Archives: October 2009 - February 2010
On February 19-21, the Pacific Speech and Debate Team traveled to Modesto Junior College to compete in the Northern California Forensics Association's Championship tournament. Pacific's squad finished second overall out of more than 30 schools throughout California and Nevada. Pacific debaters Chelsea Kelleher and Emily Sheldon placed first in Parliamentary Debate. Rachera Swan won first place in persuasive speaking, and she is now the California representative to the oldest speech competition in the country: the Interstate Oratory Competition (IOC). This is only the second time that Pacific has had a representative to the IOC.
Kieran Holland, Physics, gave a talk titled "Running coupling in strong gauge theories via the lattice" at a particle physics conference called "Strong coupling gauge theories in the LHC era" at Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan.
Psychology faculty, graduate and undergraduate students presented research at the 28th Annual Meeting of the California Association for Behavior Analysis in Irvine, CA. Matthew Normand and several graduate students presented a symposium titled "Battling the Bulge: Behavioral Approaches to Promoting Physical Activity," which reported original research on physical activity conducted at Pacific by graduate student authors Tracy Larson '11, Kristin Hustyi '10 and Scott Greenberg '10.
- The poster "Assessing the Effectiveness of a Parent-Training Model Through Direct Measures" was authored by Shanun Kunnavatana '10, Matthew Normand, Tracy Larson and Scott Jensen.
- The poster "Functional Analysis and Treatment of Escape Maintained Noncompliance" was authored by Kathryn M. Kestner, Matthew Normand and Joshua Jessel.
- The poster "Infant Sign Training and Functional Analysis" was authored by Mychal Machado '11, Kristin Hustyi and Matthew Normand.
- The paper "A Rapid Treatment Analysis of Compliance in Young Children" was authored by Shanun Kunnavatana and Matthew Normand.
- The paper "Behavior Analysis in Health and Fitness: Promoting Physical Activity" was authored by Matthew Normand.
- The paper "The Development and Validation of Physical Activity Measurement Systems" was authored by Tracy Larson, Matthew Normand, Kristin Hustyi and Scott Greenberg.
- The paper "Shaping Physical Activity in Obese and Overweight Children Using Percentile Schedules" was authored by Kristin Hustyi, Matthew Normand, Tracy Larson and Scott Greenberg.
George Lewis, Sociology, has had three of his published works (All The Glitters: Country Music In America; Side-Saddle On The Golden Calf: Social Structure and Popular Culture In America; and "Won't Get Fooled Again: 25 Years of Pop Recordings and Reviews") included in "Rock Journalists and Music Critics: A Selected Bibliography," which appears in the current issue of Popular Music and Society (Feb. 2010). Lewis has also been invited by the President of the Popular Culture Association to deliver remarks at the upcoming joint meeting of the American Culture Association and the Popular Culture Association, reflecting on Ray Browne, founder and prime mover of both these associations, who recently passed away.
Marcia Hernandez, Sociology, was a panelist for the workshop "The Feminist Teaching Portfolio" at the Sociologists for Women in Society Annual Winter Meetings in Santa Barbara, CA.
Emily Heller '10, Theatre Arts, has been accepted to the CaLARTS (California Institute of the Arts) MFA Management Program with a specialization in producing. She is one of three students selected from a nationwide search.
Danielle Stephens '10, Theatre Arts, advanced to the semi-finals in the Irene Ryan acting competition at the Western States region Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival which was held in Reno,
NV this year.
Lisa A. Tromovitch, Theatre Arts, will be awarded a Dreammakers and Risktakers Award by the Livermore Chamber of Commerce. The award ceremony will be held at Poppy Ridge Golf Course, Livermore on March 30.
Christine Strain '10, Visual Arts, was selected as a finalist in the Strathmore Artist Papers "How Do You See Green" Illustration Competition.
Chemistry faculty, postdoctoral fellow, graduate and undergraduate students presented their research at the 2010 Conference on Ion Chemistry and Mass Spectrometry, January 15-17, 2010, at Lake Arrowhead, California. Jianhua Ren and Balint Sztaray each chaired one oral session.
- Postdoctoral fellow Kiran Kumar Morishetti gave a presentation "Generation of Phenoxide Radical Anions under API Conditions." S. Prabhakar and M. Vairamani were coauthors and Jianhua Ren was the research advisor.
- Graduate student Sampada Borkar '13 gave a presentation "PEPICO Studies on the Energetics of Atmospherically Relevant SxOyClz Ions." Lauren Ooka '10 and Andras Bodi were coauthors, and Balint Sztaray was the research advisor.
