H&SS eNews, June 2007

Greetings from H&SS.

The H&SS eNews is a monthly electronic publication of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. The eNews is compiled and edited by Kelli McElhinny, director of media relations for H&SS. She can be reached at 412-268-6094 or kellim@andrew.cmu.edu. Contact Kelli to submit news about yourself and your fellow alumni, and to sign up for our newsletters.

For past eNews publications, please visit the H&SS eNews archive.

For news about the entire university, be sure to check out the university’s home page or the Carnegie Mellon Today website.

We apologize if this is a particularly lengthy eNews. It was a good spring.

Student News

--Brittany McCandless, a senior majoring in professional writing and creative writing, received a $1,500 scholarship from the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh. She was an academic intern in the spring at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. This summer, she will be doing an internship at ABC World News in New York City, funded in part through a Marion Mulligan Sutton Internship award. Sutton is a 1965 graduate of Margaret Morrison Carnegie College.

-- On May 4, the English Department held its annual Adamson Awards to honor student writers. A list of winners can be found at http://www.hss.cmu.edu/pressreleases/2007/070518_adamson.html

College/Faculty News

-- John Anderson, the Richard King Mellon Professor of Psychology and Computer Science, has been elected to the American Philosophical Society.

--Jim Daniels, the Thomas Stockham Baker Professor of English, won the Blue Lynx Prize for poetry from Eastern Washington University for his poetry collection, “Revolt of the Crash-Test Dummies.

--PeaceMaker, a video game simulation created by Impact Games, a spin-off of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center, was featured in an April 23 report on the Al Jazeera television network. The segment was titled “Peace between Israel and Palestine… in the computer world,” and showcased Laurie Eisenberg, an associate teaching professor of history. Eisenberg and her colleague Ben Reilly used the game in their course “U.S.-Arab Encounters”, which was taught jointly in Pittsburgh and at Carnegie Mellon Qatar. The PeaceMaker game challenges players to find solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The segment can be viewed, in Arabic, on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34RBplTHnLQ.  

--A study published by Brooke Feeney, an associate professor of psychology, has earned her first prize at the inaugural Mind Gym Academic Awards in London. Feeney is a social psychologist whose research focuses on relationships among couples. She received the award based on a paper that appeared in February in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. This paper consisted of two studies which revealed that people can cultivate a greater sense of independence in their relationship partners by providing support to the partner--and accepting their dependence--when needed. Over time, the partner grows more independent and willing to take healthy risks. The award included a 6,000 pound prize, which is about $12,000. It is billed as the largest award for applied psychology in Europe. For more information go to http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/May/may15_feeney.shtml.

--Statistics Professor Stephen Fienberg and Philosophy Professor Wilfried Sieg have been named fellows of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, joining seven other Carnegie Mellon professors who have been elected to the august organization. Fienberg, the Maurice Falk University Professor of Statistics and Social Science, has been on the Carnegie Mellon faculty since 1980. He previously served as head of the Statistics Department and dean of H&SS. Sieg, who has been at Carnegie Mellon since 1985, was head of the Philosophy Department from 1994 to 2005. For more information, go to http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/May/may14_fienbergsieg.shtml.

--George Loewenstein, the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Economics and Psychology, lectured recently to a packed house at the Tinbergen Institute in the Netherlands. Loewenstein taught a mini-course on behavioral economics from May 23-25. All 49 slots for the lecture were taken, and 78 students had applied for the course.

--Kenya C. Dworkin y Méndez, an associate professor of Hispanic studies, is the co-editor of “Spanish and Empire”, a collection of essays that offers an interdisciplinary critique of the place of Spanish in the rise of the Spanish empire and in the independence movements of colonial Spanish America. The book also examines the place of English and Spanish in the changing demographic composition of the United States. The book was co-edited by Colombian sociolinguist Nelsy Echávez-Solano. The late Spanish linguist Juan R. Lodares, and Clare Mar-Molinero, Ilán Stavans, John Lipski, and Edmundo Paz-Soldán are among the contributors. “Spanish and Empire” is volume 34 of the prestigious Hispanic Issues series at the University of Minnesota Press.

