Faculty Research and Creative Activity
2011-12

Find Faculty Activity by Discipline:

> Business and Economics

> Humanities (English, Hispanic Studies, Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, Religion)

> Library (The Ames Library)

> Natural Sciences (Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics & Computer Science, Physics, Psychology)

> Professional Schools (Art, Music, Nursing, Theatre Arts)

> Social Sciences (Educational Studies, History, Political Science, Sociology & Anthropology)

Also See:


Business and Economics

Hoyt, Fred attended the Fall Conference of the Marketing Management Association in St. Louis. A former president of the organization, Hoyt chaired a session on technology, and presented a paper as part of a panel dealing with teaching tips.


Humanities

Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures

Balina, Marina led a multi-disciplinary delegation of faculty members from Illinois Wesleyan, Illinois State and the University of Illinois to Russia for a weeklong conference on global children's issues. It is the second international colloquium with prominent Russian scholars that Balina has organized; the first was conducted in 2010 at Illinois Wesleyan. Read more.

Fritzsche, Sonja:

- Presented a paper at the annual conference of the Science Fiction Research Association in Lublin, Poland.  The paper, "Dreaming of Homeland in SF Film From Behind the Iron Curtain," discussed films by Stanley Kubrick, Andrei Tarkovsky, Gottfried Kollditz, and Hermann Zschoche.
- Authored a chapter in a book published with Marina Balina and Scott Sheridan, entitled “Once Upon a Heimat: Fairy Tale Film as East German Homeland.” This is part of a publication series from a Special Seminar on "Culture of Childhood: Norms, Values, and Practices." Moscow/Tver': Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Gumanitarnyi Universitet (Russian State University for the Humanities), 2011.
- Served as Program Coordinator for the annual conference of the Society of Utopian Studies, held in State College, Pa. from Oct 20-23, 2011.
- Is on the editorial board of Extrapolation, a long-established, peer-reviewed journal of speculative fiction based at the University of Texas, Brownsville, and also the new journal Zanzalá, an online academic science fiction journal, based at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil, 2011.

Religion

Erlewine, Robert was named Managing Editor of the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy (Brill).

Erlewine also published an article titled "The Legacy of Abraham Joshua Heschel," in the Fall 2011 issue of Tikkun Magazine.


Library

Davis-Kahl, Stephanie had a research poster accepted for the 2012 NITLE Symposium: Inventing the Future in Arlington, Va. Her proposal, "Publishing & Pedagogy: Extending the Capstone Course Experience," was selected from among many submissions from faculty, technologists, librarians, and administrators across the country through a peer-review process.

In addition, Davis-Kahl, along with Bob Leekley and Mike Seeborg, Economics, presented "Promoting Active Learning through Undergraduate Economics Journal" at the poster session on active learning strategies at the annual American Economics Association conference in Chicago on Jan. 7, 2012. The poster can be found on the Selected Works section of Digital Commons.

Duke, Lynda co-edited, with Andrew D. Asher, the book College Libraries and Student Culture: What We Now Know (published by ALA Editions), based on Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries: The ERIAL Project, which was conducted at Illinois Wesleyan and four other Illinois university libraries through a Library Services and Technology Act Grant.

Miner, Meg is a joint partner in a newly announced $575,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant program. Based at Northern Illinois University Libraries, NIU and partner libraries at Chicago State University, Illinois State University, Illinois Wesleyan University and Western Illinois University will simultaneously test multiple collaborative digital preservation solutions and evaluate the suitability of each option for small and medium-sized college and university libraries. Miner will serve as Illinois Wesleyan's project coordinator, overseeing repository testing for IWU's digital collections.

Moore, Monica was invited to speak at the upcoming U.S. Agricultural Information Network (USAIN) conference "Soil, Water, Food and Energy: Agriculture in an Era of Global Climate Change" in Minneapolis on April 29. Her presentation highlights her work in the development of techniques for collections analysis in libraries. USAIN is an organization of information professionals who take leadership roles on national information policies relating to agriculture. USAIN advises the National Agriculture Library on information matters and promotes collaboration among agricultural research centers.

Sweet, Chris authored a paper, "The Role of Information Literacy in Service Learning Courses: A Case Study and Best Practices," that was accepted for the highly competitive LOEX (Library Orientation Exchange) conference in May 2012. Sweet has also been invited to speak to a graduate independent study seminar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on information literacy this spring.


Natural Sciences

Biology

Lehr, Edgar is leading a team of U.S. and Peruvian biologists who were awarded a grant by the National Geographic Society's Global Exploration Fund to conduct research in 2012 on amphibian and reptile diversity. They will analyze specimens gathered from the Pui Pui Protected Forest in Peru for a type of fungal infection that is impacting worldwide amphibian populations. Read more.

In addition, Lehr published:
- With A. Catenazzi (2011): "A new species of marsupial frog (Anura: Hemiphractidae: Gastrotheca) from the Río Abiseo National Park in Peru." Herpetologica 67(4): 449-459.
- With Sinsch, U., E. Greenbaum, and C. Kusamba (2011): Rapid assessment of montane anuran communities in the Albertine Rift: Hyperolius castaneus Ahl, 1931 as an umbrella species for conservation. African Zoology 46(2): 320-333.

Chemistry

House, James, with Michelle A. Ponschke '11, published an article, "Kinetic Studies on the Loss of Water from (alpha)-D-Glucose Monohydrate" in Carbohydrate Research, 346, 2285-2289 (2011).

