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ACHIEVERS
Karen M. Hult, associate professor of political science, has been elected vice-president of the Presidency Research Group (PRG). The PRG is an organized section of the American Political Science Association whose purpose is to promote and recognize scholarship on the U.S. presidency.
Marion R. Reynolds Jr.'s paper "Shewhart and EWMA Variable Sampling Interval Control Charts with Sampling at Fixed Times" has been awarded the Brumbaugh Award for 1996 by The American Society for Quality Control. The award has been given annually since 1949 to the paper judged to have made the greatest contribution to the industrial applications of quality control. Reynolds, a professor of statistics and forestry, received his award at the 51st Annual Quality Congress in Orlando.
Christine M. Anderson-Cook of the Department of Statistics presented papers at several recent conferences. At the Virginia Academy of Science conference, she presented the contributed paper "Studying Group Effects on Circular-Linear Relationships." She presented an invited talk in Gatlinburg at the SRCOS/ASA Summer Research Conference titled "Studying Variance for Directional Data with Response Surface Methods." At the Joint Statistical Meetings of the American Statistical Association in Anaheim, she presented a contributed talk titled "Measuring Hockey Powerplay and Penalty Killing Efficiency."
David E. Lawrence's talk "Cluster-Based Bounded Influence Regression," given at the Annual Meeting of the American Statistical Association, was named the Most Outstanding Presentation in the Section on Physical and Engineering Sciences at the Annual Meeting. Lawrence is from the Department of Statistics.
Several members and a former member of the Department of Statistics participated at the Third North American Institute of Mathematical Statistics Conference of New Researchers in Statistics and Probability in Laramie, Wy. Presenting papers were Tim Robinson and Jeffrey B. Birch, "Duel Model Regression"; James Mays from Virginia Commonwealth University and Birch, "Mixing Procedures for Obtaining a Model-Robust Fit." Mays and Birch also presented the paper "Smoothing Considerations in Nonparametric and Semiparametric Regression" at the Virginia Academy of Science Annual Meeting.
John Christman, associate professor in philosophy, presented two papers at the 9th International Conference on Socio-Economics in Montreal: "Liberal Individualism and U.S. Welfare Policy" and "Basic Income Guarantees and Autonomy."
John M. Carroll, professor of computer science and director of the Center for Human-Computer Interaction, and Mary Beth Rosson, associate professor of computer science, served as outside reviewers at a U.S. Air Force workshop on scenario generation for early requirements identification. Carroll also attended the Association for Computing Machinery's Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, DIS'97, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He served on the conference organizing committee and, at the conference itself, served as co-leader for the working group on documenting the design process. He also presented a paper at the conference, "Requirements development: Stages of opportunity for collaborative needs discovery," co-authored with Rosson, George Chin, graduate student in computer science, and Jurgen Koenemann, research associate in computer science.
A number of members of the political science department participated in the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Washington D.C. Douglas A. Borer presented a paper titled "Superpowers Defeated: Lessons of Credibility and Legitimacy from Vietnam and Afghanistan." Jeff Corntassel co-authored a paper titled "Social Construction of Native Americans: Findings from the 1996 Elections." Karen M. Hult and Charles E. Walcott co-authored a paper titled "Qualitative Research and the Study of the Presidency." Timothy W. Luke gave papers titled "From Body Politics to Body Shops: Power Subjectivity and the Body in an Era of Global Capitalism," and "The Discpline as Disciplinary Normalization: Networks of Research." Laura Parisi co-authored a paper titled "Are Some Presidents More Open Than Others? Presidential Succession and the Openness of U.S. Trade Policy." Glenn W. Richardson Jr., co-authored a paper titled "Campaign Spending by Candidates, Parties, and Independent Groups." Charles L. Taylor presented a paper titled "New Institutions for Working Men and Women: Early Working Class Political Organizations in Britain." Stephen K. White presented a paper titled "The Richer Ontology of Charles Taylor: Prefiguring Political Theory." In addition, White served as a panel chair, and both Hult and Wayne Moore served as discussants.
A paper, "Campaign Spending by Candidates, Parties, and Independent Groups," co-authored by Glenn W. Richardson Jr., assistant professor of political science, and Ross E. Burkhart of Boise State University, was listed by The Washington Monthly magazine in its annual review of "What's Hot at the APSA [American Political Science Association] Annual Meeting."
Hegang Chen of the Department of Statistics presented papers at several recent conferences. At the Joint Summer Conference on New Developments and Applications in Experimental Design, he presented the invited talk titled "Some Recent Advances in Minimum Aberration Designs." The conference was jointly sponsored by the American Mathematical Society, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. At the 60th Annual Meeting of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, he presented the invited paper titled "2**(n-m) Designs with Resolution III or IV Containing Clear Two-Factor Interactions."
Ilja A. Luciak of the Department of Political Science served as a guest professor at Universität Innsbruck, Austria, for a month. He also participated in several international conferences. He presented the papers "Women and Electoral Politics on the Left: A Comparison of El Salvador and Nicaragua," at the XX International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Guadalajara, México, and "Gender and Democratization in Central America" at the 49th International Congress of Americanists, Quito, Ecuador. Luciak was invited to present the results of a United Nations-sponsored study on "Reproductive Health, Empowerment and Population Policy: The Case of El Salvador" at the 22nd World Conference of the Society for International Development, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
John Kobza of industrial and systems engineering (ISE) served as faculty adviser for a team of undergraduate students who received first place in the third annual Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) Systems Modeling Student Simulation Competition. The students, Jeff Cameron and Scott Huber, had eight weeks to develop a solution for a case study using a simulation software package, ARENA. After initial judging was completed for the competition, the top five student teams in the nation participated in a final round of competition held at the International IIE Conference in Miami.
Joe A. Adams, economic development specialist in Public Service Programs, was a featured speaker at a recent symposium on International Programs and the Community College held in Roanoke. His presentation focused on the "Role of Community Colleges in International Trade Development."