Faculty Activity

The Faculty Notes newsletter lists the professional activities of the teaching and administrative faculty of the University of Mary Washington. It is produced in November, February and May by the Office of University Relations, in cooperation with the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Vice President for Graduate and Professional Studies.

Faculty members who would like to submit material for publication should send an e-mail to tmannix@umw.edu with information about his or her professional activities, such as publication of books, journal articles and research papers; presentations made at conferences or workshops; election to office in professional societies or organizations; and receipt of research grants, honors, awards or other types of significant recognition from outside agencies and organizations.

Additional information on some faculty and staff members can be found in the Media Resources Guide to Faculty Expertise and through departmental Web pages. There also is an A-Z listing of all full-time faculty on the University Web site.

November 2007 Faculty Notes Newsletter

Nabil Al-Tikriti, assistant professor of history, presented a paper on his experiences teaching history at the “College Teaching that Promotes Active Learning” conference at the University of Chicago. He also helped organize a group of 15 UMW students volunteering to gut houses flooded by Hurricane Katrina, and led the first UMW “Ottoman Istanbul” study abroad program in Turkey. This fall, he began serving as a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C.

Mehdi Aminrazavi, professor of philosophy and religion, attended a seminar at the Princeton University Center for Theological Inquiry, where he presented a paper “Quran on the Question of the Other: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly.”  In addition, he presented the paper “He Who Knows Himself, Knows His Lord: Reflections of Ibn Sina’s Suspended Man Argument” at a conference on Medieval Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Philosophy at Marquette University. Dr. Aminrazavi also attended a conference at The George Washington University on Rumi, at which he presented a paper “On Knowing and Becoming: The Discourse of Knowledge and Silence in Rumi’s Thought.”

Antonio Barrenechea, assistant professor of English, attended the National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar “Toward a Hemispheric American Literature” at Columbia University. He also presented a paper “Good Neighbor/Bad Neighbor: Academic Inter-Americanism and Its Discontents” at the third congress of the International American Studies Association in Lisbon, Portugal.

Dawn Bowen, associate professor of geography, presented a paper, “Preservation Through Recreation: The Dahlgren Railroad Heritage Trail,” at the annual meeting of the Pioneer America Association in Hagerstown, Md.

Raul Chavez, associate professor of leadership and management, was elected to the Board of Governors of the Community Foundation of the Rappahannock River Region. He also serves as the co-chair of the organization’s marketing committee.

Yuan-Jen Chiang, professor of mathematics, delivered the presentation “Transversal Wave Maps” at a colloquium of the Mathematics Department of National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, Taiwan.

Teresa Coffman, associate professor of education, and several students had their article “The New Literacy Crisis: Immigrants Teaching Natives in the Digital Age” published in the Virginia Society for Technology in Education journal.

Dr. Coffman also received a $10,000 grant from the Virginia Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, in conjunction with the Stafford County School System, to research technology professional development and coaching methods with technology resource teachers in the K-12 school system.

In addition, she and Mary Beth Klinger, assistant professor of business administration, had their article, “Utilizing Virtual Worlds in Education: The Implications for Practice,” published in the International Journal of Social Sciences in the Virtual Reality in Distance Education special edition.

Suzanne C. de Janasz, associate professor of leadership and management, edited a special edition of Career Development International in which she contributed one of the five papers. Dr. de Janasz also presented two workshops at the annual Organizational Behavior Teaching Conference in Malibu, Calif.

Andrew Dolby, associate professor of biology, organized the first-ever simultaneous survey of breeding birds in all of Virginia’s state parks. The survey was conducted by the Virginia Society of Ornithology. Dr. Dolby also had his analysis of a 2006 state-wide survey on breeding Northern Saw-whet Owls published in The Raven.  In addition, he presented a poster, titled “Song Performance and Parental Care in the Gray Catbird: Is Song Complexity a Red Herring?,” at the 125th Stated Meeting of the American Ornithologists’ Union at the University of Wyoming. The poster was co-authored by several undergraduate research students who participated in the project.

