Category: Professional Notes

Chris Foss, professor of English, organized a roundtable discussion on autism studies at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Raleigh/Durham, N.C., on Nov. 10. For this special extended session panel, Foss joined four prominent national voices in offering short presentations to introduce threads of discussion that initiated a two-hour conversation on topics such as the nexus of autism and aesthetics, the nexus of autism and neurocosmopolitanism, and the nexus of autism and rhetoric.

Janusz Konieczny, professor of mathematics, has co-authored a research article, Sn-normal semigroups of partial transformations, published in the journal Algebra Colloquium. The article has been written jointly with two UMW graduates, Sean Droms and Roberto Palomba, and contains the results of undergraduate research that Sean and Roberto did when they were mathematics students at the University of Mary Washington.

Brian Baker, Executive Director for Entrepreneurship and Vice President of the Virginia Business Incubation Association, presented at the VBIA Annual Conference on October 23 in Charlottesville.  He was invited to speak on the programs and economic benefits of the University of Mary Washington Office of Entrepreneurship.  Those programs include the UMW Small Business Development Center, the EagleWorks Accelerator and Innovation Center where the La Ceiba and Esfuerzo de Amor programs are housed, the emerging “Incubation Corridor” in collaboration with George Mason University, Rural Business Development in Virginia’s Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula, and collaboration with faculty and students. In 2012, 38 students have been involved in applied skills projects at the Office of Entrepreneurship. Notable faculty collaborations include a business analytics project featuring Dr. Christopher Garcia and Dr. Gail Brooks of the College of Business, a master’s level analysis engagement featuring Dr. Louis Martinette of the College of Business, and the La Ceiba and Esfuerzo de Amor programs featuring Dr. Shawn Humphrey of the College of Arts and Sciences. In 2011 the SBDC was involved in over 425 business projects that yielded 174 new jobs, 394 retained jobs, 51 new business openings, over $5.9 million in increased sales, and over $13 million in new capital investment.

The Office of Entrepreneurship is a division of the University of Mary Washington Center for Economic Development and hosts the UMW Small Business Development Center, the EagleWorks Accelerator and Innovation Center, the Engagement Council, and the Virginia Business Incubation Association.

Elizabeth Lewis, professor of Spanish, gave a paper titled “La verdadera Ilustración en Fernando en Zaragoza, Una visión de Frasquita Larrea (1814)” at the meeting of the Sociedad Española de Estudios del Siglo XVIII (SEESXVII) October 24-26, which was held in Cádiz, Spain to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the ratification of Spain’s first constitution.  Her paper was on a pamphlet criticizing the constitution, published by the mother of Spain’s first realist novelist, Cecilia Bohl de Faber.

On Nov. 2, Will Mackintosh, assistant professor of history, presented a paper on transatlantic tourist satire at the 23rd Annual Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association Conference in Pittsburgh, as part of that conference’s larger focus on tourism and travel as popular culture.