AMERICAN.EDU/CAS/CONNECTIONS | FALL 2011
An
Artful
Gift
Research
Two
Go
A New
Ethical
Economics
Public
Health
Gets Real
Here
Comes
the Sun
Letter
from
the
Dean
On the Cover
Magazine Production
Sigalit Landau //
Dead See. 2005 //
Photograph
Publisher: College of Arts and Sciences //
Dean: Peter Starr // Managing Editor: Mary Schellinger //
Writers: Maggie Barrett, Josh Halpren, Kaitie O’Hare,
Charles Spencer // Editor: Ali Kahn, UP //
Designer: Nicky Lehming // Webmaster: Thomas Meal //
Senior Advisor: Mary Schellinger // Send news items and
comments to Abbey Becker at casnews@american.edu
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INNOVATIVE. PASSIONATE. VISIONARY. INSPIRED. COMMITTED. CURIOUS. All of these
adjectives describe the faculty, students, and alumni, good citizens all, whose stories are
featured in this issue of Connections.
No one exemplified the model citizen like Jack Child, who was passionate about the study of
Latin America and its language. His influence and tenacity continue to enrich our community.
Aaron Bell shares Jack’s passion as he travels across state and national borders researching
this country’s involvement in El Salvador’s civil war.
Curiosity is the lifeblood of an academic community. It drives U. J. Sofia, newly appointed
associate dean for research, to measure changes in the sun. And it motivates Colin Saldanha,
who joins the university this year, to study how the effects of estrogen on the minds of
songbirds might inform the way we treat Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and stroke patients.
Martha Starr’s interest in the consequences of the current recession inspired her to compile
reflections by leading economists whose views depart from economics as usual. Carly Kinney
is blending majors in statistics and political science with an eye toward a career as a pollster.
Curiosity also drives a psychic teenage investigator—the protagonist in MFA alumna Jennifer
Allison’s riveting mystery series. And across campus, faculty and students with penetrating
research questions are pairing up to find answers.
Giving back to the community is what fuels some. Don Rothfeld envisions his gift of Israeli
art as enriching both the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center and the
dialogue on political issues involving Israel, inspired by programs at the museum and AU’s
Center for Israel Studies. Mary Margaret Whipple may be stepping down from a successful
political career, but she continues to work to improve the lives of fellow Arlingtonians.
Others act as the role models themselves, putting their expertise to work to teach students
what it takes to be a good citizen. Our new undergraduate programs in public health,
launched this fall, offer students the fundamentals so they can go on to seek innovative
solutions to this growing global issue. In his new book, Carl Menninger offers guidance on
what it takes to balance the artistic and business aspects of an acting career.
We are pleased to share these stories with you—and invite you to share your stories with us.
Happy reading,
Peter Starr
Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
AMERICAN.EDU/CAS/CONNECTIONS | FALL 2011
Letter from the Dean
An Artful Gift 2
Rothfeld Collection of Contemporary Israeli Art donated to AU Museum
Birdbrained Study 4
Biology professor Colin Saldanha studies the effects of hormones on the brains of songbirds
Public Health Gets Real 4
New interdisciplinary degrees marry hard and social sciences
Research Two Go 6
Faculty-student collaborations gain fuel across campus
Here Comes the Sun 10
Physics department chair U. J. Sofia’s lofty new solar study
Jennifer Allison’s Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator 11
Successful mystery series launches alumna author’s career
Remembering Jack Child 12
Tribute to beloved and innovative language and foreign studies professor
A New Ethical Economics 14
Economics professor Martha Starr’s new book makes case for an ethics code in the field
Sum of the Parts 15
Junior Carly Kinney finds she can have it all in her future career
Mind the Edge 16
Theatre and dance director Carl Menninger’s self-help guide for young actors
Alum Profile: Mary Margaret Whipple 17
A public service wonk for people and the planet
The Road Taken 18
PhD history candidate Aaron Bell’s excellent dissertation adventure
New Faculty 19
Achievements 21
THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY MUSEUM at the Kat-
zen Arts Center recently
received a major gift
from New York collector Donald Rothfeld.
The Rothfeld Collection of Contemporary
Israeli Art features 151
pieces of contemporary,
2
mixed-media Israeli
art and it comes with
the Rothfeld Fund, a
$50,000 endowed gift
to support maintenance
and exhibition costs.
“In its first six years,
the American University
Museum has focused
on international art, and
particularly on contemporary art from the Middle
East, already presenting
major exhibitions from
Syria, Lebanon, and
Israel,” said Jack Rasmussen, the museum’s
director and curator.
“The Rothfeld gift helps
us build a collection
that will encourage this
continuing discussion of
ideas, beliefs, and values
in the region—exactly
what is needed today.”
The collection, a virtual
chronicle of Israel’s history, includes the work of
prominent and emerging
Israeli artists, including
noted painter Moshe
Kupferman, a Holocaust
survivor and a founder
of Lohamei Hagetaot (a
kibbutz in northern Israel
that commemorates Jews
who resisted Nazism).
Also represented in the
collection are artists Yael
Bartana, Sigalit Landau,
Rona Yefman. Martha Double Jew. 2008. C-print
by
Maggie
Barrett
Sigalit Landau. Dead See. 2005. Photograph
Artful Gift
An
and Elad Lassry, who
recently exhibited at the
Museum of Modern Art
in New York; all three
were featured at the
2011 Venice Biennale.
Rothfeld gave the collection to the American
University Museum, the
largest university affiliated
art museum in the D.C.
metro area, to inspire
dialogue about political
issues involving Israel.
AU is home to the
Center for Israel Studies (CIS), whose mission is to present the
creative and intellectual
contributions of modern Israel in the arts,
sciences, social sciences, and humanities.
The university offers an
undergraduate minor in
Israel studies, one of the
premier programs of its
kind in the United States,
focused on the nation’s
history, unique political
democracy, multicultural society, economic
development, immigrant
absorption, and international contributions.
“When I decided to
gift the collection, I felt
that the work should be
gifted to a non-Jewish
[or] -Israeli affiliated
institution. I wanted the
artists’ work out there—
to be seen, discussed,
and compared with that
of their peers across
the globe,” Rothfeld
said. “When I learned
about AU’s Israel studies program and met the
staff, I was convinced
that this was the right
venue for the work. The
beauty of the Katzen Arts
Center and the Washington, D.C., location
Pavel Wolberg. Jenin. 2001. C-print
arts
Tal Shochat. Crazy Tree (Detail). 2005. Photograph
arts
“The Rothfeld gift helps us
build a collection that will
encourage this continuing
discussion of ideas, beliefs,
and values in the region—
exactly what is needed today.”
­— Jack Rasmussen
made it a slam dunk.”
The gift also honors
Michael Oren, Israel’s
ambassador to the
United States and an
acquaintance of Rothfeld.
The museum will show
works from the Rothfeld
collection in exhibitions
and in conjunction with
events cosponsored by
the museum and CIS. 
