Along the Mall citations: Spring 2015
New Media faculty member Jon Ippolito along with John Bell were awarded a 2015 eLearning grant to extend the interactive, badge-based tutorial system built for use by digital curation and other distance education students.
Gregory Zaro, associate professor of anthropology and climate studies and chair of the Anthropology Department; and Dan Sandweiss, professor of anthropology and climate studies, were invited participants in Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society’s Partnering for Success workshop August 2–4 at the Snowbird Resort in Utah. The workshop focused on increasing the number of acceptances among students invited to join PKP. Each chapter annually invites the top 7.5 percent of juniors and the top 10 percent of seniors. Zaro is the president of UMaine’s PKP chapter, and Sandweiss is the northeast regional vice president and a member of the national board of directors. Phi Kappa Phi was founded at UMaine in 1897 and now has more than 300 chapters.
This fall, Professor of Philosophy Doug Allen will spend five months of his sabbatical based at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. In addition, he will spend a month serving as the first Visiting Chair Professor in Gandhian Philosophy at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in Mumbai.
Steven Barkan, professor of sociology, has received the President’s Award from the Text and Academic Authors Association. The award is given for service to the organization.
Representatives from the eight universities participating in the National Hazing Prevention Consortium were at the University of Maine June 10–12 for a summit that included reviewing promising practices, challenges and evaluation case studies occurring on the different campuses to begin to build an evidence-based framework for hazing prevention to inform a nationwide dialogue. The summit was led by Elizabeth Allan, UMaine professor of higher education and president of Stop Hazing, home of the Hazing Prevention Consortium, a three-year program now in its second year. Attending the summit were representatives from Cornell, Lehigh, Texas A&M, University of Arizona, University of Central Florida, University of Kentucky, University of Virginia and UMaine.
Howard Segal, professor of history, spoke on the evolution of the University of Maine at the annual Homecoming meeting of UMaine retirees on June 2. His talk derived from the UMaine history book project he is editing.
Jeffrey Thaler, assistant university counsel and a visiting professor of energy policy, law and ethics at the University of Maine, will speak on “Why Climate Change — A Socratic Exercise,” at the Midcoast Senior College, June 3 at Curtis Memorial Library, Brunswick. Thaler’s lecture is the first in a series of lectures on the theme, Global Climate Change and Maine’s Natural Resources, present and Future: Gloom and Doom or Economic Boom? Also speaking in the series on June 24 is marine scientist Andrew Pershing, addressing “The Gulf of Maine as the Frontline of a Changing Global Climate.”
“The Sex Lives of College Students: A Quarter Century of Attitudes and Behaviors,” authored by Professor of Family Relations and Human Sexuality Sandra Caron, was published in April. This second edition of “The Sex Lives of College Students” presents results of a 100-plus question human sexuality survey administered to thousands of college students ages 18–22 from 1990 to 2015. The goal is to better understand students’ sexual attitudes and behaviors, as well as trends. The findings raise awareness and provide perspective about students’ understanding of sex matters and related difficult issues, and indicate there is a long way to go before people own their sexuality. The survey results reinforce that young adults are generally comfortable pursuing sexual relationships, but often fail to openly discuss sexual issues. Some results suggest the double standard still exists; more college women than men say love is important in sex. “The Sex Lives of College Students” provides a springboard for honest dialogue about the role of sexuality in people’s lives and a forum for more public discussion of private parts. The book is available through amazon.com.
May 10 at the Jerusalem Academy of Music, Ramat Gan, Israel, Pianist Phillip Silver and cellist Noreen Silver will give a performance master class and a lecture-recital on the life and music of German-born composer James Simon, who was murdered in Auschwitz. May 16, the Silver Duo will performing works by James Simon in Prague, Czech Republic, under the auspices of the Rafael Schächter Institute for Arts and Humanities. May 17, Phillip Silver will give a solo performance at Terezin Concentration Camp, under the auspices of the Schächter Foundation.
