Faculty and Staff Career News

o 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, recently was selected by the 2016 Northeast Section of the Mathematical Association of America Teaching Award Selection Committee to receive the 2016 NES/MAA Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching. And he’s been extremely active in mathematics education initiatives across Vermont and nationally.

Christine Bauer-Ramazani, instructor in the Applied Linguistics Department, has had two articles published in publications of the TESOL organization–refereed: Bauer-Ramazani, C., et al. (2016, June). Flipped learning in TESOL: Definitions, approaches, and implementation, TESOL Journal 7(2), 429-437, and a newsletter– Bauer-Ramazani, C., et al. (2016, March). All aboard for the Electronic Village … Online!  OnCALL.  In addition, Christine was an invited panelist in two presentations at the 50^th TESOL Convention & Exhibition in Baltimore, MD, April 5-8, 2016: 1) TESOL 50th Anniversary Special Event: Leadership Panel: History of the Electronic Village in Retrospective: Over three decades of Professional Development in Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) and 2) CALL-IS Academic Session: Project-Based Learning (PBL)–Pedagogical Possibilities for Online, Mobile, and Blended Learning. Her panel presentations encompassed a framework for CALL, PBL, and content-based instruction (CBI), approaches to assessment, as well as the Electronic Village Online and web casting, both of which she was developed for the CALL Interest Section of TESOL. Her sessions were recorded and can be accessed at http://bit.ly/TESOL2016-presentations

Michael Bosia, associate professor of political science, presented his research on global LGBT Human Rights and state homophobia, at a panel he worked with the campus group Common Ground in organizing. The panel was chaired by Dean of the College and Professor of International Relations Professor Jeffrey Ayres. In recent travels, Michael made professional stops in Atlanta, Toronto and at Lehman College CUNY, and reviewed several books in his field.

Robert Brenneman, associate professor of sociology, recently was co-author with Brian Miller of a published article,  “When Bricks Matter: Four Arguments for the Sociological Study of Religious Buildings,” in a 2016 edition of Sociology of Religion (77: 82-101). In recent months he also wrote a book chapter, made presentations in New York City and Costa Rica, was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to teach in Guatemala next year, and wrote an expert affidavit for asylum-seekers from gang violence in Guatemala and Honduras.

Paul Constantino, assistant professor of biology, recently has published research on reconstructing diet from tooth wear in the journals BioEssays and Acta Biomaterialia, and just submitted another paper to Journal of the Royal Society Interface. He also presented research at an Atlanta conference, and has three students from his lab presenting their research at another major June conference in Washington, DC.

George Dameron, professor of history, has published an essay on recent research on the plague of the fourteenth century, and another on the Florentine Church during the lifetime of Dante Alighieri, entitled “Church and Orthodoxy,”  in the book Dante in Context (Cambridge). On January 7, 2016, he also chaired and commented at the last American Historical Association meeting (Atlanta) on three papers as part of the panel on the Italian Renaissance state.

Patti Delaney, associate professor of anthropology, led a round-table discussion titled “Somali Culture: Looking In,” on campus April 13.  It was an opportunity for faculty, students and the community to discuss unique cultural practices embraced by many of King Street Center’s Somali families, and share or make discoveries about family structure, traditional gender roles, food, religion, and other issues specific to these New Americans.

John Paul Devlin, associate professor of fine arts/theater, and Cathy Hurst, professor of fine Arts/theater, accompanied 18 Saint Michael’s College students to the regional Kennedy Center American Theater Festival at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, CT during the week of January 26 – January 31, 2016.  John is currently the Regional Co-Chair for KCACTF and Cathy is the Immediate Past Chair of the region. Four St. Mike’s theater majors participated.

Mike Donoghue, longtime adjunct professor in the Media Studies, Journalism and Digital Arts Department, made a half-day presentation during the annual Vermont Court Clerks College, discussing media issues and taking questions from court personnel from throughout the state. Mike also was the invited keynote speaker at the annual Charlotte News Writers’ Workshop.

Mary Beth Doyle, professor of education, received the College’s Community-Engaged Educator award for her commitment to building sustainable, reciprocal partnerships and enhancing student learning through community engagement in her courses.  The award was presented at the Community Partner Appreciation and Award ceremony on May 5 in Dion.

Kristin Dykstra, distinguished scholar in residence in American Studies, had her translations and scholarly introduction featured in The Counterpunch (and Other Horizontal Poems), by Cuban writer Juan Carlos Flores, published in early 2016 by the University of Alabama Press.  She spoke on panels about literary translation at Havana’s 2016 international book fair and at the Latin American Studies Association’s international congress in New York.

