Faculty/Staff Newsletter Spring 2008

ADDISON AULT (chemistry) attended the 223rd National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans in April.

In 1858, Darwin and Wallace published their historic papers in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society (now called the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society). One hundred and fifty years later, MARTY CONDON (biology) is proud to announce that the same journal published results of collaborative research involving students and faculty from Cornell College, Iowa State University, Ithaca College, and the Systematic Entomology Laboratory of the USDA. Preliminary results leading to the paper were first presented by students Kacie Flaherty ('05), John Gammons ('08), Jessica Johnson ('07), Sara Marsteller ('07), and Francisco Serna ('06) at annual Cornell College student symposia, and at national meetings of the Society for the Study of Evolution. The paper, titled "Uncovering tropical diversity: six sympatric cryptic species of Blepharoneura (Diptera: Tephritidae) in flowers of Gurania spinulosa (Cucurbitaceae) in eastern Ecuador" (2008. Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 93:779-797), has the following authorship: Condon, Dean C. Adams, Darrin Bann, Flaherty, Gammons, Johnson, Matthew L. Lewis, Marsteller, Sonja J. Scheffer, Serna, and Susan Swensen. Funding for this research was provided by Cornell College Student-Faculty Collaborative Research grants, Campbell-McConnell Sabbatical Award, and several grants from the National Science Foundation.

DIANE CROWDER’S (French) article based on her paper given at a Harvard conference on Monique Wittig has now been published in a special issue of GLQ (the major refereed journal in lesbian/gay/queer studies). The article, "From the Straight Mind to Queer Theory," argues that, while Wittig had articulated the major insights of queer theory over twenty years before the appearance of that movement in academe, current proponents have taken those ideas in ways that are antithetical to the goals of a truly gender-free society that she envisioned.

In addition, Crowder was asked to be an outside evaluator for the research component of a tenure decision for a French scholar at the University of Ottawa and for a pre-tenure decision for a colleague in French at Colorado College. She has also juried three articles this year, one each for Tulsa Studies in Women'sLiterature, Signs, and Crisolenguas.

RHAWN DENNISTON (geology) published four manuscripts based on the results of research projects performed by Cornell College geology majors. Two of the papers were published in Geology, a leading international journal, the third in Quaternary Research, and the fourth in a special volume on faunal evolution in the Caribbean. Student co-authors are: Michelle DuPree ('04), Stephanie Penn ('05), Peter Cole ('06), Brian Hoye ('06), and Charles Trodick ('07).

During February, CAROLYN ZERBE ENNS (psychology) attended the ACM/GLCA Japan Study Advisory Committee meeting. In addition to selecting 2008-09 Japan Study students, advisory committee members participated in an evaluation of the Japan Study Program. In late February, she traveled to Japan for two weeks in order to explore research collaborations and engage in preliminary planning for teaching a Cornell course in Japan.

In March, Enns attend the International Counseling Psychology Conference in Chicago. She co-facilitated a working group project titled "Psychological practice with women and girls: Global perspectives." Her co-facilitator was Sayaka Machizawa, a former Cornell College student and graduate of the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Enns also delivered a paper as part of a symposium titled "Women at different stages of international career development." This symposium featured women psychologists from Japan who have followed diverse career paths in both North America and Asia. In late March, she contributed to the Committee for International Relations in Psychology meeting (Washington, DC).

Enns has been accepted to participate in an Asian Studies Development Program seminar, which will be held at the East-West Center (Honolulu) during July. The three-week summer seminar will focus on "Infusing East Asian Studies in the Undergraduate Curriculum."

MELINDA GREEN (psychology) and her undergraduate research team had two papers accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals. The first paper titled "Femininity and Eating Disorders" was accepted for publication in Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention. The second paper titled "Feminist Identity as a Predictor of Eating Disorder Diagnostic Status" was accepted for publication in The Journal of Clinical Psychology. The team has three additional papers currently under review.

Green and her undergraduate research team members will present a paper titled "Eating Disorders and Depression: A Relationship Beyond Social Comparison, Self Esteem, and Body Dissatisfaction?" at the International Eating Disorders Conference in Seattle in May of 2008. Green is also currently co-writing a CCLI grant to the National Science Foundation in order to support the development of an interdisciplinary, inquiry based Cornell College Neuroscience Program. Finally, she and members of her undergraduate research team have been awarded a McElroy Student-Faculty Research Grant from the Iowa College Foundation to provide support for ongoing research activities.