3
by
Charles Spencer
Public
Health
Gets
Real
by
Josh
Halpren
BIOLOGIST COLIN SALDANHA
is interested in how hormones,
estrogen in particular, are delivered to the right place at the
right time to regulate neural structure and function.
Songbirds, which make up
about half of Earth’s 9,000 bird
species, turn out to be the perfect subjects to study this phenomenon. They need to learn
a specific song, and in spring
parts of their brains actually
double in size. Estrogen contributes to this brain plasticity, and
it also slows degeneration when
the birds’ brains are injured.
Such findings are why Saldanha
has devoted his career to understanding the mechanisms of
hormone production, function,
and delivery. “One thing that our
research has discovered is that
the enzyme that makes estrogen is localized to very specific
portions of nerve cells, and our
big surprise was that individual
synapses are capable of synthesizing estrogen,” he said.
The most recent description of
his research findings appears in
4
“Our big surprise
was that individual
synapses are capable of
synthesizing estrogen.”
— Colin Saldanha
two coauthored articles: “Synaptocrine Signaling: Steroid Synthesis
and Action at the Synapse,”
Endocrine Reviews (2011) and
“Intracerebral Estrogen Provision Increases Neurogenesis and
Cell Proliferation in the Injured
Zebra Finch Brain,” Developmental Neurobiology (2011).
His research could have important implications in the treatment
of Alzheimer’s, stroke, and Parkinson’s disease. The National
Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has awarded
him about $3.2 million in grants
to investigate neuroplasticity.
This fall Saldanha is setting
up his lab, but in general he
will teach courses in endocrinology and sexual determination and differentiation. 
MAINTAINING AND improving public health is one of
the great mandates of our
time, both in the United
States and abroad. In
this spirit and context, the
committee charged with
creating AU’s newest
major, within the College of Arts and Sciences, delivered its baby.
The new program
offers a BA, a BS, and
a minor in public health.
The BA focuses on the
social sciences aspect
of public health (e.g.,
prevention and community health), and the BS
on the science, including
biostatistics, advanced
work in epidemiology,
and infectious disease.
Interdisciplinary at its
core, the public health
program pulls courses
from each of the university’s schools and
college. Across campus, more than 70 AU
faculty members currently conduct research
related to health or teach
courses in the field.
“We hope to engage
many different types of
students,” says Lynne
Arneson, interim program
director and a member
of the original committee.
It’s already happening.
Public health is attracting premedical students, as well as those
with interests in global
health, advocacy, and
environmental health.
“I love public health
because it incorporates
so many fields,” explains
sophomore Tahmina
Ahmed, CAS ’14, who
dreams of working as a
pediatrician for Doctors
Without Borders and
community health organizations in her native New
York. Ahmed wants to
complement her physical science course work
with classes in other
disciplines to ensure
adequate preparation
for her career. “Politics,
history, gender roles, religion, and cultural perceptions all impact health.”
Haley Lynn, CAS ’14,
spent her first year in the
School of International
Service but changed her
major to public health
after she discovered the
program. Lynn’s goal is
to promote healthy lifestyles at both the grassroots and public policy
levels. “Providing [health]
education and easy-toaccess resources for
“Providing [health]
education and easyto-access resources
for people of all
socioeconomic levels
is imperative for our
nation to prosper.”
— Haley Lynn
people on all socioeconomic levels is imperative
for our nation to prosper,”
says Lynn. She hopes
to get involved with First
Lady Michelle Obama’s
“Let’s Move” campaign
and other obesity prevention efforts. “Informing others about easy
ways to live a healthy
lifestyle is what I am
truly passionate about.”
“What sets our program apart from other
public health programs,”
explains Arneson, “is that
it teaches students the
basics and also allows
them to develop their
passions.” Students take
classes in global health,
health science, social
and community health,
and policy, program planning, and evaluation, ultimately choosing one area
of concentration. “We
hope to use this major
to make a good connection between the hard
sciences and the social
sciences,” says Arneson.
AU’s program is also
unique in that it requires
students to participate in
XXXXXXXXXX
interdisciplinary
Photo by Annie Adam (Uganda)
sciences
interdisciplinary
internships and experiential learning opportunities. Partnerships with
public health institutions
and NGOs in the D.C.
metropolitan area provide
quality internships and
research opportunities
for students. In addition,
AU offers study abroad
programs specifically for
public health students.
“Public health is a practical type of major,” says
Arneson. “It’s all about
applying knowledge.”
“We can pump billions of dollars into
our economy to create
jobs,” says Lynn. “But
who will fill those positions when so many
people are not healthy?
A change needs to start
from the ground up.”
Ahmed agrees, “It’s
imperative,” she says,
“for doctors to realize that giving advice
and medication is not
the only solution. They
can be advocates for
their patients through
real change in the
public health system
and community.” 
5
interdisciplinary
interdisciplinary
IMAGINE MILLIONS of
by
Kaitie
O’Hare
ON A BUSY CAMPUS like American University, it is sometimes a challenge to stay
abreast of all the research being conducted by students and faculty. The College of
Arts and Sciences alone has 17 departments, and the range of research is broad and
impressive. Four professors and their students discuss their collaborations here.
VICTORIA CONNAUGHTON,
professor in the Department of Biology, is paying forward the positive
undergraduate experience she had at Bucknell University: She’s
opened her visual neuroscience laboratory to
interested students, giving them the opportunity
to conduct independent
research in her area.
“I think the hands-on
experimental aspect of
science is very important,” she says. “It allows
students to learn laboratory techniques and to
apply and ‘see’ concepts they have read
about and learned about
in the classroom.”
Connaughton and her
students, undergraduate and graduate, are
currently testing zebrafish retinas for exposure
to different compounds
like nicotine and glucose.
The latter induces hyperglycemia, or high blood
sugar, which, in humans
with diabetes, can cause
6
retinal complications. The
goal is to develop a new
model, using zebrafish,
to observe the effects
of prolonged hyperglycemia on the retina.
Data from the research
serves as the basis of
a proposal that will be
submitted to NIH before
the end of the year.
“There are zebrafish
mutants with visual system defects localized to
the retina, and some of
these defects are characterized by symptoms
that are similar to those
seen in humans with
specific visual problems,
such as night blindness,”
says Connaughton.
Her students are
also conducting experiments on sewage waste
and runoff in natural
habitats to see how
human-ingested chemicals affect animal life.
For this study, they are
monitoring exposures
of fluoxetine (Prozac).
“In many cases, it is
not known what effect
these chemicals have
on the animals, such
as fish, that inhabit the
contaminated streams
and lakes. If we know
what the concentrations
of contaminants are in
those streams, we can
perform lab studies to
determine the chemical’s effects,” she says.
While Connaughton continues to seek
answers to her research
questions, she never
loses sight of her ultimate
goal as a professor: to
influence and expand the
minds of her students.
Lindsey Nugent, a
recent graduate and
former student of Connaughton, says that the
mentoring opportunity
was a primary reason
she enrolled at AU. During the two years she
spent in the lab as a
grad student, Nugent
used Connaughton’s
retinal slice preparation
to isolate the eyes and
retinas of cavefish and
examine neuronal cells.