William Ellis, assistant professor of fine arts/music, co-curated the current show at Burlington’s New City Galerie, Exaltations with former Saint Michael’s art professor Gregg Blasdel and Jennifer Koch, and gave the May 6 opening night talk, “The Scarecrow and the Cross: Contexts in the Sculptures of Hawkins Bolden.”

William Grover, professor of political science, gave a talk on May 24, 2016 at Ohavi Zedek Synagogue in Burlington, VT, titled “The Elections of 2016 and the Future of the American Presidency.” He also made several media appearances to discuss the presidential race with local, national and international outlets, and offered perspective on the State of the Union address for the College website.

Rowena He, assistant professor of history, gave the following invited talks during the past academic year:  Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University (April 11, 2016); China Colloquium Series, the Council on East Asian Studies, Yale University (October 8, 2015); New York University Law School, Asia Law Institute (October 9, 2015); and Brandeis University, International and Global Studies Program (September 17, 2015). Rowena also was interviewed by Vermont Public Radio (April 20, 2016), The New York Times Chinese (June 6 & June 7, 2016) and The New York Times (June 22, 2016).

David Heroux, associate professor of chemistry, has been elected as chair of the Green Mountain Section of the American Chemical Society.

Val Hird, adjunct art instructor, updates her Genesis Tree NY16 project in New York City, a concept that came out of painting she did. For the first smaller 3D version of the project, which Val originated last year, she made 3,000 forms. For the present larger version at Nohra Haime Gallery on Fifth Avenue, she had others make the forms, from which she managed and assembled the installation. One participant was the Saint Michael’s Center for Women and Gender led by Micalee Sullivan. This year’s larger version is a crowd-sourced international outreach project representing diverse age groups and individuals worldwide who submitted 4,000 hand-folded origami pieces, to the assembly of a large 3-dimensional tree.  Each crane, cube and box was made from recycled magazine paper gathered and folded by participants in Jordan, India, Australia, UK, Japan, Panama, Colombia, Abu Dhabi, and the U.S. They were installed in March to form a big tree representing a diversity of language, locality and color that affirms (rather than divides) the connections among us all.

Cathy Hurst, professor of Fine Arts/Theater, directed the play I and You by Lauren Gunderson at Vermont Stage in April 2016.  Located in downtown Burlington, Vermont Stage is the city’s only year-round, professional theater company.

Angela Irvine, director for sponsored programs and foundation relations, completed a program at Harvard University this spring — a certificate program through the Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education Program, “Leadership Decision Making: Optimizing Organizational Performance.”

Zsu Kadas, professor of mathematics, gave a presentation entitled “A Short Course in Population Dynamics” at the Spring Meeting of the Northeast Section of the Mathematical Association of America held June 3-4, 2016, at the University of New England in Biddeford, ME. Greta Pangborn, professor of computer science, also attended the meeting along with four Saint Michael’s undergraduates, doing summer research on Graph Theory and Self-Assembly of DNA. Zsu also gave a talk entitled “Population Models and the Logistic Equation: the Importance of Being Discrete” in the Applied Mathematics session at the XXIII Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference held on April 2, 2016 at Saint Michael’s College.

Richard Kujawa, professor of geography and chair of the Department of Economics and Geography, presented in a panel session focused on “The role of geography in nexus thinking: Becoming institutional and community leaders while defending the discipline!” at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) in San Francisco, CA.  He also finished out his term representing the Northeast for AAG.

Brian Lee, assistant dean of students / housing operations, was invited to present an “Institution in Action” webinar which highlighted how Saint Michael’s uses the Residence (by Symplicity) software to manage many aspects of the College’s housing system. The webinar was part of a series earlier in the semester during which schools shared best practices of the housing selection process in advance of room selection season. Residence Life at Saint Michael’s is entering its fourth year of using Residence to collect applications and roommate matching criteria to house incoming students, as well as allow returning students to form groups and select their room for the upcoming year online. Residence also helps manage the room change process and simplifies occupancy reporting.

Robert Letovsky, professor of business administration and accounting, in February gave  a briefing/presentation at the Doubletree Hotel in South Burlington to the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce board about the impact of the lower Canadian dollar with an overview of the Canadian economy.

Crystal L’Hote, associate professor of philosophy, in late April delivered a paper, “From Correlation to Causation: The Pluralist’s Way,” at the Science of Consciousness conference, hosted by Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. The paper engages metaphysical questions in philosophy of science and neuroscience. Crystal is a member of the Neuroscience Program Steering Committee at the College.

