Applebee Receives David H. Russell Award for Research
By Christine Hanson McKnight
School of Education Professor Arthur N. Applebee has been named the recipient of a major award from the world�s largest association of English teachers.
Applebee, who is also director of the federally sponsored National Research Center on English Learning and Achievement, headquartered on campus, will accept the honor Nov. 21 from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) at the group�s meeting in Nashville, Tenn. With 90,000 members who teach English from kindergarten through college, the NCTE is the world�s largest subject-matter educational association.
The David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English recognizes more than two decades of scholarly contributions by Applebee to the fields of English studies, literacy and language arts, especially his 1996 book, Curriculum as Conversation: Transforming Traditions of Teaching and Learning, which is a reconceptualization of the role of curriculum in American schools and colleges. He specializes in studies of language use and language learning, particularly in school settings.
"Arthur Applebee is one of the leaders in our national efforts to understand the best ways to teach literature and writing," said Judy Genshaft, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, and a former dean of the School of Education. "This award is well deserved and recognizes a number of significant contributions to the field."
James T. Fleming, current dean of the School of Education, said that Applebee�s 1978 book, The Child�s Concept of Story: Ages Two to Seventeen, is a landmark work that has influenced a generation of educators and their thinking about how children learn. "Arthur joins an illustrious group of scholars who are among the giants in the field over the last half-century," Fleming said.
Other major works by Applebee include national studies of the teaching of writing and literature in 1993, 1981 and 1984 and a comprehensive history, published in 1974, of the teaching of literature in American secondary schools. Applebee is coauthor of How Writing Shapes Thinking: A Study of Teaching and Learning (1987) and a series of reports on reading and writing achievement issued in 1981, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990 and 1994. He is a former editor of Research in the Teaching of English and a past president of the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy.
Applebee is co-director with Judith Langer, another School of Education faculty member, of the National Research Center on English Language and Achievement, a $12.5 million project funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The Center is carrying out an ambitious, five-year research agenda involving more than 30 scholars from Albany, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Oklahoma and the University of Washington. Now in its third year, the series of studies is expected to have a major impact on the way schools and communities approach the teaching and testing of English and the "language arts:" reading, writing, listening and speaking.
Shadd Maruna
When the School of Criminal Justice looked to fill a new position this fall focusing on individual change and rehabilitation, it was pleased to get a positive response from Shadd Maruna. "He is important to us because he covers two fields of criminology," said David Bayley, dean of the School of Criminal Justice. "He has had extensive study in plan changes and of corrections in communication."
Maruna felt fortunate as well. "As a longtime admirer of the work of Albany�s eminent School of Criminal Justice, I was extremely happy to read that the school was looking for a criminologist with my specialties," he said. "I am extremely enthusiastic about the opportunity of working at Albany."
Maruna has successfully competed for prestigious fellowships, such as a Guggenheim and a Fulbright Research Grant and has received several awards and scholarships, including graduating from Illinois State University summa cum laude. He has spent much of his career focusing on "desistance" from crime and community corrections in order to understand how and why individuals "go straight" and has submitted a variety of journal articles on his research.
"He has struck me as being a scholar who writes clearly about complex ideas, is tremendously well-read across a number of disciplines, is penetrating in analysis and painstakingly thorough," said Ros Burnett, Head of the Probation Studies Unit at the University of Oxford�s Center for Criminological Research.
Maruna was a graduate fellow at the Joint Center for Poverty Research, administered by the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, and spent two years working as a research assistant at Northwestern�s Institute for Policy Research. In 1995-96, he provided assistance on research for the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, Harvard University�s massive longitudinal study of the causes of criminal behavior.
Later, Maruna received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University where he did extensive research using life history interviewing and biographical analysis to understand "how and why some young people �grow out� of delinquent behavior while others persist with crime." He has also interviewed and done ethnographic fieldwork among homeless persons, heroin users, ex-convicts, and criminal justice practitioners in settings such as Louisiana, Alaska, and the United Kingdom.
