Professor of Chemistry Trish Ferrett, Co-Director of the Carleton Interdisciplinary Science Initiative (CISMI) and Senior Research Fellow at SERC, designed and participated in a faculty workshop at Carleton in June funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Alex Forde '07 recently received the award for best undergraduate poster presentation at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Milwaukee, Wisc., in 2008. Forde's poster was titled "Choosiness in rolled-leaf beetles: Leaf age and leaf configuration affect colonization by the specialist herbivore Cephaloleia fenestrata." Co-authors on the poster were Clare Kazanski '07, Jenna Forsyth '07, Jannel Anderson '07, Mark Luterra '07, and biology professor Mark McKone. The field research for the poster was carried out in Costa Rica as part of Professor McKone's course in Tropical Rainforest Ecology.

Professor of biology Mark McKone was quoted in the September 11, 2009, edition of Science. McKone commented on the work of Harvard University evolutionary biologist Hopi Hoekstra, who gave an enthusiastically received seminar at Carleton in February 2009 as part of the biology department's celebration of Darwin's Bicentennial.

The work of David Lefkowitz, associate professor of art, is the focus of a new exhibit at the Rochester Art Center, opening Thursday, September 11 and running through January 10, 2010. Entitled "David Lefkowitz: Other Positioning Systems," the exhibit highlights samples from several bodies of work from the past dozen years—part desconstruction of, and meditation on, the exhibition space itself. With a nod to both the "pleasures and pitfalls of the 'white cube,'" the exhibition is a "giddy demonstration of alternative re-use of otherwise discarded ephemera of both contemporary consumer culture and the natural world."

A new book, The American Elections of 2008 (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers), edited by Janet Box-Steffensmeier and Steve E. Schier, Dorothy H. and Edward C. Congdon Professor of Political Science, was recently reviewed in USA Today. Susan Page, Washington Bureau Chief, wrote, "The amazing election of 2008 is going to spawn a generation of analysis. Here's a smart start by some of the nation's most respected political scientists."

The Summer 2009 edition of the Sewanee Review was dedicated to recently deceased Mellon Professor of the Humanities, emeritus, Donald E. Schier. The dedication reads "This issue of the Sewanee Review is dedicated to the memory of Donald E. Schier (1914-2009), teacher, scholar and critic, a valued contributor since 1981."

Paul Shambroom, visiting professor in art, received a 2009 McKnight Artist Fellowship for Photography. His work explores American power and culture. Shambroom is a former McKnight Fellow in 1985, 1989, 1995, and 2001. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Creative Capital Foundation and the Bush Foundation. A mid-career survey exhibition of Shambroom's major projects debuted in 2008 at the Weisman Museum of Art and traveled to the Columbus Museum of Art, the University Art Museum-California State University (Long Beach), and the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center.

Anne Patrick, William H. Laird Professor of Religion and the Liberal Arts, received the Ann O'Hara Graff Memorial Award from the Women's Consultation in Constructive Theology of the Catholic Theological Society of America in June in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for her scholarship and ministries on behalf of women.

Professor of French Chérif Keïta recently had his film "Oberlin-Inanda: The Life and Times of John L. Dube," which was screened in Paris on May 16, reviewed by Afrik.Com under the title "A la redecouverte de John Dube" (Rediscovering John Dube). Keïta's newest film, "Cemetary Stories: A Rebel Missionary in South Africa," has been officially selected for the Durban International Film Festival, July 22 to August 2, and is scheduled for several screenings, both at the festival and throughout the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Along with colleagues including Beth Friedman '08, associate professor of chemistry Deborah Gross recently published three papers describing research carried out in East St. Louis and in northern Sweden: "Estimating the contribution of point sources to atmospheric metals using single-particle mass spectrometry" (Atmospheric Environment 2009); "Subarctic atmostpheric aerosol composition: Ambient aerosol characterization" (Journal of Geophysical Research 2009); and "Subarctic atmospheric aerosol composition: Hygroscopic growth properties" (Journal of Geophysical Research 2009).

Neil Lutsky, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychology, chaired a symposium and gave a paper entitled "How Positive Should We Be Teaching the Science of Positive Psychology?" at the First World Congress on Positive Psychology in June in Philadelphia.

Devashree Gupta, assistant professor of political science, was awarded the 2009 Samuel H. Beer Prize for the Best Dissertation on British Politics, awarded by the British Politics Group of the American Political Science Association.