Helena Baert and Matthew Madden
Helena Baert and Matthew Madden, Physical Education Department, served as planners for the Central South Zone Conference held at SUNY Cortland on Friday, Jan. 19. The conference, part of the Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, included more than 25 sessions and brought together over 170 physical education and health professionals from Central New York. The conference was well attended and participants and presenters included current students, faculty, alumni and members living and/or working in Broome, Cayuga, Chemung, Chenango, Cortland, Delaware, Otsego, Schuyler, Tioga and Tompkins counties. Student volunteers from the Alliance of Physical Education Majors (APEM) helped make the conference a success. Baert is past president of the Central South Zone.
Susan J. Rayl
Susan J. Rayl, Kinesiology Department, presented a paper titled “Schizophrenia and Elite Athletes: The Struggles of Kamara James” at the Center for Sociocultural Sport and Olympic Research (CSSOR) Second Annual Conference held March 15-16 at California State University, Fullerton. Kamara James was a competitor, who suffered from schizophrenia, in the Women’s Epee event in Fencing at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. A new international conference, CSSOR attracted participants from several countries, including Germany, Brazil, France, China, Canada, Australia and the United States.
Nancy Kane
Nancy Kane, Performing Arts Department, performed in the Endicott Performing Arts Center’s production of “Great Expectations” this summer.
In other news, Kane has assumed full director duties for Twin Tiers Honor Flight, a nonprofit local hub of the national Honor Flight Network, which takes WWII, Korean Era, and terminally ill veterans at no charge to Washington, D.C. to visit their war memorials and Arlington National Cemetery.
Gretchen Herrmann
Gretchen Herrmann, library, presented her paper, “Stuff at High Tide: The Ebb and Flow of Household Clutter Witnessed through the U.S. Garage Sale,” at the 110th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association held Nov. 16-20 in Montreal, Canada. The paper focuses on the over-accumulation of consumer goods in the last 40 years and the ways in which garage sales serve as “release valves” for too much household clutter.
Jean W. LeLoup
Jean W. LeLoup, International Communications and Culture emerita, along with U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) colleagues LeAnn Derby and Ramsamooj J. Reyes, and Sheri Spaine Long from the University of North Carolina – Charlotte, had their paper, “Fusing Language Learning and Leadership Development: Initial Approaches and Strategies,” published in Dimension 2014. The white paper was a result of a semester-long Faculty Learning Community in the Department of Foreign Languages at the USAFA that met throughout the spring of 2013. The paper focuses explicitly on the relationship between language learning and leadership development through discussion, reflection and exploration to advance strategies and develop related resources.
John C. Hartsock
John C. Hartsock, Communication Studies Department, has been asked to serve as a reviewer this fall for Fulbright scholarship applicants from Russia for the 2015-16 academic year. The candidates would conduct research and teach in the United States in the area of journalism. Hartsock was a Fulbright scholar in journalism in Ukraine in 1993 at Taras Shevchenko Kiev State University in Kiev.
In other news, Hartsock stepped down at the end of May after five years as the editor of the peer-reviewed scholarly journal Literary Journalism Studies. The official journal of the International Association for Literary Journalism Studies, it was founded by Hartsock starting with the Spring 2009 issue. The journal is published biannually. Under Hartsock’s editorship, the journal established the first bibliography in its subject field and is now listed in the MLA International Bibliography. It is also listed with Ebscohost. Bill Reynolds, director of the graduate program in journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto, has been selected as Hartsock’s successor.
Sharon L. Todd
Sharon L. Todd, Recreation, Parks and Leisure Studies Department, and undergraduate student Ashlee Boughton, delivered a research presentation titled “Nature Relatedness, Sense of Place, and Well-being in Outdoor Pursuits Trip Groups” at the 28th Annual Northeastern Recreation Research Symposium on April 4 in Annapolis, Md. Ashlee, a senior majoring in therapeutic recreation, has been working all year with Todd on a longitudinal research project through the Undergraduate Research Assistant Program.
Christopher Gascón
Christopher Gascón, Modern Languages Department, has been re-elected secretary of the Association for Hispanic Classical Theater (AHCT). Annually, the AHCT hosts a conference, publishes a journal and supports the oldest and longest-running Hispanic Golden Age theater festival in the world at the Chamizal National Memorial Theater in El Paso, Texas. In addition, the organization provides a library of digitized editions of plays, a video archive of performances of plays available for streaming and a biannual newsletter. Gascón has served as secretary since 2011 and has produced the last eight issues of the AHCT Newsletter, reporting on performances and scholarly activities related to Hispanic Golden Age drama.
Kathleen A. Lawrence
Kathleen A. Lawrence, Communication Studies Department, had her poem “Afternoon Dance” published in haikuniverse on May 4. This micro-poem was selected to be the featured haiku of the day and reflects the social life of residents of a spring garden.
Kaitlin Flannery
Kaitlin Flannery, Psychology Department, was interviewed about her work on friendship dissolutions for a recently published BBC article titled “Downgraded or dissolved: What to do when you break-up with your friends.”