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 A Guide to Arts and Sciences' News, Events and People

May 2010

Contents
A View through Her Lens

Students Honor Lee Sigelman

Center is Hidden Gem

Mallon to Lead Creative Writing

Dean Barratt's Blog Takes Off

Risk Analysis Certificate Introduced

Grad Programs Rank High

An Evening to Remember

A Blood-Sucking Economy

Solar Symposium Offers Vision

Women and Philanthropy


Columbian College Video

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Make a Difference

Kudos
Michael P. Akin, BA '03, MBA '07, and Steven Frenkil, BA '74, received GW Alumni Association Outstanding Alumni Service Awards.

Russian Language and Literature Major Alexander Bouchard was named a 2010 Russian Scholar Laureate by the American Council of Teachers of Russian.

Jeffrey Burson, PhD '06, authored the book The Rise and Fall of Theological Enlightenment.

The 2010 Oscar and Shoshana Trachtenberg Prizes were awarded to Political Science Professor Bruce Dickenson (Teaching), Statistics Professor John Lachin (Scholarship), and Human Services Professor Honey Nashman (Service).

Classical and Near Eastern Professor Elise Friedland received a fellowship award from the American Center for Oriental Research.

Doctoral candidate Felicia Gomez was awarded the American Anthropological Association's Minority Dissertation Fellowship for 2010-2011.

Ravi Kalpathy (Statistics) received the 2010 Philip Amsterdam Graduate Teaching Assistant Award. Michele Jurkovich (Political Science) and Karine Posbic (Biological Sciences) received Honorable Mentions.

American Studies PhD candidate Matt Kohlstedt was awarded a $2,500 grant from the Rockefeller Archive Center.  

Associate Professor of Hebrew Yaron Peleg received the Simon Dubnow Institute Fellowship.

Assistant Professor of American Studies Elaine Pena was selected to participate in the 2010-2012 Young Scholars in American Religion Program.

Dana Rosenstein, BA'02, (with James Feathers) won a R. E. Taylor Poster Award at the Society for American Anthropology 75th Anniversary Meeting.

Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures Young-Key Kim-Renaud and Professor of Korean Language Miok Pak were awarded a Summer 2010 Faculty Research Grant by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies.

Graduate Teaching Assistant of History Julia Sittmann received the Fonds québecois de la recherche sur la société et la culture fellowship—Quebec's answer to the U.S. Fulbright.

Steven A. Tuch, chair of the Department of Sociology, has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Poland for 2010-11.

Doctoral candidate Chongzhi Zang was awarded the $4,000 Dimitrius N. Chorafas Foundation Prize for his dissertation research on Computational and Biophysical Studies of Epigenomes.

Congratulations to all 2009-2010 Graduate Fellowship Award Recipients.

Upcoming Events
Doctoral Hooding Ceremony
May 13, 5:00 pm
Charles E. Smith Center

Columbian College Celebration
May 15, 12:00 pm and 3:30 pm
Charles E. Smith Center

"Source" Exhibit and Performance, Faculty Member Mary Coble
May 15, 2:00 pm
Conner Contemporary Art

Commencement
May 16, 9:30 am
National Mall

Fulbright Information Session for Graduate Students
May 21, 12:00 pm
Rice Hall, Conference Room 304


Alumni Events
Networking Naturally Program: How To Get the Results You Want (Webinar)
May 18, 1:00 pm

Networking Reception
May 18, 6:30 pm
Philadelphia, PA

Cezanne and American Modernism
May 22, 10:00 am
Baltimore Museum of Art

Reception at the American Association of Museums Annual Meeting
May 24, 5:30 pm
Los Angeles, CA

Networking Reception
May 26, 6:30 pm
Northern Virginia


Department Blogs and Newsletters
Anthropology Department

Chinese Program

English Department

Japanese Program

Korean Program

Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute

Physics Department

School of Media and Public Affairs

Speech and Hearing Sciences

Solar Institute

Theatre and Dance Department

A View through Her Lens
Luther Rice Fellow Forged Unique Path
Graduating senior Francesca Greggs creates her opportunities. During her years at GW, the Luther Rice Undergraduate Research Fellow developed her own major in Visual Communications, traveled and researched extensively abroad, began a graphic and website design company, and successfully completed a photo-documentary on Muslim immigration in Ireland. Read more.


A Special Tribute
Political Science Students Memorialize Professor through Service, Support
Among the hundreds of GW students crowding the track at the Lerner Health & Wellness Center to raise money for the American Cancer Society last month was a cluster of Columbian College political science graduate students running in the Relay for Life. They were there to memorialize a very special person in their lives: Professor Lee Sigelman, who died of cancer in December.

