Archive for the ‘Faculty Recognitions’ Category

Faculty Recognitions

Tuesday, June 5th, 2012

Joy Swallow and Tony Caruso Win Presidential Awards

At a ceremony held April 12, 2012 in the AUP+D conference area these awards were announced.  Tony Caruso (Physics) was awarded the 2012 UM President’s Award for Early Career Excellence. 

Photos of UMKC Chancellor Leo Morton, 2012 UM President’s Award for Early Career Excellence winner Tony Caruso (left) 2012 President’s Award for University Citizenship-Leadership winner Joy Swallow (right), and UM President Tim Wolfe [Photos courtesy of Beci Edmundson].

Joy Swallow (Architecture, Urban Planning+Design) was awarded the 2012 President’s Award for University Citizenship-Leadership.

For more see:

Robin Aupperle (Psychology) was awarded a University of Missouri Research Board (UMRB) grant for a study titled “Cognitive Training in PTSD: Effects on Cognitive and Emotional Processing”.
 

Robin Aupperle (Psychology) and Jared Bruce (Psychology) were awarded Frontiers: The Heartland Institute for Clinical and Translational Research grants.  Aupperle’s study is titled “A pilot study investigating effects of cognitive training for PTSD” and Bruce’s study is titled “Improving medication adherence in Multiple Sclerosis”.
 

Jennifer Lundgren (Psychology) will be inducted as a Fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders at the International Conference on Eating Disorders May 5th in Austin, TX.  She has a forthcoming edited volume, Night Eating Syndrome: Research, Assessment, and Treatment, to be published by Guilford (in print August 2012).

Campus Recognizes Six College Faculty and Staff for 2012

Monday, April 23rd, 2012

At UMKC’s 2012 “Celebration of Excellence” on March 12 six in A&S were recognized for outstanding achievements in various award areas.  They are:

     
Ann Hubbard(Political Science) Chancellor’s True Unsung Hero Staff Award;    Jared Bruce(Psychology) Chancellor’s Early Career Award for Excellence in Teaching; 
     
Stephen Dilks(English Language and Literature) Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching;    Ricky Allman(Art and Art History) Trustees Faculty Scholar Award; 
  
 
   
Jannette Berkley-Patton(Psychology) Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Community Engagement;  
 
 and 
Charles Wurrey(Emeritus, Chemistry) Chancellor’s Award for Career Contributions to the University. 

For more see:

Faculty Recognitions/Awards

Monday, April 23rd, 2012

Alex Holsinger (Criminal Justice and Criminology), who received his MS in Criminal Justice from Illinois State University in 1993, was selected to be inducted to the Illinois State University College of Applied Science and Technology Academy of Achievement.  This award recognizes alumni for their professional achievements and service to others.  For more see:

Virginia Blanton (English Language and Literature) was awarded a University of Missouri Research Board grant for $32,967 to host an international conference at UMKC on “Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe” 5-8 June 2012.  Conference details and registration forms are available at:

Lyn Elliot (Communication Studies) won prizes at the Black Maria Film and Video Festival and James River Shorts for her 2011 short film, “Another Dress, Another Button.” Her film has also been selected to screen at a dozen other film festivals, including the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Florida Film Festival, the Maryland Film Festival, and the Kansas City Film Fest.  For mor see:

George Gale (Emeritus, Philosophy) reports that his book Dying on the Vine: how phylloxera changed the world of wine has just been named one of the three finalists in the ‘history’ category of the 2012 awards of the International Association of Culinary Professionals.  See:

His accompanying comment? “Bet it’s the first time a book in history and philosophy of science has ever been in the hunt for a culinary book award!”
 

Sungyop Kim, (Architecture, Urban Planning + Design) has learned that his co-authored the paper “Bicyclist injury severities in bicycle-motor vehicle accidents” has been listed as one of the most cited articles published in Accident Analysis and Prevention since 2007.  The paper has been cited in 38 peer-reviewed journal papers according to Scopus.  See:

Faculty Recognitions

Tuesday, February 21st, 2012

Mona Lyne (Political Science Chair) learned that her book The Voter’s Dilemma and Democratic Accountability: Latin America and Beyond received the Choice Award for an Outstanding Academic Title. For more see:

. www.cro2.org/default.aspx?page=reviewdisplay&pid=3465899.

Richard Gentile (Geosciences Emeritus) was honored for his contribution to the profession of Geology by the Association of Environmental and Engineering Geologists: Kansas City/Omaha Section at a reception in September, 2011. He started his career at the Missouri Department of Natural Resources in 1958 and came to UMKC in 1966. For more see:

. www.aegweb.org/files/public/KCO-SEC_August_2011_
Newsletter.pdf.

