| SPRING 2003... |
FACULTY NOTES
|
Joanna Goodman (assistant professor of English) and Henry Israeli (instructor in English and integrative arts) both were recently awarded 2003 fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Goodman was awarded a creative writing fellowship in poetry and was one of 38 winners out of a field of more than 1600 applicants. Israeli was awarded a fellowship to support the translation of selected poems by Luljeta Lleshanaku from the original Albanian.
|
Joanna Goodman |
Henry Israeli |
An exhibit of African American music memorabilia drawn from the collection of Jerry Zolten (assistant professor of speech communication and American studies) was on display earlier this semester in the Pattee Library Diversity Room on the Penn State University Park campus. In conjunction with the exhibit, the Library also sponsored Zolten's presentation on the Dixie Hummingbirds. Copies of his newly-published book,
Great God A'Mighty - The Dixie Hummingbirds: Celebrating the Rise of Soul Gospel Music, were available for signing. Great God A'Mighty was reviewed in The New York Times Book Review in February.
Zolten also offered a specially commissioned presentation on Billie Holiday, "Fine and Mellow: Billie Holiday's Life in Jazz," in conjunction with the Bristol Riverside Theater's production of
Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, a one-woman show starring Chris Calloway, daughter of famed band leader Cab Calloway. Following the performance in Bristol, PA, Zolten served as a panelist in a discussion of Ms. Holiday and her life and music.
The National Science Foundation has funded Jim Winsor (professor of biology) and Andy Stephenson's project "Studies of the Interrelationships Among Inbreeding, Resistance to Herbivores, and the Transmission of Pathogens in Wild Gourds" for $469,000 for four years. The work will be carried out at laboratories at Penn State Altoona and University Park, as well as the Agricultural Station at Rock Spring.
 L. Edward Day (assistant professor of criminal justice and sociology) and Michelle Miller-Day (assistant professor of communication arts and sciences in the College of the Liberal Arts ) co-authored the paper, "Family Communication, Maternal and Paternal Expectations, and College Students' Suicidality," which appeared recently in
The Journal of Family Communication. The paper concludes that female college students with mothers expecting perfection and fathers who support the mother are more likely to contemplate suicide than peers from less pressured families. The study survey of 421 college students — 227 female, 194 male — revealed that close to the same percentage of female and male students contemplated thoughts of suicide: 19.4 percent or nearly one in five, says Miller-Day. But the proportion of students who actually attempted suicide was 4.0 percent for females, compared to 1.1 percent for males. Thus, for female students, thoughts of suicide are four times more likely to lead to an actual attempt at self-destruction, she notes. The findings indicated that college women most vulnerable to suicidal thoughts are those with mothers who not only require stellar performance in school but keep raising the bar of expectation, notes Day. Female college students are placed at particular risk when their fathers conform to the mother's wishes and acquiesce in their non-negotiable demands for perfection. For the complete story, visit
http://www.psu.edu/ur/2003/collegestudentsuicide.html
John R. Linn (assistant professor of criminal justice and sociology) has been named as both process and program evaluator for the newly created Blair County Drug Court. The Blair County Drug Court was established under the auspices of the Drug Court Policy Initiative (DCPI) and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). In the position of process evaluator, Dr. Linn has engaged in the on-going assessment of interactions among the members of the Blair County Drug Court team through the various stages of training. The Blair County Drug Court will become operational in early September 2003. At that time Dr. Linn will initiate a longitudinal evaluation of the effectiveness of the Drug Court initiative.
Three of Annette Zalanowski's (associate professor of music) music composition students placed in the 2002-2003 Student Composition Competition sponsored by the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA). Michael Creighton achieved first place for "Changing Meters"; Christine Fedak was awarded second place for "A Walk in the Park"; and Adam Focht won third place for "Theme and Variations." Robert Bonsell received an honorable mention for "Mystic Explorations." Creighton moved on to represent Pennsylvania in the Eastern Division's competition at Elizabethtown College.
 |
Michael Wolfe (professor of history) has been appointed book review editor for H-France, an online, bilingual list-serve devoted to discussions of French history and current events affecting France and the world.
|
|
|
|
|
