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Good News from Arts & Sciences
Good news from the College of Arts & Sciences faculty! The College of Arts & Sciences celebrates the achievements and good news of its students and faculty. On the following links we feature one good news item for each division in the college: Humanities and Natural Sciences & Math and Social Sciences. But here are several good news about faculty for us to celebrate: HUMANITIES DIVISION English Faculty Stephen Frech, Associate Professor of English, has his poetry translations from the Dutch appearing in the following literary journals: Pleiades Compulsory Education; Spoon River Poetry Review Inner Fire, Night Rest, and A Skin; and Natural Bridge Big City Life. These poems are the first US publication by Dutch poet Menno Wigman. Frech used his Junior Sabbatical (Spring 07) to translate Wigman’s book of poems Zwart als kaviaar [Black as Caviar]. Frech has poems of his own appearing in Bateau (“In the Hands of the King”) and Flyway (“Oh Preludes, Oh Fantasies”). Dr. Jim Meyer, Associate Professor of English, attended the International Reading Association Convention on May 6 in Atlanta, Georgia. He presented his paper entitled, "Everyone Wants to Do Better, But We Need a Framework: Nurturing and Sustaining Teacher Researchers.” The International Reading Association is the primary professional organization for the teaching of reading. The annual convention generally has over 20,000 registrants. Proposals are peer reviewed, and only about 1 in 10 is accepted. The presentation covered the results of work with teachers in schools, providing information on how teachers can enjoy high-quality professional development through their work in school-based teacher research groups. Jim Meyer and his colleague Ellen Spycher from ISU have been conducting research on teacher inquiry groups for several years. Their article, "No child left behind and teacher quality: Improving professional development through inquiry groups," appeared in English Leadership Quarterly, 31(1) August 2008, pp. 5-6. ELQ is the national journal of the Conference on English Leadership, one of the constituent organizations of the National Conference of Teachers of English. Dr. Michael O’Conner, Associate Professor of English, attended a number of research and faculty development institutes over the summer. From June 15 to June 17, he attended the 2008 CHF (Chicago Humanities Festival) Summer Institute for Teachers: The American Metropolis, in Chicago. From July 20 to 23, he participated in the National Council of Teachers of English Institute for 21st Century Literacies in Indianapolis. O’Conner also attended an NCHC (National Collegiate Honors Council) Faculty Institute entitled, “A Tale of Two Cities: Minneapolis and St. Paul,” a ‘City as Text’ workshop, up in the Twin Cities. In April, Dr. Anne Matthews, Associate Professor of English and Dean of Teaching and Learning, presented a resulting paper, “Autoethnographies and Ethics: First-Year Writing Students, Identity, and Action,” at the College English Association (CEA) conference at New Orleans. This paper was published in the organization’s online journal, The CEA Forum. Dr. Matthews spent the fall 2007 semester on sabbatical, conducting research into the teaching and writing of autoethnographies, which resulted in another CEA conference presentation, this time in St. Louis in March 2008. . Dr. Randy Brooks, Professor of English and Acting Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, had five poems and an essay, “Teaching Haiku at Millikin University,” published in Riverbed Haiku, 1.2, (Savoy, IL), Summer 2008. <http://www.riverbedhaiku.com> He also was co-author of Common Time: Photo-Haiga a limited gift edition of photography by Assistant Professor of English, Priscilla Meddaugh, and haiku by Randy Brooks, distributed at Blue Connections. (Decatur, IL), May 2008. Dr. Brooks was editor and publisher of Haiku: The Art of the Short Poem by Tazuo Yamaguchi. This is a full-length documentary film and poetry anthology published as a DVD/book on contemporary English-language haiku, published by Brooks Books, August 1, 2008. See publication details at: <http://www.brooksbookshaiku.com/haikufilm/> August 22-24, Dr. Brooks led a workshop on teaching haiku, “Teaching Haiku as a Social Art,” at The Cradle of American Haiku Conference, located at Mineral Point, Wisconsin. He also presented a paper at the conference on “The Love Haiku of Raymond Roseliep.”
