Mehdi Aminrazavi, professor of philosophy and religion presented a paper entitled “Mysticism in Islamic Philosophical Tradition: Hindrance to Rationalism or Perfection of Reason” at the Symposium on the Middle Ages (Mystik im Mittelalter Gegensatz oder Vollendung der Vernunft?) at Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany. Feb. 26, 2014.
College of Education Professor Named to International Advisory Board
Dr. Patricia Reynolds has been named to the International Advisory Board for EDULEARN14. It is designed to discuss the latest developments in the field of teaching and learning methodologies, educational projects and innovations and new technologies applied to education and research. The EDULEARN14 Advisory Board has been created as a consultant body with the specific aim of getting new ideas and proposals in international education. It is composed of selected professors and researchers from all continents around the world.
Bowen and Students Visit Guatemala during Spring Break
Jack Humiston ’15 and David Chambers ’14 measure clearings in the cloud forest using a GPS unit and a laser range finder. This allows them to calculate areas of deforestation. The students worked on this project with 2011 graduate Ian Pope.
Dawn Bowen, professor of geography, supervised an undergraduate research trip to Guatemala over spring break with University of Mary Washington students.
Jack Humiston ’15 and David Chambers ’14 researched a project titled “Mapping Deforestation in the Sierra Yalijux Mountains of the Alta Verapaz, Guatemala” over a nine-day period.
“This experience is incredibly important because students actually apply the concepts/techniques that they learn in the classroom to a real world setting. In this case, the students are also helping to produce maps for Community Cloud Forest Conservation, the local NGO that I work with, to show landowners the threats to their property, the consequences of not protecting land, and promoting a preservation plan with the local community,” said Bowen. “These young men can now state that they have done field work and used the data that they collected to produce maps.”
Jen Chiang Published in the Journal of Geometry
Yuan-Jen Chiang, Professor of Mathematics, published a joint research article “Transversal Wave Maps and Transversal Exponential Wave Maps” in the Journal of Geometry. It investigated the properties and relationship of transversal wave maps and transversal exponential wave maps.
Janusz Konieczny Publishes in Asian-European Journal of Mathematics
Janusz Konieczny, professor of mathematics, published a research article, Automorphism groups of endomorphism monoids of free G_sets, in the Asian-European Journal of Mathematics.
NSF STEP Grant Presentation
Dianne Baker, Venitta McCall, and Kelli Slunt attended the National Science Foundation Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Talent Expansion Program 2014 Grantees Conference in Washington, D.C. March 5 to 7, 2014. On Thursday, March 6, the three principal investigators for the grant presented a poster entitled STEM Talent Expansion Through Research, Engagement, Preparation, and Scholarship.
Barrenechea Selected for Jessie Ball duPont Summer Seminar
Antonio Barrenechea, Associate Professor of English, has been selected to participate in one of the two 2014 Jessie Ball duPont Summer Seminars sponsored by the National Humanities Center. That seminar, “Globalization and the Varieties of Modern Capitalism,” will meet June 1 to 20 in Research Triangle Park, N.C. His application was approved in conjunction with a new project on the poetics and politics of excess in the cinema of the Americas.
Cate Brewer Co-Chairs National Theatre Conference
Cate Brewer, Lecturer in Theatre in the Department of Theatre and Dance, co-chaired the Practice/Production Symposium of The Mid-America Theatre Conference. She also presented her paper entitled: “Contemporizing Commedia: Re-envisioning the Renaissance.” Cate has presented at The Mid-America Theatre Conference for the last six years.
Professors and Student Publish Collaborative Column
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.