Professional Activities
On Feb. 22, President Helen Giles-Gee and President Stephen Mittelstet of Richland College presented a keynote plenary session, “Charting the Successful Transfer: Coherence and Degree Completion in a Time of Swirling Enrollments,” at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) 2008 Integrative Designs for General Education and Assessment Conference in Boston, Mass.
President Helen Giles-Gee and President Jackie Jenkins Scott, Wheelock College, were keynote panelists for An Evening with the Presidents: The Path to the Presidency at the African American Women in Higher Education-New England (AAWHE-NE) Conference, held at Bentley College on Apr. 7.
At the KSC National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Student Chapter’s Explorations and Innovations in Science Education event held at Keene State College on Apr. 14, President Helen Giles-Gee presented a keynote, “The Importance of Inspiration,” for regional science teachers, colleagues, and students. This event was organized by Christie Wallace, KSC Student Workshop chairperson, and Sally Jean, associate professor, Science Education and NSTA Student Chapter advisor.
Colin Abernethy (Chemistry) traveled to the University of Texas at Austin to serve on the examining committee for one of their Ph.D. candidates. During his visit, he also discussed some newly implemented teaching exercises in chemistry laboratory classes at Keene State with University of Texas faculty.
James Stemp (Anthropology) presented three papers at the 73rd annual Society for American Archaeology conference held in Vancouver, Canada, in March. All of the papers dealt with various analyses of chipped stone tool assemblages from ancient Maya sites in Belize, Central America. The papers were entitled “The Organization of Chipped Stone Tool Technology at Minanha, Belize,” “The Grooved Stone Spheres from Baking Pot, Belize: A Design Theory Approach,” and “The Lithic Economy at Pook’s Hill, Belize: The Chipped Chert and Chalcedony Assemblage.”
Two KSC seniors, Jason Beckta and Amy Hollar, presented the results of a research study at the April National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) at Salisbury University in Salisbury, Md. The title of the poster presentation was “Behavioral and Morphological Effects of Bifenthrin on Xenopus laevis Tadpoles.” The study was conducted by Jason in collaboration with Amy and supervised by Susan Whittemore of the Biology Department.
Jason Beckta, who has been accepted into three master’s degree/Ph.D. programs as well as three master’s degree-only programs, has chosen to pursue his master’s and Ph.D. at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va. Amy Hollar will be pursuing a Ph.D. in biology at the University of Cincinnati. Both students are from the Keene area.
Katherine Tirabassi (English) co-led a preconference workshop entitled “Revealing and Preserving Our Local Histories: Archives as a Tool for Access” at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in New Orleans, La., held from Apr. 1 to 5. At this conference, Tirabassi also presented a paper exploring the regional legacies of 1940s New England writing teachers as part of a panel entitled “Rewriting Histories: Considering the Role of Legacy, Mentorship, and Local Context in Archival Research.”
Larry Benaquist (Film) was part of a team sent by the New Hampshire Postsecondary Education Commission to Turino, Italy, in late March to consider the evaluation of St. John International University, which wishes to incorporate in New Hampshire. Faculty members were sent to evaluate proposed programs in art history, international arts administration, environmental studies, film studies, environmental architecture, architecture, and business administration.
On Apr. 19, Benaquist was the keynote speaker at the ninth annual Graduate English Conference at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, Conn. It is a conference that welcomes graduate students from around the Northeast to deliver papers on issues of the text, English, women’s studies, and related fields.