She attributes her success to Connaughton.
“As scientists we
love facts and figures,
but the thing about
research is that anything
can happen. You will
have many more failed
experiments than successful ones, but it’s
those successes that
keep you going,” says
Nugent. “[Connaughton]
pushed me so hard during graduate school, but
she did so with comfort
and respect. I was ready
to quit a couple of times
when it seemed like I
would never get results,
but she kept me going.”
Photo by Vanessa Robertson
BIOLOGY
“I think the hands-on
experimental aspect of
science is very important.”
— Victoria Connaughton
square feet filled with
paperwork from decades
of bankruptcy court
cases. Daunting, right?
It’s a challenge facing
the National Archives.
Economics professor
Mary Hansen is homing in on the challenge
and putting her students
to work researching the
underlying issue that
is front and center in
today’s economy: debt.
Hansen’s recent grant
from the Institute for New
Economic Thinking supports her study of changes in bankruptcy law from
1940 to 2000, and in
particular how women’s indebtedness has
changed during that time.
“A lot of interesting
changes happened in
the middle of that time
period,” Hansen says.
“The most important thing
was that the participation
of women [in the labor
force] about doubled.
You would expect the
changing economic role
of women to be reflected in their access to
credit markets, in their
rates of indebtedness.”
This rate of indebtedness is what Hansen
hopes to measure, with
input from her students.
They will be closely
examining original court
documents from bankruptcy cases to measure changes in debt
by gender over time.
Hansen was drawn
to the topic because
of her interest in economic, legal, and social
history. She is particularly excited to explore
a topic that has been
only narrowly covered
in the past but offers
insight into our current
economic situation.
While managing what
she refers to as “largescale archival work,”
Hansen wants to ensure
that her students take
from the experience a
new understanding of
bankruptcy law and a
new perspective on the
research process in
economics and history.
They are assigned tasks
relevant to their experience, interests, and
academic focus. All of
them, however, get to
participate in the hard
work: photographing and
filing each document.
The next step will be
to identify trends and
decipher meaning to
better understand the
complexities of women’s
indebtedness. “These
students will know where
the numbers come from.
Being part of that datagenerating process is
exciting for them, knowing that they’re contributing to knowledge that no
one had ever put together before,” says Hansen.
While the process
benefits her students,
Hansen gets satisfaction from observing
them find meaning in the
documents. She hopes
that some students will
use the data for their
capstone topics.
“Students get a real
sense that economics
Photo by Vanessa Robertson
Research Two Go
ECONOMICS
“Being part of that datagenerating process is exciting
for [the students], knowing
that they’re contributing to
knowledge that no one had ever
put together before.”
— Mary Hansen
is history, when it boils
down to it. It’s a reflection of people’s lives;
it’s the foundation of
people’s everyday
struggles,” she says.
“Watching students do
that is a really rewarding experience.”
7
interdisciplinary
PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSOR Anthony Riley has
By understanding the
mechanisms, he says,
he is able to determine
how various drugs affect
the body. “I can see how
alcohol and cocaine
interact,” he says. “I can
understand what parts
of the brain might be
involved. It’s a difference
between basic research
and applied research.”
With so much ground
to cover, Riley relies
on the help of his students—11 altogether.
“I’ve got many students,
and each is doing
Photo Vanessa Robertson
implemented a less
conventional approach
to doing research with
his students: Rather
than inviting them to
work on his projects,
he encourages them to
develop their own studies. In his lab. Under
his supervision.
In 35 years of teaching, Riley has published
with every student who
has ever worked with
him in the psychopharmacology laboratory.
After they graduate, he
continues to work with
them to secure jobs in
the field of psychology.
“I see myself as a
trainer and as a mentor,”
he says. “I want them to
be equally creative and
passionate, to have a
topic that they enjoy, that
they want to pursue—
and that they can have
the intellectual freedom
to pursue a topic that
simply excites them.”
Riley and his students
are currently exploring
ways in which drugs
interact with each other,
how drugs affect certain
areas of the brain, how
adolescents react differently to drugs, and
more. He is interested
in the mechanisms of
drug intake and abuse,
and he hopes that his
research may contribute
to the development of
new treatment methods.
“We’re allowed to generate our own ideas
here; we don’t get handed a project.”
— Katie Serafine
8
something different in
that analysis,” he says.
For example, one student is looking at the
mechanisms of the aversive effects commonly
associated with abused
drugs, as well as using
neurobiological assays,
or measurements of
drug activity, in the brain
to study which components and pathways are
affected by the drugs.
Another student is analyzing how drug history
can affect drug vulnerability and abuse liability.
Riley’s students
appreciate his dedication to their research
and also his flexibility.
Katie Serafine, a doctoral student in behavior,
cognition, and neuroscience, says the ability
to choose her assignments is what keeps her
focused on the work
she’s doing with Riley.
“We’re allowed to generate our own ideas here;
we don’t get handed a
project. I’ve never had
to run an experiment that
I wasn’t interested in.”
Riley says he always
looks forward to what
the next batch of young
minds might contribute
to his research. “I hope
[the future] holds the
same as the past: that
I continue to have the
bright students around
me, the support of the
university, and the ability to pursue what I’m
interested in. I have my
own intellectual curiosity,
and watching students
understand and process these issues and
take off on their own
is really rewarding.”
STATISTICS
YEARS AGO, a graduate data analysis course
lit a fire inside statistics
professor Betty Malloy,
and she’s been burning
for more ever since. “I
had so much fun playing
with data,” she says.
She’s looking to pass
along that same sense
of fun and fire to her
students any way she
can, particularly by giving them opportunities
to engage in research.
For Malloy, statistics
isn’t just about crunching numbers: it’s about
looking for data trends
and creating models to
reveal information about
anything from elephant
fertility to traffic pollution.
“Every day you wonder what it is you get to
do that day, what you’re
going to discover,” she
says. “Whether it’s a
small discovery or you
end up with a dead end,
it doesn’t matter. You
always have this little
bit of excitement, and
you feel like high-fiving
someone sometimes.”
Those high-five
moments are what keep
her busy working on so
many projects, including
analyzing auto workers’
health risks, a project
she has been working on since 2004.
The General Motors
United Auto Workers
Study has Malloy and
her students analyzing
data from the National
Cancer Institute to create models that assess
health risks associated
with hazardous working
conditions. More than
40,000 employees were
sampled across a span
of 70-plus years. The
study focuses on exposure to auto plant chemicals, which can cause
disease and cancer.
Malloy is trying to determine just how dangerous these chemicals can
be to the overall health
of the plant workers.
“It’s a really rich data
set,” she says. “There
are lots of measurements, lots of different
outcomes measured, and
lots of different exposures that [researchers]
have estimated. It’s just a
goldmine of information.”
Malloy and her students have seen some
strange trends in their
data that at first appear
abnormal but make sense
after careful thought.
