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Awards and Honors

Diane Bunce, professor, chemistry, was awarded the James Flack Norris Award for Chemical Education by the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society. The award will be presented at a dinner at the Harvard Faculty Club at Harvard University on Nov. 8. As the award recipient, she also will give a lecture at the Harvard Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology.

Gunnar Lucko, assistant professor, civil engineering, received the Cornerstone Award from Bell Multicultural High School in Washington, D.C., for his mentoring of students in engineering.

Timothy Noone, professor, philosophy, will serve as president of the American Catholic Philosophical Association this year. He will preside and give the presidential address at the annual meeting of the association in Milwaukee in November.

Owen Stanwood, assistant professor, history, received two fellowships for the 2007-08 academic year to complete a book titled Imperial Designs: Popery Politics, and the Making of British America, 1678-1700. He will spend seven months in residence at the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress and two months in residence at the Folger Shakespeare Library, both of which are in Washington, D.C.

Grants

Jessica Ramella-Roman, assistant professor, biomedical engineering, received two grants totaling $380,000 to conduct medical research in the prevention of diabetes-related blindness and the care of persons with spinal injuries. A $230,000 Early Career Award from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation will fund two years of research related to measuring oxygen levels in the retina of diabetes patients. This research will attempt to determine the relationship between oxygen flow and the vision loss that often results from diabetes. The second grant — $150,000 from the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation — will fund two years of research on pressure sores to be conducted by Ramella-Roman and her co-investigator, Joseph Hidler, associate professor, biomedical engineering.

Venigalla Rao, professor, biology, received a three-year, $480,000 grant from the Henry Jackson Foundation for a project to engineer high-quality immunogens toward the development of an AIDS vaccine.

On the Road

Sophia Aguirre, associate professor, business and economics, presented a paper titled “Family Structure, Wealth and Economic Growth” at the World Conference of Families IV in Warsaw, Poland, May 11-13.

She presented a paper titled “Food Distribution and Economic Growth” at the 2nd Cross-Cultural Dialogue on Family Harmony and Economic Growth at Beijing University in China, May 15-16.

Aguirre taught intermediate macroeconomics at the Catholic University of Madagascar in May and June.

She presented a paper titled “The Cost of Family Decline in Lost Social Capital and Increased Poverty” at the 2007 World Family Policy Forum: Achieving Development Without Losing our Families, held at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, July 9-11.

Helen Alvaré, associate professor, law, was the keynote speaker at the May 4 Choose Life luncheon in Cleveland. The event was sponsored by LifeWorks Ohio.

Life Cycle Institute associate fellows Sandra Barrueco, assistant professor, psychology, and Carole Brown, research associate professor, education, gave presentations at the 2007 National Institute of Child Health and Human Development-National Center for Education Statistics Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort Conference at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md., May 8-10. Barrueco gave a presentation titled “Predicting Early Developmental Patterns among Latino Infants and Their Families in the United States.” Brown’s speech was titled “Levels of Alcohol Consumption during Pregnancy and Child Social, Mental, Motor and Physical Development from the ECLS-B 9-Month Data Wave.”

Ronald Calinger, professor, history, gave a presentation titled “Leonhard Euler’s Scientific Legacy in the Works of American Historians of Mathematics, 1983 to the Present” at the L. Euler 2007 conference hosted by the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, Russia, May 13-17.

Sharon Christman, assistant professor, music, taught a master class June 25-26 to members of the Washington Opera Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist program.

William Dinges, associate professor, theology and religious studies, gave two lectures in Germany in April. His presentations included “America’s Religious Market: Explorations in Diversity and Pluralism” on April 16 at the U.S. Consulate General in Hamburg and “Collective Identity Today: American Catholics in the Culture of Choice” on April 17 at the University of Rostock.

He gave a talk titled “Religion in American Culture” June 11 in Washington, D.C., to a U.S. State Department Visitor’s Program delegation from Algeria, Tunisia and the West Bank.

He also gave a presentation titled “Catechetical Implications of Research on Young Adult Catholics” at a colloquium of the Foundation for Adult Catechetical Teaching Aids, held July 31-Aug. 2 in Chicago.

George Eng, senior research associate, chemistry, with Xuequing Song, Alejandra Zapata and Olaniran Atchade, University of the District of Columbia,  presented "Toxicity and QSAR studies of a series of triorganotin 2,2,3,3-tetramethylcyclopropanecarboxylates" at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Chicago, March 25-29, 2007.

Lisa Gitelman, associate professor, media studies, gave a talk titled “New Media and Their Publics” for the “Participatory Media in Historical Perspective” workshop held at Uppsala University in Sweden, May 12-16.

