Beloit College Faculty Accomplishments

In April Jeff Eisenberg had a solo exhibition at Ping Pong Gallery, San Francisco. Titled Automatic Transmissions, the exhibition included recent large-scale drawings and an audio installation. In June Jeff was included in a group exhibition titled New Faces at The Annex, San Francisco. In September he exhibited in Introductions 2007 at Root Division, San Francisco and with Swarm Gallery at the Portland Affair Art Fair, Portland, OR.

Last spring, Jo Ortel co-chaired a roundtable discussion, "Regarding Art History in Global Perspectives," chaired a panel, "Contemporary Native American Art: Rethinking the Field," and presented a paper on Fritz Scholder at the 2007 Midwest Art History Conference in Indianapolis. In September '07, Jo gave a paper on a Scholder-related subject at the Native American Art Studies Association conference in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Dawn Roe had the following solo and two-person exhibitions: “Interior Landscape,” Southern Light Gallery, Amarillo, TX; “Imminent Significance(s),” Wisconsin Arts Board, Madison, WI; Group Exhibitions: “Physical Presence: The Figure in Contemporary Art,” Mesa Contemporary Arts Center, Mesa, AZ; “Biennial 24,” South Bend Regional Museum of Art, South Bend, IN. She is also a grant recipient from the Chicago Artists’ Assistance Program, Chicago Cultural Center.

George Williams, Jr. served on a panel titled “Representations of Violence on African American Bodies,” that was featured in the Race and Pedagogy National Conference (held at the University of Puget Sound). His presentation was titled "Notions of Identity: A Visual Investigation of the Schizophrenic Relationships of the African American Body in Mainstream Culture.” He also had two paintings selected for the 2007 Wisconsin Triennial group exhibition at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Madison, Wis.

This fall 2007 semester, Williams is serving as a visiting professor in the Chicago Arts Program of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, teaching a course titled Visual Arts Colloquium: Working and Creating in the Arts.

In October, Williams served as a guest lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, for its African American Lecture Series, which was titled "Oppositional Voices." On Oct. 23, his solo exhibition of paintings – Notions of Identity – opened in Beloit College's Wright Museum of Art. The exhibition constructs a new visual language by investigating and reclassifying the black male body. A reception with the artist was held on Oct. 26.

Yaffa Grossman and Carl Mendelson co-authored with Paul Campbell an editorial about avoiding plagiarism entitled “Write your own contest entry,” The UMAP Journal 28: 93-98. Yaffa was invited to two meetings this July to make presentations on her research: “Integrating photosynthesis, respiration, and growth: A Microsoft Excel based simulation of Wisconsin Fast Plant growth” for the BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium Symposium Education Forum, at the Botanical Society of America annual meeting in Chicago, and “Functional-structural modeling of plant growth” at a workshop: “Roots--Now in 3-D! 3-D Root Architecture Imaging and Its Use in Structural-Functional Models” at the American Society for Horticultural Science annual meeting. In addition, she was co-convener of a workshop on urban ecology education at the Ecological Society of America annual meeting, San Jose, CA. Finally, as a direct result of interactions that she had with Bruce Alberts, Beloit College’s 2007 Commencement speaker, she was appointed to the editorial board Molecular and Cell Biology Reviews, a new journal for undergraduate and graduate papers.

Ken Yasukawa’s co-authored paper with Sanger Scholar student W. Werner, “Nest abandonment as a potential anti-parasite adaptation in the Red-winged Blackbird,” was published in Passenger Pigeon69, 481- 489. Ken was a participant in a symposium on teaching animal behavior, “Teaching animal behavior in the laboratory: an exercise using Betta spendens in an introductory zoology class for biology majors and non-majors,” at the 2007 meeting of the Animal Behavior Society in Burlington, VT. In addition to his symposium participation, he was the designated host of the Society’s meeting, which attracted 630 attendees (second most in ABS history), and the scientific program included 145 oral presentations and 150 posters.