Delwyn Catley (Psychology) was awarded a University of Kansas Cancer Center Pilot Project Award, for $27,703, for a project entitled: The Role of Implicit Attitudes in a Motivational Smoking Cessation Intervention. The purpose of this study is to assess whether Motivational Interviewing changes implicit attitudes (relative to a cognitively oriented health education control intervention), and whether any changes in implicit attitudes lead to more quit attempts.

New Letters has again done well in its field. One of the most highly regarded national prize anthologies for literary presses and magazines has reprinted two more works from UMKC’s New Letters. The Pushcart Prize XXXVI: Best of the Small Presses 2012, released in November 2011, includes an essay, “Logophilia,” by B. H. Fairchild, and a short story, “Rockaway,” by Lydia Conklin, both from New Letters vol. 76 no. 4 (summer 2010). “It is rare that a magazine or press receives multiple Pushcart Prizes in a single year,” says New Letters editor Robert Stewart. “Even one is an honor.”

They go on to say that these two new awards combine with a Pushcart Prize “triple crown” in 2010 to place New Letters among the top 10 Pushcart Prize winning magazines in the country over the latest three years, from 2010 to 2012. Other magazines that equaled five or more awards during that time period include Ploughshares, Tin House, Threepenny Review, and The Kenyon Review.

Theodore Seligson, (AUP+D Visiting Professor) recently received two achievement awards. The American Institute of Architects – Kansas City Chapter presented a Presidential Award and The Historic Kansas City Foundation presented a Lifetime Achievement Award in early December. In addition, to honor Seligson’s contributions to architecture and design, the faculty and advisory board of AUP+D and Seligson’s friends recently established the Seligson Fund for AUP+D. The fund will provide financial backing for lectures, special events and other projects that support and advance the AUP+D program.

Recognitions

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011

Ricky Allman (Art and Art History) has been awarded one of The Charlotte Street Foundation’s Awards for Visual Artists for 2011. The grant is in the amount of $10,000. For more, see:

http://www.charlottestreet.org/2011/04/2011-charlotte-street-visual-artist-awards-fellows-announced/  

Richard Delaware (Mathematics and Statistics) won the 2011 Missouri Section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics, awarded on April 1 in Columbia, MO, at the annual section meeting. His nomination packet was also forwarded to the MAA to be entered in the national competition for the 2011 Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics, and he will learn this summer whether he is one of the up to 3 annual winners. See:

http://www.maa-mo.org/teachingaward/teachingaward.html 

William Ashworth (History) organized an exhibition last year for Linda Hall Library: The Grandeur of Life: A Celebration of Charles Darwin. The Library has just learned that the online catalog of the exhibition (which he wrote and designed) has won the national award given by the Association of College and Research Libraries, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, for best online exhibition of 2009-2010. Linda Hall had only won it once before, for his earlier printed catalog, The Face of the Moon (1991). The award will be presented on June 26, 2011 in New Orleans at the annual meeting of the ACRL; Bruce Bradley, curator of rare books at Linda Hall, will accept it. For the award winning catalog, see:

 James Sturgeon (Economics) was interviewed by NBC Action News about the legislative debate in Jefferson City on a proposed Right to Work Law for Missouri. For more see:

Kati Toivanen ( Art & Art History) gave a Visiting Artist Presentation at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art on March 24, 2011. For more see:

Monica Mingucci (Applied Language Institute) was interviewed for the Wednesday Sun about ALI and its programs. For more see:

Maude Wahlman (Art and Art History) was curator for an exhibit of African Art at Northwest Missouri State University that ran April 4 through April 22, 2011. She gave the opening night lecture as well as wrote the catalog. For more see:

Bill Black (Economics) who had served as the Federal Government’s director of litigation during the savings and loan crisis was again interviewed by the New York Times about the way those who seemed to have precipitated the current financial crisis have been treated. See:

Karen Vorst and Karen English are Recognized by the LGBTQIA Resource Center

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011

At the Lavender Graduation ceremony on May 5, 2011 Karen English received this year’s Outstanding Staff Award as given by the LGBTQIA Resource Center. In selecting Karen for the award, the selection committee singled out her longtime service and dedication to the LGBTQIA community both locally and here at UMKC. Her leadership on the fundraising front as it relates to securing the campus’ new endowed scholarship fund and her extraordinary relationship building skills with faculty, students, staff, alumni and the community were also singled out by the committee.

