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

May 2011

Contents
What's for Lunch?

Culture's Impact on International Organizations

New Study Reveals Autism's Global Prevalence

Spring DanceWorks Wows

The Tahir Dialogues

Post Graduation Plans? Research in Argentina

Solar Symposium Addresses Energy's Role

A Passion for Fish

Making it in Music

Prime Movers Media Featured at Correspondents' Dinner

Faculty Excellence Honored

New Books

Awards and Recognition

Columbian College Video

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Upcoming Events
Columbian College Celebration
May 14, 12:00 pm & 3:30 pm
Smith Center

GW Commencement
May 15, 9:30 am
National Mall

OIRA 30th Anniversary Conference: Executive Oversight of Administrative Discretion
May 20, 8:30 am
Jack Morton Auditorium

Alumni Events
Santiago Alumni-Student Dinner with Professor Dana Tai Soon Burgess
May 19, 7:00 pm
Santiago de Chile

GW Museum Programs Alumni Reception at AAM
May 24, 5:30 pm
Hilton Americas-Houston, Texas

Annual Capitol Hill Alumni Reception
May 24, 6:00 pm
U.S. Capitol Visitors Center

Dinner with GW Alumni Ambassadors Leslie and Kathryn Megyeri and Professor Steven Schooner
May 25, 7:30 pm
Budapest, Hungary

GW Art Therapy Program 40th Anniversary Celebration
July 8, 6:00 pm
Art Therapy Center, Alexandria, VA

Alumni Only Career Fair
June 9, 11:00 am
Smith Center

Rome Alumni-Student Dinner with Professors Catherine Anderson and Nadia Volchansky
July 21, 7:00 pm
Roma, Italy

From the Departments
Academy for Classical Acting

Africana Studies

Anthropology

Art Therapy

Chinese

English

Judaic Studies

Media and Public Affairs

Medieval and Early Modern Studies

Museum Studies

Philosophy

Physics

Political Science

Professional Psychology

Public Policy and Public Administration

Regulatory Studies

Romance, German, and Slavic Languages and Literature

Science and Engineering Complex

Solar Institute

Speech and Hearing Sciences

Statistics

Theatre and Dance

University Writing

What's for Lunch? Students Combine Sociology and Service in Dean's Seminar
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, childhood obesity has tripled in the last 30 years. This staggering statistic has thrust school lunches and nutrition into the spotlight and inspired programs like First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" initiative. At Columbian College, Associate Professor of Sociology Ivy Ken served up a new Dean's Seminar designed to immerse students in the sociological aspects of the epidemic and take them to the frontline, i.e., the public school lunch room. Read more.


Exploring Culture
Though countless students have made weekend trips to IKEA in the suburbs, not many have traveled to the Swedish home furnishing store in Austria and the Czech Republic. Visiting IKEA in multiple countries was just one aspect of the Organizational Sciences special topic course "Leadership and Culture" offered this spring. Columbian College undergraduate students spent a week touring multinational organizations and historical sites in Vienna, Prague, and Bucharest and comparing them to how the same organizations operate in the United States. Read more.


New Study Reveals Autism's Global Prevalence
Autism may be more common worldwide than previously thought, according to a new study released by Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs Richard Grinker and researchers from Yale University. Funded by Autism Speaks and the Columbian College's Institute for Ethnographic Research, the study revealed that 2.6 percent of children ages 7 to 12 years in a South Korean community have autism, equivalent to 1 in 38 children. "The study suggests that autism may be more common than previously thought," said Grinker, author of Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism. "This research powerfully demonstrates that the methods one uses to study prevalence will profoundly influence the estimate." Read more.


Spring DanceWorks Wows
Dancers, choreographers, lighting designers, musicians, videographers, costume designers-more than 60 students employing their various artistic talents recently helped bring Spring 2011 DanceWorks to life on the stage. The production's three-night run featured pieces by seven student choreographers as well as guest artist/choreographer Francisca Morand and eight dancers from the University of Chile. The Chilean contingent was brought here through Columbian College's Dean's Scholars in Globalization program. Read more.