Economics and Management

http://www.beloit.edu/~academic/fields/majors/econmanag_overview.php

Scott Beaulier’s “Look Botswana: No Hands!” was recently published in an edited volume, Making Poor Nations Rich: Entrepreneurship and the Process of Development (Stanford University Press; Benjamin Powell, editor). Another paper (co-authored article with Bryan Caplan of George Mason University), “Behavioral Economics and Perverse Effects of the Welfare State” will be appearing in the Fall, 2007 issue of Kyklos.

Emily Chamlee-Wright has had the following publications: “The Political, Economic, and Social Aspects of Katrina,” with Peter Boettke, Peter Gordon, Sanford Ikeda, Peter Leeson, and Russell Sobel, Southern Economic Journal (Fall 2007); “Signaling Effects of Commercial and Civil Society in Post-Katrina Reconstruction,” Cato Journal (Fall 2007); “The Long Road Back: Signal Noise in the Post-Katrina Context,” The Independent Review (Fall 2007); “The Structure of Social Capital: An Austrian Perspective on Its Nature and Development,” Review of Political Economy (Winter 2007); and “Disastrous Uncertainty: How Government Disaster Policy Undermines Community Rebound,” Mercatus Policy Series, Mercatus Center, George Mason University, no.9 (February) 2007, (co-authored with Daniel Rothschild).

Jerry Gustafson is among twenty faculty recognized by Wake Forest University for promoting entrepreneurship throughout the college curriculum. WFU has chosen his paper, "Entrepreneurship is a Liberal Art," for presentation at a conference of this select group. Gustafson and CELEB are subjects of a profile completed last June, commissioned by the Kauffman Foundation, the largest funder of entrepreneurship programs. Beloit's was one of only ten programs profiled nationally. CELEB was featured in the "what's cool?" section of the Beloit College entry in Treasure Schools - America's College Gems, recently published by Spark Publishing.

Josh Hall was assistant editor of Unleashing Capitalism: Why Prosperity Stops at the West Virginia State Line and How to Fix It, Russell S. Sobel (ed). Morgantown, WV, The Public Policy Foundation of West Virginia, 2007. He also served as assistant on Economic Freedom of the World: 2007 Annual Report by James Gwartney and Robert Lawson Vancouver, The Frasier Institute, 2007. In addition, he had the following publications:

Journal Articles: " Local School Finance and Productive Efficiency: Evidence from Ohio," Atlantic Economic Journal vol. 35, no. 3 (September 2007): 289-301.

"The Effect of Judicial Selection Processes on Judicial Quality: The Role of Partisan Politics" (with R. Sobel). Cato Journal vol. 27, no. 1 (Winter 2007): 67-82.

"Do Gas Stations Raise the Price of Gasoline on the Weekends or Holidays?" (with R. Lawson and L. Raymer). Atlantic Economic Journal vol. 35, no. 1 (March 2007): 119-120.

Book Chapters:

"Mann, Horace." in Exploring American History: From Colonial Times to 1877 (vol. 6), T. Lansford and T. Woods (eds). Tarrytown, NY: Marshall Cavendish (2008): 652-–653.

"The Sources of Economic Growth," (with R. Sobel) in Unleashing Capitalism: Why Prosperity Stops at the West Virginia State Line and How to Fix It , R. Sobel (ed). Morgantown, WV: The Public Policy Foundation of West Virginia (2007): 15-35.

"When It Comes to Taxes: Focus on Being Competitive," (with J. Ross) in Unleashing Capitalism: Why Prosperity Stops at the West Virginia State Line and How to Fix It , R.Sobel (ed). Morgantown, WV: The Public Policy Foundation of West Virginia (2007): 69-79.

Book Reviews:

Review of Bryan Caplan, “The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies,” Perspective vol.14, no. 9 (September 2007): 2-3.