“It’s interesting that
a lot of times you see a
downturn at the higher
exposure, which would
imply that the more you’re
exposed to the chemicals,
the less you’re at risk.
This is counterintuitive,”
she says. “The unhealthy
workers get sick earlier
at lower exposures and
drop out [of the work
force], and you have
what’s called the ‘healthy
worker survivor effect.’
People who are really
healthy continue working at higher exposures,
and it makes it seem
like these exposures
aren’t bad for you.”
Working with these
data has also been a joy
for Malloy’s students.
Photo by Kaitie O’Hare
PSYCHOLOGY
interdisciplinary
“Every day you wonder what it
is you get to do that day, what
you’re going to discover.”
— Betty Malloy
“Betty’s great—she’s
just too modest to say
so,” jokes Philip Gautier,
a recent graduate and
research assistant to Malloy. “I’m learning about
techniques that are common and broad. There’s
so many that you can’t
cover everything in your
course work, so there’re
a number that I’m learning from scratch in the
research with Betty.”
Gautier meets with
Malloy to discuss theories and methodologies associated with the
study and implement
them in programs that
they design to catch
data trends. They look
at simulation studies and they talk about
what works—and what
doesn’t work—in their
data and programs.
Currently, they’re drafting a research paper
about their results.
After their close collaboration on the auto
workers study, they will
have to pursue their joint
research from a distance: Gautier began
his doctoral studies at
Purdue University this
fall. But after working
with so many research
assistants over the years,
Malloy regards goodbyes as a bittersweet
aspect of her career.
“There always seem
to be new things to find
out and new people to
work with, who bring
in questions and make
me think about things
in new ways,” she
says. “We just have
really good students.
I feel really lucky.” 
9
sciences
humanities
humanities
Sun
Jennifer Allison’s Gilda Joyce,
Psychic Investigator
by
Kaitie O’Hare
“We don’t understand what carbon
dioxide, methane, and other pollutants
are doing to our climate until we
understand what the sun is doing.”
— U. J. Sofia
U. J. SOFIA, chair of the
Department of Physics, sits down at a table
in his office, as usual.
It’s two years to the
day since he began his
career at American University. Sofia takes a
moment to look around
the room, decorated with
all manner of artifacts
and trinkets, including a
massive inflatable globe
that hangs above his
desk. He’s had a good
two years, he acknowledges. And now, he’s
launching his third year
at AU as the first associate dean for research.
Sofia is not new to
research. He has been
actively involved in
more than two dozen
10
funded research projects, and his list of
publications and presentations is even longer.
Science runs in his
family. His father is also
an astrophysicist, whose
work shaped Sofia’s
life at a young age. “My
earliest datable memory
is being at the launch of
Apollo 11. I was actually
at the Kennedy Space
Center for the launch of
the first spacecraft where
people landed on the
moon,” he says. “I was
just a bit over two years
old, and I still remember
my dad holding my hand
and leaning over to me
and saying, ‘Remember
this, you want to remember this.’ And I do. I
From The Bones of the Holy cover art
Here Comes the
by
Kaitie
O’Hare
remember the rocket
going up, feeling the
pulse of the engines.”
Now, as his father
retires from Yale University, Sofia takes over the
family trade. His current
project—in collaboration with the University
of Maryland–College
Park and the University
of Maryland–Baltimore
County—is the establishment of the Goddard
Planetary Heliophysics
Institute, where he and
colleagues will study
effects of the sun on the
earth and other planets
in our solar system.
“It’s actually a very
good thing for the department overall, so we’re
very excited about it.
This gives us a very
tangible connection
to NASA,” he says.
To conduct his
research, Sofia will utilize
a device designed by
his father called a Solar
Disk Sextant (SDS). The
SDS has the capability
to take precise measurements of the sun, even
changes in its apparent
size over a 20-minute
span of time. A nearspace instrument, it will
be mounted for flight on
an 11 million cubic-foot
balloon at an altitude of
120,000 feet (that’s nearly 100,000 feet above the
altitude at which commercial airplanes fly).
The balloon, says Sofia,
is “unfathomably large.”
Sofia’s contribution to
the project will be to program the SDS, as well
as the PICARD satellite,
launched by France in
2010, to gather information about the sun—size,
temperature, energy
output, and more—over
the next three years.
“Basically, we don’t
understand what carbon dioxide, methane,
and other pollutants are
doing to our climate until
we understand what the
sun is doing. That is a
fundamental piece of
the model that is missing, and we’re hoping to
provide that fundamental piece,” he says. 
HIGH SCHOOLER Gilda Joyce,
psychic investigator, knows the
signal: an itch in her left ear
followed by a communication
from the “other side.” And then
there are the creepy crimes to
which she finds herself drawn to
solve. A strange life indeed for a
somewhat quirky teenager, but
her future is written—for now,
anyway, according to her creator
Jennifer Allison, MFA creative
writing ’98, who is five books
into the Gilda Joyce series (the
first was published in 2005).
Here’s the backstory: Gilda
has been honing her psychic
skills to communicate with her
recently deceased father. But
her clairvoyance also gets her
entangled in a series of mysteries involving both the living and
the dead. In the latest book, The
Bones of the Holy, Gilda travels
to St. Augustine, Florida, where
her mother is about to remarry
—the prospective husband is
an antiques dealer, who seems
to be harboring some ghostly
secrets in his historic house.
Allison began the Gilda Joyce
series after working a long and
varied string of jobs, including a
stint as a shopping mall pianist.
When the dot-com she was
working for went under and
she found herself with time on
her hands, she turned to what
she loved doing most: writing.
And so the Edgar Awardnominated series was born.
The first book, Gilda Joyce:
Psychic Investigator, is set in San
Francisco, where Allison was
living at the time. Subsequent
books follow Gilda around the
country and abroad, always to
places where Allison has lived or
visited. “I need to be able to really picture where and when things
are happening, and setting things
in places that I know in pretty
intimate detail helps me know my
story,” she explains. “Some little
nuggets of history are woven
in there. I find it interesting to
do that; I think it inspires me.
When I’m in a place, I think of
events that could have happened
in that location. The places are
almost characters in the books
because they have so much
influence on what happens.”
Like Gilda Joyce—who is
always typing spy reports, writing
in her journal, or writing novels
in her spare time—many of her
fans are young writers. “Lots
of the readers love that Gilda’s
a writer herself,” says Allison.
“A lot of [them] feel this connection to the main character.
They’re great readers, they’re
really smart, they’re increasingly younger and younger.”
A self-described literacy activist, Allison enjoys connecting to
her readers in the classroom.
“I’m really interested in literacy
in our country and how to get
kids more access to books and
help them find books that they
really enjoy reading,” she says.
“There are too many situations
where kids don’t have access
to those books. I find it gratifying that my values are in
line with what I work on.”
She has created an interactive
website with a section for teachers who are using the books in
class. The teacher’s guide features questions for discussion,
creative art projects, and suggestions for writing exercises.
Allison intends to write at least
one more Gilda Joyce book.
