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A Guide to Arts and Sciences' News, Events and People | August 2012 |
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Contents Alumni Weekend Kick Off Secrets Behind Rock Banging Cell Phone Demography Prime Movers Media Gains Traction Museum Studies Program Hosts Iraqi Curators New Synthetic Chemistry Lab Opens "Face the Facts" Launches Fish Power Licht Receives $1.6 Million Experimentalist Turned Educator New Books Awards and Recognition Selected Published Works
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Alumni Weekend Kicks Off September 27!
Make plans now to return to GW to reminisce and enjoy the company of old friends. Alumni Weekend, which kicks off September 27, features 60+ events including a concert by the award-winning band Earth Wind & Fire, a Multicultural Alumni Happy Hour, Back to Thurston tours, Taste of GW, and Sunday Political Brunch. Columbian College alumni are also invited to a special reception with Dean Peg Barratt
and other faculty on Friday evening. Other fun events include the Music Department's CD-release party; the "Classes Without Quizzes" lecture with Professor of Philosophy and Human Sciences Peter Caws; and tour of the new Synthetic Chemistry Lab and the Science and Engineering Hall construction site. Read more and register.
Early Toolmakers: The Secrets Behind Rock Banging 
Why were some early humans able to shape stone tools while others were not? Erin Marie Williams, a post-doctoral scientist in hominid paleobiology, is banging rocks together to find out.While it sounds-literally-like an activity fit for a caveman, the rock banging is part of sophisticated research project. And now, thanks to the generosity of Michael Thacher, BA '70, and his wife, Rhonda, there is a new instrument to help Williams and Professor of Anthropology Brian Richmond undertake experiments that reveal how humans use their arms and hands to create stone tools. Read more. Cell Phone Demography: Analyzing Use across Ethnic Groups 
Professor of Anthropology Joel Kuipers' fascination with cell phones extends well beyond texting and the "Words with Friends" smart phone app. Mindful of the estimated 6 billion cell phone subscribers worldwide, Kuipers is interested in how different ethnic groups-specifically, immigrant communities-use mobile phones. Do they use them to stay in touch with friends and family in their home nations? Do cell phones help them organize community events in their new countries? Read more.
Prime Movers Media Gains Traction 
Prime Movers Media, the nation's first journalism mentorship program to focus on urban schools, is exceeding expectations thanks to power partnerships with top multi-media organizations. Housed in Columbian College's School of Media and Public Affairs, the program sends journalists and GW student interns into 10 underserved high schools to teach critical thinking, writing, and technical skills. Among the organizations providing funding and mentorship support are
The Washington Post, National Public Radio, Thompson Reuters, Widmeyer Communications, and The White House Correspondents' Association, which showcased a video about the program during this year's annual gala. Read more.
Museum Studies Program Hosts Iraqi Curators 
Twenty-three Iraqi artists and curators traveled to DC this summer to participate in a month-long residency program hosted by one of the top museum training programs in the U.S. In partnership with the State Department, Columbian College's Museum Studies Program
spearheaded an initiative to help Iraq restore and rebuild its cultural heritage. The participants attended classes on collections management, conservation, museum management, emergency preparedness and museum education. They also took part in special tours of area museums, led by Museum Studies Director Kym Rice. Read more.
New Synthetic Chemistry Lab Opens 
GW took the wraps off a spacious new chemistry laboratory that officials hailed as a taste of the future flavor of lab science at the university. Chemistry Department Chair Michael King said renovating the former classroom offered an opportunity to model on a smaller scale the "new designs and new thinking" that are central to the Science and Engineering Hall project, from its air-handling system to work spaces geared toward the exchange of ideas. The lab is now home to Professors Cynthia Dowd, who is developing new molecules to fight diseases, and
Adelina Voutchkova-Kostal, who is examining ways to make industrial processes less polluting and household products less toxic. Read more.
Face the Facts: New Initiative Provides "Big Issue" Daily Tidbits 
From now until election day, a mostly student team of researchers, video producers and editors will reveal daily myth-busting facts about important national issues to launch the first phase of Face the Facts USA. This interactive project of the Columbian College's School of Media and Public Affairs is a nonpartisan, multiplatform content hub and civic engagement initiative to help inform voters using pop culture-themed digital videos, lively infographics and extensive social media. Every day, a new fact will be revealed, mined from 10 categories of national interest including debt and deficits, the economy, and health care.
Read more.
Bone Helps Some Fish Power Their Pucker 
The sight of a goldfish grazing-and grazing, and grazing-can start to feel like a reminder that some animals get to drift along, puckering away in simple, rent-free peace. But in a trio of studies published this year Associate Professor of Biology Patricia Hernandez and her collaborators reported a new layer of complexity in that puckering, illuminating the role of the kinethmoid bone that's found in one-quarter of all freshwater fish species, called Cypriniformes-which includes minnows, carp, goldfish and more than 3,000 other species- that use the bone to pucker unlike any other fish. Read more.
Licht Receives $1.69 million for Solar Energy Research 
Professor of Chemistry Stuart Licht received a $1.69 million grant from the National Science Foundation's Sustainable Energy Pathways Program to expand his research using the Solar Thermal Electrochemical Photo (STEP) conversion process he developed and patented. STEP offers a carbon-dioxide free method of producing iron that could provide a "green" solution to an industry that has used the same polluting process of iron smelting for three thousand years. The solar conversation process makes it possible to more easily extract pure metal iron from hematite and magnetite, the two prevalent iron ores. Read more.
An Experimentalist Turned Educator 
When Gerald Feldman was 8 years old, he decided he wanted to study nuclear physics. He had just read the book Atoms in the Family by Laura Fermi, wife of renowned physicist Enrico Fermi � whose work helped lead to the development of the atomic bomb � and it showed Feldman what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. "It's not like I like to blow things up," said Feldman, professor of physics and innovative educator. "But reading this book turned me on to physics. I always knew that I wanted to do this." Read more.
New Books Supriya Goswami, Adjunct Professor of English, authored her first book, Colonial India in Children's Literature. Victoria Grady, Adjunct Professor of Organizational Sciences, recently penned The Pivot Point: Success in Organizational Change. Gil Harris, Professor of English, wrote Marvellous Repossessions: The Tempest, Globalization, and the Waking Dream of Paradise. Awards and Recognition Professor of Speech and Hearing Sciences Shelly D. Brundage and Professor of Geography Joseph P. Dymond were both awarded the 2012 GW Writing in the Disciplines Teaching Award. Valentina S. Harizanov, Professor of Mathematics, was awarded a grant of $133,557 from the National Science Foundation in support of her research project, "Topics in Computable Structure Theory." Robbie Robinson, Professor of Mathematics, received a $175,000 grant from the Simons Foundation Collaboration Grants Mathematicians Program for his research on dynamical systems and aperiodic order. Angelica Spanos, BA '09, won the "Outstanding Video Journalist/One Man Band Reporter" award from the Chesapeake Associated Press Broadcasters Association for her work as a video journalist. Selected Published Works Elisabeth Anker, Assistant Professor of American Studies, published two peer-reviewed articles this spring, "Heroic Identifications" in Theory and Event and "Left Melodrama" in Contemporary Political Theory. Catherine Bailard, Assistant Professor of Media and Public Affairs, published "Testing the Internet's Effect on Democratic Satisfaction: A Multi-Methodological, Cross-National Approach" in the Journal of Information Technology & Politics.
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