In addition, at the same event, Dean Karen Vorst received the Collaborative Excellence award. Like Karen English, the selection committee wished to honor Dean Vorst for her longstanding commitment to improving resources and services available for LGBTQIA students, faculty, staff and community members.

Recognitions

Saturday, January 29th, 2011

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in November 2010 announced that Michelle Boisseau, (English and Associate Editor of BkMk Press) is among one of the nation’s 42 noted poets to receive a $25,000 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship. For more about Michelle and her work, see: http://cas.umkc.edu/english/our-department/people.asp.  For more about the award see: http://www.nea.gov/news/news10/grant¬announcement-november.html
 
Miriam Forman-Brunell, (History), has been appointed to the Affiliated Faculty of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.
 
William Black, (Economics), the author of “The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One,” had an essay published by The New York Times in December, 2010 titled:“Worse Than You Think”. For more see:  http://www.nytimes.com/ roomfordebate/ 2010/ 12/07/should-megabanks-be-broken-apart/big-banks-are-worse-than-you-think?emc=eta1

Pellom McDaniels, (History), has received word of an NEH grant to support his research in American Studies on the topic:The Prince of Jockeys: The Life and Career of Isaac Murphy. For more on the December 2010 NEH grants see: http://www.neh.gov/news/archive/December2010grantsstatebystatefinal%282%29.pdf

Daniel McIntosh, (Physics), was recently elected to the executive board of the NASA Missouri Space Grant Consortium and is the UMKC affiliate member. For more on MOSGP see: http://web.mst.edu/~spaceg/index.html

Clancy Martin, (Philosophy), has an essay as the featured cover story for Harpers in January 2011. See: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2011/01/0083250
 
He also had an essay published in December 6, 2010 in The Chronicle of Higher Education. See: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Lie¬Guy/125582/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en 

Clancy Martin (Philosophy) is interviewed by WBUR about his experience and his recent Harper’s cover story on AA.
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/media-player?source=hereandnow&url=http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2011/01/13/alcoholics-anonymous/&title=Journalist+Examines+Inner+Workings+OfAlcoholics+Anonymous&segment=alcoholics¬anonymous&pubdate=2011-01-13   

Pearlie Johnson (Black Studies Program) On December 26, 2010, the Kansas City Star Magazine published an interview that highlighted her research on African American quilters.

A&S Good Teaching Award Winners For 2010 Recognized

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Three faculty members were among those recognized at the A&S Convocation in September.  They are:

Virginia Blanton Virginia Blanton (English) won the Alumni Good Teaching Award awarded annually to an outstanding regular faculty member in the College of Arts and Sciences. ($1,000).
Toya Like Toya Like (Criminal Justice and Criminology) won the Dean’s Outstanding Teaching Award awarded annually to one regular faculty member in the College of Arts and Sciences for outstanding teaching. ($1,000).
Andrea Drew-Gounev Andrea Drew-Gounev (Chemistry) won the Dean’s Non-Regular Lecturer Award awarded annually to one non-regular faculty member in the College of Arts and Sciences for outstanding teaching. ($1,000).

Recognitions

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Ann Wood (Sociology) reports that the  UMKC Sociology Department has been recognized for its work with a recent donation drive for “Stand Down”, a charity event on November 5th for marginal/homeless veterans in Kansas City  as the faculty, staff, students, and the Sociology Club collected clothing and personal items from various Sociology/Anthropology courses for donation.
See:- http://kcstanddown.org/index.html

Barry Anderson (Art and Art History) presented an invited lecture at Notre Dame University on October 28, 2010 on his video art. The lecture marked the opening of his exhibit of recent video works LoopPsych.
See:- http://artdept.nd.edu/events/2010/10/28/3945-photography-exhibition/
He also has a showing of other work currently taking place in St. Louis.
See:- http://www.brunodavidgallery.com/exhibition_spaces.cfm?exhibition_id=47&gallery_space_id=4

Richard Delaware (Mathematics and Statistics) was interviewed several times in 2010 (along with two Southwest Early College Campus Mathematics teachers) for an October 2010 Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation report titled “College Readiness: The View from Early College High Schools”. He is acknowledged on p. ii, and quoted on p. 14.
See:- http://cas.umkc.edu/mathematics/Delaware/WW_CollegeReadiness_Oct2010.pdf

Betsy Beasley,  the office administrative associate  for New Letters has been honored for her work in women’s rights with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Women in Politics Fund of  the Greater Kansas City Women’s Political Caucus . The award was presented on September 10 ,  2010.
See:- http://www.newletters.org/PDFs/News%20.pdf