NATURAL SCIENCES DIVISION Mathematics/Computer Science Faculty From July 7-9, Dr. Daniel Miller, Associate Professor of Mathematics, attended a Texas Instruments (TI) sponsored workshop in Sioux Falls South Dakota. The workshop focused on introducing college and high school faculty to the newest line of TI handheld calculators. These new calculators will replace TI long running 83/84 and 89/92 series calculators. The new calculators called TI Inspire have already been approved for ACT, SAT and AP exams and will become the prevailing calculators on the market. The Mathematics Department has purchased these new calculators for its entire full-time faculty and Dr. Miller will be offering departmental workshops in the fall of 2008 to assist in the integration of this new exciting technology. Dr. James Rauff, Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, published a paper entitled, "Prove it in Swahili: Language as an Axiomatic System," in the Illinois Mathematics Teacher. He also published eight book reviews. His review of A Beginner's Guide to Discrete Mathematics by W.D. Wallis was published in SIGACT News (the official journal of the ACM’s Special Interest Group on Automata and Computing Theory). Dr. Rauff’s reviews of the books Meta Math! by Gregory Chaitin, Godel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Uses and Abuse by Torkel Franzen, Alice in Action: Computing Through Animation by Joel Adams, Ant Colony Optimization by Marco Dorigo and Thomas Stutzle, The Mathematics of Logic: A Guide to Completeness Theorems and Their Applications by Richard Kaye, Pacific Ethnomathematics: A Bibliographic Study by Nicholas J. Goetzfridt, and The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist by Reviel Netz and William Noel were published in the international journal Mathematics and Computer Education. Dr. Joe Stickles, Associate Professor of Mathematics, received a $2000 grant from the Mathematical Association of America to help fund the second annual Illiana Undergraduate Mathematics Research Conference. This conference is a joint venture between Millikin University and Wabash College in Crawfordsville, IN. This year, the conference will be held on Saturday, October 25 on Millikin's campus. With Dr. Paula Stickles, Assistant Professor of Education, and Dr. Michael Axtell of the University of St. Thomas, Dr. Joe Stickles co-organized a contributed paper session at Mathfest, the annual summer meeting of the Mathematical Association of America at Madison, WI. The session, entitled “How To Get Students to Read the Text and Does This Matter?”, featured eleven speakers who presented a variety of ways to get students to read their mathematics textbooks, including methods of assessment of the effect reading the text has on student learning. Dr. Stickles was a Research Associate at the Wabash Summer Institute in Mathematics, an eight-week Research Experience for Undergraduates held at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, IN. As a Research Associate, Dr. Stickles was responsible for providing introductory lectures and served as a mentor to eight undergraduate students who did research in commutative algebra this summer. Along with Dr. Michael Axtell of the University of St. Thomas, they guided these students through a number of research projects that led to the submission of five different research papers by the students. Also, these students will present their research at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Washington, DC in January, 2009. Dr. Eun-Joo Lee, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, was co-author of three articles in peer-reviewed journals: (1) Lee, S., & Lee, E., "On Testing Equality of Two Censored Samples", Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation(JSCS) (2008); (2) Lee, E., Sheehan, M., & Lee, S., "Asymptotic- and Simulation- Based Estimator Selection for a Normal Distribution Standard Deviation", Mathematics and Computer Education(MACE) (2008), vol. 42, 145-152; and (3) Lee, S., Lee, E., & Omolo, B., "Using Integrated Weighted Survival Differences for the Two-Sample Censored Data Problem, Computational Statistics and Data Analysis(CSDA) (2008), vol. 52, 4410-4416. Biology Faculty Dr. Judy Parrish, Associate Professor of Biology, and four former students submitted two abstracts for presentation at the national meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), which were peer reviewed and accepted for poster presentations August 3-8 in Milwaukee. Three of the students, Laura Zimmerman, Natalie Mentzer and Jessica Forrest, now in graduate programs, worked with Dr. Parrish for three years at Millikin and continued after they graduated to develop management practices for controlling teasel, a weedy plant that is threatening native vegetation and spreading rapidly along interstates. They started the work at the request of the Center for Ecological Entomology at the Illinois Natural History Survey and the Illinois Department of Transportation, which is applying the results from our studies to their management program. Poster Session 27-125 - Invasion: Prevention and Management Effects of herbicide treatment, life history stage, and application date on cut and uncut teasel, Dipsacus laciniatus L. Laura M. Zimmerman 1, Natalie M. Mentzer 2, Jessica L. Forrest 2, and Judy D. Parrish 3. (1) Illinois State University, (2) University of Illinois, Springfield, (3) Millikin University The other student, Katrina Strauss, who graduated from Millikin in May, is starting her teaching career at Round Lake High School. With guidance from Dr. Casey Watson, Assistant Professor of Physics and Dr. Parrish, Katrina combined her interests in biology, mathematics, and environmental preservation to develop an integrated case study to be used in classrooms (at academic levels from junior high through beginning college) to help students understand modeling and the factors involved in making predictions about climate change. Poster Session 45 - Education: K-12, August 6, 2008, A case study: Modeling future impact of factors related to global climate change on coastal cities. Katrina A. Strauss, Judy D. Parrish, and Casey Watson. Millikin University Dr. Parrish also taught an immersion class this summer, Ecological Journeys: Alaskan