November Accolades
November 3, 2003
Accolades is a monthly column recognizing the latest achievements of George Mason faculty and staff members. Submit Accolades information by the 15th of the month preceding to Attn: Daily Gazette, by mail to 4C5, by fax to (703) 993-8784, or by e-mail to gazette@gmu.edu. Electronic photos with submissions are welcome.
Administration
Marilyn Mobley McKenzie, Provost's Office and English, gave the literary benediction for the second annual Legacy Award ceremony for the Houston/Wright Foundation. At the award ceremony, McKenzie was also named to the foundation board.
College of Arts and Sciences
Amal Amireh, English, wrote "Between Complicity and Subversion: The Body Politics in Palestinian National Narrative," which was published in South Atlantic Quarterly, Fall 2003; vol.102, number 4.
Peter Brunette, English, was the keynote speaker at a conference on Federico Fellini at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Richard Bausch, English, was interviewed about his writing and life for failbetter.com, an online literary journal devoted to publishing original works of fiction, poetry, and art. The journal is based in Brooklyn, New York.
Liam Callanan, English, wrote a short story, "Taken," that appeared in the latest issue of failbetter.com, an online literary journal based in Brooklyn, New York, devoted to publishing original works of fiction, poetry, and art.
Jane Turner Censer, History and Art History, wrote The Reconstruction of White Southern Womanhood, 1865-1895, which was published by the Louisiana State University Press.
Richard J. Diecchio, Environmental Science and Policy, presented the paper, "The Falling Spring of Virginia," at the 115th annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Seattle.
Bianca Diaz, English, wrote poems that were published in Fourteen Hillsand Gulf Stream Magazine.
Harold Geller, Physics and Astronomy, presented "Professionals and Amateurs for Astronomy Education and Outreach" at a conference sponsored by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in cooperation with the National Research Council. The conference, "Communicating Astronomy to the Public," was held at the National Academies in Washington, D.C.
Stephen S. Harlan, Environmental Science and Policy, presented the paper, "The Gunbarrel Mafic Magmatic Event: A Key 780 Ma Time Marker for Rodinia Plate Reconstructions," at the 115th annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Seattle.
Cynthia Patterson, English, received two month-long research fellowships for the 2003-04 academic year to support her doctoral dissertation, "Imag(in)ing the Middle Classes in the Philly Pictorials of the 1840s and 50s." The first fellowship, awarded by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in Harrisburg, supported research into the Pennsylvania State archives collection of letters, diaries, memoirs, and visual materials. The second fellowship, awarded by Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library in Delaware, supported research into Winterthur's manuscript, periodical, visual culture, and material culture collections.
Art Taylor, English, wrote "Pointing the Finger," an essay that was published in Lifeboat: A Journal of Memoir.
College of Visual and Performing Arts
 David Chung |
Graduate School of Education
Kevin Clark received a congressional award, the "Education Technology Think Tank's (ET3) Technology to Empower Community 2003 Champion Leadership Award." The award is sponsored by the Education Braintrust of the Congressional Black Caucus. Congressman Major R. Owens, in his letter announcing this award, said Clark received his honor because of his "inspiring leadership, exemplary service to our country's underserved youth, and demonstrated excellence in the field of community technology."
Steve Constantino was an invited speaker at Florida Governor Jeb Bush's conference titled "Strengthening Families." The governor called upon Constantino's group, Family Friendly Schools, to participate and lead the conference. Family Friendly Schools recently finished five days of introductory workshops and meetings with some Florida educational leaders and is presently working on multiyear projects to infuse family and community engagement strategies into the workings of schools and districts.
 Gary Galluzzo |
Julie Kidd and Robert Pasnak, Psychology, received a cognition and student learning research grant from the Institute of Education Sciences for their project, "Increasing Learning by Promoting Early Abstract Thought." The $721,039 grant extends over three years.
Margo Mastropieri gave the keynote address at the 25th Annual International Conference on Learning Disabilities in Bellevue, Washington, sponsored by the Council for Learning Disabilities. Her presentation was "Combining Effective Instruction with Covering Content for High-Stakes Testing: Reality or Fantasy." She also presented a paper, "Strategies for Increasing Learning."
Donna R. Sterling, Juanita Jo Matkins, and Anastasia Kitsantas received a "Programs that Work" award from Governor Mark Warner at a dinner in the governor's mansion for the New Science Teachers' Support Network (NSTSN). The "Programs that Work" awards feature programs that support females and minorities in mathematics and science and are given by the Virginia Mathematics and Science Coalition. NSTSN is a partnership of Prince William County Public Schools, Fairfax County Public Schools, and George Mason University and is funded by the National Science Foundation.
David Wiggins cowrote with Patrick Miller of Northeastern Illinois University The Unlevel Playing Field: A Documentary History of the African American Experience in Sport, published by University of Illinois Press, 2003.
Lorraine Valdez Pierce wrote a book with the National Education Association (NEA), which is part of the NEA assessment series. The book, intended for regular classroom teachers, is Assessing English Language Learners. She also wrote an article on "Teaching to the Test: Best Practice?" which appeared in the June/July/August (Vol. 13, No. 3) issue of TESOL Matters published by Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.
Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution
Richard Rubenstein held a book signing at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., which was carried live on C-SPAN. The signing was for Rubenstein's book, Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages.
Dennis J.D. Sandole was interviewed by Barry Newhouse of Voice of America concerning NATO, where it is going, and what it plans to become in the post-Cold War, post-9/11 future.
Robinson Professors
Hugh Heclo, Robinson Professor of Public Affairs, wrote the chapter, "The Political Ethos of George W. Bush," for The George W. Bush Presidency: An Early Assessment, edited by Fred I. Greenstein and published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. He also wrote "Ronald Reagan and the American Public Philosophy" in the Elliot Brownlee and Hugh Davis Graham book, The Reagan Presidency, published by University Press of Kansas, 2003. Heclo gave an address, "Sixties Civics," to the Harvard Program on Constitutional Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He also wrote the article, "Is the Body Politic Dying? A Review Essay," that appeared in The Political Science Quarterly, November 03, Vol. 118:3.
Harold Morowitz, Robinson Professor of Biology and Natural Philosophy, wrote a paper, "On the Origin and Fine-Tuning of Metabolism," with Eric Smith, which was presented at the conference "Fitness of the Cosmos for Life: Biochemistry and Fine-Tuning" sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
James Trefil, Robinson Professor of Physics, gave a series of lectures on "Scientific Literacy," as part of the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar series at the University of Oklahoma, Denison University, and Kent State University.
Roger Wilkins, Robinson Professor of History and American Culture, participated with Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in the panel presentation of "Presidents Lyndon Baines Johnson and John F. Kennedy," at the 92nd Street Y, in New York City. He is a commissioner of the 50th Anniversary of the Landmark U.S. Supreme Court Case Brown v. the Board of Education and in that capacity gave a lecture, "Opening Doors, Opening Minds," at Iowa State University. He also participated in a panel presentation, "My Soul Is a Witness," at the Robert J. Dole Institute for Politics, University of Kansas. Wilkins wrote the chapter, "The Challenge to State-Sanctioned Racism: Brown v. Board of Education," which appeared in Defining a Nation: Our America and the Sources of Its Strength, edited by David Halberstam and published by the National Geographic Society, 2003, Tehabi Books. The related television program, Defining a Nation, with David Halberstam and Amy Chua, was presented by National Geographic Live on Oct. 1. Wilkins gave a lecture to the Gunston Hall docents on "George Mason: His Contributions to the Nation and 18th Century Virginia Slaves" and one on "The Enduring Legacy of James Madison," as part of the Montpelier Lecture Series.
School of Information Technology and Engineering
Chun-Hung Chen, Systems Engineering and Operations Research, received the Kayamori Best Automation Paper Award at the 2003 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc (IEEE) International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Chen cowrote "Dynamic Scheduling Rule Selection for Semiconductor Wafer Fabrication" with B. W. Hsieh and S. C. Chang of National Taiwan University.
Bijan Jabbari, Electrical and Computer Engineering, won a $864,000, four-year grant from the National Science Foundation under its Experimental Infrastructure Network program to collaborate on a project with the University of Maryland, College Park, and the University of Southern California. The total award is $6.72 million over four years for the project that will create a Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching capable optical core network.
 Roman Polyak |
Edward Wegman, Applied and Engineering Statistics, was selected as the chair of the National Academy of Science's (NAS) Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, and made a member of the NAS Board on Mathematical Sciences and Its Applications.
School of Management
Edward Douthett, Management, cowrote "Differential Levels of Disclosure and the Earnings-Return Association: Evidence from Foreign Registrants in the United States," which was published in the International Journal of Accounting, Volume 38, No. 2.
 Andres Fortino |
Ken Heller, Accounting, was recognized at President Merten's convocation for contributions to federal tax policy.
Linda Samuels, Business Legal Studies, presented "Famous Marks: Actual Harm Is the Secret" and a paper cowritten with Richard Coffinberger, "Essay Choice: A Weighted Approach to Testing," at the annual meeting of the Academy of Legal Studies in Business in Nashville, Tennessee.
Amitava Dutta, Mahesh Joshi, and Linda Parsons presented "Business Continuity Practices in the Financial Services Industry" at the national Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences meeting in Atlanta. This work was supported by a grant from the AT&T Foundation. Dutta has also been appointed senior editor in the eBusiness Operations Department of the Production and Operations Management journal.
Sarah Nutter, Accounting, was an invited participant at the University of Illinois Tax Symposium. This biannual symposium provides a forum for leading tax researchers in accounting and economics to discuss current working papers.
George Wang, Finance, and Aysegul Ates wrote "Information Transmission in Electronic Versus Open Outcry Trading Systems: An Analysis of U.S. Equity Futures Markets." They presented this paper at the Financial Management Association annual meeting in Denver. Wang also presented "The Asymmetric Volatility of Basis and the Theory of Storage" with A. Gao at the meeting.
Hun Lee, Management, cowrote with Ken G. Smith and Curtis M. Grimm "The Effect of New Product Radicality and Scope on the Extent and Speed of Innovation Diffusion," which was published in the Journal of Management, October 2003. He also cowrote with Stephen E. Christophe, Finance, "What Matters about Internationalization: A Market-Based Assessment," which appeared in the Journal of Business Research.