Fredrick Lee (Economics) presented a paper on “Social Surplus Approach and Heterodox Economics,” at the 2010 Association for Heterodox Economics Conference in Bordeaux, France.
See:- http://ocs.sfu.ca/hetecon/index.php?conference=AHE&schedConf=AHE2010&page=paper&op=view&path%5B%5D=38&path%5B%5D=0

William Black (Economics) has had numerous media appearances and interviews in recent months.
See:- http://www.trutv.com/video/conspiracy-theory/liars-loans.html

Diane Mutti Burke (History) has published a book, On Slavery’s Border:  Missouri’s Small-Slaveholding Households, 1815-1865, which focuses on the experiences of enslaved and slaveholding Missourians who lived and worked on farms within this state.
See:- http://www.earlyamericanplaces.org/?page_id=41
For a Missouri Research Board interview about her research
See:- http://umresearchboard.org/articles/15

Randall Wray (Economics) has published an essay on his perspective on the global financial crisis in The European. He also notes the work of his colleague, Bill Black (Economics) in identifying the origin of the crisis in fraudulent activities.
See:- http://www.theeuropean.de/wray

Faculty from the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures used a Teaching Enhancement Grant (K. Krause and L. Myers, co-investigators) to attend a “Foreign Languages and Cultures Across the Curriculum” conference in Saratoga Springs, NY to research the possibility of starting such a program at UMKC. Lindsy Myers and Scott Baker will give a presentation as part of the FACET seminar series later this year.
See:- http://clac2010.wordpress.com/program and http://www.umkc.edu/provost/facet/

Kathy Krause, (Chair)  began a three-year term as a member of the Fulbright Review Committee for faculty fellowships to Belgium-Luxembourg-E.U.-and Poland.
See:- http://www.cies.org/
She also presented two papers this Fall: “Noblewomen and the Writing of History in Picardy and Flanders” as part of a panel on Lordship, History and the Dominae of Northern France at the Haskins Society Annual Conference at Boston College and  “The Charters of the Countesses of Ponthieu in the Thirteenth Century” at the Western Society for French History Conference, Lafayette, LA.
See:- http://haskinsatbostoncollege.blogspot.com/2010/07/2010-conference-schedule-and.html and http://www.wsfh.org/annual-conferences.html.

Kenneth Baker gave an invited lecture at the University of Exeter, Sept. 7-9, 2010 entitled “Schiller, Gutzkow, Laube, Hebbel—German Historical Drama of the 1850s.” It will be published next spring, in the Yearbook of the Forum Vormärz Forschung.
See: http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/research/conferences/gutzkow/
He also published an essay: “The ‘Nature’ of Pleasure: Homosexuality as Trope in Early Brecht.” in Limbus: Australian Yearbook of German Literary and Cultural Studies 3 (2010): 195-210. The topic of the Yearbook was “After Nature.”
See:- http://arts.monash.edu.au/german/limbus/

Gayle Levy is just beginning her three-year term on the national screening committee for the Fullbright Student Program to Western Europe.
See:- http://us.fulbrightonline.org/about.html

Larson Powell, co-edited special issue of Musik-Konzepte, no. 150 (2010) on Stefan Wolpe.
See:- http://www.etk-muenchen.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=139523&template=neu_werke_default_musik
He also published : “The Modulated Subject: Stockhausen’s Mikrophonie II,” Search: Journal for New Music, no. 7, Summer 2010 and gave two invited lectures:“Heimat through a Double Lens: Wolf’s Einmal ist Keinmal.” Humboldt-Kolleg in honor of Jost Hermand, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, Nov. 19, 2010.  and  “Adorno and the American Radio,” University of Colorado – Boulder, CO, Nov. 11, 2010 (inaugural guest lecture for new program in Critical Theory).
See:- http://german.lss.wisc.edu/~smoedersheim/hermand/ and http://www.searchnewmusic.org/powell_stockhausen.pdf

Kati Toivanen (Chair, Art and Art History) had an exhibition of her work Domestic Debris at the Art &Design Gallery of the University of Kansas in October, 2010.
See:- http://ereview.org/2010/09/27/spots-spiders-and-sweepings-kati-toivanen/

The English Department reports many exciting activities and achievements as we move through the current semester.
See-: http://cas.umkc.edu/english/Newsletter.pdf

Faculty Highlights: 2009

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

(Alphabetical by faculty member’s last name)

Ricky Allman (Art and Art History) was included in an exhibit at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, IL called Signs of the Apocalypse/Rapture which coincided with the publication of the book Signs of the Apocalypse/Rapture by Front Forty Press, www.front40press.com/sotar.php

Barry Anderson (Art and Art History) exhibited “Intermissions,” a solo city-wide project involving 13 venues and numerous billboard sites around the Syracuse University campus and city of Syracuse, New York. Highlights included a solo exhibition at the Everson Museum of Art and a new video installation for the Light Work Gallery.

