H&SS eNews, November 2007

Greetings from H&SS.

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. We always appreciate news from our alumni.

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

For other Carnegie Mellon news, be sure to check out http://www.cmu.edu and http://www.cmu.edu/news/blog/index.shtml.

EDITOR'S NOTE-We want to thank everyone who attended this year's Homecoming events - the H&SS Senior Honors Program 25th Anniversary Symposium and our annual Homecoming reception. It was a special weekend, thanks to you.

Congratulations go to our Alumni Award winners Alexander K. Bacas, Rich Lackner and Terry L. Babcock-Lumish - the most of any college this year. We also want to congratulate our Student Service Award winners, Brittany McCandless and Bradford L. Yankiver.

You can check out photos from the H&SS Homecoming festivities at http://www.flickr.com/photos/annej/sets/72157602813252548/.

Alumni News

--Kevin Boyle (B.S. Business Administration and Economics, 1994) is vice president and treasurer of American Commercial Lines Inc. in Louisville, Ky. Previously, he was director of planning and development for Great Lakes Transportation, which was sold to Canadian National Railway Company. From 1998 to 2001, Boyle worked for Seabulk International, where he rose to the position of treasurer. He holds a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

--Rebecca Cantrell (B.A. European Studies; German; Creative Writing, 1990) has written her first novel, "Even Smoke Leaves a Trace", which is set to be published in 2009. The novel follows an undercover crime reporter in Berlin in 1931 as she searches for her brother's killer, a trail that leads from the city's dark underbelly to the top ranks of the rising Nazi party. For more information go to www.rebeccacantrell.com.

--Deborah Kruglak Gilman (B.S. Psychology, 2000) is a third-year pediatric psychology fellow at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. She specializes in stress and pain management and medical compliance. In addition to clinical inpatient and outpatient therapy, Gilman conducts a variety of clinical research. For the past two years, she has been working on a multi-site National Institutes of Health-funded grant examining a behavioral treatment to increase calorie intake in toddlers with cystic fibrosis. Gilman earned her doctoral degree in school/clinical psychology at Tulane University in New Orleans.

--Tiffany Jastrzembski (B.S. Cognitive Psychology and Social History, 1998) has accepted a government civilian cognitive psychologist research position at the Air Force Research Laboratory, Performance and Learning Models Team, directed by Kevin Gluck (M.S., Ph.D. Psychology, 1997, 1999). She interned with this lab in the summer of 2005 and returned in 2006 as a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow. She presented that work at the 2006 I/ITSEC Conference, where her group's paper, "Knowledge Tracing and Prediction of Future Trainee Performance" won the Best Paper Award. Jastrzembski was awarded this year's Arnold M. Small Distinguished Service Best Student Paper Award at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting for her doctoral research, titled "Error Extensions to GOMS Modeling: Age-Related Predictions of Error in a Mobile Phone Task," supervised by Neil Charness (M.A., Ph.D. Industrial Administration, 1971, 1974). Jastrzembski earned her Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Florida State University.

--Deborah (Brannick) Lafky (B.S. History, 1977) recently joined the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In her new position, she focuses on information security and privacy standards within the development of the National Health Information Network. Previously, she was a research associate at the Kay Center for E-Health Research of Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif., where she is preparing to defend her doctoral dissertation. Lafky welcomes contact from fellow alumni and current students with an interest in healthcare information systems at Deborah.Lafky@ieee.org.

--Vijay Palaparty (B.A. Creative Writing, 2002; M.A. Professional Writing, 2003; M.A. Literary and Cultural Studies, 2005) wrote "Alekhya: Spilling Ink", a dance theater production, in which he also performs. The performance, which features the dance and music traditions of South India as well as English poetry and theater, will premier Nov. 23 in Chennai, India. Jennifer Shaupp (B.A. Creative Writing, 2003) serves as theater artist and literary consultant for the production.

--Steve Peters (B.S. Policy and Management, 1992) sold his web development firm, AMAZING!, to OpenSourcery LLC of Portland, Ore. Founded in 1995, AMAZING! provides web development services, specializing in clients with an educational mission or education-related products. Peters, who founded AMAZING!, will stay on with OpenSourcery. For more information go to http://www.amz.com/news-ops_pr.html.

College/Faculty News

--German Professor Stephen Brockmann has been awarded the DAAD Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in German and European Studies by the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS). The highly competitive award is given annually to an exceptional scholar, who must be an American citizen or resident, in one of the institute's three areas of research: policy studies, economics or culture and politics. Brockmann is an accomplished scholar in the field of German studies, which combines the study of German literature, history and politics. His work examines the relationship between literature and culture on the one hand and German national identity on the other. For more information go to http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/October/oct12_BrockmannDAAD.shtml.

