A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff
Zach Whalen
Zach Whalen, Assistant Professor of English, has been appointed to a three-year term on the Modern Language Association’s Information Technology Committee charged with advising on various technological initiatives and projects within the MLA. The Modern Language Association is the preeminent professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature and includes some 30,000 members.
The University of Mary Washington President’s Technology Advisory Council, PTAC, recently awarded 10 PTAC Innovation Fund Grants to UMW faculty and staff members.
PTAC Innovation Fund Grants, which can range from $500 to $25,000, are intended to help jump-start innovative uses of technology in learning, teaching and exploration at UMW. This year’s grant recipients were:
The President’s Technology Advisory Council is a presidentially appointed committee of faculty, students and staff established in 2012 as a recommendation within the University Strategic Plan.
PTAC advises the president on technology issues, provides input on the purchasing of digital systems, and fosters and enables academic technologies and libraries at UMW. For more information visit http://president.umw.edu/ptac/grant/.
UMW Cares won the “Prevention” category award at the NASPA Campus Safety Knowledge Community meeting in March. NASPA is the professional organization for Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. The award – an engraved plaque – was presented to Doug Searcy at the annual conference in Baltimore, Md. Congratulations to the UMW Cares Team for this recognition and ongoing service to the UMW community.
Elizabeth F. Larus, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, presented a lecture, “The U.S. Pivot to the Western Pacific: Implications for Security in the Asia-Pacific,” on April 11, 2014 to Command and Staff of the Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWACS) as part of the National Securities Lecture Series at the UMW Dahlgren Campus. Professor Larus’ lecture was simultaneously broadcast to remote attendees from U.S. Strategic Command and the Pentagon.
Shumona Dasgupta, Assistant Professor of English, presented “Staging Resistance in ‘Crisis Fiction’: Women Writing the Indian Partition” on March 29, 2014, at the Association of Asian Studies annual conference in Philadelphia, Pa. She also presented “Violence and the Everyday: Reading the Representational Ethics of Gendered Violence in Partition Texts” on April 5, 2014, at the Northeast Modern Language Association (NEMLA) annual convention in Harrisburg, Pa.
Anand Rao, Associate Professor of Communication and Director of the Speaking Intensive Program and the Speaking Center, gave two presentations at the National Association of Communication Centers conference at Arizona State University-West on Friday, April 11, 2014. The first was on “Assessment Best Practices,” and the second was on “Negotiating Identity and Place at Institutions without Communication Majors.”
On April 5, Will Mackintosh presented a paper entitled “Traveling Gender Identities in the Nineteenth Century” at the Graham Letters and Culture Symposium in Illinois.
Eric Lorentzen, associate professor of English, gave a pedagogical talk entitled “The Victorian Psychological Novel and Memory: Wordsworthian Echoes, Freudian Anticipations” at the Northeastern Modern Language Association Conference in Harrisburg, Pa. on April 4. He also chaired the panel “Literary Genealogies: British Romantic Poetry and Victorian Novels.”
Students perform at the UMW Jazz Festival.
The UMW Jazz Ensemble, directed by Doug Gately, participated in the annual UMW Jazz Festival held on April 6. In addition to performing their own program, they also worked with guest jazz artists, Jeff Antoniuk and Wade Beach, from the group “Jazz Update.”
The University of Mary Washington Board of Visitors recognized former women’s tennis coach and athletic director Dr. Edward Hegmann by naming the outdoor tennis facility in his honor in a ceremony on Wednesday. The facility is named the Edward Hegmann II Tennis Complex.
Edward Hegmann (center) poses with UMW All-American players Tyler Carey ’15 and Lindsay Raulston ’14.
During his 36-year tenure, Hegmann built UMW Athletics into one of the nation’s top Division III programs. For more information about Hegmann’s legacy, visit http://www.umweagles.com/edceremony.