"We saw this event as a good opportunity to remember Lee and to show the department how much we, as students, appreciated him and his work," said Christina Caan, a doctoral candidate and the co-coordinator of the graduate students' effort.
Read more.


Hidden Gem on Foggy Bottom Campus
GW Speech and Center helps campus community and beyond
Walking around the Foggy Bottom campus, you may not realize that an unassuming street level entrance at the corner of 21st and G Streets NW leads to GW's state-of-the art Speech and Hearing Center. Within its 16 multifaceted treatment, training, and conference rooms, faculty and staff certified by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association have been providing a full range of speech, language, and hearing services for individuals with communication disorders for more than 64 years. Read more.


Critically Acclaimed Novelist to Lead Creative Writing Program
Thomas Mallon, who has been named director of Columbian College’s Creative Writing Program,, didn't begin writing fiction until he was in his 30s. In his youth, he lacked the confidence to invent his own stories.

“More than anything I wanted to be a novelist, but it seemed like such a daunting ambition,” said Mallon. “The odds seemed too high against it." Read more.


Dean Barratt's Blog Takes Off
Dean Barratt has moved from budding to full-blown blogger! Her posts range from highlights of antics on campus to reviews of Broadway shows in New York. Read her latest posts and catch a glimpse of life at GW from the Dean's perspective. And stay tuned, Dean Barratt's busy summer should keep her blog bustling with her latest adventures. She welcomes your comments!  Read more.




Announcing New Graduate Certificate Program
Quantitative Risk Analysis Prepares Professionals for an Uncertain World
During the last decade, we have felt the impact of natural and manmade disasters such as 9/11, Katrina, and the global economic meltdown. The new Graduate Certificate Program in Applied Quantitative Risk Analysis - housed in Columbian College's Department of Statistics - addresses these challenges and empowers participants to devise strategies and implement decision tools in crisis situations. Read more.


Top Ranking for Columbian College Graduate Programs
US News and World Report released 2011 graduate school rankings, revealing the top programs in the nation in sciences, social sciences and humanities, and other areas. Ranked in the top 15 are three programs in Columbian College's Trachtenburg School of Public Policy and Public Administration: Public Affairs, Public Management Administration, and Public Finance and Budgeting. In addition, Public Policy Analysis, Political Science, Speech and Hearing Pathology, and Statistics ranked in the top 50. Among the programs in the top 100 were Biological Sciences, Computer Science, English, History,  Math, Physics, and Psychology. Read more.


For Arabic Language Students, an Evening to Remember
Forty students from Columbian College’s Arabic Language Program recently spent a very special evening at the Embassy of Bahrain as guests of Ambassador Houda Ezra Ebrahim Nonoo. Spearheaded by Arabic Instructor Rana Casteel, the event was part of the program’s ongoing efforts to immerse students not only in a country’s language but also in the culture, politics, and socio-economic structure of the region.
 
“We’ve made an effort to take advantage of our location in the nation’s capitol and establishing a mutually beneficial dialogue with the diplomatic community,” said Mohssen Esseesy, coordinator of the Arabic Program and assistant professor of Arabic and International Affairs. “We’re brought the culture into the classroom to foster a better understanding of the language.”  Read more.


A Blood-Sucking Economy
Studying Emergent Markets – and Dracula
When Elizabeth Davis, director of Columbian College's Organizational Sciences Program, told her comparative management students their course would expose them to other cultures, she was not exaggerating.

This spring, Davis and her students spent 10 days in Romania and Albania studying Eastern European emerging democracies in a program sponsored by the Office for Study Abroad. The class had a private tour of the Romanian Parliament and visited a variety of sites, including Dracula’s castle in Transylvania, the University of Tirana, the mobile phone company Vodafone Albania and the Romanian Banking Institute.
Read more.


Solar Symposium Offers Vision for the Future
Last month's GW Solar Institute Symposium offered a fascinating look at key issues surrounding the development of solar energy through the eyes of top experts in the field. Several of the panel participants were GW alumni, including Debra Jacobson, JD '77, co-director of GW's Solar Institute; John Lushetsky, MBA '94, manager of the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Energy Technology Program, and Jerry Bloom; BA '74, MA '76, moderator of the Solar Vision panel. Read more.


Forum Spotlights Women Philanthropists
On April 28, GW hosted the second annual Women and Philanthropy Forum, which brought together prominent women philanthropists to discuss the scope and impact of women's wealth, and to highlight the social and economic change driven by women's philanthropy. Among the Columbian College alumnae speaking at the event were Ellen Zane, BA '73, president & CEO of the Tufts Medical Center and the Floating Hospital for Children, and Steffanie Burgevin, BA '68, senior vice president–investment officer with Wells Fargo Advisors.
Read more.


 

 

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