The Tahir Dialogues: Professors Travel to Egypt in Wake of Mubarak's Overthrow
Professors Bill Adams and Sean Aday just returned from an enlightening trip to Cairo to participate in the "Tahir Dialogues" and conduct workshops on news coverage and the pending free elections in Egypt. "I was not sure what to expect but hoped we could make a positive contribution," said Adams, professor of public policy and public administration. "People were saying things they would have been sent to jail for saying a few months earlier. The trip surpassed our expectations and went very well." Read more.


Post Graduation Plans? Research in Argentina
Among those graduating this year is School of Media and Public Affairs graduate student Hadas Gold, who will soon be packing her bags for Argentina to gain hands-on international journalism experience as the winner of the competitive SMPA-Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Student Fellowship. Gold's project will take her to Buenos Aires to investigate the lives of the cartoneros ("cardboard pickers") who make a living by collecting and selling recyclables. Their way of life is being threatened by a new government-run recycling program, an ironic and unintended consequence of the city's attempt to protect the environment. Read more.


Solar Symposium Addresses Energy's Role
The third annual GW Solar Institute Symposium brought together key solar industry leaders, experts, and influential decision-makers to examine the role of solar energy within the framework of the clean energy challenge issued by President Obama in his 2011 State of the Union address. The full-day event began with a keynote address from Minh Le, chief engineer for the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Program, on the challenge and the department's $1 per watt SunShot Initiative. Top solar energy companies, including First Solar, SunPower, Solar Reserve and SunEdison, commented on the initiative's feasibility and their corresponding plans. Other sessions discussed weather-related variability and transmission challenges. A panel on private sector use of solar featured Andrew Murphy, executive vice president of NRG Energy, whose planned 250 MW California solar project received a $1.187 billion loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. Read more.


A Passion for Fish
Guillermo Orti's passion for fish-in particular the evolution of the piranha and its myriad species-has led him to explore remote regions of the world, including the Brazilian Amazon. Highlights of his trip into the rain forest last summer aired May 3 on the National Geographic Channel. The special, inspired by a recent fossil discovery in Argentina, focused on the megapiranha, a creature that existed millions of years ago. "Researchers found a piece of jaw bone with three teeth that was an intermediate form between piranhas and pacus, a related South American fish," said Orti, a Lous Weintraub associate professor of biology. "From the size of the bone, researchers estimate the fish was four or five feet long, more than twice as long as [large] piranhas today." Read more.


Making it in Music
To succeed in the music industry, Neil Portnow, a 1971 Speech Communication graduate, said individuals need to be relentless, persistent, patient, unwavering and self-motivated. "If at the end of the day this is what you've got to do, keep going and don't look back." This was just one piece of advice Portnow, president and CEO of the Recording Academy-the organization that hosts the Grammy Awards-offered during the "How Do I Become a Music Industry Mogul" event, part of a series co-sponsored by the GW Alumni Association, Career Center, and the Class Council. Read more.


Prime Movers Media Featured at Correspondents' Dinner
The School of Media and Public Affairs' Prime Movers Media program was profiled during the recent White House Correspondents' Association Annual Dinner. A video about the program was shown during the dinner, which was attended by President Obama and many other government and Hollywood luminaries. Prime Movers Media is a teaching and mentoring program that provides urban high school students and teachers, veteran journalists, and college interns the opportunity to work together  to hone journalism skills. Read more.


Faculty Excellence Honored
Martha Finnemore, professor of political science and international affairs, and GW President Steven Knapp  have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences-one of the nation's most prestigious honorary societies and a leading center for independent policy research. They are two of 212 new members recognized for their achievements in the fields of science, scholarship, business, public affairs and the arts. Read more.

In addition, Eric Cline, associate professor classics and anthropology, and Teresa Murphy, associate professor of American studies, were among those honored with Oscar and Shoshanna Trachtenberg Faculty Prizes-endowed by former GW President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg in memory of his parents' great respect for higher education. Cline received the Trachtenberg prize for scholarship and Murphy received the prize for university service. Read more.


