Campus community reports honors, presentations, publications

10:57 a.m., Dec. 14, 2012--For the Record provides information about recent professional activities of University of Delaware faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Recent honors, presentations, publications and international scholarship include the following:

Campus Stories

From graduates, faculty

As it neared time for the processional to open the University of Delaware Commencement ceremonies, graduating students and faculty members shared their feelings about what the event means to them.

Doctoral hooding

It was a day of triumph, cheers and collective relief as more than 160 students from 21 nations participated in the University of Delaware's Doctoral Hooding Convocation held Friday morning on The Green.

• Doctoral hooding
• Old Swedes
• Summer SAT, ACT prep
• 'Opus 13' pre-sale

Honors

Mary Watson, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, has been selected as one of next year's Thieme Chemistry Journal Awardees, a prize given to outstanding young scientists worldwide by the editorial boards of Synthesis, Synlett and Synfacts. The prize consists of free one-year online and print subscriptions to the three chemistry journals.

Presentations

Erik T. Thostenson, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, is an invited keynote speaker at the 28th International Conference of the Polymber Processing Society, Pattaya, Thailand, Dec. 11-15. His talk is titled “Multifunctional Polymer Composites: Hierarchical Micro/nano Multi-scale Hybrid Composites for Sensing Applications.”

A poster titled "Modeling Engineered Approaches to Enhance Denitrification under Rapid Infiltration Basins" that resulted from a collaborative research project involving Paul Imhoff, professor of civil and environmental engineering, Maryam Akhavan, civil and environmental engineering doctoral student, A. Scott Andres, senior scientist with the Delaware Geological Survey, and Stefan Finsterle, staff scientist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was presented at the fall 2012 American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, Dec. 3. The poster and abstract are currently on display in the first floor lobby of the Delaware Geological Survey building, Academy Street, adjacent to Penny Hall.

Marsha Dickson, professor and chair of the Department of Fashion and Apparel Studies, presented an invited lecture in Seoul, South Korea, on Dec. 1 as part of the 2012 Eco-Design Marketing Symposium organized by the Korean Scholars of Marketing Science. Her paper won the Best Paper Excellence Award. Dickson also visited Yonsei University where she lectured to graduate and undergraduate students.

Timothy Murray, head, Special Collections Department, University of Delaware Library, presented "Fine Printing in the Digital Age" at the "The Fine Book in the Twenty-first Century-Yes, It will Survive!" symposium sponsored by the Oak Knoll Press, New Castle, Del., Oct. 5.

Publications

Margaret D. Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and professor of humanities, has a new essay titled “The Brave Little Toaster from Print to Film: Obsolescent Appliances and Capitalist Allegories” in the peer-reviewed scholarly journal Opticon 1826 (Vol. 14, Autumn 2012), which is a publication of University College, London, U.K.

David M. Stone, professor of art history and director of the new curatorial track Ph.D. program in art history, has published "Signature Killer: Caravaggio and the Poetics of Blood," Art Bulletin 94, No. 4 (December 2012), pp. 572-593. The abstract of the article states: "Blood is one of the most powerful metaphors in art and literature. In his 1608 altarpiece for the Knights of Malta, The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, Caravaggio signed his name 'in the blood' of the executed saint. This witty and violent gesture, fruit of the predicament that had brought him to the island — murder, exile, and the chance for redemption — engages in a number of personal and political discourses, some inspired by his honorary knighthood. The signature, which builds on self-fashioning themes explored in Caravaggio’s earlier paintings, also makes a bold contribution to the poetics of concettismo."

Visiting scholar

In October, David Shearer, professor of history, completed a month as a visiting scholar at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, and in November, a month as a visiting scholar at Tübingen University, also in Germany. He gave lectures, led seminars and met with and advised graduate students. In December and January, he will be a visiting scholar at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales, in Paris, France.

To submit information to be included in For the Record, write to ud-ocm@udel.edu.