Spectrum - Volume 21 Issue 02 September 3, 1998 - 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 21 Issue 02 - September 3, 1998

Albert Moore , of Environmental Health and Safety Services at Virginia Tech, has achieved all criteria for the "Associate Ergonomics Professional (AEP)" designation from the Board of Certification in Professional Ergonomics (BCPE). This associate status is a precursor to the Certified Professional Ergonomist (CPE) designation and is available to a person who: meets the education requirements for BCPE certification (MS in human factors/ergonomics or related field); has passed Part I (basic knowledge of human factors/ergonomics) of the BCPE certification examination; and who is currently is working toward fulfilling the BCPE requirement of four years practical experience as a human factors and ergonomics professional.

The Virginia Tech chapter of the honor society of Phi Kappa Phi was recently represented at the society's national convention by Sue A . Herbein , the chapter's president. The event, which was held at Penn State, August 4-8, offered delegates from the more than 280 Phi Kappa Phi chapters the opportunity to exchange ideas on promoting academic excellence. The theme of the 1998 convention was "Winnowing the Past to Cultivate the Future." Founded in 1897, the honor society of Phi Kappa Phi is a nonprofit organization that recognizes and encourages academic excellence in all disciplines. With more than 790,000 members and 281 chapters, Phi Kappa Phi is one of the oldest and most respected academic honor societies. The Society budgets annually $380,000 for fellowships for outstanding students' first-year graduate study.
Lee Drowne , assistant director for undergraduate admissions, was invited to present at the 84th Annual Meeting of the American Association of College Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) in Chicago, April 16. The title of her presentation was "Recruiting International Students From Your Office: Armchair Recruiting." The session described how to effectively utilize alumni living overseas in the recruitment of talented international students and in yield efforts.
Richard Rich , head of political science at Virginia Tech, received the Aaron Wildavsky Book Award from the Policy Studies Organization. The award is named after one of the leading scholars in public policy research and recognizes "the best policy studies books published since 1975." Rich received the award for his work as editor of a series of books on policy analysis published during the 1980s.
Elizabeth Struthers Malbon , professor of religious studies in the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at Virginia Tech, presented an invited address entitled "The `Reflected Christology' of the Markan Narrative" to the Theological Institute of Uppsala University, Sweden, and to the Institute for Biblical Exegesis, Copenhagen University, Denmark. She also presented a faculty seminar paper entitled "The `Refracted Christology' of the Markan Narrative: Jesus' `Son of Man' and `Kingdom of God' Statements" at the same institutions, as well as conferring with faculty and graduate students. Malbon presented a related paper to the Southeast Region of the Society of Biblical Literature meeting in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Charles Aull , professor emeritus of mathematics at Virginia Tech, published the second volume of a projected multi-volume set on the history of general topology. The book is entitled Handbook of the History of General Topology, Volume II and was published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Netherlands in 1998. It is edited by Aull and R. Lowen of the University of Antwerp.
Margaret Murray , associate professor of mathematics at Virginia Tech, was the keynote speaker at Sonya Kovalevskaya Day at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, N.C. Sonya Kovalevskaya Day is sponsored by the Association for Women in Mathematics and the National Security Agency and provides an opportunity for area high school girls to learn more about careers in mathematics. Murray was also the keynote speaker for the Women's History Month celebration at the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) in Greenbelt, Md. She gave a talk on the contributions of women to mathematics at NCHS.
Osman Balci of Virginia Tech's computer-science department delivered the keynote address at the Turkish Department of Defense Simulation Symposium in Ankara, Turkey. The subject of his address was "The Role and Importance of Simulation in Military Applications."
John M. Carroll , professor in computer science and director of the Center for Human-Computer Interaction, participated in the NSF Information Retrieval Tools Workshop held at the University of Pittsburgh. He served on the User Interfaces Subgroup.
Ilja A. Luciak , associate professor of political science at Virginia Tech, had his article "Gender Equality and Electoral Politics on the Left: A Comparison of El Salvador and Nicaragua" published in the Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs . He was also an invited participant to the "Consultations on Women's Empowerment and Reproductive Rights," sponsored by the Society for International Development in Rome, Italy.
Karen Hult and Charles Walcott , professors of political science at Virginia Tech, have had their article "Policymakers and Wordsmiths: Writing for the President under Johnson and Nixon" published in Polity .
Roger Ehrich and graduate student Faith McCreary of the computer science department at Virginia Tech, attended the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Conference in San Jose, California. They presented "Home-School Networking to Support Constructivist Learning in a Rural Elementary School: Lessons from Families, Schools, and Researchers," which discussed the preliminary experiences from the first half of a multi-year project investigating the long-term responses of children, families and schools to a cost-free, technology-rich fifth-grade home and classroom environment.
Douglas A. Borer , assistant professor of political science at Virginia Tech, has been named a Fulbright Visiting Scholar in the Strategic and Security Studies Unit of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Kebangsaan, Malaysia. He will consult and lecture on strategic and security issues and international relations during the 1998-99 academic year.
Timothy W. Luke , professor of political science at Virginia Tech, has won the Leroy Bennett Award for Best Paper presented at the 1997 meetings of the Northeast Political Science Association. His paper was entitled "From Territoriality to Telemetricality: Politics in Networked Places, Connectivity Spaces." Luke had several articles and book chapters published during the past year, including "On Videocameralistics: The Geopolitics of Failed States, the CNN International, and (UN) Governmentality" (with Gearoid O Tuathail, associate professor of Geography), in Review of International Political Economy ; "At the End of the Nature: Cyborgs, Humachines, and Environments in Postmodernity" in Environment and Planning ; "The World Wildlife Fund: Ecocolonialism as Funding the Worldwide `Wise Use' of Nature," in Capitalism Nature Socialism ; "Global Flowmations, Local Fundamentalism, and Fast Geopolitics: `America' in an Accelerating World Order" in An Unruly World? Globalization, Governanace, and Geography ; "PC Politics: Professional Correctness vs. Political Correctness" in Cultural Politics and the University ; "Localized Spaces, Globalized Places: Virtual Community and Geo-Economics in the Asia-Pacific, in The Rise of East Asia: Critical Visions of the Pacific Century ; and "The Discipline of Security Studies and the Codes of Containment: Learning from Kuwait" in Geopolitics: A Critical Reader . Luke also gave a number of invited presentations during the past year. These included "Ecocritiques: Nature Criticism as Political Theory" at The Writer's Center, Bethesda, MD; "Building Cyberschool: The Virginia Tech Experience" in Wellington, New Zealand; "The Political Economy of Environmental Studies" at Macalester College, St. Paul, MN; "The Virginia Tech Cyberschool" and "The Sierra Club: Politics and Culture in a Green Resistance Group" at the Center for Information, Discourse, and Technology Studies, Georgia Tech, Atlanta Ga.
Bill Frakes of Virginia Tech's computer-science department in the Northern Virginia Graduate Center, gave an invited talk on software reuse and domain engineering at Thomson Research Labs Group, Rockville, Md. The talk was the kickoff of a planning meeting for implementing systematic reuse at Thompson.
Timothy W. Luke , professor of political science at Virginia Tech, has been awarded the Christian Bay Award by the New Political Science section of the American Political Science Association. The award recognizes the best paper in the area of critical political theory given at the 1997 Annual Meeting of the APSA.