For the Record, May 6, 2016
University community reports recent presentations, publications
4:51 p.m., May 6, 2016--For the Record provides information about recent professional activities of University of Delaware faculty, staff, students and alumni.
Recent honors, presentations, publications and service include the following:
People Stories
'Resilience Engineering'
Reviresco June run
Honors
Xuan Yu, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Geological Sciences, has been named a distinguished lecturer by EarthCube, a collaborative effort initiated by the Division of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure and the National Science Foundation’s geoscience directorate to advance the cyberinfrastructure for geosciences. In this role, Yu is giving invited lectures at universities and research institutions across the country on best practices for data management in geoscience publications and on the benefits of open science engagement.
A team of master of business administration students from the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics has won an honorable mention in the Aspen Institute Business and Society International Case Competition. In April, MBA students Edwin Brown, Arpita Gandhi, Dan Matera and Nathan Snodgrass spent 72 hours analyzing a case on Illy Coffee and creating a six-page written analysis. The Lerner College’s Graduate and MBA Programs opened the facilities at One South Main Street over one weekend so that the team could spend much of this time sequestered and working together. Aspen Institute founder and director Justin Goldbach thanked the team for their hard work and participation, saying, “With your help, we truly believe that we are helping to make the next generation of executives savvy to the centrality of social, environmental and ethical issues in business.”
The University’s Mineralogical Museum, housed in the Department of Geological Sciences, recently was ranked at 17 in “The 30 Most Amazing Higher Ed Natural History Museums” by bestcollegereviews.org. Rankings were based on the number of artifacts or specimen in the collection, public access and opportunities at the museum for college students and community involvement. Founded with a gift from Irénée du Pont Sr. in 1964, the museum is housed in Penny Hall and displays approximately 350 specimens from a collection of more than 2,500 specimens of minerals, meteorites, gems and carvings. It was the only mineral museum included in the list of comprehensive natural history museums with collections of fossils, dinosaurs and other age-old artifacts such as Yale’s Peabody Museum, making it a particularly notable feat.
Presentations
Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and professor of humanities, delivered a paper titled "Teaching 'Comfort Women' Issues: The Hidden Stories of Girls" at "War and Sexual Violence: An International Conference," on April 28. The conference, which was held at the City University of New York Graduate Center, was sponsored jointly by the CUNY Academy for the Humanities and the Society for Military History. Stetz's presentation focused on how and why to reframe the Imperial Japanese Army's so-called "comfort system" of World War II as a war crime that involved child abuse and child sex trafficking
Publications
Rudi Matthee, John and Dorothy Munroe Distinguished Professor of History, published “Patterns of Food Consumption in Early Modern Iran,” in Oxford Handbooks Online (2016).
The forthcoming summer issue of the Smithsonian Museum's journal American Art, the premier journal in the field, includes articles by three faculty members in the Department of Art History. Wendy Bellion and Mónica Domínguez Torres, both associate professors, offer what the journal calls “paired perspectives” on John Singleton Copley’s “Watson and the Shark.” Bellion’s article is titled “Land Shark: Copley's Reiterative Acts of Representation,” and Domínguez Torres is the author of “Havana's Fortunes: ‘Engaged Histories’ in Copley's ‘Watson and the Shark.’” Jason E. Hill, assistant professor, is the author of “How to Look at News Pictures in America” in the same issue of the journal.
Service
Marianna Safronova, professor of physics and astronomy, has been elected vice chair of the American Physical Society’s Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics. The position will rotate to chair upon the expiration of the appointment of the incumbent chair.
Books
Wayne Batchis, associate professor of political science and international relations and of legal studies, is the author of The Right’s First Amendment: The Politics of Free Speech and the Return of Conservative Libertarianism, published in March by Stanford University Press. The book examines how the concept of constitutional free speech rights — an issue closely associated in the 1960s with American political liberalism — has been adopted by conservatives. Mark Graber of the University of Maryland School of Law has called the book “an important, readable guide [that] expertly documents the powerful impact of this 30-year transition on constitutional law, politics and the development of free speech.”
New faculty
Deborah Gump will join the UD faculty on July 1 as director of journalism. The journalism program offers an interdisciplinary minor that is housed in the Department of English but is open to students from any major. Gump, who earned a doctorate in journalism and mass communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been a visiting professor at the University of South Carolina, professional in residence and director of the John Seigenthaler Chair of Excellence at Middle Tennessee State University, director of the Knight Program for Editing and Editing Education at Ohio University and director of print and online training for the Committee of Concerned Journalists in Washington D.C.
To submit information to be included in For the Record, write to publicaffairs@udel.edu.