Education

http://www.beloit.edu/~educ/

Sonja Darlington participated in a three-part conference in Botswana and South Africa this past summer. Traveling to Gabarone, Pietermaritsburg, and Sorowe, she presented a paper entitled "Bessie Head's Response to 'The Call of the Global Green.'" As part of the 70th year anniversary of Bessie Head's birth, Darlington was also asked to speak at the international symposium on Head's educational philosophy in her book Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind.

Michael Merry had a book published, Culture, Identity and Islamic Schooling: a philosophical approach (Palgrave 2007). He authored three articles: “Patriotism, History and the Legitimate Aims of American Education, Educational Philosophy and Theory,” (published online early), “Should the State Fund Religious Schools?” Journal of Applied Philosophy, 24, 3 255-270 ; and “The Well Being of Children, the limits of Paternalism and the State: can disparate interests be reconciled?” Ethics and Education, 2, 1, 39-59. Michael presented “Do Islamic Schools Enhance or Threaten Democracy?” at the ‘Extremism and Education’ conference, Roehampton University, London, United Kingdom, July 2007, and “How Schools Inhibit the Autonomy of the Middle Class,” at the Philosophy of Education Society Annual Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, March 2007.

Bill New presented a paper on recent school desegregation cases at the Law and Society Association meetings in Berlin in July, and a paper on teaching developmental psychology at the American Psychological Association meetings in San Francisco in August. All last year, he worked with a group of local folks to start a new charter high school, which opened this fall at the Eclipse Center (the old mall). The Roy Chapman Andrews Academy (named after one of our famous alums) is a project-based school; the plan is to eventually expand to grades 6-12 with a population of around 300 students. The first graduates will cross the stage in June 2010. Bill is the president of the Governance Board of the school.

English

http://www.beloit.edu/~english/

Tamara Ketabgian gave two papers at the Institute of English Studies at the University of London: one in April on "Martineau and the Mystery of Improvidence: Luxury, Perversity, and Machine Culture" and a second in July on "Natural Theology among the Machines: Vision and Technology in Babbage and Wells."

Last May, Chuck Lewis gave a paper at the National Conference of the American Literature Association in Boston. The title of his paper was “Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America as 9/11 Prosthesis.” A version of this paper will appear as a chapter in an anthology entitled Literature After 9/11 (Routledge Press). His essay, “Babbled Slander Where the Paler Shades Dwell: Reading Race in The Great Gatsby and Passing,” appeared in LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory this summer.

Interdisciplinary Studies

http://www.beloit.edu/~academic/fields/majors/idst_overview.php

Diane Lichtenstein assisted Angela Davis (Director of Field and Career Services) in writing the grant funded by Wisconsin Campus Compact for an AmericaCorps/VISTA volunteer who will develop service learning opportunities at the Merrill Community Center for Beloit students as well as begin building College infrastructure for service learning.

Carol Mankiewicz received a grant from the School for International Training to participate in a 10-day workshop in Vietnam on the natural and cultural ecology of the Mekong Delta. Much of the emphasis was on sustainable development and improved standard of living for the inhabitants. Thirteen other faculty from colleges and universities throughout the United States participated in this May 2007 field workshop.

Rama Viswanathan co-authored a poster presentation, working with three students--Han Lai '09, Hlaing Lin '09, and Khalid Qumsieh '07– and John Jungck on his summer research and course development for the new Interdisciplinary Studies (IDST) minor in Computational Visualization and Modeling (CVM). The work was funded by the National Science Foundation as part of a $71,000 grant for a state-of-the-art computer visualization laboratory equipped with 12 high-end desktop computers and large screen flat panel displays in the new Center for the Sciences. The poster, titled "Graph Theoretical Properties and Visualization of Biological Interactions: BioGrapher," was presented by John Jungck on August 2 at the joint Annual National Meeting of the Society for Mathematical Biology and the Mathematical Association of America, held in San Jose, California.