Over the years, he was able to apply his work in criminology to teach classes on the undergraduate and graduate level in areas such as ideology and crime, community intervention, and research in action settings, among many others. "I am very committed to undergraduate and graduate teaching and find as much joy and fulfillment in this aspect of my work as I do in my research," said Maruna.
In addition to his credentials in criminology, Maruna has a background in social sciences, and has published in areas such as law and personality psychology. "I believe that crime is a multifaceted issue and that the study of crime benefits from such a variety of orientations," he said.
Currently Maruna is co-editing a volume for Dartmouth Books� Series in Forensic Science, tentatively titled Lives of Crime, with Dr. Laurence Alison from the University of Liverpool. The book will describe, said Maruna, "new directions in the use of life history narratives in criminology, and will include several samples of my own phenomenological research in Liverpool and Chicago." He also plans to continue his research on the subjective process of rehabilitation here at Albany. "Albany would be an ideal location for such a comparative study, and I would hope to involve as many students as are interested in this research."
Tim Heinz
John Carlo Bertot
Information systems expert John Carlo Bertot is not only a sought- after scholar in his field and an award winner for teaching excellence, he is a double Albany alumnus.
"We are thrilled to have him," said Philip Eppard, dean of the School of Information Science & Policy, of Bertot�s appointment this fall. "He is a real bright and productive scholar in his field."
In 1995, Bertot received the Outstanding Teaching Assistant award at Syracuse University, where he had served on the university�s personnel committee. He was a faculty member at the University of Maryland Baltimore County from 1995-98.
The securer of a number of grants � among them from the National Science Foundation, the American Library Association, and the Maryland state education department � to assess the involvement of different public libraries with the Internet, he recently developed a graduate certificate in Information Resources Management for Albany. It began this fall.
Bertot received both a B.A. (1986) and an M.A. (1988) in communication from Albany and later received his Ph.D. from Syracuse University�s School of Information Studies. Prior to his appointment in the University of Maryland�s Department of Information Systems, he was a teaching assistant and research associate in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, and a graduate assistant at SUNY Central Administration. After completing a graduate scholar internship with Albany at the New York State Assembly, he became user services manager and then supervisor for office automation training at the Assembly�s Office Automation and Data Processing Department. He returned to academia at Syracuse and earned his Ph.D. in 1996.
At Syracuse, Bertot taught such courses as Telecommunications Policy, Research Methodologies, and Decision Support Systems at both the undergraduate and graduate level.
In 1996, he founded (and became president of) Bertot Infor-mation Management Consulting Services, Inc., which provides services for information management, information technology planning and statewide network and public library evaluation activities.
He is a member of the Task Force on Electronic Services Output Measures for the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science and National Center for Education Statistics, and was on the editorial boards of Government Information Quarterly and The Internet Connection, where he was chairman. He has also served as a reviewer on the Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Library and Information Science Research, and the Government Information Quarterly. Some of his professional associations include those with the American Library Association, the American Society for Public Administration, the American Society for Information Science, and the Association for Computing Machinery.
Bertot has published a number of articles, books, and research monographs since 1992. He has work forthcoming, including a book, Public Libraries and the Internet: Victoria, Australia, and an article, "Measuring Electronic Services in Public Libraries: Issues and Recommendations" which will be published in Public Libraries. Both works are co-written with C. R. McClure. On Jan. 28 of this year, he delivered the keynote address at the Victorian Association for Library Automation in Melbourne, Australia.
"Bertot is a strong researcher and teacher, and has an already proven track record in securing funds for programs," stated Eppard. "But it�s also nice to see an undergrad alumnus return to our school."
Tim Heinz
Excellence in Teaching
by Carol Olechowski
Millicent Lenz
For School of Information Science and Policy associate professor Millicent Lenz, much of the enjoyment of teaching comes from "the excitement of dialoguing with students about literature and exploring with them what Salman Rushdie would call the never-ending �stream of stories� in the engaging new books published for children and teenagers."
