Successful Talent Transfer to EOP
Silke Van Ness, research associate professor in the Program in Linguistics and Cognitive Science and a longtime German instructor at the University, says she has enjoyed a new role since January, as teacher of writing in the Educational Opportunities Program.
Carson Carr, director of EOP, said Van Ness “brings a strong background in modern language” and “can transfer her skills to our program. We’ve found her to be an asset in terms of language development.”
Van Ness has earned both a Ph.D. in German and an M.A. in TESOl from the University.
Van Ness said that in addition to her degree work, her experience teaching upper level composition courses, writing intensive courses, and courses in grammar and linguistics “have prepared extremely well for my work at EOP.”
Besides her responsibilities at the University, Van Ness is pursuing a long-term research project in sociolinguistics. She studies issues of gender and language in an Amish community in Ohio. Her most recent fieldwork there was conducted in June on a fellowship from the Max Kade German-American Research Institute at Penn State University.
Van Ness said she has “discovered that women have initiated a linguistic change in the community.”
John LeMay
Key Participant at Women’s Conference
Iris Berger of the Department of History was one of the participants when the National Council for Research on Women joined New York University and the Ford Foundation to host a meeting of educational leaders on Oct. 3-5 in New York City.
The group assessed progress on the three-year, multi-campus project: “Women’s Studies, Area and International Studies Curriculum Integration Project” (WSAIS). The Ford Foundation has funded the project since 1995 as part of an effort to bring a gender lens to international and area studies and to internationalize women’s studies. Since then, WSAIS has helped shape the course offerings, curricula, research, and educational experiences of faculty and students throughout the country.
Berger was part of the final event on Oct. 5, held at the Cosmopolitan Club on 122 East 66th St., dealing with the topic “Where Do We Go from Here”?
Innovative Teaching Awards Presented
The following faculty members and their teaching projects have been awarded financial support from the University’s 1997 Innovation Fund for Teaching:
• Winthrop D. Means, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, “Exploring One Model for ‘Speaking-Intensive’ Courses;”
• Bruce Kingma, School of Information Science and Policy, “Developing an interactive class webpage and other electronic resources to support RISO 261: Internet and Information Access;”
• Timothy Lance, Mathematics and Statistics, “Computer Laboratory Project Bank;”
• George Lance and Jon Jacklet, Biological Sciences; “Campus Nature Web: Assessing methods for directing student field research teams via the WWW;”
• John Delano, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, “Transformation of Earth Science 232 into a modern classroom with technologies that provide for a range of teaching strategies, most notably the use of the WWW for instructional purposes;”
• W. Langdon Brown and Mark Dalton, Theatre, “Upgrade of Theatre 140 instruction via the creation of an orientation and training guide for Tas and adjuncts;” and
• Linda Pershing, Women Studies, and Robert Yagelski, English, “Transformation of a Gen Ed course to incorporate active learning through peer education, carefully structured writing assignments, and interactive computer technologies.”
New Assignments in Finance & Business
Carl P. Carlucci, Executive Vice President of the Division of Finance and Business, recently announced a number of staffing changes within the division.
Don Del Manzo joins the University as Assistant Vice President for Facilities Management. He has a background in civil engineering and a record of more than 12 years of service as director of facilities management at Amherst and Lafayette colleges.
Anne Connolly is the director of Sponsored Funds Accounting. A certified public accountant and supervisor with 20 years of experience in public accounting, proprietary, and not-for-profit service organizations in senior management positions, she was most recently chief financial officer of John B. Garrett, Inc.
MaryBeth Salmon, a University alumna, is the new director of University Business Systems. Salmon was most recently with the New York State Police as a manager of administrative information systems, including the development of mainframe-based applications; the installation of LANs and WANs; the conversion to Client/Server computing; and the design, programming, and implementation of internal systems and turn-key solutions.
The University’s chief fiscal officer, Kathryn Lowery, has been promoted to Associate Vice President for Financial Management and Budget. She began her tenure at the University in 1978 as technical assistant for the Computing Center.
Barbara Bodner, a University alumna who joined the Division of Finance and Business in 1973, is now associate director of Student Accounts for Billing and Account Maintenance. She also agreed to serve as Interim Director of Student Accounts. Jennifer Watson, a fellow alumna, is the new director of Parking Management. She began in the Division in 1981 in the Office of Environmental Health and Safety, where she won a national award for developing a data management system. Over the years she has held a number of positions in the Physical Plant, most recently manager of Building and Institutional Services and coordinator of special events.
A Sage in African-American Studies
The annual reading and scoring of the College Board’s Advanced Placement Examinations in U.S. History took place in June of this year and faculty member George Levesque of the Department of African-American Studies was selected as a member of that judging committee.
Each year the AP Program, sponsored by the College Board, gives hundreds of thousands of capable students an opportunity to take rigorous college-level courses and examinations, based on their exam performance, to receive credit and/or advanced placement when they enter college.
Levesque has also become a member of the Editorial Advisory Board that will evaluate the current edition of A Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African American Studies, which looks at certain African civilizations before the advent of Western imperialism, the effects of imperialism and of enslavement in the Americas, the issues surrounding the African American family, African American art, and at current pressing political and ideological issues..
The goal in creating this collection is to introduce all college students to African American studies and to accurately reflect the field’s contemporary concerns. Those on its editorial board,” says Arlyne Thompson, executive editor, “will have a first-hand opportunity to influence the development of an important book in the field.”