Faculty/Staff Achievements

Meredith Davies Hadaway, vice president of college relations, has released her first collection of verse, Fishing Secrets of the Dead, a finalist in the Word Press First Book competition. Critic Sandra Gilbert calls Hadaway's poems "wise meditations on the irrecoverable possibilities of the past."

Erin Anderson, assistant professor of sociology and anthropology, presented a paper, "Maintaining Masculinity: At-Home Fathers and Constructions of Identity," at the conference "The Art of Gender in Everyday Life," sponsored by the Anderson Gender Resource Center at Idaho State University.

Katherine Cameron, assistant professor of psychology, was one of six to receive a mentoring award from the National Science Foundation to conduct undergraduate research in the neurosciences. The grant provides $10,000 for Cameron and her student, Feii Atualevao '06, to conduct a summer research project titled "Brain areas and timing of implicit and explicit activation of social knowledge; electrophysiological study of gender stereotypes in healthy undergraduates," and to travel to present the results at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. With the assistance of students, she also presented the poster "Verbal short-term memory and sentence production" at the Eastern Psychological Association Meeting and the Cognitive Neuroscience Society Meeting. Cameron was also invited to present a talk on using a "Case-based learning approach in the Classroom" at the 27th Annual National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology Conference in St. Petersburg Beach, FL. She has been granted junior faculty leave for Spring 2006.

Professor of English Tom Cousineau was the guest speaker at the second winter meeting of the Modernist Research Focus Group of the University of California at Santa Barbara. He discussed his current book project on the novels of Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard.

Bob Dawson, assistant professor of economics, presented the paper "Vertical Integration in the Post-IFQ Halibut Fishery" at the annual meeting of the Southern Economic Association in New Orleans.

Melissa Deckman, assistant professor of political science, has co-authored a new book, Women with a Mission: Religion, Gender, and the Politics of Women Clergy, published by the University of Alabama Press. She also presented a co-authored paper, "The Politics of Gay Rights: A Clergy Perspective," at two separate conferences: the Eastern Sociology Society's Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, and the Midwest Political Science Association's Annual Meeting in Chicago. In addition, she gave a conference paper titled "Women at the School Board Level: Ideology, Party and Policy Concerns" at the Southern Political Science Association's Annual Meeting in New Orleans.

Irv Degraw, assistant professor of business management, has been designated a Sam Walton Fellow by Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE), joining colleague Susan Vowels, who was appointed last year. He was also selected to the Program Committee of the Southern Finance Association.

Charlie Kehm, assistant professor of physics, has received a $3,600 grant from the Small Research Grant Program of the American Astronomical Society for his proposed project "Measuring Xenon in Stardust." He has been granted junior faculty leave for Spring 2006.

At the March 2005 Eastern Psychological Association meeting, associate professors of psychology Michael Kerchner and Lauren Littlefield presented a co-authored poster with students titled "Relating testosterone and cortisol levels with hyperactivity and aggressive behaviors in male children with ADHD." Littlefield and her students also presented two other posters: "Personal values and problem behaviors in a delinquent population" and "Utility of the Leadership Checklist in a college population."

Alisha Knight, assistant professor of English, attended the 2005 CAAR Conference in Tours, France, and delivered the paper "'In The Lives of These Women Are Seen Signs of Progress': Pauline Hopkins's Race Woman and the Gospel of Success."

Rick Locker, associate professor of chemistry, and Anne Marteel-Parrish, assistant professor of chemistry, co-authored with students a poster titled "Chemistry Matters at Washington College" at the American Chemical Society meeting. At the same conference Marteel-Parrish gave a talk titled "Towards the Greening of Our Minds: A New Special Topic Chemistry Course offered at Washington College." With Kristin Koenig '05, she also co-authored the article "Washington College's Student Affiliates Chapter" in The Chesapeake Chemist published by the Maryland Section of the American Chemical Society.

Robert Lynch has been promoted to the rank of professor of economics.

