Faculty and Staff Career News

To read complete versions of these abbreviated news items where you see a live link, click to reach the faculty member’s personal page. Then visit that page’s “Recent News” tab, where this current item in fuller detail will be at the top. For staffers without a faculty page, the full text of each news item is included here.

George Ashline, professor of mathematics, gave the Thirteenth Annual Pi Mu Epsilon lecture on Friday, November 6.  His topic was “Exploring the famous problems from antiquity: angle trisection, cube duplication, and squaring the circle.”

Jeffrey Ayres, professor of political science and dean of the College, earlier this year published two co-authored book chapters: “Civil Society and Canadian and Global Political Economy,” in International Political Economy, and,  “Is North America Unravelling?  Transformations of Regionalism in North America,” in Limits to Regional Integration.

Christine Bauer-Ramazani, instructor in the Applied Linguistics Department, was invited to serve on the committee to select candidates for Fulbright US Student English Language Teaching Assistantships for Germany for 2016-17. On Sept. 30, Christine presented at Saint Michael’s College with co-panelists on “Flipping the Language Classroom: Approaches, Challenges and Opportunities.”

Michael J. Bosia, associate professor of political science, presented his research from his co-edited volume, Global Homophobia, at a symposium hosted by the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto where he has an appointment as a fellow. Also, his book State Homophobia and LGBT Activism, is under contract at Cambridge University. In mid-December 2015 he returned to University of Toronto to serve as the external examiner for a PhD dissertation in the Political Science Department on LGBT politics in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Robert Brenneman, associate professor of sociology, served as consultant at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion and Global Development Program. He also participated in a workshop on “The Intersections of Development and Religion in Guatemala” in Washington, DC, September 28-29, 2015.

Alain Brizard, professor of physics, co-authored several articles about his research in peer-reviewed publications over the past year, including in Physics of Plasmas and in Physics Letters; he also gave three seminars at the Swiss Plasma Center, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne (Swiss Confederation).

Kellie Campbell, director of the Accelerated Summer College and assistant director, academic technology, will make a presentation at the 2016 NERCOMP annual conference at the Rhode Island Convention Center, March 21-23, 2016 in Providence, RI. Her co-presenter will be Saint Michael’s Associate Professor of Business Karen Popovich and their topic will be: “Timely innovation: Transforming teaching and learning by blending digital content with faculty mentorship over a six-week 24/7 living and learning summer program: Saint Michael’s Accelerated Summer College.” Jerome Allen of Information Technology also was accepted to present a poster at the conference, on “Student Support and Leadership: Building Better People, Making Connections and Building Community.” Kellie and Erik Lightbody, assistant director – IT Technical Services, presented Nov. 13 in Norwood, MA at the Northeast Regional Computing Program workshop entitled “Better, Faster, Stronger: Training Student Workers for your Service Desk.”

Nick Clary, professor of English, was invited to join the Board of Directors for the Vermont Shakespeare Festival (formerly the Vermont Shakespeare Company). He will be introduced at the next meeting of the Board, January 30.

Brian Collier, associate professor of art, whose work was at the Shelburne Museum recently as part of the “Eyes on the Land” exhibition, was mentioned in a review of the exhibition in Seven Days, and he and his project were the exclusive focus of an article “Wisdom found Staring at Pine Island Goats,” by Jess Wisloski in the Essex Reporter. He also presented work at Pecha Kucha night on Nov. 12 at the Shelburne Museum.

Laura Crain, library associate director, became president of the College & Special Libraries section of the Vermont Library Association in May.  Beth Dietrich, reference and instruction librarian, became vice-president, and will serve as president beginning May 2016.  Beth and Laura organized the CSL section’s one day conference at Vermont Technical College in October. Laura and Kristen Hindes, interlibrary loan and instruction librarian, presented a pecha kucha titled “Picture This: Using Instagram to Promote Your Library” in May at the Vermont Library Conference in Burlington, VT.  In October, Kristen presented a lightning round on this topic at the Dartmouth Library Conference in Hanover, NH.  In November, Laura presented a pecha kucha titled “Snap, Tag, Share: Instagram Your Library” at the Charleston Library Conference in Charleston, SC.

John Paul Devlin, associate professor of fine arts/theater, designed lighting and stage managed Rogue Dance Company’s September concert in the McCarthy Arts Center.  He also designed and painted scenery for the Moonbox Production of Barefoot in the Park in November at the BCA Plaza Theatre in Boston , to excellent reviews.