Heather Lynch, sustainability coordinator and associate director of facilities, has been appointed to the Board of Directors of Mercy Ecology for a three year term commencing July 1, 2016.

Tara Natarajan, professor of economics, published a co-authored article entitled “Institutions and Values: A Methodological Inquiry” in the Journal of Economic Issues, Vol 50, Issue 2 in June 2016. Tara was lead author of this article and co-authored it with a professor at Colby College. Tara also was appointed to the Editorial Board of the Forum for Social Economics, one of two peer-reviewed journals published by the Association for Social Economics.

Paul Olsen, assistant professor of business administration and accounting, in April 2016 received the 2015 Best Critical Incident Award from the Journal of Critical Incidents for his 2015 critical incident case study titled, “Save the whales? Crisis management at Lego.” Paul also presented cases, one co-authored with a colleague and another with a student, at a Chicago conference in April.

John O’Meara, associate professor and chair of physics, was part of a team awarded over $500,000 in a grant from NASA to understand how galaxies spread heavy elements throughout the universe. He was appointed to the Large UltraViolet Optical InfraRed (LUVOIR) telescope Science & Technology Definition Team by NASA, has had a number of publications accepted in journals, was an invited speaker/participant at an Arizona workshop and an invited colloquium speaker at Durham University in England; and, was a participant at the Thirty Meter Telescope Science Forum in Kyoto, Japan.

Reza Ramazani, professor of economics, in recent months has published several book reviews in his field appearing in Choice, a publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries. He also was invited to be part of 10 different panel discussions at 68th Annual Conference on World Affairs (CWA) at University of Colorado in Boulder, Co. on April 4-8. He also was on a local TV panel discussing employment in the 21st century.

Maria Rinaldi, web support specialist for the Admission Office, was elected as a pledged delegate for Bernie Sanders in late May at the Democratic State Convention. She is writing a blog post about her campaign to become a delegate.

Alayne Schroll, professor of chemistry and Leavy Family Chair in Chemistry, joined with Alexandru Sasuclark (biochemistry major, 2016) to present a research poster titled  “Synthesis, Purification, and Characterization of N-(9-fluorenylmethoxycarbonyl)-Se-tert-butylthio-L-selenocysteine” at the American Chemical Society National Meeting in San Diego CA on March 14, 2016.

Jonathan Silverman, chair of the Education Department, wrote an article, “Becoming empathic storytellers: A curriculum for developing cultural,” that was selected and now published in the book Cultural Sensitivity in a Global World: A Handbook for Teachers. He also co-authored (with Dean Jeffrey Ayres) “Sense of place and resiliency through innovative interdisciplinary curriculum” that was included in the spring, 2016 Journal of Sustainability Education.

Michael Stefanowicz, assistant director of admission, in early June co-presented at the New England Association of College Admission Counseling Annual Meeting & Conference, on the topic, “Standards Based Learning and the College Admission Process,” with several educators and business people from across New England.

Susan Summerfield, professor of fine arts/music and the College organist, was to present a recital with violinist Fran Pepperman Taylor of the College’s adjunct Fine Arts faculty, on June 12 in the Chapel of Saint Michael the Archangel on the Saint Michael’s campus, as part of the annual meeting of the Vermont chapter of the American Guild of Organists. Each year this group chooses an Artist of the Year, and this year they chose Susan for that honor.

Jeffrey Trumbower, professor of religious studies, presented a paper titled “The Use of Scriptures to Construct a Coherent Afterlife Scenario in ‘Against Plato, On the Cause of the Universe,’ often attributed to Hippolytus” at the Annual Meeting of the North American Patristics Society in Chicago, May 27, 2016.  He also organized and presided over a panel of four papers devoted to studying views about the afterlife in Early Christianity.

Thomas Van Dzura, instructor of accounting and chief financial officer for the Society of Saint Edmund, was featured along with his family in a two-page profile article that appears on pages 20 and 22 of the June 2016 edition of Vermont Catholic, a monthly publication of the Diocese of Burlington. It’s about a 5K race in which he goes the extra mile for family and faith.

Joan Wry, associate professor of English, presented a paper, “’Quiver down, with tufts of tune’: Emily Dickinson’s Palpable Soundscapes,” at the MLA Convention in Austin, TX in January 2016.  Joan recently had a second paper, “Landscapes and Mindscapes:  Deep Mapping in Edward Hitchcock’s Geology and Emily Dickinson’s Poetry,” accepted for the 2017 MLA Convention to be held next January in Philadelphia.