Ecology. They met on campus June 7 and 8, then flew to Alaska, June 9-23, to study composition of tundra and boreal forest communities, successional patterns after glacial retreat, and interactions between plants and animals. They were very fortunate in being able to spot and observe wildlife (including humpback whales and grizzly bears) and to complete small research projects on such questions as how snow melt and glacial streams compare in chemistry and constituent organisms, how the very long (21 hour) days affect plant metabolism, and whether heat or light is more important in allowing tundra flowers to track the position of the sun. They studied coastal rainforest and marine systems in Kenai Fjords National Park near Seward, glaciers and glacial streams near Palmer, and interactions between organisms in tundra in Denali National Park. Camping gave the students a chance to experience at least part of the environmental challenges that organisms of the extreme north must be adapted to meet. Chemistry Faculty In August 2008, several Millikin Chemistry faculty presented papers at the 20th Bienniel Conference on Chemical Education at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Three of our full-time Millikin University chemistry faculty (Dr. Bennett, Dr. Rammelsberg, and Dr. Josefson) presented, and one adjunct faculty member, Dr. Baumann, attended the conference. Dr. Bennett's Monday evening poster, "Eleven Years of Green Chemistry at Millikin University.” Presenting on Tuesday afternoon, Dr. Rammelsberg's "Portfolios for enhancing student learning in essentials of organic and biochemistry" was part of a session devoted to using writing as part of a learner-centered chemistry curriculum. Dr. Baumann attended workshops covering the use of "Chemistry in Context," Anasazi NMR, and the chemistry of art. Dr. Josefson wrapped up the week talking about Millikin's innovative Block Chemistry courses on Thursday morning. For complete details, see the individual faculty member’s contributions. Dr. George Bennett, Associate Professor of Chemistry, spoke on the topic of “Clean Coal Technology” as part of a presentation on alternative energy for a gathering of Millikin alumni on April 16, 2008 in Decatur. Dr. Bennett attended the 20th Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, which was held at Indiana University on July 27-31, 2008. He presented a poster on “Eleven Years of Green Chemistry at Millikin University” in a symposium on “Green Chemistry Curricula: From Early Adoption to Sustained Integration.” Dr. Bennett also finished second overall and first in the male 35- to 39-year-old age group in the conference 5K cross country race. An article by Dr. Bennett, entitled, “Green Chemistry in Undergraduate Research” was published in the Summer 2008 issue of Council on Undergraduate Research Quarterly. Dr. Bennett, attended the 236th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, which was held in Philadelphia on August 17-21, 2008. Dr. Bennett gave an invited talk on “Incorporating Green Chemistry into the Undergraduate Curriculum: The Development Process” in a symposium on “Sustainability Across the Curriculum: Green Chemistry and Beyond.” Dr. Bennett also served as an invited panelist in a workshop on “How to be a Green Chapter” as part of the undergraduate programming at the meeting. In addition, Dr. Bennett finished fifth overall in the 6th Annual Younger Chemists Committee 5K race. The trip was partially funded by Dr. Bennett’s Research & Artistic Achievement Award. On July 17, 2008 Dr. Anne Rammelsberg, Chair and Associate Professor of Chemistry, was given a plaque at the ADM biannual award ceremony for US Patent #7,368,138 issued on May6, 2008. The patent covers the extraction of phytosterols from corn fiber using green or environmentally benign solvents and will help ADM provide ingredients that when added to foods will lower cholesterol when consumed. This is her second US Patent for work completed at Archer Daniels Midland Company while on sabbatical. The first US Patent #6,982,328 for this work was issued on January 3, 2006 and included collaborators from Batelle Memorial Institute (Richland, WA) as well as those at ADM. Physics Faculty Last winter, Dr. Casey R. Watson, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, and the Society of Physics Students (SPS) received a Marsh White Award to partially fund the High School Physics Day Event they hosted here at Millikin in April. Dr. Watson recently learned that "Strong Upper Limits on Sterile Neutrino Warm Dark Matter" by Hasan Yuksel, John F. Beacom, and Casey R. Watson, has been accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters which is expressly dedicated to presenting seminal results in the field of physics. The Star Formation and Nuclear Accretion Histories of Normal Galaxies in the AGES Survey by Casey R. Watson, et al. (17 co-authors) has also been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal, which is among the premier journals for astrophysics and cosmology research. Dr. Watson completed several research projects with Millikin students. He worked with student Bobby Arn, to calculate the mass of the asteroid-belt object that Comet Holmes may have hit to undergo its dramatic increase in brightness last October-November. (Google Comet Holmes for pictures). The results of their research indicate that any average asteroid could have done the job, adding credibility to the collision hypothesis; i.e., since neither an especially large nor small asteroid is required, there is a high probability that a collision could have led to the observed brightening. Dr. Watson teamed with Dr. Marianne Robertson, Professor of Biology, and her students Morgan Holmes and Sophi Jesek to study and assess the capacity for learning in millipedes and spiders. Robertson, Holmes, and Watson found evidence for learning in millipedes when they are subjected to electrical shocks. Robertson, Jesek, and Watson found evidence for learning and memory in baboon tarantulas that are subjected to choices between heated and room temperature metal plates. In particular, they found that these spiders learn 5 to 10 times faster than they forget, and that they are able to remember what they have learned for approximately 50 minutes.