- Graduate student Jialin Shen '11 and undergraduate student Allison Lai ' 10, presented a poster "Acidities of Short Peptides: A Hypothesis of Conformational Change." Kelly Chen '12 was a coauthor, and Jianhua Ren was research advisor.
- Graduate student Yuan Tian '12 presented a poster "Enhancement of Acidity of Carboxylic Acids Induced by Polar Substituents." Jianhua Ren was research advisor.
- Graduate student Sumit Mukherjee '10 presented a poster "Effects of Structures of Cyclohexane-Based Aminoalcohols on Their Proton Affinities." Eric Wang '09 and Vyacheslav Samoshin were coauthors, and Jianhua Ren was research advisor.
Paul Turpin, Communication, presented the paper "The Higher Mysteries: What Rhetoric Can Do for Habermas's Theory of Communicative Rationality" at the Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association, Chicago, IL, Nov. 13, 2009.
Kurtis C. Burmeister, Earth & Environmental Sciences, was awarded an EDMAP National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program Grant of $14,515 by the United States Geological Survey to support several undergraduate research projects examining the Appalachian fold-thrust belt exposed along the Helderberg Escarpment in the central Hudson Valley of New York State.
George Condon, Jacoby Center for Public Service and Civic Leadership, was recently in Chico to address the League of Women Voters of Butte County on the topic "Reform of California's Constitution: the Case for a Constitutional Convention."
Dari E. Sylvester, Political Science, co-authored the chapter "Campaigning in the Internet Age," with Michael T. Heaney (University of Michigan) and Matthew E. Newman (University of Florida) in the forthcoming volume, The Electoral Challenge: Theory Meets Practice, 2nd Edition published by Congressional Quarterly Press.
Dari E. Sylvester, Political Science, served as a guest editor for an upcoming special issue of the Journal for Civic Commitment on Service-Learning and Political Engagement. Her independently peer-reviewed article "Service-Learning as a Vehicle for Promoting Student Political Efficacy" was also accepted for publication in the special issue.
Matt Normand, Psychology, was appointed to the editorial board of the journal Behavioral Interventions. Behavioral Interventions is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes articles on research and practice involving the utilization of behavioral techniques in the treatment, education, assessment and training of students, clients or patients, as well as training techniques used with staff.
Stacy Rilea, Psychology, and Dan Cliburn, Computer Science, published the paper "Evaluating presence in low-cost virtual reality display systems for undergraduate education" in the Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges.
Marcia Hernandez, Sociology, and Lorrie Knight, University Library, had their article "Reinventing the Box: Faculty-Librarian Collaborative Efforts to Foster Service Learning for Political Engagement" published in the Journal for Civic Commitment.
Christine Strain '10, Visual Arts, has been selected as a finalist in the Strathmore Artist Papers "How Do You See Green" Illustration Competition. The grand prize winners will have their artwork featured on one of four special edition artist sketchpads, plus a $1,000 scholarship will be awarded to their art department.
On January 28-Feb 1, 2010, the Pacific Speech and Debate Team traveled to Webster University in St. Louis and competed against 35 other schools from around the country. At the end of the long weekend, Pacific debaters were first in the tournament, and Sarah Hamid was the top speaker.
For the first time, a Pacific debater, Sarah Hamid, has been named to the three-person team that will debate the Irish National Debate Champions at the National Parliamentary Debate Association Championship in Lubbock, Texas on March 18-23, 2010. This exclusive team selects only three debaters out of the thousands nationwide, and it is considered a major achievement to be selected.
In February, the Pacific Speech and Debate Team traveled to Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego and competed against 55 other schools from around the country. For the first time at this tournament, Pacific debaters placed first (Will Chamberlain and Sarah Hamid), and Pacific was first in schools. It is a grueling tournament that is often as large as or larger than the Paul Winters tournament that Pacific hosts in the fall. Emma Henry placed 4th in the individual events sweepstakes out of over 100 speakers.
Cynthia Dobbs (English, Writing in the Disciplines), Scott Evans (Educational Resource Center), Chris Goff (Math), Cathie McClellan (Theatre Arts), Lisa Tromovitch (Theatre Arts), and Heather Williams (General Education) attended the 3rd annual Academic Literacy Summit at the University of California at Davis on February 4. Pacific faculty participated in such workshops as "Deeper Thinking for Math Writing" and "Writing in the Disciplines: Handling the Paper Load."
