Janusz Konieczny, professor of mathematics, has published a letter to the editors, Are Financial Jobs Morally Unjustifiable?, in the journal Mathematical Intelligencer.
Winter Break Study Abroad Program in Cambodia Offered for the First Time at UMW
While winter break sent scores of college students scrambling for the comforts of home, UMW geography major Brian Brown spent his winter break out of the country for the very first time. He was one of seven UMW seniors in Cambodia as part of a three-and-a-half week study abroad program with Associate Professor of Geography Donald Rallis and Assistant Dean of Academic Services Amber Huffman, who is a geography graduate of UMW. The students chronicled their journeys through blog posts and social media.
The winter break program, offered for the first time at Mary Washington, is one of only a few of its kind in the country, according to Rallis. Students on the trip will earn credit for a Geographic Study Abroad course toward the requirements for the geography major.
For the full story, read the Jan. 11 web feature.
Janusz Konieczny Publishes in Semigroup Forum
Janusz Konieczny, professor of mathematics, has published a research article, A proof of Devadze’s theorem on generators of the semigroup of Boolean matrices, in the journal Semigroup Forum.
Weight Watchers at UMW — New Session Starts January 25
The following information is provided by Human Resources and the UMW Weight Watchers at Work group:
A quick Google search reveals that losing weight is the number one New Year’s resolution. Get a start on that resolution and join UMW friends who have already lost over 1,000 pounds! Read this testimonial from one of our members:
“There comes a time in one’s life when you are no longer comfortable in your own skin. I got to that point last spring. My clothes felt tight, I had trouble sleeping and my back and joints ached. I was reluctant at first to join Weight Watchers. After all, I wasn’t FAT and didn’t want to eat SPECIAL FOOD. Plus, I wasn’t sure I would fit in. I was wrong on all counts. Weight Watchers is flexible and easy to follow. The on-line tools make tracking what I ate a breeze. I loved being able to enter my favorite recipes and restaurant entrees and find out how many points they are per serving – an eye opening experience! I lost weight by making simple modifications to my diet. I didn’t have to buy special food or deprive myself of the foods I love. The work support group provided encouragement , tips, and great camaraderie. I really liked getting to know other people on campus. The meeting time fit easily into my lunch hour and was very convenient. I met my goal and enjoy the group so much I plan to keep coming. I am truly grateful for this terrific benefit.” (Catherine)
Weight Watchers is Ranked #1 Weight-Loss Diet by U.S. News & World Report. Inaugural rankings from U.S. News & World Report put Weight Watchers in the top slot for weight-loss diets. Read more here: http://www.weightwatchers.com/util/art/index_art.aspx?tabnum=1&art_id=111661&sc=3046
The new Weight Watchers at Work session begins Wednesday, January 25. Join us and take advantage of special pricing for state employees. Check out a meeting for free; registration and information are available at these upcoming meetings:
Wednesday, January 11
Noon-12:30 p.m.
Red Room, Woodard Hall
Wednesday, January 18
Noon-12:30 p.m.
Red Room, Woodard Hall
Contact Pam Taggert (ptaggert@umw.edu) 654-1018 with any questions.
UMW Cited as Model for Future of Networked Learning
UMW, and UMW Blogs in particular, is being heralded in Richard Demillo’s new book Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities as a space of great educational ferment, to quote from George Leef’s review of the book here. In fact, Leef’s review not only examines more popular open education mainstays like MIT’s Open Courseware, but spends a bit of time discussing the role of networked culture in re-imagining the future of higher education:
Open courseware is not the only way online learning is going to change higher education. DeMillo observes that whereas the traditional college class involves the broadcasting of information from the professor to (doubtfully alert) students, blogs involve rich connection networks where students and instructors interact and share their questions and information.
In that regard, DeMillo points to a little-known school where there is great educational ferment: “At the University of Mary Washington, learning takes place in the digital spaces engineered by Jim Groom and his band of Edupunks. At UMW, learning takes place in blogs.”
And when highlighting the importance of a networked culture for the future of learning at institutions UMW is highlighted as a model. UMW Blogs provides more than open resources and lectures on the internet, it also enables the ability to interact and share ideas and resources that helps bridge the gap between institutions of higher learning and the web.
James Bacon, proprietor of the Bacon’s Rebellion blog that focuses on all things Virginia, not only gave UMW kudos in for its work with UMW Blogs in his post on the DeMillo book, but also points out what remains the most important lesson of UMW Blogs. The open publishing platform is not remarkable because it is single-handedly transforming higher education (such an assertion would be absurd), but rather it is how this platform embodies “the process of experimentation” that is still in its infancy when it comes to the future of higher education. To Mary Washington’s great credit, it has been on the bleeding edge of innovation in this regard for more than seven years.
Image credit: Ethan Hein’s “Hyperbolic orthogonal dodecahedral honeycomb”
Jeffrey W. McClurken
Jeff McClurken, chair and associate professor of history and American studies, had the article “Teaching and Learning with Omeka: Discomfort, Play, and Creating Public, Online, Digital Collections” published in the collection “Learning through Digital Media: Experiments in Technology and Pedagogy.”
The essay was released in electronic form at http://learningthroughdigitalmedia.net. In addition, it was issued in published form by The New School as part of Mobility Shifts, a project supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
The article, which discusses the value of discomfort and open-source tools in teaching digital history, features a number of digital history projects by UMW students.
Read the article in its entirety.
Jess Rigelhaupt
Jess Rigelhaupt, assistant professor of history and American studies, and four UMW students served on a panel on “Oral History and Documenting James Farmer’s Legacy at the University of Mary Washington” at the 2010 meeting of the Oral History Association. Christiane Lauer ’11, Sadie Smith ’11, Justin Mattos ’10 and MacKenzie Murphy ’10, with Rigelhaupt, presented papers based on interviews the students conducted in Rigelhaupt’s course “Oral History and James Farmer,” which was taught in fall 2009. The interviews are available at farmeroralhistory.umwblogs.org, a website that documents Farmer’s contributions to UMW and was built as part of the course. Lauer’s and Smith’s participation in the Oral History Association annual meeting was supported by an undergraduate research grant from the College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office.
Janusz Konieczny
Janusz Konieczny, professor of mathematics, published four research articles (the last two as a co-author): “Centralizers in the semigroup of injective transformations on an infinite set” in the Bulletin of the Australian Mathematical Society, “Infinite injective transformations whose centralizers have simple structure” in the Central European Journal of Mathematics, “Automorphisms of endomorphism semigroups of reflexive digraphs” in Mathematische Nachrichten, and “Minimal paths in the commuting graphs of semigroups” in the European Journal of Combinatorics. He was an invited speaker at the “Workshop on Universal Algebra, Complexity and Constraint Satisfaction Problems” in Lisbon, Portugal, and gave an invited seminar talk at the Center of Algebra of the University of Lisbon, Portugal.
Andrew Dolby and Deborah O’Dell
Ass
ociate Professors of Biology Andrew Dolby and Deborah O’Dell were awarded a $1,000 grant by the Virginia Society of Ornithology for their joint project Enzyme immunoassay quantification of Heat Shock Protein 60 and its application to avian conservation biology.
At the Virginia Academy of Science’s Fall Undergraduate Research Meeting, held at the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond in October, O’Dell’s student, Anum Shaikh, was awarded funding for undergraduate research. Anum will study the “Effects of Combined Vitamin E and C Treatment on Plaque Formation in Alzheimer’s Disease.”