BENJAMIN GREENSTEIN (geology) was lead author of an article published by the international journal Global Change Biology. The article "Escaping the heat: range shifts of reef coral taxa in coastal Western Australia" was based on three years of field work in the region and offered some predictions about the future of coral reefs as the global climate warms. Greenstein gave an invited talk about his research to members of the Department of Geography and Geology at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington in late February.

This winter, JOHN GRUBER-MILLER (classics) contributed to a review of Ultralingua Dictionaries 6.0, a set of eight software based dictionaries (including Latin-English), with Esperanza Román-Mendoza (coordinator), published in CALICO Journal 25.2 (2008). He also published an article, "Teaching Culture in Beginning Greek." CPL Online 4.1 (2008), available at http://www.camws.org/cpl/cploline/Gruber-Millercplonline.pdf. In addition, his book, When Dead Tongues Speak: Teaching Beginning Greek and Latin (Oxford University Press, 2006) received a favorable review in Bryn Mawr Classical Review, available at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2008/2008-03-07.html.

This spring Gruber-Miller was named editor of CPL Online, a national, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to Latin and Greek pedagogy (http://www.camws.org/cpl/cplonline/cplonline.html), succeeding Charles Lloyd, the journal's founding editor. He was also invited to participate in the American Philological Association/American Classical League Joint Task Force on Latin Teacher Preparation. The task force is charged with drawing up national standards for Latin teacher training and Latin Methodology courses.

LESLIE KATHLEEN HANKINS' (English) essay, "Cinéastes and Modernists: Writing about Film in 1920s London," introduced the cinema section she edited for the anthology, The Gender Complex of Modernism, published by Illinois U. Press in 2007. Her article, "Teaching Mrs. Dalloway and Film: from the Historical Avant-Garde Cinema to Current Film Adaptations" will be published shortly in Approaches to Teaching Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, from Modern Language Association Publications. She presented a paper at the MLA convention in Chicago in December: “‘A French recipe of my grandmother’s’? X. Marcel Boulestin’s Vogue articles and Cookbooks, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and 1920s Culinary Culture in London.” She presented a sequel to that paper, “‘A good dinner is of great importance to good talk’ : X. Marcel Boulestin’s Culinary Writing in Vogue and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Mrs. Dalloway’” for the Feminist Symposium at Cornell College in March 2008.

Hankins attended the Modernist Studies Association Annual conference in Long Beach in November 2007 and for the annual Virginia Woolf conference in June 2007 presented a paper, “‘The War had taught him. It was sublime.’ Anti-War Lesson Plans in Mrs. Dalloway and King Vidor’s film, The Big Parade.” Her paper on Abel Gance’s 1918-19 anti-war epic, J’accuse, and Virginia Woolf’s anti-war novel, Mrs. Dalloway, has been accepted for an international Visual Culture conference at Oxford University in England.

DOUG HANSON (art) deinstalled his November/December one person exhibition at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids and reinstalled the majority of the work at the Project Art Galleries – University of Iowa Hospitals during January/February.

M. PHILIP LUCAS (history) published "Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution," in Milestone Documents in American History: Exploring the Primary Sources that Shaped America (Paul Finkelman, ed.).

In April, KATY STAVREVA (English) participated in the joint annual meeting of the Queen Elizabeth I Society and the South-Central Renaissance Conference, "Exploring the Renaissance 2008," in Kansas City, MO. She presented some of the findings of her Campbell McConnell-sponsored sabbatical research in a paper titled "'The Tongue is a Fire': Contentious Speech and the Problem of Gender in Early Modern Sermons." She also has an article, "Dream Loops and Short-Circuited Nightmares: post Brechtian Tempests in Post-Communist Bulgaria," forthcoming in the 3.2 (Fall/Winter 2007) issue of Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation.

CRAIG TEAGUE (chemistry) gave a presentation titled “Investigation of Keggin species with oxide surfaces” at a special symposium on polyoxometalates at the 234th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston, MA. Cornell students Tina Pontarelli, Jenny Bean, and Justin Valenstein were co-authors on this presentation. Along with ADDISON AULT (chemistry), Teague also attended the 55th Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Association of Chemistry Teachers in Liberal Arts Colleges in La Crosse, WI.

