June 26, 2024

Mindy Erchull

March 17, 2011 by

Mindy Erchull, assistant professor of psychology, has received the 2011 Psi Chi Southeastern Regional Faculty Advisor Award for her active involvement as the university’s Psi Chi chapter advisor.

The award is presented annually to one Psi Chi faculty advisor per region who best demonstrates Psi Chi’s purpose of encouraging excellence in scholarship, particularly in psychology, and advancing the science of psychology. The Psi Chi Southeast region includes Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, U.S. Virgin Islands, Virginia and West Virginia. Erchull’s award was announced during UMW’s Psi Chi spring induction ceremony on March 10.

Since becoming the university’s Psi Chi advisor in 2006, Erchull has facilitated programs already in place and helped chapter officers to add more workshops to assist students in preparing for graduate school and job applications. In addition, she has traveled with past chapter presidents to national leadership conferences sponsored by Psi Chi, and the university chapter was under Erchull’s guidance when the group received a regional chapter award in spring 2010.

In addition to serving as the chapter’s advisor, Erchull has served as a faculty consultant to Psi Chi for three years, reviewing grant and award applications and serving as a reviewer for the “Psi Chi Student Research Journal.” In addition, Erchull has served as president of the campus Phi Beta Kappa chapter and has been a member or a convener of several Phi Beta Kappa committees.

In 2010, she received the Mary Roth Walsh Teaching the Psychology of Women Award at the American Psychological Association Convention. The award, sponsored by the Society for the Psychology of Women, recognizes a young faculty member who employs innovative methods to address issues of diversity in teaching the psychology of women.

Erchull, a member of the UMW faculty since 2005, received a Ph.D. and a master’s degree in social psychology from Arizona State University and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Connecticut College. Her research focuses on such issues as objectification, feminism and psychological aspects of reproductive health.

She has been a reviewer for the Association for Women in Psychology, the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research, and the American Psychological Association conference submissions and a reviewer for publications that include “Sex Roles,” “Women’s Studies” and “Health Care for Women International.” She is also a consulting editor for “Psychology of Women Quarterly.” Her own articles have appeared in “Psychology of Women Quarterly,” “Sex Roles” and “Health Psychology,” among other academic journals.

Erchull is co-chair of the Hyde Graduate Student Research Grants Committee for the Society for the Psychology of Women. Her professional memberships include the American Psychological Association, Association for Psychological Science, Association for Women in Psychology, Society for Menstrual Cycle Research, Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Virginia Academy of Academic Psychologists and the Virginia Psychological Association.

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Doug Sanford

March 2, 2011 by

Douglas W. Sanford, professor and chair of the Department of Historic Preservation, contributed the article “Slave Housing” to the two-volume World of a Slave: Encyclopedia of the Material Life of Slaves in the United States, edited by Martha B. Katz-Hyman and Kym S. Rice (Greenwood, 2011). 

Much of the information for Sanford’s article developed out of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant project headed by Sanford and Dennis Pogue, of George Washington’s Mt. Vernon, on the variety of housing arrangements for slaves in Virginia, based on archaeological, architectural, and documentary evidence.

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Esther Yook

March 1, 2011 by

Esther Yook, director of the UMW Speaking Center, presented “Communication Centers Spanning the Continent:  Visual Ideations and Models” and “Communication Centers as the Golden Gate of Oral Communication:  Great Ideas for the Center” at the annual convention of the National Communication Association in San Francisco, Calif., in November.  At the same conference, Yook also served as a poster session judge and as chair of the paper session “If You Build It, They May Come:  Empirically Identifying Motivations Surrounding the Use of Communication Centers.”

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Faculty Research Grant Awards

February 16, 2011 by

These College of Arts and Sciences faculty members submitted Faculty Development Grant proposals in November, and following review by the Committee on Faculty Development and Grants, the CAS Dean made these awards for the 2011-12 fiscal year:

  • Jason Davidson, Department of Political Science and International Affairs, ” ‘We Gotta Get out of this Place’: US. Allies’ Decisions to Withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan.”
  • Mindy Erchull, Department of Psychology, “Objectification, Sexualization, and Sexual Agency.”
  • Jacqueline Gallagher, Department of Geography, Textbook on Field Methods in Mobile GIS and GPS.
  • Debra Hydorn, Department of Mathematics, “Correcting for Error in GPS Postion to Improve the Linear Association Between Satellite and Field-Collected Measurements of Elevation.”
  • Rosemary Jesionowski, Department of Art and Art History, “Proof of Experience.”
  • Janusz Konieczny, Department of Mathematics, “Conjugacy in Semigroups.”
  • Ben LaBreche, Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication, “Samson Agonistes and the Critique of Liberalism.”
  • Elizabeth Lewis, Department of Modern Foreign Languages, “Women and Charity in Spain, 1786-1939.”
  • Leslie Martin, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, “Making Sense of Need: Organizational Constructions of Homelessness and Solutions.”
  • Maya Mathur, Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication, ” ‘Big Fish and Little Fish’: Comic Economics on the Jacobean Stage.”
  • Keith Mellinger, Department of Mathematics, “Cap partitions of affine spaces.”
  • Laura Mentore, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, “The Social Significance of Competitive ‘birdsport’ among Guyanese Men.”
  • Marjorie Och, Department of Art and Art History, “Community and Friendship in the Letters and Portraits of Vittoria Colonna.”
  • Jennifer Polack-Wahl, Department of Computer Science, “iPod for Education: Teaching Resource for the Future.”
  • Sheshalatha Reddy, Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication, “Two Chapters on Indian-English Periodical Literature.”
  • Debra Steckler, Department of Psychology, “An Investigation of the Foundation of Arnett’s New Life Stage: Emerging Adulthood.”
  • Abbie Tomba, Department of Biological Sciences, “Identification of Larval stages of trematodes (Family Opecoelidae) parasitizing freshwater snails (Family Pleuroceridae).”
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Courtney Clayton

January 28, 2011 by

Courtney Clayton, assistant professor in the College of Education’s Dept. of Curriculum and Instruction, has written a chapter in the book entitled “Teacher Preparation for Bilingual Student Populations”.  “This volume focuses on understanding the structural, substantive, and contextual elements of preparation programs, and provides transformative guidelines for creating Educar signature programs. Designed to improve the practice of teacher preparation by promoting dialogic conversations and applications of praxis in the preparation of bilingual/ESL teacher candidates, it emphasizes that exemplary teacher preparation requires transformative teacher educators.”

Clayton, C. & Brisk, M.E. (2011). It’s my responsibility! Teacher of bilingual learners in an English-immersion context. In B. Bustos Flores, R. Hernandez Sheets & E. Riojas Clark (Eds.). Teacher preparation for bilingual student populations: Educar para transformar. (pp. 182-187). New York, NY: Routledge.

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Jim Gaines

January 12, 2011 by

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.

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Holly Schiffrin

January 4, 2011 by

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.

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Margaret Mi

December 16, 2010 by

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.

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David Cain

December 9, 2010 by

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.

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Debra Hydorn

December 9, 2010 by

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.”

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