New Books
Henry Hale, associate professor of political science and international affairs, authored "Hybrid Regimes: When Democracy and Autocracy Mix" in Dynamics of Democratization: Dictatorship, Development, and Diffusion, edited by Nathan Brown, professor of political science and international affairs.

Assistant Professor of History Christopher Klemek's first book, The Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal: Postwar Urbanism from New York to Berlin will be published this month.

Associate Professor of Media and Public Affairs Silvio Waisbord co-edited a new Spanish-language book called Comunicación y Salud en Argentina (Communication and Health in Argentina).

Chair of the Department of Religion Dewey D. Wallace, Jr., authored Shapers of English Calvinism, 1660-1714: Variety, Persistence, and Transformation, printed by the Oxford University Press.


Awards and Recognition
Five graduating seniors from Columbian College are among those selected to be next year's Presidential Administrative Fellows-student leaders who receive free graduate school tuition in exchange for working for the University. The 22nd class of fellows includes Elizabeth Barnett, Paul BibaJessi MannEric Thibault, and Taylor Tibbetts.

Elizabeth Chacko, professor of geography, received a Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Academic Fellowship in Washington, D.C.

Heather Charron, MFS '11, is the first recipient of the Lindsey Marie Ferris Crime Scene Investigation Prize by the Department of Forensic Sciences. She was recognized for outstanding academic achievement and exceptionally high-quality research. After graduation, Charron will work at the Maryland State Crime Lab as a Latent Print Examiner trainee.

Eric Cline
, chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and his research are featured in the Popular Archaeology article, "Archaeologists Uncover Evidence of a Minoan Presence among Ancient Canaanites."
 
Professor of Biology Robert Donaldson tied for second place in the 2011 NASA District of Columbia Space Grant Consortium Outstanding STEM Faculty Award.
 
GW Geography students Coline Reisser, Bonnie Epstien, Trevor Tisler, and Victoria Roman, representing the Mid-Atlantic region, came in second place at the World Geography Bowl Competition at the Association of American Geographers annual meeting.

Hadass Gerson, who graduated in 2007 with a BA in Sociology and minor in Fine Arts, opened a gallery in San Francisco that was featured in Dwell Magazine

Michelle Jurkovich, a graduate student in political science, received an American Consortium on European Union Studies (ACES) Research Grant for her project "Food as a Right: The Construction and Evolution of Hunger as a Global Problem."

Inwook Kim, a graduate student in political science, received a Policy Research Grant for Young Scholars by the Korean Ministry of Unification to study the political orientation and influence of think-tanks in D.C. regarding Korean peninsula issues.

Recent alumnus Amanda Lindner, BA '10, was chosen as the 2010 New York State Press Association's "Rookie Reporter of the Year."

Mitch Lowenthal, BA '10, advocated with SustainUS for sustainable solutions at the 19th U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development.

Patrick McDonough, MFA '10, has a new art show "Opening Act" at Civilian Art Projects in Washington, D.C. through May 28. Read the review in the Washington Post.

Assistant Professor of Media and Public Affairs Jason Osder received the Spark A Life Award at the 26th annual GW Excellence in Student Life Awards for his service as an inspiring faculty member.

American Studies Professor Suleiman Osman's new book The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn was one of four books featured in the April 25 issue of The New Yorker.

Gail Paster, former English professor and outgoing director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, was named Honorary Commander of the British Empire and the Folger has named its reading room after her.

Tim Quinn, a Chinese minor, and Caleb Dependahl, a Chinese major, placed first and second, respectively, in the 10th Annual Chinese Bridge Speech Competition.

Maria Rost Rublee, PhD '04, received the Alexander George Book Award by the International Society for Political Psychology for her book Nonproliferation Norms: Why States Choose Nuclear Restraint.

Alana Van Antwerp, graduate student in political science, received a 2011 National Security Education Program (NSEP) David L. Boren Fellowship.
 
Rebecca Wilson, BA '08, launched Julep magazine.


 

 

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