--On Friday, Oct. 19, attendees at the Case Studies in Bayesian Statistics Workshop, held at Carnegie Mellon, honored Statistics Professor Stephen Fienberg in advance of his 65th birthday, which takes place Nov. 27. Friday morning, four of Fienberg's former Ph.D. students gave talks touching on Fienberg's work, and Fienberg also was feted during the workshop's dinner Friday night. Fienberg is the Maurice Falk University Professor of Statistics. One of the most accomplished scholars in his field, his numerous honors and accolades include membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of Canada and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

--The Society for the History of Technology has awarded its Leonardo da Vinci Medal to David Hounshell, the David M. Roderick Professor of Technology and Social Change in the Department of History. The da Vinci Medal is the society's highest honor, and it goes to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the history of technology through research, teaching, publication and other activities. Hounshell's research includes the rise of industrial research in the U.S. and the problems of managing scientific and technical research in organizations, and the influence of the Cold War on the pursuit of science and technology in the United States. For more information go to http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/October/oct30_hounshell.shtml.

--Psychologist David Klahr, one of the leading education researchers in the nation, has been named the Walter van Dyke Bingham Professor of Cognitive Development and Education Sciences by Carnegie Mellon. In April, Klahr become the first Carnegie Mellon faculty member to be elected to the National Academy of Education. He is the training director of Carnegie Mellon's Program in Interdisciplinary Education Research, which trains doctoral students from several disciplines to conduct applied educational research. Klahr is also the education director of the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center. For more information go to http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/October/oct8_bingham.shtml.

CORRECTION--Traci E. Sebastian, the new associate director of the International Relations Program, earned a bachelor's degree in international politics from Georgetown University. Her alma mater was erroneously reported in last month's eNews.

Events

--Joel Mokyr, professor of economics and history at Northwestern University and at the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at Tel Aviv University, will give a talk titled "Mechanization, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution in Britain" as part of the Humanities Center's Mechanization series. The lecture will take place at 4:30 p.m. Nov. 2 in the Adamson Wing of Baker Hall (136A).

--Alumna Kimberly Sims (B.A. Social History; History and Anthropology, 1998) will speak at 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 9, as part of the Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy lecture series. Sims, an assistant professor of history at American University, will give a talk titled "'We Already Have the Italian Squad, Why Not the Colored Squad?': Race and Law Enforcement in Early Twentieth Century New York." Sims earned masters and doctoral degrees in U.S. history from Harvard University. Her lecture will take place in the Steinberg Auditorium (A53) in Baker Hall.

--Riccardo Schulz, associate teaching professor of recording technology in the School of Music, will present a recorded performance of American composer George Crumb's famous "Black Angels" and "Makrokosmos III", compositions for two pianos and percussion. The event will take place at 4:30 p.m. Nov. 13 in the Alumni Concert Hall in the College of Fine Arts. The performance was conducted by Juan Pablo Izquierdo and features Cuarteto Latinoamericano pianists Luz Manriquez and Walter Morales, tenor Douglas Ahlstedt, and several students from Carnegie Mellon's percussion studio. Schulz and Harold Walls collaborated extensively with Izquierdo in the editing and mastering of the recording. This recently released recording won the coveted Diapason d'Or Award, the most important independent European record prize in classical music. The event is sponsored by the Center for the Arts in Society.

--On Nov. 15, at 4:30 p.m., the Mechanization series will feature "Italian Futurism -- elucidated and performed with the participation of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Luigi Russolo" in the Adamson Wing. --Martin Davis, a professor at New York University and the University of California, Berkeley, will give a talk titled "Alan Turing's Computers and Our Computers" at 4:30 p.m. Nov. 29 in the Adamson Wing. The talk is part of the Mechanization series. For more information go to http://www.hss.cmu.edu/humanitiescenter/Fall07%20Events.html#Davis.

In Memory

--We are saddened to report the death of Patty Chon (B.S. Economics; Business Administration, 2006) who died Oct. 13 in a car accident outside of Newark, N.J. Patty worked as a paralegal at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in New York City and planned to apply next year to law school. At Carnegie Mellon, she was a founding member of alpha Kappa Delta Phi sorority and was active in several other campus organizations. She was 23. The sisters of alpha Kappa Delta Phi have created a memorial page for Patty at http://www.hyelimson.com/patty.html.

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