The Domain of One’s Own project, an initiative being run at the University of Mary Washington by the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies, was featured in the Center for Digital Education in an article by Tanya Roscorla. The article notes the unique nature of the program amongst peer institutions across the nation, as well as the profound need for such a program to exist. The Domain of One’s Own project successfully ran a pilot with over 400 students and faculty, and will open fully to the incoming freshman class this fall.
Farnsworth Coauthors Research Article
Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science and director of the University’s Center for Leadership and Media Studies, is coauthor of a research article entitled, “An Extended Presidential Honeymoon? Coverage of Barack Obama in the New York Times during 2009 and 2010,” which was published in the current issue of Politics & Policy, a refereed academic journal.
Farnsworth has also been interviewed by many area news outlets over recent political developments in Virginia, including WJLA-TV and WTOP-FM in Washington and WRVA-AM in Richmond.
Chris Foss Publishes Review
Chris Foss, professor of English, published “Toward a Transcontinental (or, InterEurasian) Canon,” a review of a set of companion texts by Mary Ellis Gibson–her scholarly monograph Indian Angles: English Verse in Colonial India from Jones to Tagore and her critical anthology Anglophone Poetry in Colonial India, 1780-1913–in the July 2013 number of English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920. Now in its 56th year, ELT is one of the most established venues for scholarly work on literature from the late Victorian, Edwardian, and early Modernist periods.
Janine Davis Publishes Commentary in Teachers College Record
Janine Davis, assistant professor of curriculum and instruction, has published a commentary in the Teachers College Record. The article, “Defining/Undermining True Professionalism for our Times: Two Competing Narratives,” looks at the ways that teacher educators prepare students for practicum experiences.
Nabil Al-Tikriti Leads Plenary Session on Health Care Under Fire
In his capacity as a board member of MSF / Doctors Without Borders USA, on June 14 Nabil Al-Tikriti co-organized, moderated, and led discussion during a plenary session entitled “Health Care Under Fire” during the 2013 MSF USA General Assembly in New York City. During this session, participants set out to “share some of MSF’s direct field experiences of the risks and dangers associated with healthcare delivery in insecure contexts, and, most importantly, to reflect on the impact such violence has on the disruption of medical services.” The forum served to launch a fresh initiative within the MSF movement entitled “Medical Care Under Fire” designed to engage with this issue globally. The new initiative follows a similar initiative launched by the International Committee of the Red Cross in 2011, and is partially in cooperation with that colleague agency.
Session panelists included: Mark Steinbeck (Medical Advisor and Delegate for ICRC at its Regional Delegation in Washington, DC), Joe Amon (Director, Health and Human Rights Division, Human Rights Watch), Francoise Duroch (Manager, Medical Care Under Fire project, MSF International), and Jason Cone (Director of Communications, MSF USA).
The session description was as follows: “Violence or the threat of violence against patients, health care personnel and health care structures is increasingly recognized as a potential barrier to our ability to deliver quality health care in highly unstable contexts. Our staff or our patients may be the direct victims of these attacks, but the indirect victims are all the people and communities who, as a consequence of these attacks, can no longer access health services. Health care can be suspended, withdrawn, or rendered impossible by violent events. Wounded and sick people can be denied effective health care when hospitals are damaged by explosive weapons or violated by fighters, when ambulances are hijacked and when health-care personnel are threatened, kidnapped, injured or killed…”
For an extended interview on this issue by Francoise Duroch, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyBNafxzF7w&feature=share
Prior to leading this session, Prof. Al-Tikriti served for several weeks this spring as Deputy Head of Mission for MSF France’s Syria relief operations, which entailed three brief visits into the conflict region. At this point, he grappled firsthand with many of the issues intended to be addressed by MSF’s new initiative in this direction.
Ranjit Singh Coauthors Article
Ranjit Singh, Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, coauthored with U.S. Navy Commander Youssef Aboul Enein an article titled “After Checkmate: The Use and Limits of the Chess Analogy Regarding Syria,” which appeared in the Small Wars Journal. The article examines frequent assumptions in the use of the chess analogy to describe the risks and benefits of intervention in Syria, and cultural differences in how the game is played. The article germinated from discussions that followed Dr. Singh’s formal lecture on “Political Islam and the Arab Spring,” delivered in May as part of the ongoing National Security Lecture series hosted at UMW’s Dahlgren campus.
Chemistry Faculty Member Mentors U.S. Team to Strong Performance
US Chemistry Olympiad team with medals
Kelli M. Slunt, Professor of Chemistry, served as the head mentor for the U.S. National Chemistry Olympiad.
The International Chemistry Olympiad is a competition for high school students. Each participating country can send a team of up to four students to compete in theoretical and practical exams. This year the U.S. team performed extremely well, earning 2 gold and 2 silver medals at the competition of 73 different countries in Moscow Russia.
More information can be found in articles in Chemical and Engineering News, published by the American Chemical Society:
http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i30/Chemistry-Olympiad-Results.html
http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i25/US-Team-Picked-International-Chemistry.html
Michael Killian and Dianne Baker Present at ABLE Conference and Publish Paper
Michael Killian, senior lecturer in Biological Sciences, and Dianne Baker, associate professor of Biological Sciences, had their paper “Corralling Wiggling Worms- Collecting Data for a Multi-Week Laboratory on the Effect of Various Treatments on the Pulsation Rate of the Dorsal Vessel of California Blackworms (Lumbriculus variegatus)” published in Tested Studies for Laboratory Teaching, Proceedings of the 34th WorkShop/Conference of the Association for Biology Laboratory Education (ABLE). This peer-reviewed paper was written in support of an invited presentation (workshop) given at the annual ABLE conference at UNC-Chapel Hill, June 21, 2012.
Dianne Baker
Michael Killian
Ben Odhiambo Kisila and Leanna Giancarlo Publish Paper
Ben Odhiambo Kisila, associate professor of Earth and Environmental Science, and Leanna Giancarlo, associate professor of Chemistry, have had their collaborative study, “Sediment trace metals and PCB input history in Lake Anna, Virginia, USA,” published in the July issue of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Earth Sciences. This research, involving undergraduate students Gayle Armentrout, Virginia Brown and Chelsea Wegner, constitutes a four-year investigation to construct a historical record of Lake Anna, extending through Louisa, Orange, and Spotsylvania Counties in Northern Virginia, by analysis of sediment cores, from seven locations within the lake and three from nearby areas, for heavy metals and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Chemical specific analysis of these samples enables an examination of the environmental evolution of the reservoir system since sediments sequester metals derived from both natural and anthropogenic sources and isotopic sediment chronology provides the temporal dimension.
Leanna Giancarlo
Ben Kisila
Farnsworth Delivers Lecture
Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science and director of the University’s Center for Leadership and Media Studies, delivered a lecture entitled “The President, Media and Politics” as part of the George Washington Teachers’ Institute at Mount Vernon on Thursday, July 18. The program brought more than 100 social studies teachers from Virginia and around the country to Mount Vernon for several days of lectures and discussions on the American presidency.
In addition, Dr. Farnsworth has been quoted by a number of media outlets on recent developments in Virginia politics, including Washington’s “NewsTalk” television program, WAMU-FM and WTOP-FM.