Faculty/Staff News of Note
March 2004
Dr. Diane Parente, assistant professor of management, and her colleague, Dr. Thomas Gattiker, Miami University of Ohio, will be guest editors for a special issue of the Journal of Operations Management. The special issue is titled Innovative Data Sources for Empirically Building and Validating Theories in OM and will publish a set of papers that identify and implement data sources that are not traditional in empirical operations management research. The Special Issue will be published in mid-2005 by Elsevier.
Dr. Darren Williams, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, spoke to the entire student body at Fairview High School on Monday, March 8 (460 students, grades 9-12, plus faculty). The presentation was titled "Through the Eyes of a Rover: Reporting from the Surface of Mars."
Congratulations to Giselle Hudson, staff assistant in the Financial Aid Office, for being chosen a 2004 Penn State Achieving Woman. This is a University-wide award, which Giselle will receive at the Commission for Women banquet on Monday, March 22, at the Penn Stater Conference Center. Hudson is the first Behrend woman to receive this award, and a group of her supporters from Behrend will be traveling to University Park to honor her at the banquet.
Dr. Zach Irwin, associate professor of political science, spoke to the Lawrence Park Historical Society on March 15 about "Nation Building in New Millennium -- Lessons from the Balkans."
Dr. George Looney, assistant professor of English and creative writing, will serve as the co-director of the first Chautauqua Writers Festival, scheduled for June 11-13 this year. The festival, hosted by the Writers Center at Chautauqua, will feature presenters such as poets Stanley Plumly and Bruce Smith; non-fiction writers Mary Karr and Dinty Moore; and fiction writers Lee K. Abbott and former Penn State Behrend professor Ann Pancake. If you are interested in learning more about the festival, contact Looney at gol1@psu.edu or at x6281.
Dr. Phylis Mansfield, assistant professor of marketing in the Sam and Irene Black School of Business, was quoted in an article that appeared on the Internet on March 15, 2004. The article was part of the MSN Money page for the day. "Those low-interest-for-life card deals" was authored by Aviya Kushner of Bankrate.com.
Patience Simmonds, assistant librarian, has an article "21st Century Reference Department: Working to Provide Quality Service to Users" published in The Reference Librarian. The article is also published by The Haworth Press as a book chapter in Managing the Twenty-First Century Reference Department: Challenges and Prospects.
Dr. Tom Spudich, assistant professor of chemistry, attended PITTCON in Chicago, Illinois, March 7-11. Spudich supervised a student presentation titled, "Trace Elemental Analysis of Snapping Turtles Collected from Erie County, Pennsylvania," given by David Duberow, a chmbd major.
Dr. G. William Baxter, associate professor of physics, attended a meeting of the American Physical Society in Montreal, Quebec, March 20-25. Baxter presented a paper titled "Expert Evidence of Molecular Chaos in a Granular Gas." Dr. Chuck Yeung, associate professor of physics, also attended this meeting.
Frank Bekeny, adjunct lecturer in SEET, received the Engineering Excellence Award from the GE on February 26. Bekeny led a team that developed computer-based design tools for GE Rail Engineering, which resulted in higher quality designs while reducing the time and effort involved in those designs.
During spring break, Dr. Michael Campbell, associate professor of biology, accompanied students from his bioinformatics class to The Institute of Genomic Research (TIGR), the Joint Technology Center, and the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), all of which are located in the Maryland/Washington, D.C. area. The organizations visited are top players in the field of DNA sequencing and biotechnology. Their host at TIGR was Jen Colvin, a graduate of Penn State Behrend.
Dr. Terri Caruso, lecturer in English, presented "Black Holes and Threatening Chasms: Fear of the Feminine in Flannery O'Connor's Fiction" on March 19 at the annual conference of the Pennsylvania College English Association in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Caruso also chaired the session on Flannery O'Connor.
Dr. Lawrence M. Downey, assistant professor of mathematics, published an article titled "Operators with Eigenvalves and Extreme Cases of Stability" in the Proceedings of the AMS (American Mathematics Society).
Dr. John Fizel, chair, iMBA Program and professor of economics, had two books released this March: Economics of Collegiate Sports edited by John Fizel and Rod Fort and International Sports Economics Comparisons edited by Rod Fort and John Fizel. Fizel also collaborated with Randall Bennett in writing a chapter on the "College Sports Industry" for the eleventh edition of the Structure of American Industry, expected to be released this month.
Lisa Mangel, lecturer of biology, organized a Forensic Science Activity Day on Saturday, March 20, for seventy-two Girl Scouts from Mercer, Crawford, Erie, Forest, and Warren counties. In addition to Mangel, presenters included Tracy Halmi, lecturer in chemistry, Jonathan Hall, lecturer in physics, Carley Hopwood, lecturer of biology, and Ruth Pfleuger, director of the Learning Resource Center.
The event included thirteen student volunteers from the Biology Club, Chemistry Club, Tri-Beta, and Alpha Phi Omega. Activities included DNA analysis, fingerprinting, chemical analysis, traffic accident analysis, blood typing, and internal analysis. Positive feedback was received and the group was asked to present the program again.
George Looney, assistant professor of English and creative writing, and Dr. Greg Morris, professor of American literature, led a group of English majors to the annual Pennsylvania College English Association conference in Scranton, Pennsylvania, March 18-20. For the second year, a Behrend student won the award for best undergraduate creative writing. Jennifer Town won for her poem, "Carnival." Students Rob Adams, Justin Brusino, and Rachel Evans also presented in a session on Shakespeare in film, and that session was chaired by Greg Morris.
Dr. Pam Silver, associate professor of biology, is the co-author of a paper titled "Chironomid Responses to Spatially Structured, Dynamic, Streambed Landscapes," which was recently published in the Journal of the North American Benthological Society. The paper describes several years of research supported by the National Science Foundation. Her co-authors are Margaret Palmer and David Wooster of the University of Maryland.
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