Student Tina Pontarelli presented “Fundamental Reactivity and Bonding Studies on Model Surfaces” at the R.J. McElroy Student/Faculty Research Symposium in Waverly, IA as a result of a grant that she and Teague previously obtained. Along with Teague’s other research students Megan Michalski and Brittany Szczepanik, Pontarelli presented “Polyoxometalate-surface interactions and properties of POM-based composite materials” at the University of Iowa Molecular and Cell Biology Retreat which was held at Cornell. A student group Teague advises received an award from the American Chemical Society, and Cornell student Teresa Beary accepted this award and presented on the group’s successes at an ACS National Meeting.

Teague continued his grant writing collaboration with scientists at Coe College, which recently secured funding from the National Science Foundation for a scanning electron microscope. He coordinated Cornell’s involvement with this grant, which will allow four Cornell faculty members and their research students to use the instrument at no charge.

JONATHON THULL (music) returned to Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre (CROT) in early January to head up their Young Artists' production of a one-act opera The Night Harry Stopped Smoking. Thull was the director, designer, and builder for this production and oversaw numerous performances presented in Cedar Rapids elementary schools and the Children's Museum in Coralville as part of CROT's ongoing arts-outreach program.

ANDY WILDENBERG (computer science) organized and presented at the Workshop for Online Assessment Systems for Computer Science and Mathematics at Pace University. He also designed and participated in a study trying to assess cultural and technological barriers to deploying such systems in Africa and Asia.

Wildenberg, along with MELINDA GREEN (psychology) and JONNA HIGGINS-FREESE (College Advancement), attended a workshop on how to write winning grants at the University of Iowa.

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COLE LIBRARY/CENTER FOR
TEACHING AND LEARNING CORNER

JEAN DONHAM (College Librarian), had an article “Standards! Standards! Standards!” published in Teacher Librarian Volume 35, Number 2 (April 2008), pages 43-46. A new edition of her book, Enhancing Teaching and Learning, is being published this summer by Neal-Schuman Publishers. Donham led a one-day workshop on Information Literacy for faculty at Bennett College, Greensboro, NC, on March 8. She gave a presentation at the Iowa Association of College and Research Libraries March 3 titled “Assignments Worth Doing—Collaborating with Faculty to Design Authentic Learning Opportunities.” Donham also attended the Coalition for Networked Information Spring Meeting in Minneapolis April 6-8.

MARY IBER (Consulting Librarian for the Sciences) participated in a panel presentation “Making the move: From Support Personnel to Librarian, a Closer Look” at the meeting of the Iowa Library Association/Association of College and Research Libraries, Davenport, IA, on March 3. Iber gave the valedictory address, “Managing Electronic Databases,” at the Library Management Training Program at Bankatlal Badruka College for Information Technology in Hyderabad, India, on December 21, 2007. She gave a talk on Trends in Academic Librarianship in the United States to students and faculty of the Department of Library and Information Science program at Osmania University in Hyderabad, India, on December 20, 2007.

GREG COTTON (Technical Services Librarian and Consulting Librarian for Visual Arts) supervised student Brooke Bergantzel’s internship in the library in Block Six. The internship included interviews of librarians at the Rocky Mountain Jewish Archive and the Library at the Denver Art Museum in addition to interviews at Stewart Memorial Library at Coe and the Hoover Library in West Branch, Iowa. The internship also included a half day with a digital imaging expert and a full day with the Board of Trustees at the BCR quarterly meeting. Cotton has been reviewing manuscripts of cataloging books for Neal-Schuman Publishers.

TONNIE FLANNERY (Consulting Librarian for the Social Sciences) and JESSICA JOHANNINGMEIER (Quantitative Reasoning Consultant) presented “What Counts? Using Data to Influence Practice” at the ILA/ACRL spring conference at St. Ambrose University in March. Flannery and Johanningmeier attended NITLE’s “Developing and Supporting Data Fluency” at Macalester College also in March.

JESSICA JOHANNINGMEIER presented “Manipulatives: Not Just for Kindergarteners” at the annual conference of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) in Salt Lake City, Utah, on April 10.

TONNIE FLANNERY presented “What Counts? Using Interlibrary Loan Data to Influence Practice” at the Midwest Interlibrary Loan Conference at Loras College in April.

MARIAH STEELE (Writing Consultant) gave a paper at the 57th National Reading Conference in Austin, TX, titled “‘Ready to Read’: Clubwomen’s Literacy Practices in the U.S., c. 1920-1970” on Nov. 29, 2007.

NICOLE JACKSON (Writing Consultant) attended NITLE's Learning to Write in the Digital Age: Writing with Technology Across the Curriculum conference April 16-18 at Colorado College. The conference offered an opportunity for writing instructors, consultants, and center directors to discuss how they might incorporate technology in writing projects and instruction.