Author: Brynn Boyer

Martha Burtis, special projects coordinator in the division of teaching and learning technologies, delivered an invited presentation to faculty at Longwood University on Friday, January 6 titled {Re}Visioning Blogging. The talk served as an introduction to faculty new to blogging and provided examples of advanced uses of blogs for those more experienced with the approach.

The presentation was part of Longwood’s first ever “Blogapalooza” event, hosted by Greenwood Library. Burtis’ slides, which include links to many UMW course and project sites in UMW Blogs can be found at http://slidesha.re/longwoodblogging.

Eight faculty members were awarded sabbatical leaves for all or part of the 2012-13 academic year to pursue a research or other professional development project, according to the December 2011 newsletter from the Provost’s Office.  Another six faculty members will spend the next academic year as Jepson Fellows with a half-time teaching load while they pursue a research project that has particular and direct application to their teaching.

The 2012-13 sabbatical awardees and their project statements are listed below:

• Nabil Al-Tikriti, Department of History and American Studies.  Project for spring 2013: complete final chapters of monograph on the Ottoman empire and submit final draft for publication.

• David Cain, Department of Classics, Philosophy, and Religion.  Project for fall 2012: complete a collection of essays on Kierkegaard.

• Mindy Erchull, Department of Psychology.  Project for fall 2012: analyze collected data, prepare to present project and results for publication on objectification among young women.

• Eric Gable, Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Project for spring 2013: complete book on the archeology of art.

• James Gaines, Department of Modern Foreign Languages.  Project for spring 2013: complete series of articles on 18^th century literature.

• Stephen Hanna, Department of Geography.  Project for 2012-13 academic year: consolidate research and submit book for publication on heritage tourism in Fredericksburg.

• Bruce O’Brien, Department of History and American Studies.  Project for 2012-13 academic year: complete book draft for a series on modern England (Academic year 2012-2013).

• Jennifer Polack-Wahl, Department of Computer Science.  Project for spring 2013: complete final testing of iTouch to be used in elementary education.

Jepson Fellows and titles of their projects for 2012-13 are:

• Janet Asper, Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry, “Development of Super-absorbing Organic Gellants for Crude Oil, and a Polymer Themed Organic Chemistry Laboratory Curriculum”

• Julius N. Esunge, Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics, “Minimizing Insurance Company Risk in a Random Framework”

• Ben LaBreche, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication (English), “Liberty Agonistes: The Problem of Freedom in the Age of Milton”

• Jangwoon (Leo) Lee, Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics, “A Domain Decomposition Method for Mathematical Models with Random Input Data”

• Jason Matzke, Associate Professor, Department of Classics, Philosophy, and Religion (Philosophy), “Between Civil Disobedience and Burning Rage: Reframing Radical Environmental Activism within Deliberative Democracy”

• Colin Rafferty, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication (English), “Beyond Truth: A False Memoir in Literature and Culture”

William Crawley, director of the Chappell Great Lives Lecture Series, and Charles J. Shields, associate director, will be featured on AM 1230 WFVA. The interview, which will air Sunday, Jan. 15 at 8 a.m., will focus on the upcoming season of the lecture series.

Shields talks about his book, And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, A Life, in a segment on the syndicated Colorado public radio program, Page by Page. The segment originally aired on Tuesday, Jan. 10 and is available online at http://www.aspenpublicradio.org/pod_listen.php?row=2126.

He also shares the book in an interview on AARP Prime Time Radio, taped on Wednesday, Jan. 11.

In addition, Shields discusses the life of Harper Lee in a video on the Biography Channel website.

Jeff McClurken, associate professor of history, presented his paper “Teaching with Social Media” during the Digital Humanities workshop at the 126th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago.

He also ran a pre-conference workshop, “So, You Want to Teach a Digital History Class?” at the AHA.

Daniel Preston, editor of the Papers of James Monroe, published volume four of the Monroe Papers, which covers the years 1796-1802, in November.  Preston, who has been the editor of the Monroe Papers at UMW since 1999, received a three-year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in September.  Prior to the receipt of the NEH grant, the Monroe Papers received major support from a gift to UMW from Robert and Alice Jepson.