H&SS eNews, December 2005

Greetings from H&SS. The H&SS eNews is a monthly electronic publication of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. The eNews is compiled and edited by Kelli McElhinny, director of media relations for H&SS. She can be reached at 412-268-6094 or kellim@andrew.cmu.edu. Contact Kelli to submit news about yourself and your fellow alumni, and to sign up for our newsletters.

I'd like to welcome all those who are receiving this newsletter for the first time, including many H&SS parents.

Please have a safe and happy holiday season.

For past eNews publications, please visit the H&SS eNews archive.

For news about the entire university, be sure to check out the university’s home page or the Carnegie Mellon Today website.

Alumni News

--Brian Gill (B.A. History and Philosophy, 1990), a social scientist in the Pittsburgh office of the Rand Corp., has developed, with his colleagues, a sophisticated system for rating the performance of each school in the Pittsburgh school district. Unlike other measures of achievement, Gill’s School Performance Index (SPI) takes into account students’ backgrounds—including poverty and family structure—which have a direct impact on academic performance. Pittsburgh school Superintendent Mark Roosevelt used Rand’s evaluation as a basis for determining which schools should be closed to bring the district’s size in line with its current enrollment. For more information, go to http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05338/616517.stm.

--Ryan Rasmussen (B.A. Professional Writing and Literary & Cultural Studies, 1994) and writing partner Thomas Crymes won the Third Annual Pitch Competition at the 2005 Austin Film Festival and Screenwriters' Conference for their screenplay “American Jedi.” One of Rasmussen's previous scripts, “Disaster Man”, was a semifinalist at the Chesterfield Writer's Film Project sponsored by Paramount Pictures. He holds an M.A. in English from Penn State and is a technical writer/editor for USERS Inc., a credit union software firm.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Carnegie Mellon invites alumni who plan to attend graduate school and have financial need to apply for the Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship, a nationally prestigious award that can be used at an approved institution abroad or in the United States. Winners receive a maximum of $50,000 per year for a maximum of six years of study. To receive the award, you must have graduated in the last five years. Non-U.S. citizens are eligible. For more information, guidelines and eligibility requirements, see http://www.jackkentcookefoundation.org. The campus deadline is March 1, 2006. If interested, please contact the campus representative, William Alba, at alba@cmu.edu.

Student News

--Abiola Fasehun, a junior Ethics, History and Public Policy major, has been accepted into the highly competitive Princeton Public Policy and International Affairs Fellowship Program (PPIA). The program prepares underrepresented minority students for an advanced degree and for careers in public service and public policy. After a summer program at Princeton, Fasehun will, upon graduation, be admitted to graduate school at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School or at another PPIA institution and receive financial support. For more information go to http://www.ppiaprogram.org/.

College/Faculty News

--Barbara Freed's film “A Model for Matisse: The Story of the Vence Chapel” received the Pierre Salinger Award for the Best Documentary at the Avignon/New York Film Festival November 13 in New York City. Freed is a professor of French studies and applied linguistics. Previously, her film was honored as the best film for television at the 2004 International Festival of Film on Art in Montreal. For more information about the film, go to http://www.cmu.edu/magazine/03fall/newsbriefs.html#henri.

--Peter Madsen, an associate teaching professor of philosophy, participated December 1 in an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) lecture on "The Assembly of Protocells" in Washington, D.C. Madsen served as respondent to the lecture given by Steen Rasmussen of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Rasmussen's talk was about how nonliving matter can self-organize into living matter, and Madsen commented on the social and ethical ramifications of this work. Madsen is the director of Carnegie Mellon's Center for the Advancement of Applied Ethics.

--Richard Scheines, the head of the Department of Philosophy, served on a committee for the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies that investigated whether food marketing is contributing to increased childhood obesity. The committee's report, "Food Marketing to Children and Youth: Threat or Opportunity?" was released December 6. Scheines was part of a subcommittee that conducted a systematic review of 40 years' worth of published scientific data on the impact of food marketing on children's diets. Scheines said that most of the research dealt with television advertising, which represents a declining share of food marketing dollars. Television advertising does influence children's behavior but the evidence is too weak to conclude that it has a direct tie to childhood obesity, Scheines said. For information go to http://www.iom.edu/report.asp?id=31330.

--Carnegie Mellon has been ranked the number two high-impact research university in the nation in psychology by Thomson Scientific, which provides products and services for researchers. The rankings are based on the number of times that the university's researchers are cited in scientific articles. Thomson Scientific considers this a key measure of scientific influence, and Carnegie Mellon researchers routinely are ranked among the most cited in the nation by the organization.

About the Quick Links