Associate Professor of Biology Nina Parker, Ph.D., MT (ASCP), was the content lead and senior writer for a microbiology textbook for OpenStax, in partnership with the American Society for Microbiology. The result of more than two years of work, which included devoting a significant portion of her sabbatical to working with editors to complete the book, it is now available online at http://cnx.org/contents/5CvTdmJL@4.2:rFziotaH@4/Introduction, for free in PDF form.
Associate Professor and Chair of English Michelle Brown, Ph.D., was featured on WHAG-TV, Hagerstown, and in The Winchester Star with her ENG 230 World Literature students for conceiving a “Next Steps” class community service/civic engagement project aimed at promoting campus unity after the 2016 divisive presidential election season (see photo above). In addition, Dr. Brown was tapped by Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Jeff Coker, Ph.D., to develop a set of initiatives that integrate oral and written communication skills into arts, sciences and humanities curricula. This work foregrounds communication as a primary strategic objective of the college’s academic mission. The project runs from spring through fall 2017.
Professor of Art History and Art Geraldine W. Kiefer, Ph.D., exhibited her recent maps of Iceland in two one-person exhibitions, the first at the Lord Fairfax Community College Middletown and Fauquier campuses, and the second at the Blue Ridge Arts Council Gallery. She also presented her work and its conceptual foundations to the Handley Library “Friends” lecture series. The pieces, “Iceland/Islandia,” created during her artist-in-residence month in Laugarvatn, Iceland, in May-June 2016 and throughout that summer, reflect her interest and passion in historical mapping as pictorial and cultural texts, and in personal mapping as records of a spiritual journey. The work initiated in 2016 will be a continuing exploration, through 2017 and 2018.
Associate Professor of Psychology Scott King, Ph.D., co-authored a paper, “The Workplace Intergenerational Climate Scale (WICS): A Self-Report Instrument Measuring Ageism in the Workplace” with Fred Bryant (Loyola University Chicago) that was accepted for publication in the Journal of Organizational Behavior. It details the validation of a measurement tool he created that is the first published instrument enabling companies to measure intergenerational age-based prejudice (i.e. ageism across multiple age groups) in the workplace. Dr. King was also nominated by the Shenandoah Area Agency on Aging (SAAA) for the Association of Fundraising Professionals Tri-State Chapter Distinguished Volunteer Award, based on the partnership between his Adult Years psychology course and the SAAA Winchester Active Living Center.
An introductory essay by Professor of History Warren Hofstra, Ph.D., “The Shenandoah Valley: Legendary American Landscape,” appeared in Andrei Kushnir’s new book, “Oh, Shenandoah: Paintings of the Historic Valley and River,” published by George F. Thompson Publishing and the University of Virginia Press. Kushnir is a landscape painter whose recent exhibit at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley, “Painting the Valley,” served as the basis for this volume of more than two hundred and fifty paintings with commentary.
Assistant Professor of Religion Kevin Minister, Ph.D. presented a paper, “Public Religious Aesthetics: Theorizing the Affect and Import of Interreligious Activism,” as part of a panel on “Religious Aesthetics, Theology, and the Humanities” at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Antonio, Texas.
Adjunct Professor of Anthropology Patrick Farris, M.A., is assisting a family of Syrian refugees who have been resettled in Winchester. The assistance has taken the form of translation between Arabic and English, as the family arrived in August from Jordan with no previous experience with American culture or English language training or skills. Sponsored by a local church, the family has made great strides in adapting to its new life in the United States, and Farris has joined other volunteers in regularly tutoring the family’s adults in English. He also conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon during summer 2016. The population of Lebanon, a nation the size of Connecticut, is just over 3 million people, and added to that nearly 2 million refugees have arrived from Syria as a result of that country’s civil war. The focus of Farris’ research was to ascertain the reactions and impressions of Lebanese to their guests, as well as the perceptions Syrian refugees hold of their hosts.
He also led undergraduate students from his Cultural Anthropology class in an archaeological excavation on a section of the site of Fort Loudoun in downtown Winchester in October. Constructed in the mid-1750s as a part of the colony of Virginia’s efforts to safeguard its western border during the French & Indian War, Fort Loudoun was designed and constructed under the supervision of a young Colonel George Washington. The current owners of the Fort Loudoun Apartments, having removed flooring as part of the building’s restoration, called in Farris to assist in recovering artifacts and documenting the site prior to the installation of new floors. The artifact assemblage supported what is known of the site’s post-colonial uses; several canisters’ worth of Civil War-era grape shot (a type of cannon ammunition) indicate the use of the site as a quarters for soldiers, numerous buttons and sewing tools appear to have come from the building’s use as a female academy and boarding school, and dozens of oyster shells and rum bottle fragments recall the oyster house which operated on the site during the nineteenth century. Students learned excavation skills and basic principles of archaeology being taught more in full during Farris’s Human Ecology class in the spring 2017 semester.