Robert E. Liebau, associate director of campus recreation, gave the presentation “To the Core—Embracing Personal Leadership Values” to the student session of the annual Virginia Athletic Trainers’ Association meeting in Richmond in January. Ian Rogol, UMW head athletic trainer, said Liebau’s talk was “extremely well received. Bob’s interaction with these students was amazing and all were extremely challenged to think about a topic many athletic training programs do not cover.”
Laurie Abeel
“The Diary of Anne Frank” is opening Friday at the Fauquier Community Theatre. It is produced by Laurie Abeel, associate professor in the College of Education, and directed by Sarah LaFantasie, who studied theatre at UMW. Opening January 14, it runs three weekends: Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 p.m. The last show is Sunday, January 30. Tickets are $13 for students and seniors, and $15 for adults, and can be purchased online at www.fctstage.org. Fauquier Community Theatre is located in the Vint Hill area at 4225 Aiken Drive, Warrenton.
Laurie and Sarah would love to see UMW colleagues at the show.
Jim Gaines
James F. Gaines, professor of French, translated Alphonse Daudet’s short story “The Three Low Masses” from the original French, and the translation will be published by the Eerie Digest in February. The story, which first appeared in print in 1866 in “Letters From My Mill,” deals with the ghosts of a priest and his parishioners who, during the 17th century, yielded to the sin of gluttony on Christmas Eve and cheated the Lord of a Mass they were supposed to celebrate. In consequence, they were condemned to reappear each year to repeat the Mass until their penance was completed.
Professor Burton Passes Away
Stephen J. Burton, a UMW music professor since 1981, died of pancreatic cancer at his home December 31, 2010. He was 62. Additional information is at http://www.fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2011/012011/01042011/598319
Mehdi Aminrazavi
The first joint program between the Asia Society and the Washington Friends of International Society for Iranian Studies was held at the Whittemore House in Washington, D.C on January 15. Despite the frigid weather more than 40 people attended. Guests were welcomed into the historic mansion adorned in holiday decorations by the Asia Society Cultural programmer, Szuhan Chen, and the founder of the Washington Friends of International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS), Mona Khademi.
Asia Society is the leading global and Pan-Asian organization working to strengthen relationships, promote understanding and address cultural issues across the fields of policy, business, education, arts and culture among the people, leaders, and institutions of the United States and Asia. They co-hosted the event for this evening with Washington Friends of International Society for Iranian Studies which was founded in 2006 to support and promote the field of Iranian Studies at the international level. ISIS, an affiliated member of the international Middle East Studies Association (MESA), is a private, not-for-profit, non-political organization of persons interested in Iranian Studies in the broadest sense.
The traditional Persian pastries and tea set an appropriate stage to introduce Dr. Mehdi Aminrazavi’s book, The Wine of Wisdom; The Life, Poetry and Philosophy of Omar Khayyam. Dr. Aminrazavi is a professor of philosophy and religion and the director of the Center for Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at UMW. His areas of specialization are medieval Islamic philosophy and theology, philosophy of religion, and non-Western philosophical and religious thought. Dr. Aminrazavi has published 10 books and numerous articles including the five volumes of An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia and Suhrawardi and the School of Illumination. He began by providing a synopsis of Omar Khayyam’s life, his mentors and students, and moved on to offer his interpretation of The Rubaiyat. By attempting to place Omar Khayyam in his own historical context, Aminrazavi elaborated on how the Rubaiyat can be viewed as the literature of resistance against the rise of religious orthodoxy during the Seljuk period. Omar Khayyam lived at a time when the golden era of Islamic civilization was coming to an end and the age of philosophy, theology and rational thought and the influence of philosophers were being increasingly curtailed. Dr. Aminrazavi made a correlation between the times in which Omar Khayyam lived and the rise of religious orthodoxy in the present day Islamic world. He brought his remarks to an end by tracing the odyssey of Omar Khayyam and his Rubaiyat to the West through the translations of Edward Fitzgerald and the Omar Khayyam Club of America in the 1920’s. Aminrazavi helped to stress his remarks with poetic excerpts from the Rubaiyat in both Persian and English.
The lecture was well received by a diverse audience who clearly had an appreciation and familiarity with literature and poetry. In an interactive question and answer session, such themes as the poetic quality of Fitzgerald’s translation, the relevance of the Rubaiyat to the contemporary world and the relationship between Khayyam’s philosophical writings and his poetry among others were investigated. The lecture was followed by a reception and book signing ceremony.