Monsignor Thomas Green, professor, canon law, served as convener of a session titled “Issues Behind the Sexual Abuse Crisis” at the annual convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America in Los Angeles, June 7-10. Sister Sharon Euart, R.S.M., adjunct professor of canon law, also participated in the session. William Mattison, assistant professor, theology and religious studies, was asked by the president of the society to be part of the coordinating committee to plan the moral theology group sessions for the next three conventions. Several other faculty from the School of Theology and Religious Studies gave presentations at the convention, including Rev. Joseph Komonchak, professor; Rev. Paul McPartlan, professor; Rev. Gerard Sloyan, lecturer; and Rev. James Wiseman, O.S.B., professor.

Monsignor Green participated in the Orientale Lumen Conference at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, D.C., June 18-21. Rev. Mark Morozowich, assistant professor, theology and religious studies, also presented a paper on liturgy as a living icon of the Church at the conference.

Miriam Gusevich, associate professor, architecture and planning, gave a presentation titled “The Ecological City: A Historic Chapter” at two conferences. She presented it at a conference of the International Association for the Study of Environment, Space and Place, held April 27-29 at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, and at a conference sponsored by the International Making Cities Livable Council, held June 10-14 in Portland, Ore.

Gusevich and William Jelen, visiting assistant professor, gave a presentation at the People Building Better Cities conference, held June 25-28 at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. The presentation focused on a spring 2007 project by CUA architecture students and faculty who traveled to Jamaica and created a master plan for a new village, in partnership with Mustard Seed Communities, a non-profit community development organization in Jamaica.

Marietta Hedges, assistant professor, drama, presented a paper titled "Fear Up: Creating Theater from Mass Media" at the conference of the Association of Theater in Higher Education in New Orleans, July 25-29. The paper documents the creation of her play, Fear Up: Stories from Baghdad and Guantanamo, co-created with Karen Bradley of the University of Maryland.

Ingrid Hsieh-Yee, professor, library and information science, presented a poster on "What Users Need for Subject Access: Table of Contents or Subject Headings?” at the American Library Association’s 2007 annual conference in Washington, D.C., on June 25. The project was a joint effort by Hsieh-Yee and library and information science assistant professors Young Choi and William Kules.

Lisa Lerman, professor, law, served as chair of the planning committee for the American Bar Association’s 33rd National Conference on Professional Responsibility held in Chicago May 30 to June 2. She also chaired two panel discussions, “Law Firm Bullies: What Makes Them Tick and How to Control Them” and “The Buried Bodies Case: Alive and Well after 30 Years.” Steve Young, reference librarian, participated in a discussion titled “Legal Ethics Research Online and Off: A Workshop.”

Thomas Long, associate professor, education, participated in a NASA institute called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, July 12-19. Long gave a presentation on brain compatible learning — classroom methods that research has demonstrated improve learning for students. NASA invited administrators from the U.S. mainland, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas and Trinidad to participate in this ongoing program. This summer marked the third year that NASA has invited Long to participate in the institute.

Bronislaw Misztal, chair, sociology, gave a presentation titled “Constructing Civil Society and Global Academic Community with Little or No Social Capital: Bridging the Gap between the Western European, North American and Latin American Experience” at the International Conference on Social Capital Transfer held June 7-11 in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Adnan Morshed, assistant professor, architecture and planning, presented a keynote address titled “Architecture as Empowerment: The Female Borrowers and the Hyper-Tradition of the Grameen Bank Housing Program in Bangladesh” at the 24th Annual Spring Symposium of the Center for South Asian Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa, held April 12-13.

Tom Nakashima, professor emeritus, art, debuted "Recent Work," his exhibit of newspaper collage at the Fairbanks Gallery at Oregon State University on May 7. The exhibit ran until May 30.

Lucinda Nolan, assistant professor, theology and religious studies, taught a course titled “A Faith That is Adult: Sources and Models for Formation in Christian Maturity” at the 10th Annual Summer Institute held at the College of Saint Elizabeth in Morristown, N.J., July 8-19.

Travis Price, adjunct professor, architecture and planning, spoke about his book The Archaeology of Tomorrow: Architects & the Spirit of Place at the Galway City Library in Ireland on June 26 and at the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland in Dublin on July 10.

Rev. Kurt Pritzl, O.P., dean, philosophy, gave a talk titled “Contemplation in Everyday Life (with Help from Some Philosophers),” as part of the Dumaine Lecture Series at the Catholic Center, Stanford University, on April 30.

Modern languages and literatures assistant professors Peter Shoemaker and Mario Ortiz led monthlong study-abroad programs during the summer. Shoemaker took students to Paris from July 1 to Aug. 4, and Ortiz took students to Mexico to study indigenous Indian cultures from May 14 to June 17. Both trips included a weeklong service component.

Merylann Schuttloffel, chair and associate professor, presented a paper titled “Collaborators in Catechesis” at “Directions for Catholic Educational Leadership in the 21st Century: The Vision, Challenges and Reality,” the 4th International Conference on Catholic Educational Leadership, held in Sydney, Australia, July 29 through Aug. 1. The conference was convened by the Flagship for Creative and Authentic Leadership of the Australian Catholic University.

