On Oct. 10 to 13, Professors Ranjit Singh, political science and international affairs, and Nabil Al-Tikriti, history and American studies, attended the 2013 Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Conference in New Orleans, LA. The conference is the primary professional event for Middle East Studies in North America. On Oct. 11, Nabil Al-Tikriti chaired a panel entitled “Empire and Belonging: Ottoman Empire to Modern Turkey,” which brought together four scholars offering papers concerning intellectual luminaries in the late Ottoman Empire and early Republican Turkey. On Oct. 12, Ranjit Singh’s presentation on the “Teacher’s Dilemma” presented by new media was part of the “Media, Media Literacy, and Teaching Middle East Studies” panel sponsored by MESA’s Committee for Undergraduate Middle East Studies (CUMES).
Suzanne Houff Publishes Book
Suzanne G. Houff, College of Education department of curriculum and cnstruction professor and chair, recently authored Managing the Classroom Environment: Meeting the Needs of the Student. Published by Rowman & Littlefield Education, the book offers educators practical strategies for managing the classroom. Using William Glasser’s ideas as a foundation, the text covers the five basic needs and their relation to classroom management. Additional management theories and concepts are explored alongside developmental recommendations to offer an overarching classroom plan that focuses on meeting student needs and moving away from reward- and punishment-based systems.
Meadows Presents at STEM Conference
College of Education Professor George Meadows was an invited presenter at the STEM: Science with the Future in Mind Conference, held at the Virginia Military Institute Oct. 8 and 9. The target audience for the 2013 conference was high school teachers and students. Teachers were able to explore current scientific research as well as the pedagogy of science. High school students were given the opportunity to build relationships with mentors involved in STEM. Meadows presented workshops featuring the work being done in the College of Education’s LearnerSpace, including demonstrations of 3-D printing, microcontrollers, and alternative input devices such as the Makey Makey and the LEAP Motion Controller.
Anthes Speaks at Virginia Union University
Dre Anthes, Director of Graduate Admissions, was a guest speaker at Virginia Union University on Wednesday, Oct. 9. She presented information on graduate school to two different groups of students, including VUU’s Sydney Lewis School of Business.
Mark Snyder Performs at Breast Cancer Benefit
Assistant Professor of Music Mark Snyder performed with students Becky Brown and Paige Naylor at the Second Annual Under 40 Music Marathon, an event dedicated to raising breast cancer awareness in men and women under the age of 40.
From Sept. 27-29, Hard Rock Cafe – Washington, D.C., City of Hope, and Pink Jams! partnered for the Second Annual Under 40 Music Marathon. With the help of 250 local musicians and hundreds of supporters, the event raised over $15,000!
A wide variety of local, regional, and national musicians played back to back continuously for 39 hours and 59 minutes. All in the name of breast cancer awareness.
Donations from the Marathon will go to support City of Hope’s life-saving breast cancer research and treatment programs, and helps Pink Jams! eradicate the misconception that breast cancer awareness begins at age 40.
Domain of One’s Own Initiative Goes International!
UMW’s Domain of One’s Own Faculty Initiative was one of five featured live video-streamed sessions at the referred 2013 International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) conference in Raleigh, N.C. on Oct. 3, 2013.
Our panel session, ‘What is the role of ‘Digital Scholarship’ in Higher Education, Faculty Development and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning?’ provided a unique opportunity for the international SOTL community to consider the role of ‘open’ digital scholarship within and across disciplines, faculty development efforts and explore implications of digital scholarship within the broader higher education community.
Panel members included:
Professor Martin Weller author of The Digital Scholar: How Technology is Transforming Scholarly Practice at the Institute of Educational Technology Professoriat at The Open University, United Kingdom was brought in remotely to the panel session to share his scholarly work on groundbreaking work with digital scholarship and set the stage for UMW’s innovative Spring 2013 Faculty initiative.
Dr. Gary Poole, Professor and Associate Director of the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver served as panel moderator. He has published extensively, co-authored Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education, has numerous SoTL publications, and served as the Director for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at UBC.
Dr. Mary Kayler (Director, Center for Teaching Excellence & Innovation) presented on the faculty development model and theoretical framework to support faculty innovation practices and reported out faculty data related to digital scholarship.
Dr. Andrea Livi Smith (Assistant Professor, Historic Preservation) shared her experiences with the faculty initiative and showcased her domain andrealivismith.com.
Andy Rush and Tim Owens (Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies) presented on the innovative culture at UMW showcasing past DTLT initiatives and the groundwork for building the Domain of One’s Own Project.
ISSOTL serves faculty members, staff, and students who care about teaching and learning as serious intellectual work; fostering inquiry and dissemination about post-secondary learning and teaching.
Chiang Publishes Book in Series
“Developments of Harmonic Maps, Wave Maps and Yang-Mills Fields into Biharmonic Maps, Biwave Maps and Bi-Yang-Mills Fields” by Yuan-Jen Chiang, professor of mathematics, was published by Birhauser, Springer, Basel, in the series of “Frontiers in Mathematics” in Europe.
She presented “Developments of Harmonic Maps into Biharmonic Maps” at the second Pacific Rim Mathematical Association Congress, which occurs every four years, in Shanghai, China. She also presented “Harmonic and Biharmonic Maps between Riemannian Manifolds” at a Colloquium of Mathematics Department, National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei.
Janusz Konieczny Leads Seminar at VCU
Janusz Konieczny, professor of mathematics, gave an invited talk, “The Commuting Graph of the Symmetric Inverse Semigroup,” at the Analysis, Logic and Physics Seminar at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Cooperman Blogs for USAPP
Rosalyn Cooperman, Associate Professor of Political Science, wrote an invited post for the London School of Economics USA Politics & Policy blog on divisions among congressional Republicans and the government shutdown. Cooperman states that most House Republicans have no electoral incentive to compromise with congressional Democrats. Those Republicans who do represent swing districts with large populations of federal workers and retirees.
UMW Survey Receives Extensive Coverage
A survey of Virginia voters designed by Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science and director of the University’s Center for Leadership and Media Studies, has received extensive media attention, including reports in:
The Washington Post , Politico , Daily Kos , Real Clear Politics , WRC-TV, Washington , WTOP , WAMU , The Richmond-Times Dispatch , The Daily Press of Hampton Roads and The Free Lance-Star.