Spectrum - Volume 18 Issue 22 February 29, 1996 - Achievers

A non-profit publication of the Office of the University Relations of Virginia Tech,
including The Conductor , a special section of the Spectrum printed 4 times a year

Achievers

Spectrum Volume 18 Issue 22 - February 29, 1996

WVTF radio has been selected Best Radio Station in Roanoke for 1995 in The Roanoker magazine's annual "Best of Roanoke" readers' poll. Ballots were included in the December issue of the 54,000-circulation magazine.

The Northeastern Weed Society presented its Outstanding Applied Research Award to E. Scott Hagood , professor of weed science, at the group's annual meeting in Williamsburg in January. Hagood is also an Extension weed scientist, and Extension project leader in the Department of Plant Pathology, Physiology, and Weed Science. The $1,000 award is for research into food and feed crops, and was presented in "recognition of outstanding achievements in applied Weed Science research that directly benefit and are used by Northeastern farmers."

S. Wayne Bingham received the Award of Merit from the Northeastern Weed Science Society at its annual meeting in Williamsburg in January. Bingham retired last year from his post as a professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences' Department of Plant Pathology, Physiology and Weed Science. He was recognized for "34 years of service to weed science in Virginia and the Northeast."

Christine Kiebuzinska of the English department has had her article "The Scandal Maker: Thomas Bernard and the Reception of Heldenplatz " published in Modern Drama .

Dennis Kafura of the computer-science department was co-chairman of the workshop on Design Patterns for Concurrent, Distributed and Parallel Systems at Object Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications (OOPSLA) '95 in Austin, Texas.

Harlan Miller , associate professor of philosophy, presented a paper titled "What's the Point of Personhood?" to the recent meeting of the Society for the Study of Ethics and Animals. He also gave the invited closing address to the Central Appalachian Ecological Integrity Forum in Massanetta Springs. His talk was titled "Biological Integrity Between Bunny-Huggers and Bureaucrats."

Gary Hardcastle, assistant professor in the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies and the philosophy department, has had his paper, "What Horwich's Minimal Theory of Truth Can't Explain," published in the Southern Journal of Philosophy.

Robert J. Bodnar of the geological-sciences department is the Thayer Lindsley Lecturer of the Society of Economic Geologists for the 1995-96 academic year. The lecturer is to "bring outstanding lectures on economic geology to colleges and universities having geologic programs related to mineral resources." During fall 1995, Bodnar visited the universities of Manitoba, Regina, and Alberta, where he presented two lectures: "Sources and Distribution of Metals in Porphyry Copper Deposits" and "Applications of Fluid Inclusions in the Exploration for Mineral and Hydrocarbon Resources." He is scheduled to visit Dartmouth University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Nevada-Las Vegas to present the same lectures. In addition to this honor, Bodnar was the invited keynote speaker at the European Conference on Research on Fluid Inclusions held in Barcelona, Spain. He also was interviewed by The Economist about his research related to the formation of gold and copper deposits.

Susan C. Eriksson of the geological-sciences department received the Best Paper of 1995 award for her first "popular" article on geology from the Journal of Rocks and Minerals , a journal for amateur and professional mineral enthusiasts. She presented her paper at the awards ceremony at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show in February. She was an invited speaker for the Utah Mineral Collectors meeting and is an invited speaker at the Rochester Mineralogical Symposium in April.

Robert J. Tracy of the geological-sciences department has written a textbook in the field of petrology for W.H. Freeman. The text, Petrology: Igneous, Sedimentary and Metamorphic Rock , was co-written by Harvey Blatt and is the second edition of the most widely used petrology textbook. The first edition was written by Ernest Ehlers and Blatt.

Eric Watkins, assistant professor in philosophy, will deliver two papers at the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association. One is "Habermas's Critique of Monologism." The other was selected as the Prize Essay for the North American Kan Society and is titled "Transcendental Idealism and the Categories."

Wolfgang Glasser , wood chemistry professor and associate dean for research and graduate studies in the College of Forestry and Wildlife Resources, attended a retreat ("Klausur") in the Black Forest on invitation of the German government. He was one of two international judges to serve on a six-member panel to select 30-some research proposals for a new focus research program on cellulose chemistry, which the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (similar to America's National Science Foundation) will fund for six years. The highly interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaborative program deals with the design of molecular and supramolecular structures based on cellulose and its derivatives.

