Professional Activities

Professor Jerry P. Jasinski was selected to participate in the College Board’s annual AP Reading in Chemistry. Each June, AP teachers and college faculty members from around the world gather in the United States to evaluate and score the free-response sections of the AP Exams. AP readers are high school and college educators who represent many of the finest academic institutions in the world. The AP Reading is a unique forum in which an academic dialogue between educators is both fostered and encouraged. The Advanced Placement Program (AP) enables willing and academically prepared students to pursue college-level studies – with the opportunity to earn college credit, advanced placement or both – while still in high school. In 2012, more than 11,000 AP readers evaluated more than 3.7 million AP Exams.

In December Dr. Mark C. Long was elected president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE). In his current term as vice president, Mark has served on the selection committee for a new two-year ASLE membership grant program for international students and was a judge for the ASLE Ecocriticism Award Committee that chose Rob Nixon’s Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Harvard 2012). From May 27-June 1 Mark spent the week in Lawrence Kansas at ASLE’s biennial conference where he participated in an all-day executive council planning retreat; led the business meeting for members of the organization; arranged mentoring sessions to match graduate students with experienced faculty; spoke on the poems of Maxine Kumin and Mary Oliver in the concurrent session “Geezer Poets”; and co-facilitated an in-conference workshop for academic professionals, “Staying Alive.” During an evening reception for international members and graduate students Mark was honored with the first ASLE award for dedication and excellence in mentoring.