Union in the Media

Long before he started pontificating about evolutionary fabrication, artificial intelligence and robotics, John Rieffel entertained thousands as a professional circus clown.

The assistant professor of computer science once was accepted at Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus's famed Clown College in Baraboo, Wis.

To learn more, click here.

Kate Schurick, dean of first-year students, was recently quoted in a parenting blog featured by the Washington Post.

To read the article, click here.

Three “micro-fictions” by Kimmo Rosenthal, professor of mathematics, was accepted for publication in KYSO Flash, a literary journal that publishes works that are less than 1,000 words. The three pieces are titled, “In a Certain Sense the Good is Comfortless,” “A Cage Went in Search of a Bird” and “Sin Comes Openly.” Each story takes a look at campus life and is inspired by one of Franz Kafka's Zurau aphorisms.

Lewis Davis, associate professor of economics, was invited to serve as the 2014 Visiting Scholar at Furman University. He delivered a talk on his research, "Culture and the Regulation of Entry," and discussed a student research project on "The Effects of Natural Resources on Education Spending."

Scott Kirkton, associate professor of biology, co-organized the American Physiological Society's Intersociety Meeting, “Comparative Approaches to Grand Challenges in Physiology," in San Diego. The meeting occurs every four years and is co-sponsored by the major American, European, Asian, Canadian and Australian physiological societies. At the event, Kirkton was a speaker in a National Science Foundation-sponsored career panel, organized and spoke at a symposium on "Locomotion, Biomechanics and Functional Morphology” and presented a talk that included data collected with John Carroll ’13. He also was in charge of the Best Student Poster competition.

Christopher Chabris, associate professor of psychology, has started a new column for the Wall Street Journal. “Game On” will cover all kinds of games, and will appear once a month in the Weekend Review section. Check out his first column about a hand that changed the way poker is played (subscription may be required).

Bradley Hays, associate professor of political science, was a guest on WAMC’s Congressional Corner with Alan Chartock. The show covered key upcoming decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Brad Hays, associate professor of political science, was a recent guest on "Congressional Corner" on WAMC, Northeast Public Radio.

Northeast Public Radio is a member of National Public Radio serving parts of seven northeastern states: New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.

Five students from the Department of Physics and Astronomy were among 160 undergraduate students who presented posters at the Fourth Joint Meeting of the Nuclear Physics Divisions of the American Physical Society (APS) and the Physical Society of Japan in Waikoloa, Hawaii in October.

Salina Ali ’15, Benjamin Nadareski ’16 and Joshua Yoskowitz ’16 presented research on airborne pollution in Upstate New York performed with Professors Scott LaBrake and Michael Vineyard in Union’s Ion-Beam Analysis Laboratory.

Mathew Giso ’16 and Rebeka Kelmar ’17 presented their work conducted with Professor Rebecca Surman on the production of heavy elements in the stars.

The students all won competitive awards from the Conference Experience for Undergraduates program of the APS for travel and lodging.

Robert Hislope, associate professor of political science, presented his research "Musical Expression and Political Repression: Moral Panics in American History," to an African American Studies class at the University of Central Florida in Orlando this week via Skype. The professor of the UCF class is Donald Harrell ‘75.

The Daily Gazette published an editorial by Kenneth White ‘16 on Election Day. The piece examined why college students should vote. White is a political science and economics double major.

Daniel Mosquera, associate professor of Spanish, was invited to deliver two lectures in Tunisia. The first, “Trash, Latin America, and a Renewed Lumpenproletariat?” was delivered at the Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail (Tunisian General Labor Union), the largest workers coalition in the African country. Delivered at the Bibliothèque Nationale de Tunisie, the second lecture reviewed aspects of lost and regained humanisms in the Latin American context. The talk was titled, “Re-Thinking Trash in Latin America: The Renewal of Political Ecologies.” Mosquera also held discussions with students in Spanish undergraduate and graduate programs at the Université de la Manouba.

An article by Patricia Wareh, assistant professor of English, was published in Renaissance Papers. The piece was titled “Reading Women: Chastity and Fictionality in Cymbeline.” An article by Ruth Stevenson, professor emeritus of English, also appeared in that same edition. Stevenson’s piece was titled “The Speaker’s Depth of Character in Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece.”