Karen M. Hult , associate professor of political science, has had her article "Feminist Organization Theories and Government Organizations: The Promise of Diverse Structural Forms" published in the Public Productivity and Management Review . It is the lead article in a symposium devoted to the topic of "Productivity and Gender."

Duncan M. Porter of the biology department has been appointed the external examiner for the biology department of Sultan Qaboos University in the city of Muscat in the Sultanate of Oman (located south of Saudi Arabia) for a three-year term. He will travel to the university in June to evaluate the graduating class and report to the university.

Wayne D. Moore , assistant professor of political science, has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities allowing him to spend the 1996-97 academic year working on a book whose tentative title is Unofficial Law of the Fourteenth Amendment: Rethinking Problems of Constitutional Continuity and Change . He is studying the roles that citizens may have played in creating and re-creating the law of the 14th amendment. Moore also presented an invited paper titled "Mapping Competing Conceptions of the Constitutional Terrain" at a conference on The Concept of Reserved Powers in American Constitutional Law and History held at the University of California, Berkeley.

Edward A Fox of the computer-science department served as the SURA (Southern Universities Research Association) representative on the Monticello Electronic Library Steering Committee in Atlanta. He also was an invited speaker at the NSF-supported digital libraries workshop on Social Aspects of Digital Libraries hosted by UCLA. His talk was titled "Search Capabilities for Users."

Fox also was the invited speaker and talked about "Electronic Librarians, Intelligent Network Agents, and Information Catalogues" at Reconnecting Science and Humanities in Digital Libraries, a symposium sponsored by The University of Kentucky and the British Library in Lexington, Ky.

John Carroll, head of the computer-science department, gave a talk on "Learning and Memory in World 3" at the Human-Computer Interaction Consortium meetings in Frasier, Col.

Richard Nance, professor of computer science and director of the Systems Research Center, was presented an award by SIGSIM (Special Interest Group on Simulation) of the Association for Computing Machinery at the Winter Simulation Conference in Washington for outstanding service to SIGSIM and the simulation community. He also has been elected an ACM fellow.

Linda Anderson of the English department has had her article "`Virtue and Cunning': A Source for Pericles " published in the September issue of Notes and Queries .

Mellen Poetry Press has published Anne Cheney's book Dead Snakes, Cats, & the IRS: Poetry of Rock & Rebellion . Cheney, Katherine Soniat, and Jeff Mann, all of the English department, have works included.

Joe Eska of the English department has had his article "Another Look at Lepontic uenia " published in Contributions to Name Research .

Jeff Mann of the English department has had his poem "The Crowbar Comes" published in Yemassee . The poem won the $200 Yemassee Award.

Lisa Norris of the English department has had her essay "In Search of the Skeleton-Man" published in the Winter 1996 inaugural issue of Grand Tour: The Journal of Travel Literature. Her short story "Stray Dogs" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by the editor of Treasure House .

Simone Poirier-Bures of the English department has had her story "Second Chances" published in the anthology Mother of the Groom . Her novel Candyman was named one of the Top Books of 1995 by the book critic and columnist George Elliott Clarke of the Halifax Chronicle Herald and Mail Star .

Katherine Soniat of the English department has had her poem "Fire" published in the Winter 1996 issue of The Midwest Quarterly . Her poem "Forecast: New Orleans" was published in the anthology Wherever Home Begins by Paul B. Janeczko.

Dennis Welch of the English department has had his article "Blakes's Songs of Experience : The Word Lost and Found" published in the May issue of English Studies: A Journal of English Language and Literature.

John A.N. Lee of the computer-science department was invited to organize the interviewing of participants and to chair their "memories" session during the Navy reunion of WWII personnel involved in "Purple" code decryption at the National Security Agency, NCR, Dayton, Ohio.

Robert E. Denton Jr. and Rachel L. Holloway of the communication-studies department have a chapter titled "Presidential Communication as Mediated Conversation: Interpersonal Talk as Presidential Discourse" in Research in Political Sociology, edited by Philo Washburn.