Conferences and Presentations
Professor of Political Science and International Studies Zheya Gai, Ph.D., gave several lectures and presentations this year. Dr. Gai presented “The Belt and Road Initiative and China’s Worldview in the 21st Century,” at the International Studies Association annual conference in Toronto, Canada, in March. In April, she gave a lecture, “Decoding the U.S.-China Trade War: It is about more than trade,” via web stream at St. Norbert College. She was invited to give a lecture, “Decoding the U.S.-China trade war,” at China University of Petroleum, Qingdao, China, in May. Dr. Gai has served as director of the ASIANetwork Freeman Student-Faculty Fellows program since 2014. The program provides grants to student-faculty teams from U.S. colleges to conduct summer projects in Asia.
Professor of Computing & Information Studies Charles Hannon, Ph.D., gave a talk at the Midwest User Experience Conference in October. His presentation was titled “Avoiding Bias in Voice User Interfaces,” and focused on how interaction designers can avoid replicating the subtle biases that exist in everyday human language as they develop Voice User Interfaces. He noted that over time, the extent to which designers can de-bias robot speech may contribute to human language becoming less biased as well.
Professor of Biology Alice Lee, Ph.D., took her “Music of Life” FYS class to hear her play on the South Hills Multi-Organist recital Oct. 20, 2019, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Mt. Lebanon, Pa. Dr. Lee played two Bach chorale preludes: O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß (BWV 622); and In dir is Freude (BWV 615). The other organists were organists in South Hills churches and at Trinity Cathedral. Dr. Lee is the organist at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Canonsburg.
Director of Olin Fine Art Gallery Doug McGlumphy ’87, M.F.A., exhibited a one-person exhibition of his sculpture titled monumental at the College of Wooster Art Museum, Wooster, Ohio, earlier this year. The exhibition’s content explores the nation’s current political climate. The introduction was written by Professor of Art John Lambertson, Ph.D., chair of the art department.
McGlumphy’s art practice and research, in part, deals with materiality and the preservation of historic architecture components. In addition to preserving salvaged materials in his sculpture, he has also preserved historic houses that are on, or have been moved to, his 280-acre family farm in Stone Creek, Ohio, where the family operates Hisrich Hills House B&B and ArtFarm. The connection between the farm, historic materials, rural culture, and politics are evident in monumental.
Professor of English Linda Troost, Ph.D., and Sayre Greenfield, Ph.D., of the University of Pittsburgh, Greensburg, discussed the history of Pride and Prejudice adaptations at a Jane Austen festival in December. The festival was organized by The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Webster University, and the Jane Austen Society of North America’s St. Louis region, and was held on the Webster University campus.
Director of Assessment and Institutional Research Lindsey Graham Guinn gave the keynote address at the Assessment Network of New York (ANNY) in October. Her talk, “No Pain, No Drama, More Impact: Effective Administrative Assessment,” offered practical tips and solutions to enhance administrative assessment on college campuses, recommended a process model on assessment for administrative offices that focuses on training and continuous feedback, and shared strategies on how to work with, engage, and educate staff. Guinn also recently worked with a faculty member at Juniata College to give a half-day workshop titled “General Education Assessment from A to Z” at the IUPUI Assessment Institute, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious assessment conference.
Publications
Under the direction of Associate Professor of Modern Languages Amparo Alpañés, Ph.D., students enrolled in Spanish 457.01—a course about the Spanish detective novel—are writing their own detective novel in Spanish entitled El veneno familiar (The Family’s Poison). The book will have eight chapters when completed, and will be published independently online. The student-writers are: Ryan DeMayo ’20, Gabriella Faddool ’20, Alessandro Martin ’20, Seaghan McBride ’20, Maitri Patel ’20, Laurel Sipe ’20, Taylor Smydo ’20, and Adrian Vera ’22. W&J student artists submitted designs for the cover of the book; the group selected two to represent the bilingual nature of the online edition.
Professors of Computing and Information Studies Sam Fee, Ph.D., and Amanda Holland-Minkley, Ph.D., with Thomas Lombardi, D.P.S., a former W&J professor who now teaches at the University of the Virgin Islands, coauthored two publications in the fall of 2019 reporting on their academic instruction and using W&J’s CIS curriculum as a case study. They have been researching the ways in which active learning and project-based learning are well aligned with interdisciplinary computing education, noting that both of these techniques work together to improve student learning and also broaden participation in computing. The papers appeared in ACM Inroads and Issues in Information Systems, both peer reviewed publications.
This work came directly from the work the three did editing a book, “New Directions for Computing Education: Embedding Computing Across the Curriculum,” which was published by Springer in 2017. The book presents a case for the future of computing education at the undergraduate level and why interdisciplinary computing should be at its core.
Abandoned Tracks: The Underground Railroad in Washington County, Pennsylvania (University of Notre Dame Press, 2018), authored by Professor of History Thomas Mainwaring, Ph.D., received the INDIES 2018 Silver Book of the Year Award for Multicultural Studies. The book strives to separate the truth from the rumors surrounding the Underground Railroad in Washington County.
Research with Students
Research experiences make great opportunities for W&J students to travel to national conferences to present their work. Vanesa Hyde ’22 (Neuroscience and English) and Halea Kohl ’20 (Neuroscience) joined Ana Morales ’19 (Neuroscience) to present work from their on-campus research projects with Assistant Professor of Biology Kelly Lohr, Ph.D., and Professor of Biology Ron Bayline, Ph.D., at the 50th annual Society for Neuroscience conference in Chicago in October. The W&J groups presented in two poster sessions, met new research collaborators, and heard scientific talks from some of the most highly regarded neuroscientists in the world. Their presentations were titled:
“Identification and expression of glutamate receptors genes in innervated and uninnervated regions of the ventral diaphragm muscle of the moth Manduca sexta”
A. MORALES BENITEZ, K. M. YATSKO, R. J. BAYLINE
“Microbiome manipulation modifies tau-mediated neurodegeneration in Drosophila melanogaster”
H. KOHL, V. HYDE, *K. M. LOHR