Three University of Maine faculty members and five former students presented papers April 15–19, at the 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in San Francisco, California. Alice Kelley, Golden Undergraduate Coordinator and Instructor, School of Earth and Climate Sciences, presented “A Predictive Model for Submerged Prehistoric Sites, Northern New England and Canadian Maritimes,” coauthored with Dan Belknap and Joe Kelley, professors of Earth and Climate Sciences. Paul “Jim” Roscoe, professor of anthropology, spoke on “Beyond Defense: The Political Implications of Defense in Contact-era New Guinea.” Dan Sandweiss, professor of anthropology and climate studies, delivered a paper titled “Floods, Famines, and Fagan: Recent Research on El Niño in the Age of Andean States and Empires” in a session honoring best-selling archaeology author Brian Fagan. Former student speakers included: Louis Fortin, bachelor’s in anthropology (2006), master’s in quaternary and climate studies (2008); Peter Leach, bachelor’s in anthropology (2003), master’s in quaternary and climate studies (2007); Christopher Miller, master’s in Earth sciences (2006); Elizabeth Olson, master’s in quaternary and climate studies (2012); and David Reid, bachelor’s in anthropology and Honors (2007), Honors associate 2011–12.
Pankaj Agrrawal, associate professor of finance, co-authored “Investor Sentiment and Short-Term Returns for Size-Adjusted Value and Growth Portfolios” that was published in the Journal of Behavioral Finance. Agrrawal and co-author Doug Waggle examined the sentiment levels of individual investors between 1992–2010 to see if they offered insights into subsequent short-term market returns. “Digitizing investor sentiment to glean market behavior from big data is seen as an opportunity to extract alpha in markets that have heightened volatility. We build on the work of Kahneman and Tversky (1992),” Agrrawal says.
Dan Sandweiss, professor of anthropology and climate studies, was invited to present a paper on the earliest settlement of Peru at a summit April 6–9 on the state of the art in Peruvian prehistory convened by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture, in Pisac, Peru. Experts on different periods gathered at the summit; intended outcomes include an edited book and exhibit content for a $150 million national museum being built near Lima.
Scott Dunning, professor of electrical engineering technology, will receive the 2015 Frederick J. Berger Award from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) in recognition of distinguished accomplishments. It is one of ASEE’s national awards that will presented at the society’s 122nd Annual Conference and Exposition, June 14–17 in Seattle.
Ngo-Vinh Long, professor of Asian history, has been appointed a visiting senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), the most prestigious research institute in Asia on Southeast Asia. In recent years, Long has been among the international researchers and scholars presenting in ISEAS’ Vietnam Studies Programme.
Kurt Rademaker, UMaine faculty associate in anthropology and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tuebingen, and Sonia Zarrillo, University of Calgary, “Survival of the Highest,” Natural History, Vol. 123, March 2015, pp. 36–38.
Jeffrey Thaler, visiting professor of energy law and policy, will serve on an expert panel at the E2Tech Forum: Renewable Energy Incentives: Investment or Entitlement? The forum is March 25 in Augusta. Thaler will speak on renewable incentives in Maine and regionally.
Susan Gardner, associate dean of accreditation and graduate affairs in the College of Education and Human Development, and Amy Blackstone, associate professor of sociology, wrote a chapter on incivility and mobbing in the academy in the new book, Disrupting the Culture of Silence: Confronting Gender Inequality and Making Change in Higher Education. Many of the book’s contributors are or have been involved in ADVANCE projects on their own campuses. Gardner and Blackstone will be presenting on their chapter as part of a panel of fellow contributors at the Southern Sociological Society meetings in March.
Jon Ippolito, a professor in the New Media program who directs the online graduate Digital Curation program at UMaine, and Richard Rinehart, director and chief curator of the Samek Art Museum at Bucknell University, co-wrote “Re-collection: Art, New Media, and Social Memory.” The academic book on new media preservation looks at how to keep the digital culture alive in the face of rapid technological obsolescence. Ippolito has spent time during his sabbatical year promoting his book in Europe and the Americas, including U.S. venues such as the Library of Congress.
Dan Sandweiss, professor of anthropology and climate studies, gave a talk titled “Human Ecodynamics of Early Settlement on the Central Andean Coast” Feb. 27 at Yale University.
Mohamad Musavi, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and associate dean of engineering, has been selected as a 2014 recipient of an IEEE-USA award for his outstanding leadership and dedication to the design and direction of the Bangor High School STEM Academy, part of the College of Engineering’s K–12 STEM Literacy Educator-Engineering Partnership. The award will be presented at the IEEE-USA Annual Meeting, May 16 in Milwaukee.
Mary Ellen Camire, professor of food science and human nutrition, has been chosen to receive the 2015 General Mills Institute of Health and Nutrition Innovation Award. The award is given to an investigator whose scientific contributions advance the understanding of the health benefits of whole grains. It will be presented at the American Society of Nutrition Scientific Sessions and Annual Meeting, Experimental Biology 2015, March 29 in Boston. A news release about this and other ASN awards is online.