Brady Earnhart, visiting assistant professor of English, had two articles published: “The Good Gray Poet and the Quaker Oats Man: Speaker as Spokescharacter in Leaves of Grass” in the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review and “A Colony of the Imagination: Vicarious Spectatorship in MGM's Early Tarzan Talkies” in The Quarterly Review of Film and Video. His poem “And I Did” appeared in the spring 2007 issue of the journal White Crane.

Jeff Edmunds, associate professor of mathematics, gave the presentation “A Discrete Competition Model with Periodically Oscillating Habitat Size” at the International Conference on Difference Equations and Applications in Lisbon, Portugal.

Mindy Erchull, assistant professor of psychology, and Miriam Liss, associate professor of psychology, and student co-authors recently had two papers published. “Feminism: What Is It Good For? Feminine Norms and Objectification as the Link Between Feminist Identity and Clinically Relevant Outcomes” and “Thinking of Others: Feminist Identification and the Perception of Others’ Beliefs” both appeared in the journal Sex Roles.

They also presented a poster “Feminist Identity Indirectly Predicts Clinical Outcomes Through Rejecting Feminine Norms and Self-Objectification,” at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in Washington, D.C. At the American Psychological Association in San Francisco, they presented a poster, “Daughters of the Second-Wave: Predictors of Feminist Self-Identification and Activism.” Both of these were researched with students.

Tom Fallace, assistant professor of education, had the paper “Once More Unto the Breach: Trying to Get Preservice Teachers to Link Historiographical Knowledge to Pedagogy” published in Theory and Research in Social Education.

Stephen J. Farnsworth, associate professor of political science, co-authored the article “The Quebec Elections: The Media, All Horse Race, All The Time,” which was recently published in Policy Options.  Dr. Farnsworth also co-authored the chapter “How Television Covers the Presidential Nomination Process” in “The Making of the Presidential Candidates, 2008,” published by Rowman & Littlefield Press.

Chris Foss, associate professor of English, participated in the National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar “The Oscar Wilde Archive: His Life, His Work, His Legend,” at UCLA’s William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

G. Robert Greene, assistant professor of leadership and management, presented the paper “What? You Gave Me a #$*%&^ Performance Evaluation?! Helping Students Understand the Role of Self-Esteem in Performance Evaluation” at the Organizational Behavior Teaching Conference’s annual meeting at the Graziadio School of Business and Management of Pepperdine University.

Steve Greenlaw, professor of economics, participated in the Developments in Economic Education conference in Cambridge, England. He presented the paper “Using Social Software to Empower Teaching and Learning in Economics.” Dr. Greenlaw also gave two presentations at Bryn Mawr College: one was for the economics department about teaching undergraduate economics research and the second was a panel discussion on teaching with social software.

Jason James, assistant professor of anthropology, presented the paper “The Politics of Redemption: Heritage Fetishism and Heimat Nostalgia in Dresden and Eisenach” as part of a panel titled “Dresden and the German Victim Discourse” at the German Studies Association Annual Conference.

Christopher Kilmartin, professor of psychology, was elected to Fellow status in the American Psychological Association. Dr. Kilmartin also co-authored the book “Men's Violence Against Women: Theory, Research, and Activism.” In January 2008, he will begin his presidency of the Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity, Division 51 of the American Psychological Association.

Ben Odhiambo Kisila, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences, received funding of $13,092 from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Norfolk, and $5,338 from the Dominion Power Environmental Services for his ongoing research, “Isotopic Sediment Chronology and Accumulation Rates Studies to Aid in Historical Analysis of PCB, Trace Metals and Nutrients in Lake Anna, Virginia.”

Janusz Konieczny, professor of mathematics, co-authored a research article, “Automorphisms of Endomorphism Monoids of Relatively Free Bands,” which was published in the Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society.

Elizabeth Lewis, associate professor of Spanish, presented the paper “Women, Charity and the Power in María Rosa Gálvez’s ‘Oda a la Beneficencia’” at the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies meeting in Montpellier, France. She also organized and chaired the session “The Legacy of Benito Feijoo: Reflections from Other Peoples, Times and Places.”

