Dean of the College Office

Q: What inauguration took place in the year 1878, which eventually set time for over 12,000 miles of railroad across the Northwest?

As part of our continuing Mid-East Connections series, Shahzad Bashir, Associate Professor of Religion, will give a talk on Monday, May 12, 7:30-8:30 p.m. in the Gould Library Athenaeum. The title of his talk is, "Between God's Image and Satan's Workshop: The Human Body in Islamic Thought and Practice."

Jackie Lauer-Glebov, Associate Director of Institutional Research and Coordinator of Educational Assessment, will be leaving Carleton after May 16 to prepare to become the Director of Assessment at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, starting this fall. This is an exciting and excellent career opportunity for Jackie, and Carleton’s loss will be UNC-Wilmington’s gain.

• The Program on Intergroup Relations: Lessons from a Social Justice Education Program, Thursday, May 8, at noon in Alumni Guest House meeting room

• Visualizing the Victorian Novel, Thursday, May 15, at noon in Gould Library Athenaeum

• Curricular Design Issues, Thursday, May 22, at noon in Alumni Guest House meeting room

Alan Rubenstein, a Senior Consultant to the President's Council on Bioethics, will discuss "Human Dignity and Bioethics in Three Keys" on Wednesday, May 14 at 7:30 p.m. in the Library Athenaeum. Rubenstein researches issues in U.S. domestic policy related to biotechnology and social changes in the practice of medicine. He is the principal author of the Council's forthcoming report to the U.S. President and Congress regarding the legal determination of death. Continue reading for further information.

Effective June 15^th, 2008, Carleton’s dial-in modem pool will be retiring. Newer technologies have made this the right time for a transition. In the past Carleton had hundreds of faculty and staff, and students connecting to campus via the campus modem pool. At this point in history, home Internet access via services such as Charter, Desktop Media, AOL, Jaguar, and Earthlink are widely available. As a result, the number of people using the modem pool has dwindled. In October 2006 only 22 people were using it at all. This January the number was down to 11. It’s time for a retirement party.......

Dear Carleton Colleagues: Carleton faculty and staff may have noticed that the Business Office has “stepped up” its accounting policy and procedure compliance initiatives in recent months, especially in regard to accounting for expenses. These initiatives are driven by an external environment that is very different than it was ten years ago or even three years ago. Higher education is falling under closer scrutiny from Congress; the Internal Revenue Service (IRS); Department of Justice (ADA); Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other regulatory bodies.

Have we been over estimating them? A sociology professor at Northwestern University says her research shows that the claim that today's students are "Digital Natives" is far from true. Read about the article and our thoughts about it on the Academic Technologies Blog. Please comment, we'd love to hear your thoughts!

Associate Professor of Chemistry, presented a seminar in the School of Earth and the Environment at the University of Leeds, UK and a keynote address for the 2nd European Online Aerosol Mass Spectrometry Workshop, also held at the University of Leeds, in April.

Rae Schupack Nathan Professor of Dance and the Performing Arts, was the featured speaker/performer on Undine Smith Moore Sunday at the First United Methodist Church, Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Her talk was titled, "The Composer's Daughter: Legacy." In addition, Professor Easter was the Black History Month speaker/performer for the Veteran's Administration at Fort Snelling in February, where she was honored with a Certificate of Appreciation.

William H. Laird Professor of Classics, Anthropology, and the Liberal Arts, was recently a speaker in a panel discussion on "The Who, What, Why and How of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC)" sponsored by The International Foundation for Art Research, New York.

Laird Bell Professor of History, Emerita, whose article "Dalit Literature" begun ten years ago, will appear in Cambridge University's volume on "Language in South Asia". Also, her article on "Understanding Dr. Ambedkar" will appear in the Religion Compass, an internet encyclopedia.

Associate Professor of Chemistry, accompanied five students: David Anderson, Karen Borchert, Nakita Natala, Lucas Riley, and Yirong Zhu to the annual meeting of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in San Diego to present a poster describing their work on unusual mitochondrial aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases. The same weekend, two other students, Julie Brown and Maraia Ener, presented their research in the Chihade lab at the American Chemical Society's national meeting in New Orleans.

The Carleton College Football team received a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition for their volunteer work this past fall in Rushford, MN for clean-up following major flooding in the area. Congressman John Kline presented the team, represented by coach Kurt Ramler and student James Colbenson (who is from Rushford) with an award on April 21st.

Director of the Writing Program, gave invited talks and faculty workshops on writing assessment during the month of March at Bard, Bates, and Whitman Colleges.

Visiting Assistant Professor of French, recently attended the 20th Quebec Studies Symposium organized by SUNY-Plattsburgh on "Montreal Identities: Literature, Ethnicity and Culture" in Montreal, Quebec from April 4-6, 2008. She was invited to participate with other Quebec specialists from the US and Canada. Later that month, Professor Cox presented a paper entitled "Manifesting Marginality in the Visual Space of the Graphic Novel in Satrapi's Persepolis" at the recent Women In French conference in Dallas, Texas.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy, was recently named a resident fellow of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science. On March 7, he gave an invited lecture “Quantum State Collapse Along a Light Cone: History and Objections” in the History and Philosophy of Science colloquium series at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. And, on March 27, he presented an invited talk on “Quantum Weirdness” to students in a philosophy of science course at Macalester College.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Linguistics, was in Ann Arbor recently to receive the Rackham Distinguished Dissertation Award at the graduate school commencement. She in one of only 8 recipients of this award, out of over 700 Ph.D.s awarded by the University of Michigan this year.

