Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science and director of the University’s Center for Leadership and Media Studies, recently gave a U.S. Department of State program lecture entitled, “U.S. Journalism, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy Development,” in Washington, DC., for visiting Palestinian professors. The lecture was part of the Institute for International Education’s International Visitor Leadership Program and included findings from Farnsworth’s recent co-authored book, “The Global President: International Media and the U.S. Government.”
Ambuel Publishes Book
David Ambuel, professor of Classics, Philosophy, and Religion, recently published Turtles All the Way Down: On Plato’s Theaetetus, a Translation and Commentary. Academia Verlag published the book in January, 2015.
UMW Professor Documents Local Hospital History
The storied past of Mary Washington Healthcare has been preserved online, thanks to efforts of University of Mary Washington Professor Jess Rigelhaupt.
The associate professor of history and American studies received a $25,000 grant from Mary Washington Healthcare to record oral history interviews and develop a website that covers the history of the 115-year old organization.
The website mwhchistory.com, which launched this month, currently includes more than 35 hours of interviews with longtime administrators, board members, physicians, and nurses with a wealth of knowledge about the local hospital system for the past 30 years. The project is ongoing and will record over 80 hours of interviews with over 40 people when it is completed.
Click here to view the embedded video.
“We began as an eight-room hospital, and have evolved into a not-for-profit regional system of two hospitals and 28 healthcare facilities and wellness services,” said recently retired President and CEO of Mary Washington Healthcare Fred M. Rankin III, who was interviewed for the project. “Hearing personal accounts from many who have been part of Mary Washington Healthcare’s journey through the last 20-plus years is an important part of telling the story.”
For the past two years, Rigelhaupt worked with UMW students to record interviews and edit video footage all with the goal of providing a more traditional history of the organization through the art of storytelling.
“An important goal is to have a highly accessible repository that documents the growth and expansion of Mary Washington Healthcare through the voices of the people who contributed to it,” said Rigelhaupt. “To record how they experienced what they saw, what they did and how they reflect back on it and how they’ve made meaning out of and understand the growth of the organization and the challenges that were faced.”
The largest private employer in Fredericksburg, Mary Washington Healthcare has certainly seen its fair share of growth, especially since the new hospital opened in 1993. The website includes firsthand accounts of change from a variety of employees, including Diane Brothers, who began working as a nurse at the hospital in 1986 and is now a nursing supervisor and clinical ethics specialist, and Xavier R. Richardson, who joined MWHC in 1997 and currently serves as the executive vice president of Corporate Development and Community Affairs.
“The Mary Washington Healthcare oral history website, hosted and presented by the University of Mary Washington, is a natural partnership which provides historical information, and new insights for public policy, healthcare, and regional development,” said Michael McDermott, M.D., president and CEO, Mary Washington Healthcare.
Rigelhaupt agrees.
“The project represents collaboration between the campus and the community,” he said. “As an institution for research and knowledge production, the University and this research project worked with and produced new knowledge about a pillar of the community.”
Mackintosh, Liss, and Schiffrin Publish Book Chapter on Intensive Parenting
Drs. Virginia Mackintosh, Miriam Liss, and Holly Schiffrin published a book chapter in the recently released Intensive Mothering: The Cultural Contradictions of Modern Motherhood from Demeter Press. The chapter, “Using a Quantitative Measure to Explore Intensive Mothering Ideology,” outlines the development and use of the Intensive Parenting Attitudes Questionnaire designed by the authors.
Zhao Publishes in Journal of Management Analytics
Xiaofeng Zhao, associate professor in the College of Business, recently had his co-authored article “Analyzing the time buffer in the Theory of Constraints based lean operations” published in the Journal of Management Analytics, Volume 1, Issue 3.
Tyler Named CAC President
Ken Tyler, director of athletics, is the new president of the Capital Athletic Conference’s board of directors. He begins his two-year term in January.
Check out the full story:
http://www.cacsports.com/general_releases/gen1415/board_president_umw_tyler
Farnsworth Opinion Column in Washington Post
Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science and director of the University’s Center for Leadership and Media Studies, is the author of an opinion column entitled, “How Gerrymandering cost Virginia its Medicaid Expansion,” published in the Washington Post on Jan. 18. The column incorporates the results of a recent UMW statewide poll of Virginians.
McClurken Presents at AHA National Conference
2015 AHA Conference
At the Annual American Historical Association Conference, Jeffrey McClurken, Professor of History and American Studies and Special Assistant to the Provost for Teaching, Technology, and Innovation, presented in a number of venues. He ran a two-hour workshop on “Advanced Digital History Pedagogy” at the Getting Started in Digital History session. He presented “Student Historians and a Domain of One’s Own” in the Digital History Pedagogy session. He co-organized a Digital Drop-In Session where anyone could come by and ask experts in digital humanities questions about a new or ongoing projects. McClurken also was asked to comment with other current and former department chairs on a draft statement from the AHA’s Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Evaluation of Digital Scholarship. He ended the conference by leading sessions at THATCamp AHA–an unconference exploring the intersection of humanities and technology–on the future of THATCamp and on teaching digital history to undergraduates.
Helen Housley Receives Award
Helen Housley, Associate Professor, Theatre and Dance, received the 2015 Lessac Leadership Award on Jan. 10, 2015. The award, which is presented by the Lessac Training and Research Institute, honors a member ‘for years of service toward the growth and direction of the Lessac Institute.’ Housley has served as the Institute’s Treasurer since 2009.
UMW Psychologists Discuss Balance on Public Radio Show
University of Mary Washington psychologists Miriam Liss and Holly Schiffrin say that finding happiness in life doesn’t come from having more material possessions.
“There’s really no way to be all in at work, all in as a parent, all in as a partner or spouse and all in in other social roles like volunteering,” said Liss who coauthors the recently released book Balancing the Big Stuff: Finding Happiness in Work, Family and Lifewith her colleague. “You have to find out what works for you to give balance in life.”
Liss and Schiffrin explore how to achieve this balance in an upcoming interview on Virginia’s Public Radio Program With Good Reason, which airs Jan. 24 through Jan. 30.
In the radio show, they discuss how to avoid working or parenting in excess, how to focus on what is intrinsically motivating, and how to work toward gender equality in the home and workplace in order to give concrete steps toward reaching harmony among our roles in life.
With Good Reason is a program of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. The show airs weekly in Fredericksburg on Sundays from 1-2 p.m. on Radio IQ 88.3 Digital. The show also airs broadcast on public radio stations in Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Washington D.C. To listen from outside of the Fredericksburg area, a complete list of air times and links to corresponding radio stations can be found at http://withgoodreasonradio.org/when-to-listen. Audio files of the full program and its companion news feature are available online at http://withgoodreasonradio.org/2015/01/where-did-you-come-from.
Liss and Schiffrin are international experts on the subjects of happiness, gender issues and intensive and helicopter parenting. Liss is the recipient of the prestigious 2015 Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education of Virginia (SCHEV). Schiffrin is president of the Virginia Academic and Applied Psychologist Academy of the Virginia Psychological Association.
Balancing work and family also is personal for Liss and Schiffrin. While maintaining full teaching and research loads, they also are raising young children.