H&SS eNews, June 2008

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.

For more H&SS news, go to our Web site, http://www.hss.cmu.edu/. For other Carnegie Mellon news, be sure to check out http://www.cmu.edu and http://www.cmu.edu/news/blog/.

This edition of the eNews was edited and compiled by Kelli McElhinny. You can email Kelli at kellim@andrew.cmu.edu.

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

Alumni News

-- Two recent graduates have been named Fulbright Scholars. Jonathan Minard, who graduated with a bachelor’s in humanities and arts in 2007, will study in Mongolia, while 2008 grad Rashi Vankataraman, who double majored in biology and philosophy, will study in Indonesia.

-- A pair of 2008 graduates, Caitlin Corrigan (B.A., Political Science, International Relations and German) and Vanessa VanSickle (B.A., German and Music Performance) received German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarships. DAAD is the German national agency for the support of international academic cooperation. It represents the German higher education system abroad, promotes Germany as an academic and research destination, and helps build ties between institutions around the world.

-- Abiola Fasehun, who graduated in May with a degree in ethics, history and public policy and an additional major of professional writing, was awarded the Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker Scholarship to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. The award is one of 18 scholarships for artists and writers of racial and ethnic minorities, and it funds tuition and housing for the center’s summer program.

-- Colt Foutz (B.A., Creative Writing, 2000) is preparing to tour this summer in support of his first book. Building the Green Machine, published by Savas Beatie, of El Dorado Hills, Calif., will be released in stores in hardcover and paperback on July 1. The book tells the story of how a ragtag bunch of Boy Scouts from Chicago’s Logan Square morphed into the greatest drum and bugle corps in the world, winners of twenty national and world championships. Colt began the project while working as a reporter and columnist for the Naperville Sun. He is currently a graduate student in the M.F.A./M.A. fiction writing/creative writing program at Columbia College Chicago. Visit www.cavaliersbook.com for details.

-- Renee (Cardelli) Contumelio (B.A., Professional Writing, 1997) and her husband, Lou, welcomed their daughter, Ella Marie, into the world on March 20.

--Ryan Rasmussen (B.A. Professional Writing and Literary & Cultural Studies, 1994) was recently promoted to Marketing Manager at USERS Incorporated, a financial services software firm. Shortly thereafter he placed 12th overall in the Credit Union Cherry Blossom 5K in Washington, though a causal relationship between the two events has not been confirmed. A screenwriter, Ryan chronicles his journeys at http://holyembersofdreams.blogspot.com

Student News

-- Elizabeth Barsotti, a senior bachelor of humanities and arts candidate with a concentration in creative writing, has been selected to be the assistant poetry teacher at the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts this summer.

-- Natalie Boatner, a junior modern languages major, has received a Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship to study in Russia. The Gilman Scholarship is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and it offers grants for U.S. citizen undergraduate students of limited financial means to pursue academic studies abroad.

-- Sophomore Tiffany Kim, a business administration and modern languages double major, has received a Freeman-Asia Scholarship. The Institute of International Education, based in New York City, sponsors the Freeman-Asia Scholarships to increase the number of U.S. undergraduates who study abroad in East and Southeast Asia.

-- Joseph Remolona, a junior who is minoring in creative writing, and junior creative writing major Sally Mao have been accepted at Kundiman, the Asian American Poetry Retreat. June 25 - 29, 2008 University of Virginia, Charlottesville For more information: http://www.kundiman.org/%5BCLB%5D_Brightside/1.Source/retreat.html

-- On May 2, 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/2008/080529_enghonors.html

College/Faculty News

--The Department of Philosophy’s Wilfried Sieg was recently named as the inaugural Patrick Suppes Professor of Philosophy. Sieg, who has been a member of Carnegie Mellon’s faculty since the department’s founding in 1985 and served as its head from 1994 to 2005, has been instrumental in building its reputation as a leader in the philosophy of mathematics and science as well as related fields, such as mathematical logic and decision theory. The professorship's funder, Patrick Suppes, is the Lucie Stern Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Stanford University, where he was director of the Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences. He has a longstanding relationship with Sieg, who worked at the Institute during his final two years of graduate school before earning his doctorate in philosophy, mathematical logic and foundations of mathematics.

For more information: http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2008/May/may19_suppesprofessor.shtml

In Other H&SS News...

Center for Arts in Society

-- Judith Schachter, professor of anthropology and history in the Department of History, and Stephen Brockmann, professor of German in the Modern Languages Department, are co-editors of “(Im)permanence: Cultures In/Out of Time,” which was recently published by The Center for Arts in Society (CAS) and will be available through the Penn State University Press. The volume examines permanence and impermanence in cultural and artistic practices in the West and elsewhere, and it is a collection of presentations and papers from the first conference presented by CAS, a joint program of the College of Fine Arts and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Other Carnegie Mellon contributors include College of Fine Arts faculty members Lowry Burgess and Franco Sciannameo and H&SS faculty members Xiaofei Kang and Donald Sutton.