Architecture, Urban Planning + Design received national accreditation/candidacy status in 2009 from the national Planning Accreditation Board.

Scott Baker (Foreign Languages and Literatures) published an article; “The Insufficiency of Irony: The Evolution of Brecht’s Epic Theater,” Brecht Yearbook 34 (2009): 207-226. See: Political Intimacies/Politische Traulichkeiten. Friedemann J. Weidauer, ed. The Brecht Yearbook/Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 34.

Scott also presented four lectures in the Cockefair Series in fall 2009 titled: “Bertolt Brecht as Playwright and Poet.”

Virginia Blanton (English) was inducted into the Scholars Hall of Fame (2009) at her alma mater, Southwestern College.

Michelle Boisseau’s (English) fourth book of poetry, A Sunday in God-Years, was published (2009).

Mitchell Brian (Communication Studies) saw the world premier of his play Maul of the Dead in October, 2009 as part of the Coterie at Night Series.

Jie Chen (Mathematics and Statistics) and her collaborator published a research paper “A Statistical Change Point Model Approach for the Detection of DNA Copy Number Variations in Array CGH Data” in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics in 2009.

Robert Cohon, who has a joint appointment with the Department of Art and Art History and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, completed the installation of ancient Egyptian art at the Nelson-Atkins.

Frances Connelly (Art and Art History) has been invited to contribute a volume to the series on modernism published by Macmillan Palgrave.

Steve Dilks (English) is Director of Universal Design for Learning, an appointment that is part of a $1.3 million NSF grant called KC-Bancs, coordinated by Ronda Jenson in the Institute of Human Development and Kevin Truman, dean of the School of Computing and Engineering. The grant is designed to develop programs at UMKC, the Metropolitan Community College and Kansas City Community College, with a view to increasing the number of students with disabilities—including veterans with disabilities—majoring in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).

Jenni Frangos (English) has been promoted to Editor of Eighteenth Century Theory & Interpretation, which has just moved to the University of Pennsylvania Press and now publishes four issues per year.

Gene Friedman (Theatre) received promotion to associate professor, with tenure, September 2009, in recognition of his national standing as a designer, historian and educator. In May 2009, Gene published The Eighteenth Century Liturgical Costume Collection of Zuni Pueblo, a catalogue and history of the oldest intact set of Catholic vestments in North America.

Michael Frisch (Architecture, Urban Planning + Design) was guest co-editor and co-author of the introductory essay with Jacob Wagner of the “Special Issue: New Orleans and the Design Moment,” Journal of Urban Design.

He also presented papers at national meetings.

The German Studies program, which began in the 2007-08 academic year with the introduction of a minor degree, graduated its first student in Fall 2009. This interdisciplinary, team-taught course of study encourages students to learn the German language as well as take classes across disciplines that focus on, or centrally include, the history and cultures of the German-speaking countries.

Elijah Gowin (Art and Art History) was honored when the Charlotte Street Foundation and Urban Culture Project’s Paragraph Gallery hosted “The Heaviest Flower,” an exhibition of recent photographic work by Gowin and Colby Caldwell in October-November 2009.  An 80-page full-color catalog was published in conjunction with the exhibit.

Gregory Gutenko (Communication Studies) had six short film and video projects screened in 2009 at film festival venues across the country and in Canada. One of the six, “Flora’s Fancy Free,” an animation/live action dance film, took first place in its category at the ReelHeART Film Festival in Toronto.

Eric Hall (Mathematics and Statistics) worked on a paper on relative logical strengths of different forms of the axiom of choice for finite sets. This is a joint project with Saharon Shelah of Hebrew University and Rutgers University.

G. Derrick Hodge (Sociology) co-edited a book with Merrill Singer, The War Machine and Global Health.

Jessica P. Hodge (Criminal Justice and Criminology) completed her book, Gendered Hate: Exploring the Gender Category of Hate Crime Law and it is scheduled for publication by in spring 2011 by Northeastern University Press under the University Press of New England. The book involved a case study of New Jersey’s bias crime statute. (Their 2011 catalog is not yet online.)

Christie Hodgen (English) won a Pushcart Prize in 2009 for a short story “Tom & Jerry” published in Ploughshares in 2008.

