John P. Broome, assistant professor in curriculum and instruction and director of undergraduate secondary education and preK-12 education programs in the College of Education, judged student-made documentaries for the Virginia state championships of National History Day on Saturday, April 21 in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Every year, more than half a million U.S. students conduct extensive primary and secondary research through libraries, archives, museums, oral history interviews, and historic sites for the contest. This year’s theme was “Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History.” After analyzing and interpreting primary and secondary sources and drawing conclusions about their topics’ historical significance, students submit their work in original papers, Web sites, exhibits, performances, and documentaries.

Student entries are judged at the district, regional and state levels. The top two winners from each category compete at the national championships at the Kenneth E. Behring National Contest on June 10-14, 2012 at the University of Maryland at College Park.

William B. Crawley, Jr., professor of history emeritus and director of the Chappell Great Lives Lecture Series, will appear on WFVA’s talk show “Community Link” on Sunday, April 29. The interview will air at 8 a.m. on 1230 AM or online at http://www.wfvaradio.com/Community-Link/11021682.

In the interview, Crawley will preview the final Great Lives lecture of the year “Great Lives (and Times) at UMW.” The Thursday, May 3 lecture is based on Crawley’s book “The University  of Mary Washington: A Centennial History 1908-2008.”

Laurie Abeel, associate professor of graduate education, presented a session, Instructional Applications of Creative Problem Solving Style at the National Association of Gifted Children (NAGC), in November, held in New Orleans. She also presented two sessions at the Virginia Association for Gifted Children (VAG) in Williamsburg in December, Creative Problem Solving and SOLs Can Work Together, and Destination ImagiNation: Creative Problem Solving in the 21st Century. She was asked to reprise her presentation on Destination ImagiNation at the Northern Virginia Council on Gifted/Talented Education (NVCG/TE) on April 21 in Culpeper.

In addition, she is the Creativity Network Co-Chair for NAGC, and the Virginia State Affiliate Director for Destination ImagiNation.

Margaret Mi, professor of business, was the guest speaker for the monthly meeting of the Fredericksburg Society of Human Resource Management last Thursday. Dr. Mi had members participate in several interactive and group exercises based on the topic, “A New Kind of Diversity: Age-Friendly Work Environments.” Members received continuing credits for their certification in the one-hour session.

Janusz Konieczny, professor of mathematics, has co-authored a research article, A method for finding new sets of axioms for classes of semigroups, published in the journal Archive for Mathematical Logic.