For more information: http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-9797664-0-4.html

English Department

-- Department Head David Kaufer, Business Manager Margaret Kinsky and Necia Werner, a doctoral student in rhetoric, recently returned from Mysore, India, where they conducted a three-week training course in technical communication for employees of Infosys, a technology consulting firm. Kaufer taught the course’s writing module, while Andreea Ritivoi, associate professor of English and Rhetoric, traveled to India for one of the weeks to provide instruction on intercultural and oral communications. Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Communication Design Suguru Ishizaki also joined the team for a few days to teach the visual design component, and Karen Schnakenberg, teaching professor of rhetoric and writing, taught the instructional design module via videoconference. This was the first university-based group invited to provide communications instruction to Infosys employees.

-- Professor of Rhetoric and Linguistics Barbara Johnstone recently discussed “Pittsburghese” in a segment on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered show.

To listen to the segment, visit http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90805117

Modern Languages Department

-- G. Richard Tucker, the Paul Mellon University Professor of Applied Linguistics will serve as interim dean of student affairs until a successor is named for Jennifer Church, the current dean, who is resigning her position effective July 31 due to a family relocation.

Department of Psychology

-- Marcel Just, the D.O. Hebb Professor of Psychology, is the co-author of an article titled “Predicting Human Brain Activity Associated with the Meanings of Nouns” that was published in the May 30 issue of Science. The article, co-written with Tom Mitchell, head of the School of Computer Science’s Machine Learning Department, details their research that has led to the first computational model that can predict the unique brain activation patterns associated with names for things that people can see, hear, feel, taste or smell.

For more information: http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2008/May/may29_brainmeaning.shtml

Dr. Just also gave a talk titled “Functional and Anatomical Cortical Underconnectivity in Autism” at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, which was held in April.

-- The kindergarten class from the Children’s School raised more than $2,500 in their trike-a-thon for Ally’s Angels. The organization, named for four-year-old multiple-organ recipient Ally Heintz, raises funds for the Gift of Life Donor Program, a non-profit agency serving the eastern half of Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and Delaware that recovers and distributes organs and tissues used in life-saving and life-enhancing transplants. Ally’s sister, Ashley, was a kindergarten student this year at the Children’s School. Also in Children’s School news, the 22 students from the kindergarten class, along with their families, celebrated their graduation May 22 with a picnic in Schenley Park.

Department of Social and Decision Sciences

-- George Loewenstein, the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Economics and Psychology, has been named as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS). The Academy explores complex and emerging problems through multidisciplinary research, and its current membership includes some 200 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners. Other members of the 2008 class of fellows include U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, filmmakers Ethan and Joel Coen and blues guitarist B.B. King. Loewenstein is one of 10 Carnegie Mellon faculty members who are AAAS fellows, including Psychology professors John Anderson and Robyn Dawes (who sits in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences); Philosophy Professor Wilfried Sieg; Statistics Professor Stephen Fienberg; and Philosophy and Statistics Professor Teddy Seidenfeld.

For more information: http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2008/May/may5_loewenstein.shtml

Department of Statistics

-- The Statistical Society of Canada named Maurice Falk University Professor of Statistics and Social Science Stephen Fienberg the first recipient of its Lise Manchester Award. This biennial award commemorates the late Canadian statistician Manchester’s abiding interest in making use of statistical methods to provide insights into matters of relevance to society at large. Fienberg, a Toronto native, received the award for his 2006 paper "Privacy and Confidentiality in an e-Commerce World: Data Mining, Data Warehousing, Matching and Disclosure Limitation" published in the journal Statistical Science.

For more information: http://www.ssc.ca/main/about/awards/awards2008_e.html#manchester

Events

-- The English Department is hosting the 2008 Communication Symposium June 9-11. This year’s theme is “Developing Disciplinary Literacy,” and the symposium will explore how various faculty in computer science, information systems, philosophy, and business are integrating writing and communication components into courses across the Carnegie Mellon curriculum in both Pittsburgh and Qatar. The symposium highlights several CMU faculty presenters, as well as presentations by the keynote speaker Fredericka Stoller, professor of applied linguistics, Northern Arizona University, and featured speakers Chris Anson, who is University Distinguished Professor of English and Director of the Campus Writing and Speaking Program at North Carolina State University, and Richard E. Young, Emeritus Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature, Carnegie Mellon. For more information, please contact Symposium Coordinator Danielle Zawodny Wetzel at dfz@andrew.cmu.edu or 8-4468.

To view the schedule, visit http://english.cmu.edu/research/symposium/index.html.

--For a complete list of upcoming alumni events, go to http://alumni2.tepper.cmu.edu/cmuEvents/.

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