Michelle Crow-Dolby
Michelle Crow-Dolby, Education Coordinator at Gari Melchers Home and Studio, has been awarded a Certificate in Museum Management from the Virginia Association of Museums
Holly Schiffrin
Holly H. Schiffrin, assistant professor of psychology, was interviewed by the “With Good Reason” public radio program about how lifestyle changes brought on by the recession might be better for one’s well-being.
Schiffrin told “With Good Reason” that one of the surest ways to find happiness doesn’t have to cost a nickel: spending time with friends and family. Schiffrin’s interview appeared during a broadcast called “You Got To Move” that aired the week beginning Saturday, January 1 and that is available online at http://withgoodreasonradio.org/2011/01/the-end-of-obesity.
Schiffrin specializes in child development, parenting practices, positive psychology, and research methods for psychology. She earned a Ph.D. and a master of science in applied developmental psychology from the University of Miami and a bachelor of science in psychology from Mary Washington. She also received a master’s-level certificate in parent coaching from the Parent Coaching Institute at Seattle Pacific University.
“With Good Reason” is the only statewide public radio program in Virginia. It hosts scholars from Virginia’s public universities who discuss the latest in research, pressing social issues and the curious and whimsical. “With Good Reason” is produced for the Virginia Higher Education Broadcasting Consortium by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and is broadcast in partnership with public radio stations in Virginia and Washington, D.C.
Margaret Mi
Margaret A. Mi, professor in the College of Business’ Department of Management and Marketing, has received the O’Hara Leadership Award from the Direct Marketing Association of Washington’s (DMAW) Education Foundation. She was chosen for the recognition from a field of marketing faculty from Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington, D.C. The award was presented at the association’s annual gala in December at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C. The organization is the largest regional direct marketing association in the United States, according to its website. Its members include end-users, vendors, suppliers, agencies and educators in the Washington and Baltimore metropolitan areas and central Virginia.
The award states that Mi has actively participated in the DMAW Educational Foundation’s Professors’ institute for more than twelve years. Mi created an e-commerce course, funded by a grant she received from the foundation, that was the first advertising-related course offered at UMW. She developed a prototype course for adoption by other colleges. For years, Mi drove a van of students to the foundation’s University Day. Due to her encouragement, one of her students sought and received a scholarship from the foundation, which helped the student earn a master’s in marketing communications, leading the student to a job in direct marketing and to a Ph.D. program in order to teach direct marketing.
In addition, Mi presented a workshop on sports marketing at the American Institute of Higher Education’s fifth international conference recently in Orlando, Fla. Mi was one of two submissions selected to present workshops. The workshop was an application exercise for educators interested in teaching a sports marketing course. Participants emulated a sports team, completing project components required of Mi’s UMW marketing students. These components included developing and implementing marketing strategy and plan for a new team. Teams used research data for Nashville, Tenn., which has no major league baseball team. Data included city demographics, transportation infrastructure, per capita income, venue (new or current), and parking possibilities. Teams selected players and coaches and listed their salaries. In addition, teams created team names, logos, colors, mascots, licensed and branded merchandise, ticket and merchandise pricing, special promotions with charities, sponsorships, venue-naming rights, public relations, and electronic media use.
David Cain
David Cain, distinguished professor of religion, presented a paper, “‘The Gleam of an Indication’—Adventures of the Text,” served as a commentator and addressed a “Pastor’s Workshop” on Kierkegaard’s relation to ministry at the sixth International Kierkegaard Conference at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., in June. He set up a Kierkegaard photographic exhibit for the Søren Kierkegaard Society during the American Academy of Religion’s 100th annual meeting in Atlanta in October. Cain’s essay “Why Kierkegaard Still Matters” was published in Why Kierkegaard Matters: A Festschrift in Honor of Robert L. Perkins, and the essay “ ‘But What Have You Done Here!’: Kierkegaard’s Interesting Loss of the Interesting” was published in the International Kierkegaard Commentary: The Point of View.
Debra Hydorn
Debra L. Hydorn, professor of mathematics, gave an invited presentation on community service-learning in statistics at the eighth International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS) held in Ljubljana, Slovenia in July. Her presentation, “Combining On- and Off-Campus Service-Learning in a Statistics Methods Course,” described how students in MATH 210 Statistical Methods provide statistical consulting for students enrolled in Biology Professor Kathy Loesser-Casey’s BIOL 385 Human Physiology. ICOTS is held every four years and is organized by the International Association for Statistical Education. According to the conference website, the main purpose of ICOTS is to “give statistics educators and professionals around the world the opportunity to exchange information, ideas and experiences, to present recent innovation and research in the field of statistics education, and to expand their range of collaborators.”