Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science and international affairs and director for the Center for Leadership and Media Studies, and Steve Hanna, professor and chair of the department of geography, published a collaborative column with UMW senior political science major Benjamin Harris in the Richmond Times Dispatch. The article is about the Medicaid expansion debate in Virginia.
Professor Sharpless Publishes Articles
Chemistry Professor Charles Sharpless is the co-author of two recently published articles. The first, entitled “Photooxidation-induced changes in optical, electrochemical, and photochemical properties of humic substances,” was co-authored with colleagues from U.C. Berkeley and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and appears in the current issue of the American Chemical Society journal, Environmental Science & Technology. A research article, it focuses on how prolonged exposure to solar radiation alters the photochemical and electrochemical properties of natural dissolved organic matter, ubiquitous brown “stuff” in surface waters that participates in many aspects of environmental aquatic chemistry. The second article, entitled “The importance of charge-transfer interactions in determining chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) optical and photochemical properties,” was co-authored with Professor Neil Blough (Chemistry, U. MD College Park). This was an invited review for the Royal Society of Chemistry’s journal, Environmental Sciences: Processes and Impacts, formerly The Journal of Environmental Modeling. The review, containing 247 references, deals with the optical and photochemical properties of natural dissolved organic matter, how those properties are related, and the relevance of these relationships for current research in environmental photochemistry. The article is currently in advance electronic format and will be published later this year in a specially-themed journal issue devoted to aquatic photochemical processes.
Kashef Majid and UMW Business Major Madeleine Bate Present at Conference
Kashef Majid, Assistant Professor of Marketing in the College of Business, and UMW business major Madeleine Bate, presented “Breadth vs. Depth – Linking Network Shape to Revenues, a Study of the Dispersion of Film Trailers via Twitter,” at the American Marketing Association Winter Educators Conference in Orlando from Feb. 21 to 23, 2014. To view a copy of the presentation please visit http://kashefmajid.com.
Martha Burtis and Jim Groom Present at Symposium
On Feb. 21 Martha Burtis and Jim Groom were invited to present about the open, online Digital Storytelling course ds106 at the OpenVCU Symposium. The presentation, “Open is as Open Does,” lays bare the various levels an open course like ds106 operates through. This talk breaks down teaching openly online into three parts: open platforms, open pedagogy, and open community. You can read about the presentation in more detail here or view the slide deck below.
Randall Helmstutler Publishes Article
Associate Professor and Chair of Mathematics, Randall Helmstutler, published the article “Conjugate pairs of categories and Quillen equivalent stable model categories of functors.” It appears in a recent issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra.
Farnsworth Gives U.S. Department of State Lecture
Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science and director of the University’s Center for Leadership and Media Studies, recently gave a lecture entitled, “Journalism and U.S. Foreign Policy: Global Media and Politics in Transition,” to visiting journalists from Yemen who were part of a recent Institute for International Education Visitor Leadership Program. The Washington-based program was sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.
Fallon Presents at Afroasiatic Linguistics Conference
Paul Fallon, Associate Professor of Linguistics, presented the paper “The Lexicostatistics of Central Cushitic (Agaw)” at the 42nd annual meeting of the North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics (NACAL), held this year at the University of Leiden, The Netherlands, Feb. 14-16, 2014.
Dance Faculty & Students Attend American College Dance Festival
The University of Mary Washington Theater and Dance Department will be represented by two faculty members, Beverly Mendez and Roxann Morgan Rowley accompanying eight dance students at The 2014 American College Dance Festival, March 8-11 at George Mason University. The festival provides an amazing opportunity for faculty and students to participate in workshops, classes, performances and lectures all geared to compliment dance and arts education.
“The national dance festival provides the venue for students and faculty to engage in three days of performances, workshops, panels, and master classes taught by instructors from around the region and country. The conferences also provide the unique opportunity for students and faculty to have their dance works adjudicated by a panel of nationally recognized dance professionals in an open and constructive forum.”
Along with dance/movement classes and workshops faculty and students will have the opportunity attend performances by the Joffery Ballet at the Center for the Arts as well as “Imagine…a life in Dance” facilitated by Robert Battle – Artistic Director for Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, Charlotte d’Amboise – actress and dancer, Deborah Jowitt – dance critic, author, and choreographer, Elizabeth Streb – STREB Company COMPANY and Ashley Wheater – artistic director of The Joffrey Ballet.
UMW theater and dance student, Covenant Babatunde’s choreographic work “Grave Silence” was selected to be presented in the Informal Concert during the conference, performed by students Lauren Armstrong, Sarah Joy Calpo, Mason Prince, and Edward Yates.
Dance faculty members Beverly Mendez and Roxann Morgan Rowley will also have the opportunity to teach during the conference; Ms. Mendez explores improvisation movement techniques through “Discovering Creativity through Improvisation” and Roxann Morgan Rowley examines improvisation in partnering in “Contact Improvisation, Evaluating Touch.”
Attendance for faculty and staff to The American College Dance Festival was largely due to the generous support from University of Mary Washington’s Friends of Dance Alumni Association who granted funds for their attendance.
Xiaofeng Zhao’s Article Accepted for Publication
Associate Professor in the College of Business, Dr. Xiaofeng Zhao’s article, “Nonlinear Programming,” has been accepted by the Encyclopedia of Business Analytics and Optimization (EBAO). The article will be published by IGI Global in 2014. Another article by Dr. Zhao, “Linear Programming,” will also be published in EBAO.
Toth And Students Publish Paper
Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Dave Toth, and his students Zach Goodywyn and Jerome Mueller published a paper on the research they conducted during this year’s UMW Summer Science Program. The paper compares the performance of the Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor and an NVIDIA K20c GPU. Prof. Toth also presented the work at the PDCN conference in Austria last week.