Rosalyn Cooperman, Associate Professor of Political Science, presented research on polarization of Democratic and Republican party delegates at the 2017 State of the Parties conference sponsored by the Ray Bliss Institute of Politics at the University of Akron.
Stommel Quoted in Inside Higher Ed
Jesse Stommel, executive director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies at UMW, and founding director of the Hybrid Pedagogy journal, was quoted recently in Inside Hig
her Ed. In the article, “Do Professors Need Automated Help Grading Online Comments?,” Stommel said that he found Blackboard’s proposal to evaluate student writing in this way to be alarming. “There is certainly space for technology to help us create dialogue in an online class, but using a technology to assess the success of a discussion, ultimately it reduces student engagement to a rote series of behaviors. ‘Write a comment of 60 words, citing two sources, responding to at least one of your classmates’ — those kinds of behaviors do not make a discussion successful. They’re arbitrary markers.”
Schiffrin Interviewed by Voice of America
Holly Schiffrin, professor of psychology, was recently quoted in Voice of America. The article, “Does Your Mother Still Do Your Laundry?,” discussed the problems of helicopter parenting. “Helicopter parenting is … parents being involved at a level that is inappropriate,” she said. Schiffrin told VOA that she sees students struggling to deal with issues ranging from anxiety to maturity to handling simple tasks that come with independence, such as doing laundry or cooking a meal.
Wilson Publishes, Presents Paper on Rape Acknowledgment
L
aura Wilson, assistant professor of psychology, has published a paper with colleagues from the University of Central Florida and Virginia Tech. Dr. Wilson, along with Drs. Newins and White, wrote a paper about how the way rape survivors conceptualize the incident impacts their functioning. This process is called rape acknowledgment. Up to this point, researchers have primarily focused on how the label the survivor uses to conceptualize the incident explains depression and posttraumatic stress disorder, without taking other factors into account. The findings of this more recent study suggest that the label matters in the context of the survivor’s beliefs about sexual victimization. The paper, “The impact of rape acknowledgment on survivor outcomes: The moderating effects of rape myth acceptance,” was recently published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology. Dr. Wilson also presented the study with Dr. Newins at the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies conference in Chicago this month. They presented as part of a symposium they arranged including esteemed colleagues from Duke University School of Medicine, East Carolina University, and University of New Mexico.
Lorentzen Presents a Paper at the Victorians Institute Conference
Eric Lorentzen
Eric Lorentzen, Associate Professor of English, recently presented a paper, “Oliver Twist’s Recovery: Wordsworthian ‘Abundant Recompense’ or Freudian ‘Primal Scene?'” at the annual Victorians Institute conference in Greenville, South Carolina.
Farnsworth, Hanna Columns on Virginia’s Changing Dynamics
Op-ed columns by Stephen J. Farnsworth, professor of political science, and Stephen P. Hanna, professor of geography, appeared recently in The Washington Post and The Richmond Times-Dispatch respectively. The columns, “This one map shows the Republicans’ problem in Virginia” and “Virginia’s Changing Dynamics,” provided a post-mortem of the Virginia elections.
McAllister Presents at International Conference
Marie E. McAllister, Professor of English, delivered a paper titled “Were Gentlemen Poxed Abroad? English Grand Tourists and the Rhetoric of Disease” as part of Encounters with Difference: A Conference on Travel Writing and Gender, held at Freie Universität Berlin.
Larus Publishes Journal Article on U.S. China Policy
Elizabeth Freund Larus, Waple Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and UMW alumnae Shirley Naa-kowaa Martey-Hargis published their article “U.S. President Obama’s China Policy: a Critical Assessment,” in the November 2017 issue of TEKA (Polish Commission of Political Science and International Affairs).
Cheshire Presents at Educause Conference
Hall Cheshire presented a poster on selecting a content collaboration service at ED
UCAUSE, one of the largest higher education technology conferences. The presentation focused on key criteria universities should consider when selecting a cloud content collaboration service. Cheshire was joined by Sean O’Brien ’09 from Internet2 and Lou Kelly from Arizona State University.
Nabil Al-Tikriti Serves as MSF Home Exhibit Guide in Portland
On 13-23 October, Prof. Nabil Al-Tikriti served as a volunteer guide with the MSF/Doctors Without Borders USA Forced From Home exhibit in Portland, OR. This interactive exhibit is traveling to six Western cities this fall: Boulder, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Portland, Oakland, Santa Monica (Nov. 10-21), and traveled to six Eastern cities last fall: New York, Queens, Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, and Pittsburgh.
In this exhibit, participants engage with the issue of the 65 million displaced persons worldwide, including 40 million refugees. Complete with a 360 degree video dome and six information stations, participants decide which items they might bring with them should they be displaced from their homes.
In the course of this exhibit, Prof. Al-Tikriti spoke briefly on the KATU News at Four show (at 2:25 here): https://cision.criticalmention.com/bits/wordplay/#/uuid=13dc5a25-c1a9-4047-8972-40142b333db0&channelId=8149&minTime=20171018230000&maxTime=20171019000000&token=7e34ac0d-c71f-4799-97e9-475cb307f8aa&keyword=&slim=1
For more information on the exhibit as it travels around the country, see: http://www.forcedfromhome.com/.