Miriam Liss, associate professor of psychology, and a student had the paper “Psychological Characteristics of Self-Injurious Behavior” published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. Dr. Liss also co-authored two articles, “Prescriptive Authority and Preferences for Training” and “License Portability: Do We Want It?,” which were published in Professional Psychology: Research and Practice.  In addition, she co-authored “Professional Education and Training: How Satisfied Are We? An Exploratory Study” in Training and Education in Professional Psychology.

Eric G. Lorentzen, assistant professor of English, recently presented a paper, “Doing Dickens and Cultural Studies: Interdisciplinary Connection in the University Literature Classroom,” at the Twelfth Annual Dickens Symposium in Montreal.

Jennifer Mailloux, assistant professor of psychology, and several students presented a poster “Refutation of Visual Extramission Effects Confidence in Extramission Beliefs,” at the Eastern Conference on the Teaching of Psychology in Staunton.

Leslie Martin, assistant professor of sociology, recently co-authored the article “Adult Social Capital and Track Placement of Ethnic Groups in Germany,” which was published in the American Journal of Education. She also had “Fighting for Control: Political Displacement in Atlanta’s Gentrifying Neighborhoods” published in the Urban Affairs Review.

Robert L. McConnell, professor emeritus of geology, co-authored the book “Environmental Issues: An Introduction to Sustainability,” which was published by Prentice Hall. In September Dr. McConnell was named a Senior Fellow with the U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development.

Margaret Mi, professor of business administration, presented the paper “Using Coupons as Motivators in the Classroom” at the Academy in Business Education’s annual meeting in Southampton, Bermuda.

H. Nicole Myers, assistant professor of education, coordinated a summer day camp for children with disabilities at Quantico Marine Corps Base. She spoke about UMW’s Teaching Students with Autism Certificate at the Virginia School Boards Association Conference in Richmond. She also recently became president of the Virginia Council for Exceptional Children.

Marcel Rotter, assistant professor of German, recently had an article, “When Money Goes to War: Functions of War Bond Posters During World War I,” published in Mid-Atlantic Almanac: The Journal of the Mid-Atlantic Popular/American Culture Association.  He had a book review, “Seelenarbeit an Deutschland – Martin Walser in Perspective” published in Monatshefte für deutschen Unterricht.

In addition, Dr. Rotter presented “‘Die zarteste Versuchung’: Advertisement in the German Classroom” at the Foreign Language Association of Virginia in Richmond, “Webung im Unterricht – Learning German through Advertisements” at the University of Virginia Spring Workshop, and “A Business Language Certificate: Constructing a Multidisciplinary Curriculum” at the 2007 Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in New York City.

Robert Rycroft, professor of economics, participated in the Developments in Economic Education conference in Cambridge, England. He presented “Clickers! Using Personal Response Pads” and “Studying Philanthropy and Doling Out Real Cash.”

Debra Schleef, associate professor of sociology, presented the paper “The Thirty-Hour Day: Law and Business Student Expectations about Balancing Work and Family” at the annual meeting of the Law and Society Association in Berlin.

Craig Vasey, professor of philosophy, recently presented the paper “Metaphors of the Self, Sartre, and Phenomenology” at the United Kingdom Society for Sartre Studies in London.

Steve Watkins, associate professor of English, authored a collection of short stories, “My Chaos Theory,” which was recently published by Southern Methodist University Press and has been favorably reviewed in a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Tallahassee Democrat, Booklist, Choice, and Kirkus Reviews. “My Chaos Theory” was named as a finalist for the Patterson Fiction Prize and an honorable mention in the fiction category for the 10th Annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards.

Administrative Faculty Notes

Meta R. Braymer, vice president for graduate and professional studies and dean of the faculty, was among eight women honored by the Girl Scout Commonwealth Council of Virginia Inc. at the seventh annual Women of Distinction Awards Ceremony. Dr. Braymer was recognized in the area of education for her professional and volunteer achievements.

Lawrence Webb, assistant dean of admissions, has been selected by the 8th Congressional District of Virginia to receive the Dr. Josephine Marshall Award for his grassroots activism within the African-American community as well as in the Democratic Party.