance team is made up of seniors Wendy Baughman (captain), Bonnie Lincoln (captain), and Nicole Geraci; junior Jessica Kubek (captain); sophomores Jessica Crocco, Amanda Pienciak, and Lyndsay Wood; and freshmen Tiffany Alberino, Jaimie Bass, Amanda Robinson, and Helen Rodio.

Jennifer Keller is the head coach of both squads. She is assisted by Jaime Greene (dance) and Caitlin LeBlon (cheer).