That excitement, combined with "the remarkable quality of student responses to literature, often creative and original and always individual," has also made Lenz a much-sought-after authority on writings for children and adolescents.
Since her arrival at Albany in the mid 1980s, Lenz has taught such courses as Literature for Children and Literature for Young Adults. She likewise redesigned and reinstituted a course in the history of children�s literature and developed another, Autobiographies of Writers for Young People. "Reviving the course in the history of children�s literature gave me great satisfaction," she said, "as I believe the Muse of History needs our attention, now more than ever."
Each of the two latter courses is also offered at the undergraduate level as a writing-intensive course. In recent years, Lenz adds, "with the advent of newer technologies, I�ve enjoyed exploring how class listservs can add to our in-person conversations."
Philip B. Eppard, SISP dean, has high praise for Lenz: "Certainly, Millicent is a very vital member of our faculty. She�s responsible for our School Library Media Specialists program, which has seen a lot of growth and which now accounts for about 30 percent of our students. She advises those students and teaches some of the core courses that they�re required to take, so she carries a heavy teaching and advisement schedule.
"Beyond that, Millicent gives our Library Science program a real solid basis in literature. That�s really her key area of interest, and I think it gives our program a more distinctive flavor. Our students are going out into the schools with a very solid background in literature, and that�s a real plus. She�s well known for her meticulous preparation and teaching, and she consistently gets very high reviews from students. They respond favorably and get excited about literature on the basis of the courses they take with her."
Lenz, who feels that teaching gives her an opportunity "to experience, with my students, the wonderful process of transforming consciousness and building community through the power of what poet Linda Pastan calls �the wand of the word,�" is noted for her writing about literature for young people. Her work Nuclear Age Literature for Youth: The Quest for a Life-Affirming Ethic, published in 1990, received the Children�s Literature Association�s prize for Best Book of Criticism of Children�s Literature.
"My book on nuclear age literature for young people is a critical study that provides a unique view of a topic that, despite the end of the Cold War, is more than ever pertinent," said Lenz.
In addition, she wrote, with Mary Meacham, Young Adult Literature and Nonprint Materials: Resources for Selection; and co-edited, with Ramona M. Mahood, Young Adult Literature: Background and Criticism. Lenz has also done signed entries for encyclopedias, contributed chapters to numerous books, and written many scholarly articles.
Lenz�s membership in professional organizations, including the Children�s Literature Association and the Modern Language Association, and her participation in conferences, reinforce her efforts as a "very active researcher and writer," says Eppard. "She�s very well connected in children�s literature circles and is very interested in the areas of myth and fantasy."
Lenz numbers among her greatest achievements working with Gillian McCombs, then head of cataloguing, and David Mitchell, a former SISP faculty member now in the University Libraries� Special Collections, to keep the Children�s Historical Collection from being lost to the University. They were supported with only a modest grant from the Hudson-Mohawk Library Association. "The collection is now prospering under Professor Mitchell�s direction," she said.
Lenz�s upcoming projects include a monograph on the creative process as mirrored in both fiction and "life writing" for youth, a study of the juvenilia of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and audio formats for young people�s literature � including the possibility of an audiotape series with potential for radio broadcast, similar to the Modern Language Association�s "What�s the Word?" program.
"In addition, I hope to promote the time-honored format of readers� theater based on children�s books. I�m also writing a paper for the 1999 combined conference of the Children�s Literature Association and the International Research Society on Children�s Literature on the topic of children�s literature in the 21st Century. This reflects my long-standing fascination with speculative fiction and speculative thought."
After receiving her B.A. in English from Iowa�s Luther College, Lenz went on to earn master�s degrees in English and library science from the universities of Kansas and Wisconsin, respectively. She holds a Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University.