SOCIAL SCIENCES DIVISION Behavioral Sciences Faculty Dr. Linda Collinsworth, Assistant Professor of Psychology, passed the State of Illinois licensing examination for her profession. She has completed all required post-doctoral clinical work, and on August 21, 2008, became a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in the State of Illinois. Also, an article on sexual harassment of high school students that she coauthored was recently published: Ormerod, A.J., Collinsworth, L.L., & Perry, L.A. (2008). “Sexual harassment, appraisal, and school climate: Relation to well-being and educational outcomes for high school girls and boys.” Psychology of Women Quarterly, 32, 113-125. On May 5, 2008, Mary Garrison, Assistant Professor of Social Work, and the students from her community mental health course held a town meeting in Decatur in conjunction with Heritage Behavior Healthcare, to address the funding crisis of the Oasis, the homeless day center in Decatur. There were over 100 community people in attendance at the meeting, as well as local media, including the newspaper and television stations. Mary and her students presented information about the impact that the loss of funding would have on the local community and urged action to keep the center open. During the evening, $25,000 was raised towards keeping the doors open. Mary's students were responsible for coordinating, organizing and executing the town meeting, and gained invaluable experiential learning from this opportunity. From August 3-8th, Mary attended the Oxford Roundtable in Oxford, England. The Roundtable focus for the week was "Human Migration: Borders and National Interests". Mary was responsible for facilitating two discussion sessions with her 21 colleagues from around the United States that were in attendance. The sessions she facilitated were entitled: "Current Civil Strives in Eastern Congo" with colleague Ndinzi Masagara, from Youngstown State University, and "Embracing the Stranger: American Christianity and Immigration" with colleague Lourdes Morales-Gudmundsson, from La Sierra University. Dr. Larry Troy, Professor of Sociology, accompanied 12 other sociologists from the US, Canada, and Finland on a 10-day trip to China, June 1-10, 2008. While there, they met with Chinese sociologists and students at Peking University in Beijing and Fudan University in Shanghai. He used his experiences to write three articles, which were published in the online blog linked to the American Sociological Association journal Contexts: "The One-Child Policy and Social Change," "The Hutongs of Beijing," and "'When I Get Born Again, I Want to Come Back Chinese.'" As a visual sociologist, photos he took are published with the articles. See http://contexts.org/china. Communication Faculty Dr. Nancy Curtin-Alwardt, Assistant Professor of Communication, attended the Council on Undergraduate Research Conference in June, at the Colleges of St. John and St. Benedict, Minnesota. This interdisciplinary conference focuses on collaborating with undergraduate students in research projects. Political Science Faculty On May 13, 2008, Dr. Mark Wrighton, Associate Professor of Political Science, gave an invited talk to members, gathered for a regular meeting, of the Prairieland Kiwanis Club in downtown Decatur. He provided to the ladies of the club an update of the 2008 presidential election, and fielded questions about the direction the election might take. He also presented a co-authored paper entitled "Partisan Polarization, Procedural Control, and Partisan Emulation in the U.S. House: An Explanation of Rules Restrictiveness Over Time” at the History of Congress conference held this past May at George Washington University. The History of Congress Conference is an annual, invitational event at which top scholars meet to present original research on phenomena associated with the history of the US Congress. Way to go Arts & Sciences faculty! Dr. Randy Brooks
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Dr. Randy Brooks, Acting Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences Faculty in the College of Arts & Sciences are active scholars, writers, teachers, and teachers of teachers. We enjoy celebrating the accomplishments of the faculty and their students. Check out the good news: Good News from Natural Sciences & Math Good News from Social Sciences
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