Alexander Holsinger (Criminal Justice and Criminology) completed work on the fourth edition of Correctional Contexts an edited volume that will be published by Oxford University Press dealing with the American correctional system.   See: www.oup.com/us/catalog/he/subject/CriminalJusticeCriminology/Corrections/Corrections/?view=usa&ci=9780199751464

Kristi Holsinger (Criminal Justice and Criminology) continues to work closely with the Family Court to provide service learning opportunities for students. This unique program gives students real-world experience working with at-risk delinquent girls, and is a mutually beneficial relationship between UMKC and Jackson County.

Kristi Holsinger, Toya Z. Like and Jessica P. Hodge (Criminal Justice and Criminology) collaborated to write “Gender-specific programs:  A glimpse of where we are and where we need to go.” This work examines the practices of one juvenile court system in the Midwest from many different perspectives to assess how adolescent females are being served and to identify areas for improvement. The article appears in Women, Girls and Criminal Justice (Volume 1, pp. 1-16).

Daniel Hopkins (Geosciences) reported publication of his article “Peter Thonning, the Guinea Commission, and Denmark’s Post-abolition African Colonial Policy, 1803-1850” in William and Mary Quarterly, October 2009.

Sungyop Kim (Architecture, Urban Planning + Design) published four articles and made numerous invited conference presentations based on his research on factors affecting transportation and transportation safety issues in the U.S. and abroad. One example is his work “New Immigrants and Transportation: An Analysis of New Immigrant Workers’ Work Trips” in Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research.

Toya Z. Like (Criminal Justice and Criminology) published work describing the history of school victimizations in the United States over the past twenty years. This work appears in the Handbook of Victimology, and can be found at: www.greenwood.com/catalog/C35935.aspx

She also is working closely with the Hickman Mills Prevention Coalition’s (HMPC) Youth 4 Change (Y4C) committee is centered on Y4C’s initiative to prevent and reduce alcohol and drug use among youth in the Southeastern portion of Kansas City. More information may be found at www.hmpreventioncoalition.org.

Felicia Londré (Theatre) was elected to a second term on the Board of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre. Her twelfth book, The Enchanted Years of the Stage: Kansas City at the Crossroads of American Theater, which last year won the George Freedley Memorial Award, was subsequently recognized with Jackson County Historical Society’s Education Award.

Jennifer Martin (Theatre) was the choreographer for Bare at Unicorn Theatre in Winesburg, Ohio and at the KC Repertory Theatre and Merry Wives of Windsor at Heart of America Shakespeare Festival. Martin published two papers at ATHE in New York: “Embedded Period Movement Directions in Shakespeare’s Texts” and “Defining Original Research for a Kinetic Journal.” The ATME Journal premiered with her kinetic article on “Using a Period Movement Score in Training, Rehearsal and Performance” based on Theodore Swetz’s production of The Country Wife featuring UMKC actors, designers, and technicians. Check it out at www.ATMEWEB.org – click on “Online Resources” and then on “ATME Digital Journal.”

Daniel McIntosh (Physics) was co-author of “Structural Properties of Central Galaxies in Groups and Clusters” in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, September, 2009. See: www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122593922/issue

Beth Miller (Political Science) and Jennifer Lundgren (Psychology) noted the publication of “An Experimental Study of the Role of Weight Bias in Candidate Evaluation” in the journal Obesity, December 2009.

Kenneth Novak (Criminal Justice and Criminology) published an invited essay in Criminology and Public Policy entitled “Reasonable officers, public perceptions, and policy challenges.”

  • Journal information may be found at www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=1538-6473

Jennifer Phegley’s (English) collection of essays, co-edited with Andrew Maunder, has just been published by Palgrave/Macmillian (2010): Teaching Nineteenth Century Fiction.

Physics reported a range of research activities that reflected over $900,000 in external grants and contracts for calendar year 2009 as well as receiving three Good Teaching Awards in early 2010 by its faculty.

Louis Potts (History) reported that he lectured at the Middelburg Center for Transatlantic Studies for three weeks on the topic of “The American Revolution.” 

Noah Rhee (Mathematics and Statistics) published a paper (co-authored with J. Ding and J. Kolibal) titled “Integral and non-negativity preserving Bernstein type polynomial approximations” in International Journal of Computer Mathematics.

Stephanie Roberts (Theatre) co-directed the first year Discovery Project, The Tempest, with Carla Noack. She also choreographed and coached movement for UMKC’s world premiere of The Master and Margarita. Her original show Boom! An International Lost and Found Family Marching Band enjoyed a successful run at the Kansas City Fringe Festival and at the St. Mane in Lanesboro, MN. In August, she presented a session on “Ensemble Awareness and Availability” at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education conference in New York City.

