A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff
An abandoned home in the Colony.
After first discovering the remnants of the American oil colony on Aruba in the 1980s, Dawn Bowen has finally published an article in the Journal of Cultural Geography on the creation of this place and the lived experiences of children who made the colony their home.
Kimberley Buster-Williams, vice president for enrollment management, had an article featured in College & University’s fall edition (Vol. 93, Issue 3). The article was titled “The Caterpillar Way: Lessons in Leadership, Growth and Shareholder Value and Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education.” College & University is AACRAO’s educational policy and research journal focusing on emerging concerns, new techniques, and technology in higher education. It is published four times a year.
Dr. Ben Odhiambo Kisila, associate professor of Earth and environmental sciences, along with his UMW undergraduate research students, had two research papers published in peer-reviewed journals.
“Analysis of spatial distribution of trace metals, PCB, and PAH and their potential impact on human health in Virginian Counties and independent cities, USA,” was published in Environmental Geochemistry and Health.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10653-018-0172-2
“Sediment and Phosphorous Fluxes Analysis in Aquia Creek, a Sub-watershed of the Chesapeake Bay Basin, VA, USA,” was published in the journal of Water, Air and Soil Pollution.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11270-018-3886-y
Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences Pamela Grothe co-authored a Review paper in the esteemed Nature journal, titled “El Nino-Southern Oscillation complexity”
College is key to attaining the American Dream (The Free Lance-Star)
As a new academic year approaches and immigration debates dominate the news, I have been thinking about the American Dream, particularly about how college factors into what we call this somewhat elusive concept.
The End of a Blogging Era at Harvard (Inside Higher Ed)
The University of Mary Washington still has an active institutionally hosted blogging platform called UMW blogs, said Martha Burtis, director of the digital knowledge center of the university. But the popularity of the platform has diminished since the university started offering faculty and students the opportunity to control their own blogs through an initiative called Domain of One’s Own.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/20/end-era-old-harvard-blogging-site
Bellah Fontem, assistant professor in the College of Business, and business student Jeremiah Smith, had a paper accepted for publication by the European Journal of Operational Research. The paper is titled “Analysis of a Chance-Constrained New Product Risk Model with Multiple Customer Classes.”
Professors of Psychology Miriam Liss and Holly Schriffin, authors of Balancing the Big Stuff: Finding Happiness in Work, Family, and Life, have been invited to speak at The Parent Conference at James Madison University on Saturday, Sept. 22.
The one-day educational and personal development event is for “anyone interested in the science of raising happy, healthy, and successful children,” according to an event flier.
Liss and Schriffin are internationally known experts in the fields of parenting and work-family balance issues.
In August 2018, Zach Whalen, associate professor of English and director of the minor in digital studies, traveled to Montreal to participate in the annual conference of the Electronic Literature Organization. At the conference, Whalen presented research on using computational text-analysis to study and interpret the work of a community of practitioners who use code to generate novels every November in an event called National Novel Generation Month (NaNoGenMo).
Whalen also performed a reading of his own NaNoGenMo 2017 book titled The Several Houses of Brian, Spencer, Liam, Victoria, Brayden, Vincent, and Alex, an 800-page long “children’s book”
Rosemary Jesionowski, Associate Professor of Studio Art at UMW, is embarking on a three month road trip across the United States to practice the historic photographic process of albumen printing and to produce a new body of work using this process. The work produced will be site-specific and will be a continuation of Jesionowski’s investigation of place, land, and how we identify ourselves through location.
On the road, Jesionowski will capture the landscape using a 4×5 view camera. Each stop will be between 1-3 days, allowing her time to process the film by hand and make site-specific albumen prints, using water from each area, and taking advantage of the sun’s position in each place. These variables (water content, position of sun) will create variations in the final prints and will tie the prints to the land.
Upon her return, Jesionowski will have an exhibition of the final albumen prints and will produce a book of images.
Follow along on Instagram @great_albumen_tour