Class of 1941 Professor of Art and the Liberal Arts, Emeritus, exhibited his work at the Smithsonian Craft Show in Washington recently. One of Tim’s silver teakettles, “Kitano Fantasy” was selected for the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s Renrick Gallery. The teapot was recently published in 500 Metal Vessels, Contemporary Explorations of Containment, published by Lark Books.

Ann Zawistoski, Science Librarian; Kristin Partlo, Reference & Instruction Librarian for Social Sciences; Paula Lackie, Academic Technologist, and Doug Foxgrover, Academic Technologist & Curator of College Weather Database presented a workshop at the NITLE Summit in early April. The title of their talk was "Start Seeing Numbers". Using laptops, webcams and the Internet, they gave the talk to audiences in San Francisco, St. Paul and Norton, MA, concurrently, using live video and audio, an interactive virtual whiteboard and a slide presentation.

Professor of Economics, presented a paper entitled "The Panic of 1857: Subprime Mortgage Crisis of Its Day?" at the U.S. Capitol Historical Society Colloquium "Congress and the Crisis of the 1850s".

Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science, recently organized and chaired a panel on "International Rivers and International Relations" at the 49th Annual Convention of International Studies Association in San Francisco on March 26-29. He also presented a paper titled “Do Institutions Match Development Issues in the Mekong?” at the convention.

The following students, and their faculty research mentors, from the Chemistry Department presented research posters at the American Chemical Society National Meeting in New Orleans in early April: Julie Brown and Maraia Ener, (Joe Chihade); Ryan Martinez, Kit Zall and Matt Cich (Steve Drew); Nick Brown (Deborah Gross); and Felix Amankona-Diawuo and David Selassie (Dani Kohen).

Performance Activities Coordinator in Music and Adjunct Instructor in Chinese Musical Instruments, has been awarded a 2008 McKnight Artist Fellowship for Performing Musicians. Gao Hong is the only musician in any genre to win three McKnight Artist Fellowships for Performing Musicians.

Carleton's Interdisciplinary Science & Math Initiative (CISMI) is delighted to announce the recipients of curriculum development grants for summer 2008. These projects are funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and contribute to making science-rich courses at Carleton more inquiry-based and interdisciplinary in nature:

• Laura Chihara, Mathematics, to develop a course on spatial statistics.
• Fernán Jaramillo, Biology, for a 5-week exploratory project to adopt the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as one of the models used in his teaching and research.
• Stephen Mohring, Art & Art History, and Dave Musicant, Computer Science, to prepare a new freshman seminar titled “AI & R: Arts, Interactivity, and Robotics” which will be taught in Fall 2008.
• Arjendu Pattanayak, Physics & Astronomy, to develop changes in introductory mechanics, moving it towards team-based problem-solving.
• Larry Wichlinski, Psychology, to develop a new freshman seminar titled “Brain, Mind and Body.”

Assistant Professor of History, recently learned that she has received a short-term fellowship from the Massachusetts Historical Society in support of her new project, "Street Politics and the Boston Massacre."

Professor of Educational Studies, recently published a book entitled Reading for Themselves: How to Transform Adolescents into Lifelong Readers through Out-of class Bookclubs, which was positively reviewed in the most recent issue of the International Reading Association's Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. Click here to read the full review. Also this spring term, Professor Appleman presented a paper on teaching literature to the incarcerated at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association held this year in New York City. Additionally, Professor Appleman has been appointed to the National Council of Teachers of English Standing Committee on Research and was named to the editorial board of the journal, Research in the Teaching of English.

William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Psychology, gave the Friday Conversations address for faculty on April 25 at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL. His talk was entitled "Quantitative Reasoning as an Educational Imperative across the Curriculum."

The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (CASBS) is inviting applications for residential fellowships during the 2009-10 academic year. This sabbatical fellowship provides an excellent opportunity for faculty to pursue priority research and expand their horizons while engaging in a diverse, interdisciplinary intellectual community. We seldom have Fellows from educational institutions like yours, yet we know that you have some outstanding faculty. We would value hearing from them and having the opportunity to consider them for a CASBS fellowship.

Grant and Fellowship Opportunities for this issue include:

• The Century Foundation, and
• the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation - Fellowships to Assist Research and Artistic Creation

Click on the link above for more information on these opportunities.

The Canadian Government, through its Embassy and Consulates in the United States, supports research, conferences, teaching, and program activity related to Canada and/or Canada-U.S. relations. Our grant program
seeks to encourage comparative research and teaching, faculty exchanges, student mobility, and collaboration between American and Canadian researchers. We also seek to build stronger ties between American and Canadian universities and colleges. Click here for complete information.