Deborah Rogers, professor of English, reviewed the exhibit “Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York for the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.
S.R. Waldstein and M.F. Elias (Eds.) (2015). Neuropsychology of Cardiovascular Disease (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge: Taylor and Francis. pp 1–528.
Deborah Rogers, professor of English, published in The Times Higher Ed “Undying Words, Eternal Devotion,” a review of Loving Literature 11 December 2014: 56 (print) and online.
Gregory Zaro, chair of Anthropology Department, received a grant for research to be conducted summer 2015. The grant is titled “Urban Transformation and Landscape Change at the Nadin Archaeological Site, Croatia” and is sponsored by National Geographic Society Committee for Research and Exploration.
Maine Business School assistant professor Matt Graham has been elected director of OHI, Inc., a Maine-based, public nonprofit organization providing support and services to people with intellectual and cognitive disabilities. OHI owns and operates 24 homes and the Brewer Area Food Pantry. Graham will be providing guidance on technology planning and procurement.
Peter Koons, professor of geological sciences, was made a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union at the AGU meeting this past December in San Francisco. More on the prestigious award is on the School of Earth and Climate Sciences website.
Amy Blackstone, associate professor and chair of UMaine’s Department of Sociology and director of the ADVANCE Rising Tide Center, penned the article “childless… or childfree?” published in the fall issue of Contexts. The percentage of women in the United States who have not given birth by their 40s has almost doubled since 1976, when 10 percent of women had never given birth. Blackstone writes that one question is whether people are consciously opting out of parenthood (childfree) or whether they want to have children but have not (childless). Studies, she says, indicate for childfree women, the choice is frequently linked to their desire to have careers, whereas childfree men cite as key factors the high cost of rearing children and wanting financial flexibility. Blackstone says studies also indicate higher education greatly increases women’s likelihood of being childfree, but the same is not true for men.
Susan Gardner, Amy Blackstone, Shannon K. McCoy and Daniela Véliz wrote “Effect of State Budget Cuts on the Department Climate: The human side of austerity” that ran in the November/December issue of Academe. Gardner is associate dean of accreditation and graduate affairs with the College of Education and Human Development and co-primary investigator of the National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE grant; Blackstone is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Sociology and director of the ADVANCE Rising Tide Center; and McCoy is associate professor of psychology, all at UMaine. Véliz is a research associate with the Center for Research on Educational Policy and Practice at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. They conducted a National Science Foundation-funded survey in spring 2012 at State University (pseudonym) about the role department climate plays in job satisfaction and retention. From the 50 percent of survey responses they received from 486 tenure-track and nontenure-track faculty and staff members in 23 academic departments, researchers found that budget cuts were viewed as the primary reason for negative climates. Faculty members indicated “the greatest negative impact on their day-to-day experiences resulted from things entirely beyond their department’s control,” wrote the researchers. Budget cuts, they learned, directly and indirectly influenced faculty departments’ climates due to lack of funding, unfilled faculty positions that result in unreasonable workloads and a declining physical plant. The researchers suggested State University and others in similar financial situations “move beyond Band-Aid approaches to budgetary shortfalls and consider how more strategic, long-term efforts might better serve their faculty, staff, and students, “including hiring grant management staff, lab support staff and graduate assistants.
Michael Rocque, Chad Posick, Steven Barkan and Raymond Paternoster, co-authored “Marriage and County-Level Crime Rates: A Research Note,” published in the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 52:130-145 (2015).
Ivan Manev, Dean of the Maine Business School and professor of management, co-authored the article “Friends with money? Owner’s financial network and new venture internationalization in a transition economy” published in the December 2014 edition of International Small Business Journal. Manev collaborated on the piece with Tatiana Manolova, associate professor at Bentley University, and Bojidar Gyoshev, professor at the International Business School in Bulgaria.
Dan Sandweiss, professor of anthropology and climate studies, was an invited participant in a marine resources roundtable at the Océanides Conference on The Influence of the Sea on History: A Voyage to the Heart of Antiquity & the Middle-Ages, held Dec. 11–12 in Paris, France. The program also included a reception at the French Senate hosted by the senator from St. Pierre and Miquelon, French islands near Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.
Steve Barkan, professor of sociology, has an article, “Gender and Abortion Attitudes: Religiosity as a Suppressor Variable,” in the journal Public Opinion Quarterly (POQ). The full article is available online. The article will appear in a future print edition of POQ, one of the leading journals in the fields of public opinion and political science.