Over the last year Ron Schaeffer (Theatre) directed Brighton Beach Memoirs at the Black Hills Playhouse in South Dakota. The show employed one graduate acting student, Grant Prewitt, one graduate scenic designer, Evan Hill, and one just-graduated stage manager, Laura Krouch. In fall 2009, he directed I’ll Be Back Before Midnight at the American Heartland Theatre in Kansas City, as well as The Laramie Project for UMKC.

Liana Sega (Mathematics and Statistics) and her collaborators published a paper “Acyclic complexes of finitely generated free modules over local rings’’ in the international journal Mathematica Scandinavica.

Max Skidmore (Political Science) noted that his most significant accomplishment in 2009 was seeing to completion the UMKC Accreditation Self Study 2007-2009. Skidmore served as Steering Committee Chair.

New Letters, edited by Robert Stewart (English), won the trifecta—three national awards for literary publishing in 2010. See: www.newletters.org/Pushcart2010.asp

New Letters on the Air won a NEA/NPS grant for preserving recordings, awarded to Robert Stewart and Angela Elam. See: http://cas.umkc.edu/english/publications/Fall2009NewsletterIssue%202.pdf

Tom Stroik’s (English) book, Locality in Minimalist Syntax, was published by MIT Press (2009) and a collection of essays on his linguistic theory also appeared, published by John Benjamins Publishing (2009).

Craig Subler (Art and Art History) was selected as an artist in residence at Scuola Internatinale DeGrafica in Venice, Italy for six weeks during the summer of 2009.

Joy Swallow (Architecture, Urban Planning + Design) was named 2009 Educator of the Year by The American Institute of Architects / Kansas City Chapter.

Theodore Swetz (Theatre) played the role of Bengalsky in the department’s world premiere of The Master and Margarita written by Ron Hutchinson and directed by Barry Kyle. This past summer he played Polonius in the critically acclaimed production of Hamlet led by alum Todd Carlton Lanker (who played Hamlet) and directed by Kyle Hatley,  Assistant Artistic Director of the Kansas City Rep.

Kati Toivanen (Art and Art History) and Michelle Boisseau (English) collaborated to do the book cover artwork for Bousseau’s book A Sunday in God-Years.

Wayne Vaught and Clancy Martin (Philosophy) had their reader on professional ethics published by Oxford University Press.

  • See: www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/?queryField=author&query=vaught&view=usa&viewVeritySearchResults=true

Hristo Voulov (Mathematics and Statistics) published “Asymptotic Behavior of the Solutions of a Nonlinear Difference Equation,” in the Journal of Difference Equations and Applications.

Jacob Wagner (Architecture, Urban Planning + Design) was guest co-editor and co-author of the introductory essay with Michael Frisch of the “Special Issue: New Orleans and the Design Moment,” Journal of Urban Design.

He also completed grant-funded research and presented papers at national and regional conferences.

Randall Wray (Economics) along with his co-PI William Mitchell of the University New Castle (Australia) completed the first phase of a multi-year project funded by the Asian Development Bank. They produced three papers and organized a conference held in Almaty, Kazakhstan to work with researchers from the Central Asian Republic nations (CAREC) addressing the project’s topic: “Developing a sustainable macroeconomic policy response to the global financial, energy and food crises in the CAREC countries.”

Xin Yan (Mathematics and Statistics) published with his co-author Xiao Su Linear Regression Analysis: Theory and Computing.

Yong Zeng continued to do his research with an active NSF grant entitled “Statistical Analysis of the Filtering Models with Marked Point Process Observations: Applications to Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) Data” in 2009.

Psychology

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

Tamera Murdock (Chair, Psychology) chose to approach our request differently and sent the following item to highlight both a teaching and a research high point of 2009. She also included a link to a site where the interested reader can find everything that happened in the department in the past year or so.
See: http://cas.umkc.edu/psyc/newsletter/contributions_2010.asp

New Undergraduate Psychology Offering a Big Success

Ethnic and Minority Perspectives in Psychology is a new undergraduate course that was offered this fall by Dr. Janette Berkely-Patton. Students gained a broad understanding of methods, theoretical concepts and applications of psychology relevant to ethnic minorities. For one of the course activities, students worked in groups on a class presentation and paper based on a topic and a related theory discussed in the course.