“Grand plans for the future
are to find a conclusion for the
Gilda Joyce series, whether it’s
one book or three more books,
and to have a sense that the
reader can journey through
them and reach a conclusion.”
She’s currently working on
a children’s picture book about
her life as a mother of three.
“It’s very humorous and based
on things that my kids have
inspired—things that are annoying at the time, but funny later,”
she says. Allison is also interested in switching genres and
maybe writing a play some
day. “I’d like to keep growing in other areas,” she says.
www.gildajoyce.com 
11
humanities
humanities
12
Photo by Jeff Watts
Jack child
by
Charles
Spencer
Jack Child, who died
June 18 at age 73 after
complications related
to open-heart surgery,
had an eclectic list of
passions. Penguins.
Antarctica. Latin American postage stamps.
More importantly he
leaves behind no shortage of friends who
admired his innovative
approaches to teaching
and his devotion to his
students and colleagues.
Child came to American University first as a
graduate student, earning
master’s and doctorate
degrees in international
relations from the School
of International Service. He joined SIS as
an assistant dean in
1980, and later moved
to the College of Arts
and Sciences. There
he taught in the Department of Language and
Foreign Studies.
“Jack was an exceptional scholar and colleague and a wonderfully
interesting, multifaceted
human being. His passing
leaves an enormous hole
in the department, college, and university,” CAS
dean Peter Starr noted.
As assistant dean,
Child played an important
role at SIS, said former
SIS dean Lou Goodman. After his move to
CAS, “his ties to SIS
never abated, and he
was beloved by all the
faculty here. He was
named faculty of the year
at SIS a few years ago.”
Child had a fascinating background: Born in
Buenos Aires, he lived
with his American parents
in South America for
18 years. After graduating from Yale with a
degree in communication engineering, he
joined the U.S. Army,
where he served for 20
years as a Latin American specialist. He retired
as a lieutenant colonel.
He was still on active
duty when he earned his
graduate degrees from
AU. “He was just a wonderful scholar, a wonderful colleague who,
in a way, anchored the
Latin American studies
community here,” Goodman said. “Every semester he would, on his
own, publish who was
taking what courses and
send it out to everyone
who taught about Latin
America to keep the
community together.”
Goodman noted
that Child was also
the pioneering director of the Center for
Teaching and Learning. “He was the model
teacher using technology in the classroom in
ways that just entranced
students,” Goodman
said. Child’s research
focused on cultural studies and conflict resolution in Latin America,
with a focus on Antarctica and the Falklands.
Child also loved to
get out of the classroom: He was the guest
lecturer and guide on
14 expedition cruises to
Antarctica and the surrounding vicinity. And
his boundless enthusiasm for penguins captured attention as well.
His books also reflect
his eclectic interests.
Among his publications: Miniature Messages: The Semiotics of
Latin American Postage
Stamps; Latin American History through Its
Art and Literature; and
Antarctica and South
American Geopolitics:
Frozen Lebensraum.
“Jack was a militant
Latin Americanist, deeply
committed to teaching
and scholarship,” said
Amy Oliver, chair of the
Department of Philosophy and Religion and
Photo courtesy of Jack Child
Remembering
UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR
His Memory Lives On
A generous supporter of
American University over the
years, Jack Child justified
his giving quite simply: “All
in all, AU has been a part of
my life for many years, and
through my support I hope
to remain a part of AU’s
for many years to come.”
Child’s generosity extended to both the College of
Arts and Sciences and the
School of International Service. The building housing
the Department of Language and Foreign Studies
(LFS) was dedicated as
Jack Child Hall to recognize his commitment to that
department. An endowed
fund, the Jack Child Faculty Development Award,
is being established to help
build camaraderie in LFS.
professor of Spanish
and Latin American studies. “His tireless efforts
toward Latin American
studies and American
University have greatly
improved both. Perhaps
most of all, I remember
how beautifully he treated every person he came
in contact with at AU.”
Adapted from “Jack Child
Leaves Behind Devoted
Friends,” american.edu/
americantoday/campusnews/20110621Jack-Child.cfm 
Child intended the balance of the funds designated
for the College to support
Spanish and Latin American
studies operations. A permanently endowed Jack Child
Spanish and Latin American
Studies Fund will provide
additional resources to faculty in the field to enrich their
teaching, reflecting Child’s
passion for his discipline. The
fund will also set up an annual prize for two outstanding
students—a graduate and an
undergraduate—in the field.
SIS will benefit through
support for their fine new
building, as well as funds
to supplement the annual
Harold E. Davis/John Finan
Prize for outstanding student
work in Latin American studies and create an endowed
fund for scholarships and fellowships for undergraduates
and graduates in the field.
In addition to monetary
gifts, Child left a collection
of academic and cultural
materials to be used as
resources in Spanish and
Latin American studies.
13
social sciences
social sciences
A New Ethical
Illustration by Branden Vondrak
Economics
by
Maggie
Barrett
“We need to consider these other
issues if we hope to prevent crises and
downturns like this in the future.”
— Martha Starr
DO ECONOMISTS need
a code of ethics?
That’s a question not
often asked in the wake
of the 2008 financial crisis and the great recession that followed. But
should it be? Economics professor Martha
Starr, editor of the new
book, Consequences
of Economic Downturn:
Beyond the Usual Economics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), believes
we should be asking this
14
question—and more like
it. The book, a collection of essays by Starr
and other economists,
explores the ethical, as
well as the social, political, cultural, and educational, questions behind
the crisis and downturn.
“We need to consider these other issues
if we hope to prevent
crises and downturns
like this in the future,”
said Starr, associate
professor of economics
and former Federal
Reserve economist.
After the crisis, many
people wondered why
influential economic
policymakers failed
to act despite all the
warning signs. Starr
says it could be partly
because economists
have no code of conduct or ethical guidelines
to ensure that they use
their professional skills
in the public interest.
“Unlike almost any other
academic profession—
statisticians, mathematicians, physicists,
sociologists, you name
it—economists have
always opposed adopting an ethical code.”
The result? Little or
no incentive to spot and
thwart developments that
could (and did) spiral
out of control and cause
hardship for people, particularly the economically
disadvantaged and average working Americans.
George DeMartino of
the University of Denver
writes in his essay that
such a code of conduct
would oversimplify the
complex ethical situations that economists
face. Alternatively, he
suggests establishing
a field of professional
economics ethics to
study how economists
should approach particular situations.
“A well-written code
could make people think
hard before, for instance,
accepting $135,000 in
speaker’s fees from an
investment bank—and
then giving that investment bank privileged
access to the White
House,” said Starr,
referring to the relationship between Goldman
Sachs and Lawrence
Summers, then top
White House economic adviser, in 2008.
Another essay focuses
on why organizations
once considered too big
to fail took on such risky
investments in the first
place. Risky investments,
of course, present the
greatest opportunities
for high returns; the
reward is supposed to
be tied to the risk. But,
says Starr, in contemporary American capitalism, risk and reward
have been effectively
divorced, particularly for
those with money and
power. “Numerous laws,
practices, policies, and
institutions enable the
wealthy and powerful to
push risks off themselves
and onto others—especially the unsuspecting
taxpayer,” Starr said.