Logan Museum of Anthropology

http://www.beloit.edu/~museum/logan/index.html

Staff members gave several presentations about the museum’s NEH-funded collections rehousing project. Curator of collections Nicolette Meister presented a paper titled “Planning and Implementing Anthropology Collections Rehousing Projects” at the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections annual conference in St. Paul in May. Meister also co-organized a panel titled “Moving Collections – Ready or Not!” at the annual meeting of the Association of Midwest Museums on Mackinac Island, Michigan, in September. Presenting along with her were move coordinators Anna Berg and Loran Berg. At the Midwest Archaeological Conference in Notre Dame, Indiana, in October, visiting curator of archaeology Sara Pfannkuche presented “New Life for Old Collections: The Logan Museum of Anthropology’s Collections Accessibility Project,” a paper co-authored with director Bill Green along with Meister and Loran Berg.

Karla Wheeler (curator of education) and Judy Newland (former Wright Museum curator of art), along with Laura Fowler of Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, organized and presented a panel titled “Curating Experience and Collaboration: Building Bridges between the University and the Community” at the Association of Midwest Museums annual conference on Mackinac Island, Michigan, in September. Other panelists included 2007 graduates Jaclyn Ludowese and Karina Pallin, and Bill Green, who chaired the panel.

Bill and Nancy Krusko (Anthropology) organized and hosted a conference in September titled "Applying Anthropology: Celebrating the Life and Work of Andrew 'Bud' Whiteford." Whiteford family members, other alumni, and students participated, and Green and Meister gave one of the presentations, "Practicing 'The Museum in the School': The Whiteford Legacy Today and Tomorrow."

Pfannkuche and Green co-organized and hosted “Stateline Archaeo-Fest 2007,” the joint annual meeting of the Wisconsin Archaeological Society and Illinois Association for Advancement of Archaeology, in April. At the conference, Pfannkuche presented “An Archaeological Review of the Carl and Myrna Nygren Wetland Preserve near the Illinois/Wisconsin Border” and Green presented “Uncovering and Re-Covering a Mid-19 th Century Historic Site on the Campus of Beloit College.” They also co-authored an article, “The Domeier/Watson Mounds, Winnebago County, Illinois,” published in Illinois Antiquity 42(3-4), 2007.

Green presented an invited paper, “Late Prehistoric Archaeobotanical Variability in Western Iowa,” in the Fryxell Symposium at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Austin, Texas, in April. He also made two presentations about tribal history at the invitation of the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma in Perkins, Oklahoma. At its annual Pow-wow in June the tribe gave him an Honor Dance and a blanket. Green also presented an invited lecture, “Mapping Ioway Indian History,” at the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History in October, and appears on-screen in the documentary film “Lost Nation: The Ioway” which premiered in October.

Mathematics and Computer Science

http://cs.beloit.edu/

Bruce Atwood presented a poster, Developing Good "Clicker" Questions, at the U.S. Conference on Teaching Statistics in Columbus, Ohio, May 2007.

Paul Campbell's article "Games of chance with multiple objectives," based on work done at the University of Augsburg, has appeared in the probability research journal Metrika 66 (2007) 305--313. The paper was inspired by a cooperative children's game played by one of his sons in kindergarten in Germany.

One piece of software (of the two) for which Darrah Chavey was awarded the Phee Boon Kang prize last year has been successfully converted to Web format so that it will run on any computer. A talk on the software, "A Java Drawing Program for Nitus, Kolam, Celtic Knots, etc." has been accepted for presentation at a session on "Ethnomathematics and its Uses in Teaching" for the January 2008 meeting of the Mathematics Association of America.

Steven Huss-Lederman was an organizer and presenter at the Peer-Led Team Learning in CS Workshop held at Duke University in April. Also, he co-presented with Diane Arnzen and Vicki Dominick of the LSSC at the Enriching the Academic Experience of College Science Students conference in May. Their one-hour sessions was titled, "Ideals and Practice in Peer-Led Team Learning."