Mike McLendon, assistant professor of mathematics, gave a talk at the American Mathematical Society meeting in Lubbock, TX, titled "Higher Hochschild homology of a Heegaard splitting." He also presented a colloquium talk and seminar at Boise State University, Idaho, titled "Using knots to study 3-manifolds."

Lecturer in English Erin Murphy has published a poem in the recently-released Random House anthology 180 More: Extraordinary Poems For Every Day, edited by Billy Collins, and her book Science Of Desire has been named a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. She also gave a poetry reading and participated in a creative writing panel at the University of Louisville's "20th-Century Literature Conference" in February. She was one of three featured poets in the Washington Post-sponsored "Evening in the Stacks: Passport to Asia" event held February 26 in Columbia, MD, and in March she gave a poetry reading, led a workshop, and participated in a panel at the Writers at the Beach Conference in Dewey Beach, DE.

Andrew Oros, assistant professor of political science and international studies, is the recipient of a $43,725 book project grant in Japanese security from the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership to complete research for his book The New Politics of Antimilitarism: Explaining Japan's Evolving Security Policies. He is also beginning a new project, funded in part by the Toshiba Foundation, which will result in a co-edited book titled, Japan's New Defense Establishment. Initial findings from that project will be presented in March 2006 at the International Studies Association conference in San Diego. He has been granted academic leave for Fall 2005 and junior leave for Spring 2006 to work on these projects.

Pamela Pears, assistant professor of French, has been granted junior faculty leave for Spring 2006. She will explore the paratextual elements used to market Algerian women's writing and examine the implications these marketing techniques have on their reception.

Jason Rubin has been promoted to the rank of associate professor of drama.

Leslie Sherman, assistant professor of chemistry, reviewed the article "The Virtual Museum of Minerals and Molecules: Molecular Visualization in a Virtual Hands-on Museum" for the Journal of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Education.

George Shivers, professor of Spanish, co-authored the chapter "Recent Mexican Migration in the Rural Delmarva Peninsula: Human Rights vs. Citizenship Rights in a Local Context," as part of the book New Destinations: Mexican Immigration in the United States just released by the Russell Sage Foundation.

Michele Volansky, assistant professor of drama, was recently awarded a grant from the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative, a program of the Pew Charitable Trust, for dramaturgy work on the work-in-progress The Seventh Ward. She was also commissioned by People's Light and Theatre Company to write a short play for their 30-FEST, a celebration of the Theatre's 30th anniversary. That play, inspired by family events and the flu epidemic of 1918, will be produced at PLTC next season. Her dramaturgical work can be seen off-Broadway in New York at the Barrow Street Theatre, in Austin Pendleton's Orson's Shadow, a play she commissioned and nurtured into being, which opened March 13. The play originally premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago and had subsequent runs at the Williamstown Theater Festival, the Westport Playhouse and the Old Globe Theater. She served as original dramaturg for each production.

Susan Vowels, assistant professor of business management, attended the 2005 SAP Curriculum Congress in Atlanta, GA. She led a session on "Integrating SAP Concepts into the Curriculum as a Small School: Opportunities and Challenges." She also attended the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Management Information Systems 2005 Computer Personnel Research Conference and presented her paper "DIY-IT: An Empirical Study of Website Development Staffing by Non-Profit Organizations (Research in Progress)." Her paper has been published in the printed conference proceedings and will be added to ACM's online Digital Library.

Ted Widmer, director of the C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, published an essay on inaugural addresses in The American Scholar and an essay on African-American music in 19th century New Orleans for the French journal, Revue Francaise d'Etudes Americaines.

The Washington College chapter of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, has admitted four new faculty members this academic year: Shaun Ramsey, instructor in mathematics, Jeffrey Brown, assistant professor of biology, Hugh Jarrard, assistant professor of biology, and Erin Anderson, assistant professor of sociology and anthropology. Professor Anne Marteel-Parrish has been promoted to full membership as well.