Mathematics and Computer Science

He, Tian-Xiao published the following:

- "Generalized exponential Euler polynomials and exponential splines." Open Journal of Discrete Mathematics, 1 (2011), 35-42.
- "Some Dense Subsets of Real Numbers and their Applications. (With P. J.-S. Shiue and X. Zha), Journal of Advanced Mathematical Studies, 4(2011), No. 2, 25-32.
- "Sequences of Numbers Meet the Generalized Gegenbauer-Humbert Polynomials.'' (With P. J.-S. Shiue and T.-W. Weng), ISRN Discrete Mathematics, Volume 2011, Article ID 674167, 16 pages, doi:10.5402/2011/674167.
- "Riordan arrays associated with Laurent series and generalized Sheffer-type groups."Linear Algebra and its Applications, 435 (2011), 1241-1256.

Physics

French, Linda presented "A Preliminary Survey of Trojan Asteroid Rotation" at the annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society in Nantes, France.

French also visited the University of Toronto, where she led a discussion on astronomy education and presented talks to the Astronomy Department and the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science.

Spalding, Gabe is the principal investigator on a project aimed toward improving laboratory instruction in physics for undergraduate college students, which was awarded a grant of more than $451,000 from the National Science Foundation. Read more.

Spalding's recently published article, "Fast localized wavefront correction using area-mapped phase-shift interferometry," was selected for publication in the most recent issue of the Virtual Journal for Biomedical Optics (VJBO). Every month, the editors review articles in the biomedical field that have been published in other journals and select articles for inclusion in VJBO.

Spalding also:
- With Kishan Dholakia, taught a four-hour course on imaging through turbulence and other applications of beam shaping at SPIE's annual meeting on Optics & Photonics in San Diego Aug. 21-25. Attendees ranged from representatives of the Air Force Institute of Technology, Warfare Systems Command, and several defense contractors, to professionals interested in biomedical applications.
- Also with Dholakia, chaired the Conference on Optical Trapping & Optical Micromanipulation (OTOM '11), where Spalding presented his research on "The Sonic Screwdriver -- a working prototype."
- Gave an invited talk, "Optical Momentum and Angular Momentum: Thinking about mechanical effects of light (and other wave/particle bombardments)," for the Department of Physics Colloquium at Amherst College.


Professional Schools

School of Art

Bair, Miles had two paintings acquired by the Neville Museum Foundation of Green Bay, Wis., for the museum's permanent collection. Two of Bair's paintings were also recently acquired for the First Western Trust Bank Corporation Collection in Denver, Colo.

In addition, an exhibit of Bair's paintings were displayed at the William Havu Gallery in Denver, Colo.

School of Music

Vayo, David was a resident artist for two weeks at the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Red Wing, Minn.

In addition:
- Vayo's composition Welsh Incident, on a poem by Robert Graves, was premiered at the Grand Teton Music Festival by the musicians who commissioned the work, hornist William Caballero of the Pittsburgh Symphony and trombonist Roger Oyster of the Kansas City Symphony.
- Vayo was in residence for three days in August at the Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he spoke to music composition students and attended a rehearsal and performance of his composition Poem by the ensemble Grupo Nova Música da UNIRIO.
- Vayo's composition Wellspring received its world premiere performances by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia (Spain), which played the work in Santiago de Compostela on Nov. 10 and A Coruña on Nov. 11. Leading the orchestra was Polish conductor Michal Nesterowicz. These performances resulted from Vayo's composition winning the 2009 Andrés Gaos Composition Competition, sponsored by the municipal government of A Coruña.
- Vayo performed with the Sonic Exploration Society at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts of the University of Illinois on Oct. 29, as part of the Krannert Center's Afterglow series, and attended the world premiere of his Aperçu for 10 performers at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay on Sept. 29.


Social Sciences

Educational Studies

Epstein, Irv published, "Sports as a Metaphor for Comparative Inquiry," a chapter that appears in the volume, Beyond the Comparative: Advancing Theory and its Application to Practice, edited by John Weidman and W. James Jacob. (Pittsburgh Studies in Comparative and International Education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2011): 93-112.

In addition, Epstein participated in an international academic freedom workshop sponsored by the Scholars at Risk (SAR) Network at Bilgi University in Istanbul, Jan. 15-16. On Jan.18, he and Scholars at Risk Legal Advocacy Officer Jesse Levine spoke before a group of faculty interested in creating their own SAR section in Croatia at the University of Zagreb.

Political Science

Kim, Min-hyung published the article "Theorizing ASEAN Integration," Asian Perspective, Vol. 35, No. 3, pp. pp.407-435 (July-September 2011).

In addition, Kim:
- with James A. Caporaso, was invited to be a contributor for a special issue of Journal of European Integration for next year: The European Union after twenty years of the Maastricht Treaty.
- published “State Preferences and Institutional Feedback: CAP and European Integration,” International Political Science Review, Vol. 31, No. 3 (June 2010), pp. 323-345.
- with James A. Caporaso, published “The Dual Nature of European Identity: Subjective Awareness and Coherence,” Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 16, No. 1 , pp. 19-42 (January 2009).
- was invited by Oxford University Press, at the recommendation of its editorial board, to contribute to a pioneering new online publication by authoring the article "The Crisis of European Integration in Historical Perspective,” Oxford Bibliographies Online (OBO)."

Sociology

Burke, Meghan was appointed to the Editorial Board for the journal Teaching Sociology. Her term began Jan. 1, 2012 and continues through Dec. 31, 2014.

Burke also co-authored, with Kira Hudson Banks, "Sociology by Any Other Name: Teaching the Sociological Perspective in Campus Diversity Programs," Teaching Sociology, Vol. 40, No. 1, pp.21-33 (January 2012).