Meggan Dulude, associate director of athletics, was named as a mentee to the prestigious 2015-16 NCAA and DII Athletics Directors’ Association Women & Minority Mentor Program.

Kristin Dykstra, Distinguished Scholar in Residence in American Studies, gave invited presentations at the University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers-Newark alongside Cuban poet Reina María Rodríguez in September 2015, following Rodríguez’s visit to the Saint Michael’s campus.  She also wrote a commentary for a poetics magazine, and had a book-length translation of new work by Marcelo Morales accepted for publication, while finishing an article on a Chilean-American writer. Daniel Borzutsky.

William Ellis, assistant professor of fine arts/music, performed on his guitar at a New Year’s Eve concert program at The Round Church in Richmond to start 2016.

William Grover, professor of political science, was co-author of an article, “Clinton, Sanders and the National Security Credo,” for the progressive website Common Dreams, published on Sunday, November 29, 2015. He also presented a paper on Sanders at the Annual Meeting of the Northeastern Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA, November 12-14, 2015, and gave another talk at the  Charlotte-Shelburne Rotary Club.

Kristen Hindes, teference & instruction librarian, gave a presentation in October titled “Can I have a Pizza Delivered Here? Using the Cephalonian Method for Library Orientation” at the Vermont Library Association’s College & Special Libraries “What’s New Under the Sun” event at Vermont Technical College in Randolph.

Valerie Hird, adjunct professor of art, will rely on origami fans to contribute over 3,000 homemade origami cubes and birds to form a fully life-size tree that celebrates diversity and cultural interconnections. So far the Project has groups and individuals from all over the USA plus 7 countries. Saint Michael’s Center for Women and Gender under the direction of Micalee Sullivan is submitting the work for named credit on the Genesis Tree NYC project, which will be a colorful 10’ x 14’ art installation at the Nohra Haime Gallery of New York in March of 2016.

John Peter Kenney, professor of religious studies, delivered a paper at the Seventeenth International Patristics Conference, Oxford University, August, 2015. His title was: “Nondum me esse: Augustine’s Early Ontology.”

Terryl N. Kinder, Visiting Distinguished Professor of Fine Arts, was elected as a Fellow of the prestigious Society of Antiquaries of London, a learned society officially founded in 1707, with medieval antecedents. Fellows are selected for their distinction in the fields of archaeology, architectural or art history, or other antiquarian subject matters. Terryl provided a training session for the docents of the Cloisters Museum, the medieval wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, on October 5th, and the same evening lectured in the Branner Architectural Forum of Columbia University on “Praxis at Pontigny: 900 years and Counting.”  Her recent (2014) book, Cistercian Arts (Milan 2014), of which she was managing co-editor and contributor, was published in Italian in October.

Katie Kirby, associate professor of philosophy and director of global studies, had an article on service learning in Guyana published in a book collection, Experiential Learning in Philosophy, in September 2015.  She gave an invited presentation on this work last April at Frostburg State University, in Maryland.  She presented at Purdue University in July for the 10th Annual Meeting of the North American Levinas Society, where she is on the Board of Directors.  She also was a presenter at the annual meeting of the Concerned Philosophers for Peace, in October at Loyola University, in Baltimore, Maryland.

Richard Kujawa, professor of geography, in October 2015 was a panelist discussing “The Roles and Value of Academics in Local Government” at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the New England-Saint Lawrence Valley Geographical Society in Bridgewater, MA. Richard also created web page and web video on “Land Trusts & Conservation Easements” for the Center for Research on Vermont (See page and embedded video at http://www.uvm.edu/~crvt/?Page=news&storyID=21840&category=crvt

Shannon Kynoch, head coach for women’s basketball, was selected to be the Northeast-10 Conference’s SAAC Advisor representative for the NCAA’s Student-Athlete Leadership Forum out in Phoenix AZ from April 7-10, 2016. The NE-10 group also will include coaches of football, men’s basketball and field hockey from New Haven, Assumption and Southern New Hampshire, respectively.

Dave Landers, instructor of psychology and gender studies, has  been elected to serve his second three-year term as the Chair of the NE-10 Faculty Athletics Representatives Executive Council.  He recently (October 2-4) was on a panel and served on the Steering Committee for the NCAA D-II Faculty Athletics Representatives Advanced Leadership Institute in Indianapolis, Indiana at the NCAA Headquarters.  In October he also spoke at Nichols College in Massachusetts about his book I Wish He’d Taught Me How To Shave and issues of Men and Masculinities.