David Shumaker, clinical associate professor, library and information science, presented a paper titled “Embedded Library Services: An Initial Inquiry into Practices for Their Development, Management and Delivery” at the Special Libraries Association annual conference held June 2-7 in Denver. The paper was co-authored with Laura Ann Tyler, a post-master’s certificate student at the School of Library and Information Science.

Andrew H. Weaver, assistant professor, music, presented a paper titled “Modernism and the Death of the Idealist: Reinterpreting Strauss’s Don Quixote” at the conference “Strauss Among the Scholars: An International Forum,” held at Oxford University in England, June 29 to July 1.

Performances

Sharon Christman, assistant professor, music, was a guest soloist at the Cascade Music Festival in Bend, Ore., Aug. 25 for a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony conducted by Murry Sidlin, dean of the Benjamin T. Rome School of Music.

Publications

A paper by Carlos Roberto Barrios Hernandez, assistant professor, architecture and planning, was listed for the third time in April among the 25 most downloaded papers from Design Studies: Digital Design. His paper, titled “Thinking Parametric Design: Introducing Parametric Gaudi,” was first published in Design Studies, Vol. 27, Issue 3, May 2006.

Gregory Brewer, associate professor, chemistry, Cynthia Brewer, adjunct associate professor, chemistry, Leopold May, professor emeritus, chemistry, and Genevieve White, undergraduate student, chemistry, wrote an article titled "N. Alkylation of tripodal iron (III) imidazolate complexes. Reactivity and structure" that appeared in Inorganica Chimica Acta, 2007, v. 360, pp.2153-2161. The article was written with Raymond J. Butcher of Howard University and Everett E. Carpenter of Virginia Commonwealth University.

John Golin, professor, biology, and Leopold May, professor emeritus, chemistry, wrote an article titled "The Yeast Pdr5p Multidrug Transporter: How Does it Recognize So Many Substrates?" that appeared in Biochemical Biophysical Research Communications, 2007,  v. 356, pp. 1-5. The article was written with Suresh V. Ambudkar of the National Institute of Health.

Rev. Frank J. Matera, professor, theology and religious studies, is the author of New Testament Theology: Exploring Diversity and Unity, a book published in August 2007 by Westminster John Knox Press.

Ian Pegg, professor, physics, and director of CUA's Vitreous State Laboratory, provided expert input into the contents of an April 30 Department of Energy report presented to Congress on the subject of how to dispose of surplus weapons-usable plutonium. The report is titled "Business Case: DOE's Proposed Baseline Approach for Disposing of Surplus Plutonium."

Peter Shoemaker, assistant professor, modern languages and literatures, published a book titled Powerful Connections: The Poetics of Patronage in the Age of Louis XIII (University of Delaware Press).

Shavaun Wall, vice provost, dean of undergraduate studies and professor of education, and CUA alumna Abby Crowley co-wrote an article, “Supporting Children with Disabilities in Catholic Schools,” for the June 2007 issue of Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice (10[4], 508-522).

Rosemary Winslow, associate professor, English, published her first book of poetry, Green Bodies, in June. The publisher was the Word Works, Washington, D.C.

Rev. James Wiseman, O.S.B., professor, theology and religious studies, wrote a chapter titled “Merton and Theravada Buddhism” for a 2007 book titled Merton and Buddhism, edited by Bonnie Thurston (Louisville: Fons Vitae Press).

James Youniss, professor, psychology, co-wrote the article, “The Influence of Family Political Discussion on Youth Civic Development: Which Parent Qualities Matter?” with Hugh McIntosh, independent scholar, and Daniel Hart, professor, psychology, Rutgers University. The article appears in the July issue of PS: Political Science & Politics, a journal of the American Political Science Association.

Students

Third-year law student William J. Phelan published a paper in the 2007 issue of Studies in Law, Politics and Society. He presented the same paper at the 2007 Pennsylvania Political Science Association’s annual meeting in March.

Deborah Rock, B.A. 2007, was honored by having one of her paintings included in the seventh annual ACADEMY exhibition at the gallery Conner Contemporary Art in Washington, D.C. Each year, the exhibition's curators choose the best work by graduating B.F.A. and M.F.A. art students in the Washington-Baltimore area. Rock's chosen painting is of a landscape being battered by Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed her family's New Orleans home.

A project by students at the School of Architecture and Planning is the only university entry in an exhibit titled “City of the Future: A Design and Engineering Challenge,” which opened June 8 at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. The exhibit, which will run until Oct. 7, is the culmination of the nationally City of the Future design competition, hosted by IBM and The History Channel, in partnership with the American Society of Civil Engineers.

There are more composers in the music school’s composition program than at any time in recent history. This fall, there will be 18 composers: six doctoral candidates; five master's students in the Master of Music program in Composition, Stage Music Emphasis; three bachelor's majors and four undergraduate minors.