Category: Professional Notes

On Oct. 25, 2011, Curtiss Grymala, the University Webmaster at UMW, presented at the 2011 HighEdWeb conference in Austin, Texas. HighEdWeb is a national conference of nearly 500 Web developers, designers, content managers and marketing professionals in higher education. Grymala was invited to make a 45-minute formal presentation, in addition to a “poster session” at the conference.

In the first session, Grymala presented a low-level, technical overview of writing new plugins for WordPress. At the audience’s direction — it was actually put to a vote — he focused mainly on querying and manipulating the WordPress database. Grymala’s presentation slides (which, by the way, are not in PowerPoint; but in WordPress) are available online.

In the second session, Grymala presented a poster offering food-for-thought to anyone that’s working with WordPress. The session centered around the decision to add new features and functions, and where and how those features should be added. You can view the presentation materials from his poster session online, as well.

Both presentations were well-received, and prompted a lot of discussion and questions among attendees. Throughout the conference, Grymala spoke with nearly 100 different people that expressed serious interest in the direction that University of Mary Washington is taking WordPress through UMW Blogs and the University website. Some attendees even requested that Grymala come back next year and present a half-day workshop on the topic of writing WordPress plugins.

Earlier in October, Grymala also made two presentations at edUi 2011, where he was even referred to as “kind of a superhero.” One of those sessions was presented with Cathy Derecki and Jim Groom.

Today’s issue of The New York Times features a review of “And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, A Life” by Charles J. Shields, associate director of the Great Lives lecture series. The full review is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/books/charles-j-shieldss-and-so-it-goes-on-vonnegut-review.html?_r=1.

Congratulations to Jennifer Batson, academic information specialist in admissions, who has been selected as an Excellent Eagle Employee by the Staff Advisory Council. To thank her for such a wonderful job, Jennifer will have a reserved parking spot of her choosing through Wednesday, November 30.

Here is what one of Jennifer’s co-workers said about her:

“I think that Jennifer Batson is an excellent eagle employee.  She has taken on several additional duties with no complaints.   She is the information person for the Stafford Campus, if you need to know about any program UMW offers, location of classes, UMW faculty communication to students, she is the security guard of communication if problems occur, emergency information person, vending machine problems, etc…she is the person to go to.  If Jennifer doesn’t know the answer she finds out for you and gets back to you right away.”

To nominate someone who you believe is an Excellent Eagle Employee, just send an email to Dre Anthes (aanthes@umw.edu) with Excellent Eagle Employee in the Subject Line.  In your email, be sure to include the person’s name, department, work location (with the most convenient parking lot), and of course, the reason why you believe they should be recognized.  Please spread the word to other employees about this wonderful opportunity to recognize a co-worker(s).

Courtney Clayton, assistant professor in curriculum and instruction, will be presenting in a panel at the American Educational Research Association’s annual conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her panel presentation, “Preparing Social Justice Teachers: Rethinking Action Research Curriculum for Transformation” is part of Division K – Teaching and Teacher Education/Section 5: Preservice Teacher Education Coursework: Practices to Improve Teacher Knowledge, Understanding, and Application of Subject Matter, Content, and Pedagogical Practices.

John Broome, assistant professor in curriculum and instruction, will be presenting his paper, “From the Field: What Social Studies Teachers Say They Do in the Classroom,” as part of the Research in Social Studies Education Special Interest Group.

Adria Hoffman, director of clinical experiences and partnerships for the College of Education, will present her paper, “I Don’t Want To Sound Racist, But…:”  Race, Ethnicity and Identity Construction Among Music Teacher Candidates as part of Division G – Social Context of Education.

AERA is concerned with improving the educational process by encouraging scholarly inquiry related to education and evaluation and by promoting the dissemination and practical application of research results.

AERA is the most prominent international professional organization, with the primary goal of advancing educational research and its practical application. Its more than 25,000 members are educators; administrators; directors of research; persons working with testing or evaluation in federal, state and local agencies; counselors; evaluators; graduate students; and behavioral scientists.

The broad range of disciplines represented by the membership includes education, psychology, statistics, sociology, history, economics, philosophy, anthropology, and political science.

Last weekend, students from the Electronic Music class at Mary Washington helped with tech at the First Annual Electroacoustic Barn Dance, a three-day festival of electronic music and art. UMW students Rebecca Brown, Paul Espino, Malcolm Moore, Paige Naylor, Joshua Roberts,  Mary Thompson  and Meredith Wylegala all had their works performed during the festival.

Doug Gately, senior lecturer and director of the Jazz Ensemble, and Michael Morley, orchestra manager, also performed. The festival featured composers from 32 colleges and universities across the country. Mark Snyder, director of the festival and assistant professor of music, premiered his piece Angriest Tangerine for processed double bass, electronics and video.

Snyder will perform at the eleventh annual Third Practice Electroacoustic Music Festival at the University of Richmond this weekend. He will perform on Saturday morning at 10:30 a.m. and the concert is free and open to the public. For more information, visit http://thirdpractice.org/3p11/index.html.