Take the concept of
limited liability, which
protects investors from
losing more than they
invested in a venture.
While it was designed
to foster new business
by protecting investors
if a venture failed, it created a screen behind
which people could set
aside returns while they
were accumulating new
wealth. If things turned
sour, investors could
keep the returns they
had earned and saved.
When the boom-time
bubble burst, the government’s Troubled Asset
Relief Program shifted
the risks onto taxpayers.
“Not only had the
average American not
agreed to take on these
risks and had not benefited from the outsized
gains,” said Starr, “but
they also bore most of
the costs of the downturn through lost jobs,
homes, home equity,
and retirement savings.”
That’s what motivates
Starr to keep asking
those questions. 
Sum of
the Parts
“Electoral politics and statistics
go hand in hand because
polling is such an integral part
of the election process.”
— Carly Kinney
WHEN JUNIOR CARLY KINNEY,
CAS ’13, graduated from high
school, she vowed that she was
done with math—forever. She
was on course for a career in
political science. But halfway
through her freshman year,
she found she kind of missed
the quantitative work. So
she signed up for a statistics class. And then another.
“I’ve found that I like the
statistics classes much more
than I thought I would,” says
Kinney. And so she devised a
rather unusual way to combine
her interests: double major in
statistics and political science.
The point of convergence? In
a word, polling. Kinney refers
to it as an art. Her career
plans now involve elections
and public opinion polling.
“Electoral politics and statistics go hand in hand because
polling is such an integral part
of the election process,” she
says. “I’m really interested in
elections, so the fact that an
election cycle comes around
every other year keeps me
interested in political science. It changes the politics at every election—which
means I never get bored.”
If Kinney was apprehensive
about the demands of a double
major leaving no time for other
activities, like studying abroad
and interning and all of the
other things going on around
campus, she will be able to
say she did it all by the time
she graduates. She’s studying abroad in Rome for her fall
semester, and she completed her second internship this
summer working in the public
affairs department at Ipsos, a
market research company.
“They do a lot of polls, they
do corporate reputation studies
and different studies for different entities, and I think that’s
really interesting because they
[do] a lot of statistical analysis,” she says. “I’d love to work
more with election polls in the
future, perhaps at a research
company like Ipsos that designs
and conducts them. It seems
like a perfect mix of my political
by
Kaitie
O’Hare
interests and statistics, so
I think I’d really enjoy it.”
Her first internship was in the
polling department at Huffington Post, where she compiled
polls and analyzed trends. “You
can hardly read a story about
any national election without
getting some kind of polling
results,” she says. “I love being
able to follow that closely and
delve deeper into what the
polls say, and my internships
so far have only strengthened
that love. At both the Huffington Post and Ipsos, I’ve gotten
to meet and work with people
who use political polls in their
daily work, which has been
amazing and a lot of fun.”
Kinney admits that it all can
be a bit overwhelming at times.
“Coordinating my classes is
definitely the biggest challenge
of studying both political science and statistics,” she says.
“I’m lucky because political
science is a large department,
which means that there are
a lot of different classes that
I can fit around my required
statistics classes. So juggling the two majors can be
done with careful planning.”
Kinney says she would love
to be able to use her career to
advance social issues she cares
about, like gay rights. “I’m not
sure how I could use statistics
to contribute to that cause,” she
says, “but if I got the chance to
do so, I’d definitely take it.” 
15
humanities
Photo by Jeff Watts
arts
E
G
ED
CARL MENNINGER studied
theatre at Northwestern
University and Emerson
College, whose graduates are fixtures in show
business. But when
it came to the business half of the profession, like most newly
minted actors he was
woefully unprepared.
To help other young
actors avoid that experience, AU’s director of
theatre, musical theatre,
and dance cowrote Minding the Edge: Strategies
for a Fulfilling, Successful Career as an Actor
(Waveland, 2011) with
award-winning actress
Lori Hammel. Though it’s
aimed at young actors,
Minding the Edge is a
useful self-help guide
for all creative artists.
Its exercises help artists
define their ambitions
16
and talents and guide
them toward mastering the business end of
any creative profession.
According to Menninger and Hammel,
there are really three
edges that need minding:
The “abyss” is something you don’t want to
fall into. For an actor,
that can mean focusing
on your goals and not
becoming so comfortable with a day job and
social life that your true
work begins to suffer. “If
you’re not minding that
edge, you go into free
fall—and the next thing
you know, at 30, you’re
still waiting tables; you
haven’t spent the energy
and time pursuing your
goal,” Menninger said.
“Keep your edge”
translates to “staying on
top of your game.” That
might mean taking voice
or dance lessons, or persistently auditioning for
parts, whether they’re
dream roles or not.
Don’t be an “edgy
person.” Most people
want to avoid highmaintenance diva types,
so “don’t become the
gossip, the person who
snaps at people, the toxic
presence in the room,”
Menninger cautioned.
Which brings us to
Neg-a-Tors, defined by
Menninger and Hammel as: “external negative forces, people,
thoughts, and opinions
that bring us down.”
How do you deal with
these negative forces?
“We come across
them all the time, and
they’re tough. I try to kill it
with kindness because it
irritates them,” Menninger
Photo courtesy of Mary Margaret Whipple
e
h
t
d
n
i
M
by
Charles
Spencer
said. “If you find yourself
thinking, ‘That positive
guy really irritates me,’
you’d better ask yourself,
how ridiculous is that?”
“Artists can be very
self-absorbed. To some
extent you have to be;
you’re fighting your
own fight out there,” he
said. “Remembering
that everyone, including you, is contributing
to a larger whole in creative endeavors requires
a shift in mind-set.”
Because a creative
artist’s work life is less
formally structured than
most other professions,
finding the self-discipline
to be proactive about your
career after college (going
to audition after audition,
spending the time to make
contacts after a day’s
work) goes against a lifetime of conditioning. From
Alum Profile
IF YOU WERE to describe Virginia
the time you start acting, you’re in a “reactive
paradigm—you master
tasks, await assessment,
enjoy successes as
you master harder and
harder tasks—but you’re
always reacting.”
Then you graduate
from college and “everything changes, you
become a business
owner,” Menninger noted.
“That’s really what an
actor is, a business owner. That takes a discipline
of thought and action.”
It comes down to
motivation. You have to
ask the “important questions, like: ‘Who am I?’
‘What is it I’m selling?’
and ‘What’s motivating
me to do this?’ That’s
the big question.”
If you answer money or
celebrity, you’re probably
in the wrong business.
“If you’re not
minding that edge,
you go into free fall —
and the next thing you
know, at 30, you’re
still waiting tables;
you haven’t spent
the energy and time
pursuing your goal.”
— Carl Menninger
“Money is nice, but
you’ll get derailed if your
motivation isn’t, ‘This is
what I love and when
I’m doing it I’m in the
zone; when I’m doing
it I feel creative, smart,
engaged, empowered,’”
Menninger said. “If that’s
not what’s driving you to
be an artist of any kind,
it’s going to be harder—
unless you get an incredibly lucky break.” 