--Chris Neuwirth, professor of English and human-computer interaction, received the 2007 Computer and Composition Distinguished Book Award for “Writing and Digital Media”, which she co-edited. Two English Department faculty—David Kaufer and Suguru Ishizaki—and a member of the Statistics Department, Pantelis Vlachos, co-authored a chapter in the book, titled “Mining Textual Knowledge for Writing Education and Research: The DocuScope Project.”

--On June 6, Kiron Skinner, director of the International Relations Program, will be in New York City to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Glamour Magazine’s Top 10 College Women Competition. In 1981, at the age of 19, Skinner won the competition as a senior at Spellman College in Atlanta. The honor included a trip to New York City, makeovers, an appearance on NBC’s “The Today Show” and a meeting with U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. Skinner was the first woman from a historically black college to make Glamour’s list of Top 10 College Women. Other past winners include Martha Stewart.  

--John Soluri, an associate professor of history, and Therese Tardio, a lecturer in Spanish, have received the Jefferson Award for Public Service from Carnegie Mellon. Soluri and Tardio received the award for their volunteer service to Building New Hope, a Pittsburgh organization that supports education and grassroots development projects in Central America. Soluri and Tardio are on the organization’s board of directors, and they work to promote awareness of the organization’s projects throughout the Pittsburgh community. The Jefferson Awards are given at the national and local level. Soluri and Tardio will receive their awards June 18-19 in Washington, D.C. For more information about Building New Hope, go to http://www.buildingnewhope.org/.

--John Soluri won the George Perkins Marsh Prize for Best Book in Environmental History for "Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States.” For more about the book go to http://www.cmu.edu/cmnews/extra/060201_banana.html.

-- Joe Trotter, the Mellon Professor of History, received a Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award from his alma mater, Carthage College, on May 25, during Carthage’s commencement weekend. Trotter, head of the History Department, earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Carthage in 1969. The college is located in Wisconsin.

-- Valerie Ventura, an associate research professor in the Statistics Department—along with co-authors Angelo Canty, Anthony Davison and David Hinkley—have been awarded the 2006 Canadian Journal of Statistics Award for their paper, "Bootstrap Diagnostics and Remedies." The prize will be officially presented during the 35th Annual Meeting of the Statistical Society of Canada at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John's on June 10-13.

--Carnegie Mellon and the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts have received a four-year, $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to continue development of “ASSISTment”, a powerful computerized tool designed to help middle school students master mathematical skills. ASSISTment is an intelligent tutoring system designed to quickly predict a student’s score on a standardized test, provide feedback to teachers about how they can adapt their lessons to address gaps in students’ knowledge and provide individualized tutoring to suit each student’s needs. The system has been adopted for use in all eighth-grade math classes in the Worcester, Mass., Public Schools. For more information go to http://www.wpi.edu/News/Releases/20067/doeassistmentgrant.html.

--H&SS has created a college research office to provide administrative and financial oversight for sponsored research activities in its departments. The research office, which is set to launch July 2, will report directly to the H&SS Dean’s Office and will provide expertise to the departments for the day-to-day administration of research awards. Leslie Levine, currently the business manager for the Statistics Department, will become the director of the research office.

--Starting in the fall, the English Department will begin offering a master’s of letters (M. Litt) degree in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies in partnership with Strathclyde University in Glasgow, Scotland. The program will be open to students who are enrolled in the English Department’s master’s program in literary and cultural studies. In addition to completing course requirements at Carnegie Mellon, the M. Litt students will spend a semester at Strathclyde University. Upon completion of the program, students will have earned both an M.A. and an M. Litt degree from Carnegie Mellon and a certificate in Renaissance Studies from Strathclyde University.

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