Student Feedback

Some of the topics for the students’ group projects included neighborhood disorganization and Latino communities, mental health and Asian Americans, and spirituality and health among African Americans. Here are just a few of the students’ comments about the class:

“I think all of us have learned something new about other cultures, heard from peers about their thoughts on multicultural issues, and it’s one step in a direction in bringing ethnic groups together. It has been an honor to be apart of the first class here at UMKC and I hope to use many concepts of multiculturalism that I have learned as I continue my educational professional career.” Carmen Benn

“Not only did Dr. Berkley-Patton present multicultural information that is much needed throughout our society, but she offered an environment promoting open communication and critical thinking. This class should be mandatory for all psychology majors in order to better understand and serve others.” Emilie Mendala

“This class has been very inspiring. Dr. Berkley-Patton, as well as other students in the class, helped open my eyes to certain multicultural topics. The structure of the class made us all comfortable to speak freely about our opinions and concerns. I feel this course should be mandatory for any undergraduate degree because the topics covered will help in any profession.” Jenni Branham

Dr. Catley receives $1.5 million NIH award to facilitate smoking cessation

The Department of Psychology is extremely proud of Associate Professor Dr. Delwyn Catley, who is the primary investigator on a $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study methods of enhancing smokers’ motivation and readiness to quit tobacco smoking. Tobacco smoking remains one of the most significant preventable causes of death in the U.S. And although most smokers are interested in quitting, only one in five are ready to make a quit attempt at any point in time. The study will test the effectiveness of a method of motivational counseling for motivating quit attempts among smokers not yet ready to quit. It will also determine the effect of the motivational counseling on smoking cessation rates.

The study will take place over three years and involves collaborators from the Department of Psychology (Dr. Kathy Goggin), the School of Dentistry (Dr. Karen Williams), KU Medical Center (Dr. Kimber Richter), and the University of Montana (Dr. Kari Harris). Congratulations to all. Dr. Cately will be promoted to the rank of full professor on September 1, 2010.

Recognitions

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Barry Anderson (Art and Art History) was named by The Pitch as the 2010 winner of its Mastermind Award for the Visual Arts. The award was presented on April 3, 2010. See:
www.pitch.com/2010-04-01/news/masterminds2010

Erik Olsen (Economics) has been awarded the Louis O. Kelso Fellowship from the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers to study the broadened ownership of capital in the U.S. The award of $12,500 will cover the period from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011 will support his research and permit him to attend conferences and workshops at Rutgers. For more see:
www.smlr.rutgers.edu/KelsoFellowships.pdf

Virginia Blanton (English) gave an invited lecture April 9 at Vassar College sponsored by its Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program based on her discovery of a 15th century manuscript at Cambridge University detailing the lives of 19 female saints. For more see:
www.miscellanynews.com/2.1579/prof-blanton-to-deliver-lecture-on-new-medieval-lit-1.2214426
http://medievalnews.blogspot.com/2010/04/repackaging-female-saints-lives-for.html

Felicia Londre (Theatre) used her recent UMRB grant for research on the history of local and regional theatres. See the recent KC Stage Blog for more:
http://kcstage.blogspot.com/2010/04/preserving-enchanted-years-of-stage-by.html

George Gale (Philosophy) has received word that a paper he co-authored in 1993 with John Urani (who was a member of the Physics Department Faculty) has been chosen as one of the leading papers of that decade by the retired editor of The American Journal of Physics. The paper was titled: “Philosophy Midwifery and the Birth Pangs of Modern Cosmology.”
www.kzoo.edu/ajp

Anthony Ladesich, Brad Hodgson and Jordan Kerfeld, former Department of Communication Studies students, were recognized by Paste Magazine, a leading entertainment magazine in the U.S., in March 2010 when it included their works on its DVD music and film sampler for Spring 2010. Ladesich has won an Emmy for some of his film work while Hodgson and Kerfeld each has won a Missouri Broadcasters Association Best Short Film award in the last two years.

Recognitions

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Bob Stewart of BkMK Press has written to tell us of the good word that a BkMk Press book of stories, Homicide Survivors Picnic, by Lorraine M. Lopez, is a finalist for the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The PEN/Faulkner Award is the largest peer-juried fiction prize in the country. The winner of this award — the “winner among equals” — will be announced on March 23. The other four finalist books were published by Grove Press, Harper, Knopf and Doubleday.

Beth Miller (Political Science) has been interviewed by media from several continents about the results of the research she and Jennifer Lundgren (Psychology) recently published on obesity and political candidate evaluations. For two of these interviews see:

Randy Wray (Economics), at the invitation of the President of the Dominican Republic, participated in program hosted by the Global Foundation for Democracy and Development in San Domingo during the week of January 19, 2010.

Subscribe to RSS feed