Faculty and staff news
Dr. Gene Anderson, professor of music, had his book, The Original Hot Five Recordings of Louis Armstrong, published. It was his third book in the CMS Sourcebooks in American Music series. A reviewer stated that the recordings “helped make ‘Satchmo’ a familiar household name and ultimately its bearer an adored public figure.” Anderson provides a detailed account of the origins of this pioneering enterprise and offers a timeline of Armstrong’s professional activities from 1924–28.
Dr. C. Wade Downey, assistant professor of chemistry, and Dr. Matthew L. Trawick, assistant professor of physics, have received Cottrell College Science Awards from Research Corporation.
Downey received $39,822 to support his research on the aldol reaction, a “very useful way to build complex chemical structures,” he said. He hopes the research will allow pharmaceutical companies to synthesize current and new drugs more cheaply and rapidly.
Trawick received $37,818 for his project, which uses an atomic force microscope to manipulate polymer surfaces on a nanometer scale. The basic scientific research will use a technique called “shear alignment” to change the orientation of rows of spheres in a thin film and examine their behaviors.
Cottrell College Science Awards support significant research that contributes to the advancement of science and to the professional and scholarly development of faculty and students at undergraduate institutions.
Katybeth Dreisbach, assistant director of the Career Development Center, presented the program, “Second Year Student Success Retreat: Integrating Personal, Academic and Career Goals,” at the Student Success in Virginia conference in October.
George Hiller, adjunct associate professor, SCS, received a $165,000 two-year Title VI grant from the U.S. Department of Education to develop new international business and education programs at the S.W. Virginia Higher Education Center in Abingdon. Hiller serves as the center’s director of international programs. The grant will focus on China, including study abroad opportunities for faculty and students at small colleges in the center’s network.
Dr. Woody Holton, associate professor of history, is a nonfiction finalist for the 2007 National Book Awards for his work, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution. Holton’s book presents a new perspective on the framers’ motivations for drafting the U.S. Constitution—to make America attractive for investment and take power away from the states and the people—and the history of the average Americans who forced revisions that created the document we know today.
The National Book Awards were established in 1950 to recognize American literary excellence in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Finalists receive a bronze medal and $1,000 cash award. Winners will be announced Nov. 14 at the National Book Awards benefit dinner and ceremony in Manhattan.
Dr. Kirk Jonas, interim associate provost, received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the National Legislative Program Evaluation Society (NLPES). The award recognized Jonas for his contributions and service to the field of legislative program evaluation and to NLPES. Jonas retired in 2004 from Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, where he worked on scores of public policy research projects and studies that resulted in millions of dollars of savings and new revenues for the commonwealth. In 2004 he became director of the University’s Richmond Research Institute, and in 2007 he became interim associate provost.
Dr. Joanne Kong, director of accompaniment, and Dr. Paul Hanson, adjunct music professor, have been invited to perform a two-piano concert during the National Gallery of Art’s 2009–10 concert series in Washington. The popular concert series has presented concerts by acclaimed American and international musicians.
Dr. Juliette Landphair, dean of Westhampton College, has been selected one of 64 people to participate in Leadership Metro Richmond. The nonprofit, community leadership-development program energizes and educates the region’s leaders. They also work on specific projects for nonprofit organizations in central Virginia.
Suzanne Morse, president of the Pew Partnership, participated in a panel at the U.S. Capitol about the release of the College Board’s report, “Education Pays.” She delivered the inaugural seminar at the Urban Institute, Montana State University-Billings, and was a keynote speaker at the Association for Continuing Higher Education’s annual meeting in Roanoke. She was a featured speaker at the Federal Home Loan Bank’s conference in Des Moines.
Cheryl Pallant, instructor in English and theater and dance, was chosen as a finalist for the Bechtel Prize by Teachers & Writers magazine for her essay, “Gifting Poems: Getting Students to Read Poetry Closely.” Her poems and prose also have recently been published in the anthology, Letters to the World; in Beijing’s Homônumos Magazine: Avant Garde Literature, Science & Philosophy, and in Australia’s Proximity.
Porcher Taylor, associate professor, SCS, Dr. D. Neil Ashworth, professor of management in the Robins School of Business, and Dr. David E. Kitchen, assistant professor of geology, SCS, published an article in the Spring 2007 issue of Harvard University’s Africa Policy Journal titled “Helping Africa Achieve Millennium Development Goal 1: A Hyperbole-Free U.S. Genetically Modified Food Aid Policy.”