Carolyn Lukens-Olson, professor of Spanish and chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literature, presented her paper “Charlatans of Interpretation in Cervantes’ — The Marvelous Stage for the panel “The Searching Self in Literature” at the conference “Liberal Arts and Sciences and Core Texts in the European Context” (September 11-12, 2015) at Amsterdam University College in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Tara Natarajan, associate professor of economics, presented a paper entitled, “Institutions and Values: A Methodological Inquiry” at the evolutionary economics sessions of the meetings of the Allied Social Sciences Association (annual econ convention) held in San Francisco Jan 2– 5 2016. She also edited a “Special Issue on Formal Methods for Integrated Socioeconomic Analysis,” for the Forum for Social Economics, Taylor and Francis in 2015. Individual articles are available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfse20

Elizabeth O’Dowd, professor of Applied Linguistics and Director, Graduate TESOL Programs, in October 2015 delivered a full-day academic TESOL workshop (invited) for teachers from the Universidad Nacional: UNA Liberia, Costa Rica. Workshop title:  “Introduction to Functional Grammar.” In November she was featured speaker for Colorado TESOL, Denver, where her topic was, “Getting to Genres Through Grammar.”

Paul Olsen, assistant professor of business administration and accounting, has had several case studies published in recent months and he also recently received a new certification from the Society for Human Resource Management in Alexandria, VA.

R. Michael Olson, associate professor of philosophy, attended the conference on “Liberal Arts and Sciences and Core Texts in the European Context” (9/15) in Amsterdam, Netherlands, where he presented a paper.

John O’Meara, associate professor and Physics Department chair, has had several publications accepted for his research in recent months. John also was the invited speaker at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, where he presented “New insights into damped Lyman alpha systems” as part of their large scale structure seminar series.

Reza Ramazani, professor of economics, presented a paper, “The Impact of U.S. Sugar Policy on Consumer Food Prices,” co-authored with 2014 Saint Michael’s economics major Silke Hynes, at the Western Economics Association International  in Honolulu, Hawaii, July 2015 –where Reza also organized, chaired, and was discussant on two economic sessions. He also published several book reviews in journals. Reza has been invited to be part of seven panel discussions at the 68th Annual Conference on World Affairs in Boulder, Co. on April 4-8.

Jonathan Silverman, professor of education, and  Jeffrey Ayres, professor of political science and dean of the College, took  11 students to Wales this past summer as part of their course “Environmental Study of Sustainable Places,” helping earning the University of Wales a prestigious “Green Gown” award for the work on which they collaborated.

Patrick Standen, instructor of philosophy, on Jan. 24, 2016 will be delivering a talk on Ethan Allen and his contributions to American Philosophy at the Ethan Allen Homestead. It is part of their winter lecture series. On January 7, Patrick raced to a 10th place finish at the 2015 NORCAM Continental Cup and U.S. Nationals Adaptive Nordic Championships in Craftsbury, VT.

Michael P. Stefanowicz ’09, assistant director of admission, with Associate Professor of Education Claudine Bedell and student Taylor Donnelly ’16, presented on November 20 at the Vermont Standards Based Learning Symposium. Their session was titled “Standards Based Learning and the Transition to College.”

William “Bill” Stratton, adjunct professor of English, is a poet whose second book, These Things Too Have Shape (available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble), will published in February He has received several Pushcart Prize nominations for his writing. His first book was Under the Water Was Stone (also Amazon & B&N). He most recently had poems published in Sugar House review with his next publication due in Field magazine.

Laura Stroup, assistant professor of environmental studies, Richard Kujawa, professor of geography, and Jeffrey Ayres, professor of political science and dean of the College, recently published the article “ Envisioning a Green Energy Future in Canada and the United States: Constructing a Sustainable Future in the Context of New Regionalisms?” in American Review of Canadian Studies, Volume 45,  Issue 3, 2015: Special Issue:   The “Nature” of Canadian Studies in the United States.

Melissa VanderKaay Tomasulo, associate professor of psychology and director of the Neuroscience Program, the weekend of Oct. 10-11, 2015 presented research with her student Kelcey Brigg’s ’15 at the New England Psychological Association annual meeting at Fitchburg State University in Fitchburg, MA.

Catherine Welch, assistant dean of students/director of student life outreach & assessment, was this past summer was selected to attend the HERS Institute at Wellesley, which involves going to Wellesley three times this year (October, November and March) to attend a leadership institute with other women in higher education.