Peter Bedford, the John and Jane Wold Professor of Religious Studies and director of the Religious Studies program, was an invited speaker at “In the Crucible of Empire: Resistance, Revolt and Revolution in the Ancient World,” a conference held at Yale University last month. His paper, “Resisting Imperial Rule: Some Strategies of Subjugated Peoples in the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires,” is forthcoming in a conference volume.

Why is it important for young people to vote?

Kenneth White '16, a political science and economics double major, offers his take in an opinion piece in The Daily Gazette.

An essay by Lori Marso, professor of political science, was published in the August edition of Contemporary Political Theory. “Solidarity Sans Identity: Richard Wright and Simone de Beauvoir Theorize Political Subjectivity” grew out of discussions in Marso’s African-America Political Thought course. Also, Marso is co-organizing a conference and presenting a paper at “Breaking the Rules: Gender, Power and Politics in the Films of Lars Von Trier,” a conference being held Nov. 7-8 at Brown University. For more information on the event, click here.

Robert Baker, the William D. Williams Professor of Philosophy and director of Union's Ethics Across the Curriculum Initiative, chaired the History of Medical Ethics sessions at the 16th annual meeting of the American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities in San Diego. He was also inducted as a Hastings Center Fellow. As such, he joins an association of researchers from around the world whose distinguished contributions in their fields have been influential in bioethics.

Chad Orzel, associate professor and chair of the Physics and Astronomy department, took part in a recent screening and Q-and-A at Mass MoCA in North Adams, Mass. of the physics documentary “Particle Fever.” Secret Science Club, a Brooklyn-based group conducted science outreach, hosted the event.

“Irish Travelers: The Unsettled Life,” a new book by George Gmelch, the Roger Thayer Stone Professor of Anthropology, and Sharon Gmelch, professor of anthropology, was recently published by Indiana University Press. The Gmelches’ article, “Nomads No More,” appeared in the September issue of Natural History.

Chad Orzel, associate professor and chair of the Physis and Astronomy Department, is the author of four animated videos created by Ted-Ed, the online learning offshoot of TED, known for its popular TEDTalks series. The videos, designed to help viewers learn concepts in physics, have received tens of thousands of views on YouTube. The videos are:

• What is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?
• Einstein’s brilliant mistake: Entangled states
• Particles and waves: The central mystery of quantum mechanics
• Schrodinger’s cat: A thought experiment in quantum mechanics

Andrew Morris, associate professor of history, is a featured panelist today at the Miller Center's Great Issues program on the politics of disaster. The event takes place as the U.S. grapples with the Ebola crisis, and also coincides with the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy’s devastation of areas of New York City and the New Jersey shore. The Miller Center is affiliated with the University of Virginia, where Morris earned his Ph.D. and was also a national fellow at the center. He is working on a book on the transformation of disaster relief in the U.S. during the 1960s and 1970s.

Janet Sweeney, assistant director of the Kenney Community Center, was honored at the Leadership Council on Inclusion Awards ceremony recently held at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. The awards honor those who have demonstrated exceptional achievements in diversity and inclusion on college campuses.

This week, Fernando Orellana, associate professor of visual arts, was a speaker at the World Changing Ideas Summit hosted by BBC Future in New York City. The one-day event centered around bringing forward-thinking leaders together to discuss major challenges in science, technology and health. Orellana’s panel focused on the presence of robots in modern society.

Research by Megan Ferry, associate professor of Chinese and Asian Studies, was featured on NPR’s “The Academic Minute.” Ferry discussed her holistic approach to developing the high-level language learner by integrating communicative language tasks to help students develop interpersonal skills and to value cross-cultural understanding. Listen to the piece here.

Megan Ferry, associate professor of Chinese and Asian Studies, was recently featured on WAMC's Academic Minute.

The daily program features professors from colleges and universities around the world sharing their research. It airs on public radio stations across the country.

WAMC Northeast Public Radio is a member of National Public Radio, serving parts of New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania

To listen to Ferry's segment, click here.