State Senator Mary Margaret
Whipple in a word, this might be
it: humanitarian. Born in Watseka, Illinois, Whipple grew up
in College Station, Texas. She
attended Rice University, received
her BA in English from AU (in
1961), and earned a master’s from
George Washington University.
Whipple has long been dedicated to improving the welfare
and future of young people. A
former instructor at Northern Virginia Community College, she
began her career in public service as a volunteer at her daughters’ schools. In 1976 she was
appointed to the Arlington County
School Board and became chair
in 1978. Committed to change,
she ran for office and was elected
to the Arlington County Board in
1983, serving until 1995. During
her tenure, Whipple represented Arlington on the Washington
Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Board of Directors in 1985 and
from 1988 through 1995, when she
was elected to the state senate.
“I felt that my strong ties and
valuable experiences in the local
communities while on the County Board,” said Whipple, “would
allow me to help make decisions
Mary
Margaret
Whipple
by
Yuri Ozeryan
that would improve the lives of the
people. I knew firsthand how they
would be affected through the various programs.” Whipple represents
the 31st district in the Virginia State
Senate, which includes Arlington
County north of Columbia Pike,
the City of Falls Church, and eight
precincts in eastern Fairfax County.
Known for her environmental
support and legislation, Whipple is
a three-time recipient of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Legislator of the Year Award—in 1998,
2000, and 2009. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of
the Arlington Community Foundation and an Honorary Member of
the Board of Scenic Virginia. She
also is a member of the Arlington
branch of the American Association of University Women, the
Arlington Kiwanis Club, the League
of Women Voters, the Arlington
Historical Society, the Committee
of 100, and the Arlington County,
Virginia, Commission on Aging.
Four terms after she arrived in
Richmond, Whipple announced
that she would retire in 2011. She
will remain active in the Arlington
Community Foundation, which provides grants to nonprofit organizations and scholarships to students
pursuing higher education. 
17
new faculty // notables
IN 1992, El Salvador
ended nearly 50 years
of military control and
fighting. The peace came
about with substantial
intervention from the
United States during the
nation’s 12-year-long civil
war. Aaron Bell, U.S. history doctoral candidate,
is taking his personal
interest in U.S.–Latin
relations to new academic heights as the topic
of his dissertation; he’s
also taken it on the road.
Bell’s research has
entailed an extensive journey around this country
and to Central America
to unearth information
about the role of the
United States in providing
aid to Salvadoran political parties, like Alianza
18
Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA), during
the 1980–92 civil war.
“I’m really interested
in Latin America’s history
in the past 100 years,”
he says, “because there
have been so many struggles through democratic
and revolutionary means
over what I think are
really essential questions
about how human societies should function.”
He’s particularly interested in looking at the
extent of this country’s
power in Latin American
affairs and the impact
of that influence on the
region’s citizens and
governments. “The U.S.
has had a tremendous
amount of influence in the
region, and it’s interesting
to me to see how our
country has understood
those struggles and
interacted with a variety
of political and social
movements,” he says. “I
feel like there’s conflict
between our espoused
values and more practical concerns—or at
least what policymakers have believed to be
practical concerns.”
Bell spent two months
in El Salvador, an academic payoff during
which he hoped to open
more doors. “Going
down there gave me
this chance to talk and
work with historians to
get their perspectives on
things and see the circles
they’ve uncovered that
I wouldn’t even know
Photo by Jeff Watts
SHALINI AYYAGARI
“It’s apparent that at American, growing the sciences
and building a strong science program is a priority,
and that’s impressive.”
GREGORY HARRY
—Gregory Harry
Photo by Jeff Watts
JULIET BELLOW
Assistant Professor, Performing Arts
»» PhD music, University of California–Berkeley
»» MA music, University of California–Berkeley
»» BA music, Swarthmore College
Assistant Professor, Physics
»» PhD physics, University of Maryland
»» MS physics, University of Maryland
»» BS physics, California Institute of Technology
Harry’s research focuses on astrophysics,
thermal noise, and gravitational wave detection,
which will one day provide scientists with
a new way of studying the universe.
Her areas of interest are ethnomusicology,
North Indian classical music, and music of
South Asia. She has been studying a group
of folk musicians on the India-Pakistan
border who play classical and folk music for
Hindu life-cycle ceremonies and holidays.
JUSTIN JACOBS
“I’ve always been interested
in the types of stories people
tell about their worlds.”
—Lindsey Green-Simms
Photo by Jeff Watts
“The more places you see and the
more archives you go to make your
work a lot better.”
— Aaron Bell
New Faculty
Assistant Professor, Art History
»» PhD art history, University of Pennsylvania
»» MA art history, University of Pennsylvania
»» BA art history, Columbia University
Her primary interest is the relationship between
art and dance in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, a subject explored in her forthcoming
book, Modernism on Stage: The Ballets Russes
and the Parisian Avant-Garde, 1917–1929.
LINDSEY GREEN-SIMMS
Photo by Jeff Watts
Photo courtesy of Aaron Bell
Taken
by
Kaitie
O’Hare
general lack of interest in the subject.
“There’s some really
excellent journalism
from the early 1980s,
and that’s probably the
best stuff written on
this particular topic.
There just hasn’t really
been anything in depth
since then,” he says.
“Everything references that reporting, and
I think that’s a lot of
the appeal—just constantly chasing after that
and getting, incrementally, a little closer.”
Bell decided he had
one more base to cover
in preparation for his trip.
Back from his research
odyssey, he immediately
headed up to Vermont
for an intensive Spanish language immersion
program at Middlebury
College. For seven
weeks, he had to communicate exclusively
in Spanish. When he
emerged from that experience, he had bumped
his language skills up a
level and was sufficiently
fluent to hold his own
with Spanish-speaking
scholars and others.
After all the preparation for his international research, Bell
was finally ready for
the real challenge.
“I think that’s been the
good thing about this
dissertation in general:
getting to see all these different people and places
that I wouldn’t be exposed
to otherwise,” he says. “It
makes for a better dissertation. The more places
you see and the more
archives you go to make
your work a lot better.” 
MICHAEL BADER
Photo by Jeff Watts
The Road
to look for,” he said.
The payoff, however,
came only after Bell
did extensive groundwork. To prepare for his
study in El Salvador and
elsewhere in Central
America, he embarked
in early summer on a
month-long road trip
across the country to visit
various archives. “That
was pretty interesting to
spend a month on the
road. I’ve always wanted
to see the U.S. I had
never driven past Kansas,
so it was a really good
opportunity to do that.”
Bell’s research took
him to university archives
in New Mexico and Idaho
and at Stanford, as well
as the Ronald Reagan
presidential library in
California. The ultimate
challenge was piecing
together all the information, like a puzzle. Bell
has had to learn so many
names—of countless
organizations and politicians and policy makers—and understand
their roles in the context
of El Salvador’s transition to a constitutional
democracy. “You sort of
have to play investigator,” he says. “You have
to read and find out
who the people are, and
figure out how they all
connect, and you have
to do all that legwork
to [tie] it all together.”