Dennis O. Flynn, Economics, and Arturo Giráldez, Modern Languages & Literature, were general editors of The Pacific World: Lands, Peoples and History of the Pacific, 1500-1900, a 17-volume set on the history of the Pacific region published by Ashgate/Variorum. Drs. Flynn and Giráldez also co-edited one of the volumes: European Entry into the Pacific. Religious & Classical Studies Professor Tanya Storch edited another volume titled Religions and Missionaries around the Pacific, 1500-1900. A collection of 11 Flynn-Giráldez essays titled China and the Birth of Globalization in the Sixteenth Century is scheduled for release this month by Ashgate/Variorum.
George Condon, Jacoby Center for Public Service and Civic Leadership, has selected nine students to participate in internships this spring through the Sacramento Experience program, which enables students to intern for government and advocacy organizations in the state capital. The new interns include: Justine Dodds '10 (Political Science), Jessica Jones '11 (Political Science), Cesar Luna '10 (Political Science), Daisy Madariaga '11 (Political Science), Francisco Medina '10 (Communication), Nicole Parreira '12 (Political Science), Samuel Terrell-Perica '10 (Political Science), Christina Tharp '11 (Communication), Youa Yang '10 (Political Science).
On December 4 through 6, the Pacific Speech and Debate Team traveled to Ohio to compete in the Holiday Frolic tournament. Over 30 schools were in attendance and Pacific finished first in small school sweepstakes in this "swing" tournament, which combined two tournaments in one weekend.
Dance instructor Tara Morton, Theatre Arts, will be performing as an invited artist along with the dance company "Off Balance" affiliated with Modesto Jr. College on February 17-21, 2010.
Courtney Lehmann, English, was named one of the six "most prominent" Shakespeare and Screen scholars in the world in a recent publication.
Ken Albala, History, had the article "History on the Plate: The Current State of Food History" published in the November 2009 issue of Historically Speaking and was also interviewed in the same issue.
Gesine Gerhard, History, presented her paper "Change in the European Countryside: Peasants and Democracy in Germany, 1935-1955" at a conference at the University of Leuven, Belgium.
Chris Goff, Mathematics, published the paper "Fusion Algebras for Vertex Operator Algebras and Finite Groups" in the volume "Vertex Operator Algebras and Related Areas" from the Contemporary Mathematics series of the American Mathematical Society.
Kurtis C. Burmeister, Earth & Environmental Sciences, had his paper "Redistribution of sediments by submarine landslides on the eastern Nankai Accretionary Prism" published by Springer in the book "Submarine Mass Movements and Their Consequences, Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research."
K. Jimmy Juge, Physics, gave a talk on quantum chromodynamics (QCD) lattice simulation algorithms at the International Lattice Symposium in Beijing, at the Hadron Excitation Workshop in Vancouver, and at the NorCal Lattice Meeting at Pacific.
Scott Jensen, Psychology, published a paper with several colleagues in the Journal of Attention Disorders titled "College students' Attitudes Towards Their ADHD Peers." He also presented a poster at the annual convention of the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapists (ABCT) titled "Therapeutic Alliance, Group Climate, and Attrition in Behavioral Parent Training."
Matt Normand, Psychology, was appointed an Associate Editor of the journal Behavior Analysis in Practice, published by the Association for Behavior Analysis, International. He also was elected to the editorial board of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, published by the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.
Matt Normand, Psychology, and graduate students Kristin Hustyi and Tracy Larson presented a symposium titled "Battling the Bulge: Behavioral Approaches to Promoting Physical Activity" at the 30th Annual Meeting of the Berkshire Association for Behavior Analysis and Therapy, in Amherst, MA. Several posters also were presented with faculty and student co-authors, including Scott Jensen, Mychal Machado, and Shanun Kunnavatana.
Alan Lenzi, Religious and Classical Studies, presented his paper "A New Edition of Ludlul Bel Nemeqi" in New Orleans at the national meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. His article "A Six Column Babylonian Tablet of Ludlul Bel Nemeqi and the Reconstruction of Tablet IV" co-authored with Amar Annus of Tartu University in Estonia was recently accepted for publication in the University of Chicago's Journal of Near Eastern Studies.
Christine Strain '10, Visual Arts, has been included in the current exhibition at the Knowlton Gallery, 115 S. School Street, Lodi. She is exhibiting two monotypes of birds created in Printmaking III. Her work was given a very prominent hanging position among the work of many professional artists. The show runs from December 1, 2009 to January 30, 2010.
Professors Xin Guo (School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences) and Nataliya Samoshina (Pharmacy and Chemistry), Vyacheslav Samoshin and Andreas Franz (Chemistry) presented an oral report "Conformational triggers based on trans-2-aminocyclohexanol" at the Russian Conference on Organic Chemistry in Moscow, Russia, and a poster "Triggering Stealth Liposomes by pH-Sensitive Conformational Switch of Lipid Tails" at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists in Los Angeles.
