Elizabeth Freund Larus, professor of political science and international affairs, presented the paper “Taiwan after the Global Financial Crisis: Where Do We Go from Here?” at the 52nd meeting of the American Association for Chinese Studies in Winston-Salem, N.C., in October. She also presented the paper “Taiwan’s Reaction to the Global Financial Crisis” at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Philadelphia in September.
Holly H. Schiffrin, assistant professor of psychology, wrote the opinion-editorial essay “Does Money Buy Greater Happiness?” for The Free Lance-Star, which published the article Oct. 3. The essay also was published by numerous other newspapers, including the Miami Herald, the Denver Post and the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune. Read the column at http://www.fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2010/102010/10032010/577905.
In addition, Schiffrin presented a poster, “The Impact of Affect on Cognitive Processes,” with students Caitlyn Yantis, Rebecca Groman, Allie Sleeman, Elinor Tuhy and Eric Zupko at the Association for Psychological Science conference in Boston in May.
Mark Scharf, adjunct instructor, had his full-length play Keeping Faith produced by the Twin Beach Players of Chesapeake Beach, Md. in November. His one-act play Empires Fall was presented as a staged reading by the Run of the Mill Theatre in Baltimore in December, and his full-length Fortune’s Child will be presented in a staged reading by the Baltimore Playwrights Festival in January. In addition, his play for young audiences, The Machine, was accepted by Pioneer Drama Services for May 2011 publication.
Jangwoon “Leo” Lee, assistant professor of mathematics, presented the talk “Mathematical Analysis of Models” at the US-Korea Conference on Science, Technology, and Entrepreneurship in Seattle in August. Lee also presented the poster “On Solving a Boundary Control Problem Using the Domain Decomposition Method” at the conference. In addition, he refereed a journal paper published in Mathematics and Computers in Simulation. He had the article “Finite Element Approximations of Stochastic Optimal Control Problems Constrained by Stochastic Elliptic PDEs” accepted for publication in the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications.
Keith Mellinger, associate professor and chair of mathematics, and a colleague from Virginia Tech, were presented the Carl B. Allendoerfer Award at the annual meeting of the Mathematical Association of America in Pittsburgh in August. The award recognizes outstanding expository articles in mathematics. Mellinger was honored for the article, “Kirkman’s Schoolgirls Wearing Hats and Walking Through Fields of Numbers,” that appeared in the February 2009 edition of Mathematics Magazine. Read about the award and see the article at http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/22/?pa=content&sa=viewDocument&nodeId=1355.
In addition, Mellinger published two papers, “Classes of Permutation Arrays in Finite Projective Spaces” in the International Journal of Information and Coding Theory, and “On the Number of k-gons in Finite Projective Planes” in Note di Matematica. In addition, Dr. Mellinger gave several talks, “On Blocking Semiovals Containing Conics” at the Discrete Mathematics Seminar at the University of Delaware; “Kirkman’s Schoolgirls Wearing Hats and Walking through Fields of Numbers” at a departmental colloquium at California State University, Fresno; “Coding, Cryptography and Conics: Using What They Know to Introduce Research” at a faculty seminar at CSU Fresno; and “Applying the Stuff We Like: Blocking Semiovals and Cryptology” at a discrete mathematics seminar at Virginia Commonwealth University.