Don Porter worked as a statistical consultant with Ann Cunningham, a public defender in Vilas County, to demonstrate statistically that Native Americans have been consistently under-represented in jury pools.

Modern Languages and Literatures

http://www.beloit.edu/~mll/

Gabriela Cerghedean’s book: Dreams in the Western Literary Tradition with Special Reference to Medieval Spain: A Method for Interpreting Oneiric Texts, Edwin Mellen Press, 2006 has been nominated by The Modern Language Association Division on Medieval Spanish Language and Literature, for La Corónica Book Award, an annual international prize for the best monograph published on medieval Iberian language, literature and cultural studies. The award will be announced in May at the International Congress of Medieval Studies held at Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, Michigan), with a special session convoked in the following year to honor the recipient and advance the themes of his or her research with the honoree serving as principal respondent.

This past August at the annual meeting of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, Sylvia López led a workshop titled "Moving Beyond the Classroom: Creating Community-Based Learning Opportunities to Enhance Language Learning" and presented on film as thematic and cultural input in Spanish language classes.

A critical edition prepared by Oswaldo Voysest on the Peruvian author Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera (1842-1909) has just been published by an Argentine publishing company (Stockcero). The book contains an introductory study written by Oswaldo and critical notes to the text. In addition, in preparing this edition he compared the four editions of the novel that were previously published in the 19th century, taking into consideration variants and previous editorial mistakes. The book is also available on amazon.com.

Music

http://www.beloit.edu/~music/

Ian Nie delivered a paper at a music conference in Brevard, NC featuring a model for an interdisciplinary major or minor in music. The interdisciplinary model features a collaboration among many departments but also focuses on how to marry music and entrepreneurship. Ian also helped produce his sixth CD for the Beloit-Janesville Symphony, this time as engineer, co- producer, editor and mass duplicator. The latest CD helps the Orchestra to self-advertise for the upcoming '07-'08 season. Other CD's that Ian had published include a Baroque CD, Beethoven's 3rd Symphony, Rachmaninov 3rd Piano Concerto, BJS's "Pops" concert of 2006, and "Carmina Burana". Ian had previously been one of the engineers for George Winston's tribute to Andrew Boggs, Frank Boggs' son.

Renato Premezzi gave grand piano master classes and concerts in July for the “Corsi Internazionali di Musica” at the Capella Musicale and the University of Urbino, Italy. This fall, he adjudicated the international piano competition for the Santa Fe International Institute of Music and also performed in concerts for the Los Alamos, NM Arts Council.

Elizabeth Brewer, Director, International Education, is serving on an advisory board for the German Academic Exchange Program's “Put Germany on Your Resume” project. She also continues to serve on the School for International Training Advisory Council and the Advisory Council for the American Council on Education's Internationalization Collaborative.

Gary A. Cook (emeritus professor of philosophy) presented the Distinguished Lecture at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction this August in New York City. The topic of his invited lecture was "The Mead-Blumer Debate: Revisiting the Controversy."

Paul Stanley has been promoted to co-director of the US Team to the International Physics Olympiad. Responsible for the selection and training coordination of the 24 member high school student team, Paul previously served as senior coach, taking the US team to Spain, to Singapore, and, last summer, to Iran for the international competitions. The US team has consistently ranked among the top five countries, and had one of the best showings ever in Singapore. Paul also presented a poster on computational physics and research with undergraduates at Davidson College for the 2007 summer meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers.

Georgia Duerst-Lahti completed a sabbatical appointment at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, with appointments in the Department of Political Science, Women’s Studies, and the La Follette School of Public Affairs. She also completed data gathering for a research project funded by the Evjue Foundation, “Changing Gender and Leadership of Public Sector Organizations.”