Two Pacific professors were recipients of one of only three Teva USA Scholars Grants awarded by the American Chemical Society (ACS). Xin Guo (School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences), principal investigator, and Andreas Franz (Chemistry), co-principal investigator, received the award for their proposed research titled "trans-2-Aminocyclohexanol Lipids as pH-sensitive Conformational Switches in Liposomes for Drug Delivery." Two other faculty members are key participants in this project: Vyacheslav Samoshin (Chemistry) and Nataliya Samoshina (Chemistry and Pharmacy). The grants, funded by Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, will support the researchers' work in medicinal chemistry. Drs. Guo and Franz will receive $100,000 per year for three years in order to pursue their research.
On October 31, 2009, the Pacific Speech and Debate team, led by coach Marlin Bates, Communication, traveled to Berkeley to compete in the Golden Gate Invitational. Over 20 schools were in attendance. This was a "swing" tournament, combining two tournaments in one weekend. Over three days of competition, Pacific finished first overall in school sweepstakes. On November 6-8, 2009, the Pacific Speech and Debate team hosted the largest non-national tournament in the country. More than 73 Open Parliamentary Debate teams competed from 36 schools. Since Pacific hosted the tournament, the team was not eligible for a sweepstakes award. However, if they had been able to participate, the team would have finished first overall in school sweepstakes, earning over 27% of all available points.
In National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence rankings in November, Pacific debate teams were listed in 1st, 23rd and 39th place, out of 552 teams. Will Chamberlain and Sarah Hamid were in 1st place; Tariq Bruno and Chelsea Kelleher were in 23rd place are, and Brandon Schwartz and Emily Sheldon were in 39th place.
Teresa Bergman, Communication, presented her research "How to Remember Rosie: The Politics of Representation and Memory at the Rosie the Riveter Memorial" at the National Communication Association Conference in Chicago, Illinois.
Melissa Piffero '07, Communication, presented her paper "Blogging in Public Relations: An Exploratory Analysis of Corporate Blogging" at the National Communication Association in Chicago, Illinois.
Paul Turpin, Communication, presented two papers, "The Higher Mysteries: What Rhetoric Can Do for Habermas's Theory of Communicative Rationality" and "Pathos and Ethos: No Longer the Handmaiden," at the Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association, Chicago, IL, Nov. 11-15, 2009.
Dennis O. Flynn, Economics, delivered the Keynote Address, "World History versus Global History: Interdisciplinarity and Spheroidal Connections," at the California World History Association annual meeting in Riverside, California on October 17, 2009.
Kurtis C. Burmeister, Earth & Environmental Sciences, presented four papers at the 2009 annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Portland. The papers included "Establishing a residential learning community in the earth and environmental sciences," which was co-authored by Laura Rademacher and Kaitlen Colafrancesco (Earth & Environmental Sciences), Carol Brodie (Sponsored Programs), and Steve Jacobson (Greek Life & Student Housing). Burmeister was also an author on a paper by Rademacher and Colafrancesco titled "Chemical evolution and hydrology of northern Sierra Nevadan mineral springs." Additionally, Burmeister was a co-author on the papers "New insights of deep-sea geologic architectures using submersibles: examples from the Nankai Trough" and "Along-strike variation of deformation intensity in the Hudson Valley fold-thrust belt between Leeds and Coxsackie, New York." He also presented an invited lecture on "Fieldwork on the sea floor: Geology of the Nankai accretionary prism, Tenryu Submarine Canyon, Japan" to the Department of Geology at San Francisco State University.
Kieran Holland, Physics, was invited by the Physics Department at the University of Washington in Seattle to give a seminar on his research in particle physics. His talk was titled "Technicolor on the lattice."
Trent Burkett, Visual Arts, is exhibiting at the following this fall and winter: a national juried exhibition at the Bedford Gallery/ Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, CA, titled "Objects of Virtue" and featuring sculptural and functional ceramic works; a group exhibition at JayJay gallery in Sacramento, CA; and the "Yunomi Invitational" exhibit at AKAR design in Iowa City, Iowa. Yunomi's are traditional Japanese everyday tea drinking cups. Additionally, Burkett is exhibiting in a two-person exhibition at Trax gallery in Berkeley titled "Bi Coastal" and at AKAR design in a national invitational exhibit titled "30 x 5," which features 30 artists working around the country in ceramics with five pieces each.