Erin Barker had two co-authored research studies published in the October 2007 issue of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. The first examined mother-adolescent agreement about adolescent problem behaviors. The second explored binge eating during the transition to university. She was also co-author of a research study presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for the Study of Human Development in October. This study explored the connections of daily fluctuations in positive and negative emotions with alcohol use among first-year university students. Erin was a recently appointed to the editorial board of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence and served as a Society for Research on Adolescence 2008 biennial meeting review panel member.

Suzanne Cox was awarded a Mayer Family Foundation grant to explore the feasibility of implementing a doula (childbirth assistant) program for teen mothers in Beloit. An ACM FaCE grant is also helping to fund this work while Suzanne is on sabbatical this year. Last June, Suzanne presented a paper as part of a panel on academic mothers at the conference of the National Women’s Studies Association.

Kate Linnenberg has published a chapter entitled, “#1 Father or Fathering 101?: Examining the Range of Involvement among Fathers Who Live with Their Children” in Unmarried Couples with Children, edited by Kathryn Edin and Paula England. The edited volume was recently published by the Russell Sage Foundation. Kate and Kim Pernell ('07) presented their paper "What’s Keeping Daddy from Taking Care of Daddy’s Little Girl?: Child’s Gender and Father’s Involvement in Care Work" at the Midwest Sociological Society Meetings in Chicago, IL in April, 2007. This work is based on their Sanger Summer Scholars research.

Bill Flanagan, Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students, has written chapters for three publications during the past three years: one chapter for the NACADA Journal with Gill Batterman and Olga Ogurtsova on Beloit College’s Sophomore Year Program; one chapter for a monograph on the role of the small college dean and the third on the theoretical foundation for our sophomore year program. The dean of students monograph was published by Jossey-Bass last fall; the sophomore year monograph will be published this month. Bill also serves on Governor Doyle’s Task Force for Campus Safety, is a member of the Higher Learning Commission’s Institutional Actions Committee and a Consultant-Evaluator for the HLC as well as a member of the editorial board for the professional journal published by National Association of Student Personnel Administrators.

Joy de Leon, Assistant Dean for Academic Advising and Co-Director of the Sophomore-Year Initiatives Program, coordinated a variety of activities to promote the Beloit College Sophomore-Year Initiatives during the past year. Joy recruited Beloit College student volunteers and general information for the Sept. 8, 2006 Chronicle of Higher Education article "After the Freshmen Bubble Pops." Peter Bartanen '08 was quoted in the article. Joy presented "Focus on Sophomores: A Snapshot of the Beloit College Program" on October 19, 2006 at the Wisconsin College Personnel Association state conference. Along with Olga Ogurtsova, professor of Modern Languages and Literatures and Co-Director of the Sophomore-Year Initiatives program, Joy presented on the Beloit College Sophomore-Year Initiatives program at the ACM Round Table, Oct. 27-28, 2006 in Monmouth, IL. Joy also coordinated information and interviews and was interviewed for the PaperClip Communications publication "Sophomore Year Success" section on " Beloit College: The Sophomore Year Initiative Program" published in the Summer 2007. Most of these articles and presentations can be found on the Beloit College Sophomore-Year Initiatives web site at http://www.beloit.edu/~syi/research/.

Vicki Dominick, Assistant Director of Learning Support Services Center, co-presented a paper, titled “Making it from high school to the university and beyond!” at the American Education Research Association meeting.

Nick Ewoldt, Director of the Academic Achievement Program, has been elected President of the state TRIO Association (WAEOPP), representing more than 140 TRIO Programs statewide.

Luke Janiak-Fenton, Career Counselor/Employee Relations Coordinator/Field and Career Services, wrote and awarded a Wisconsin Insurance Education Consortium grant, receiving $5,000 to promote education about Wisconsin insurance industry career options and opportunities to students and faculty. Luck was also elected President of the Wisconsin Private College Career Consortium.

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Faculty Accomplishments

Celebrating Achievement at Beloit College