He discovered it wasn’t
so easy to find what
he was looking for (in
some places, information
was poorly organized at
best), which he attributes
in part to the dearth of
U.S.–Latin American
studies programs and
Photo by Jeff Watts
humanities
Assistant Professor, History
»» PhD modern Chinese history, University of
California–San Diego
»» MA international studies, University of
Washington
»» BA English language and literature, University
of Washington
He is interested in Chinese, Japanese,
and inner Asian history. Jacobs specializes
in China’s little known northwest region,
which is predominantly Muslim.
Assistant Professor, Sociology
»» PhD sociology, University of Michigan
»» BA architecture and art history, Rice University
Bader studies racial and economic
segregation, neighborhood inequality,
and health and nutrition disparities. He is
interested in cities and the ways in which
people interact within the built environment.
Assistant Professor, Literature
»» PhD comparative literature, University of
Minnesota
»» BA comparative literature, University of
Michigan
Her areas of interest are world literature,
globalization, and gender studies. Excited to
be part of AU’s politically and socially active
community, she sees Washington, D.C., as
an ideal place to teach global literature and
hopes to share her “passion for literature, film,
traveling, and thinking with AU students.”
“I can’t imagine there’s any
better place to be than the
capital of the United States
if you want to be involved
in the most current issues.”
—Justin Jacobs
19
new faculty // notables
“My most rewarding discovery at AU was that there
are institutional regulations
that facilitate rather than
limit innovation.”
RANDA SERHAN
Photo by Jeff Watts
Photo by Jeff Watts
DAVID KEARNS
—Randa Serhan
Assistant Professor, Psychology
»» PhD psychology, American University
»» MA psychology, American University
»» BA psychology and philosophy, Rutgers
University
He researches drug abuse and drugseeking behaviors, focusing on environmental
stimuli that elicit cravings in drug users.
“D.C. is where I want to be.”
—Daniel Kerr
Photo by Jeff Watts
DANIEL KERR
Assistant Professor, Economics
»» PhD economics, University of Paris I PantheonSorbonne and CREST
»» MA economics, Centre for Economic Research
and Graduate Education
»» MA applied mathematics, Novosibirsk State
University
Assistant Professor, Sociology
»» PhD sociology, Columbia University
»» MA sociology, Columbia University
»» MA sociology, University of Windsor
»» BA sociology, American University of Beirut
She is interested in Arab studies, immigrant
communities, nationalism, and citizenship. Drawn
to AU because of the dual opportunities to direct
the Arab Studies Program and teach sociology,
she believes “the time is ripe for expanding
everyone’s understanding of the Arab world, and
that the program at AU will add to the field.”
XIAOQUAN RAPHAEL ZHANG
Photo by Jeff Watts
Photo courtesy of Natalia Radtchenko
NATALIA RADTCHENKO
Her interests are microeconometrics, labor
economics, and public policy evaluation,
the latter inspired by research related to
practical applicasions of labor economics
and interaction with policymakers.
Photo by Jeff Watts
COLIN SALDANHA
Assistant Professor, History
»» PhD social history and policy, Case Western
Reserve University
»» MA history, Case Western Reserve University
»» BA history, Carleton College
His areas of focus are environmental history,
urban social history, community history, oral
history, and public history. He was drawn
to “the vibrancy of AU’s student body and
the ways in which professors engage with
the community outside the university.”
His research focus is Chinese literature between
the last two dynasties, particularly the seventeenth
century. He has translated the works of William
Hazlitt, T. S. Eliot, and other authors into Chinese.
Professor, Biology
»» PhD biopsychology, Columbia University
»» MA biopsychology, Columbia University
»» BA biology and psychology, Gustavus
Adolphus College
His research focuses on neuroendocrinology,
neuroplasticity, and neuroscience. He’s
interested in how hormones are delivered to the
right place at the right time to regulate neural
structure and function (see story on p. 4).
20
Assistant Professor, Language and Foreign
Studies
»» PhD Chinese and comparative literature,
Washington University
»» MA literature, Peking University
»» BA literature, Peking University
“I study biology because
nature engenders humility.
I practice science because
the method is transparent. I
teach because I learn.”
—Colin Saldanha
achievements
Appointments
& Honors
MUSTAFA AKSAKAL (history) was awarded a
National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship for 2011–12, an Institute for Advanced Study
fellowship for spring 2012, and a Charles A.
Ryskamp Research fellowship for 2012–13.
JEREMIAH DITTMAR (economics) is a fellow of
the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.
ERICA DIXON (PhD psychology candidate),
ARTHUR SHAPIRO (psychology), and colleague Kai Hamburger (Universität Giessen,
Germany), placed second in the seventh annual
Best Illusion of the Year contest for “Grouping
by Contrast.”
DANIELLE EVANS (literature) shared the 2011
PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Before You
Suffocate Your Own Fool Self (Riverhead, 2010).
The prize is given to an exceptionally talented fiction
writer whose debut work represents distinguished
literary achievement and suggests great promise.
MARY GARRARD (art, emerita) received the
Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Lifetime
Achievement Award.
The HEALTH PROMOTION MANAGEMENT
PROGRAM won the National Wellness Institute
Distinguished Academic Program Award, which
recognizes outstanding academic health promotion and wellness programs that consistently
produce high-quality graduates prepared to implement wellness programs in various work sites.
CONSUELO HERNANDEZ (language and
foreign studies) received the Middle Atlantic
Council of Latin American Studies James Street
Prize in recognition of her scholarly excellence
and for the best article published in 2011 Latin
American Essays.
DEREK HORTON (chemistry, emeritus) has
been selected to join the 2011 class of fellows of
the American Chemical Society.
FRED JACOBS (SETH) was appointed as a
research fellow to EDUCAUSE Center for
Applied Research.
RICHARD MCCANN (literature) was offered a
creative artist residency at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Italy during November to
work on The Resurrectionist, A Memoir.
HEATHER MCDONALD (literature) won top
prize for her essay, “How to Fix Everything,” in
Creative Nonfiction’s food essay contest. The essay appeared in the journal’s spring 2011 issue.
The Florida Alliance for Arts Education honored
DARIO MOORE (MA dance ’05), artistic director of the Center for Contemporary Dance, with
the 2011 Doris Leeper Award for Excellence in
Arts Education.
KERMIT MOYER (literature, emeritus) won the
2011 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for
The Chester Chronicles.
President Obama appointed LESLEY WEISS
(BA ’76) to the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad.
Grants
& Research
Jumpstart for Young Children awarded SARAH
IRVINE BELSON (SETH) $32,744 for the first
year of the three-year Jumpstart for Young Children Partnership Program.
RICHARD BERENSON (physics, emeritus)
received $660,000 from NASA for first-year funding of the proposed five-year District of Columbia
Space Grant Consortium.
KIM BLANKENSHIP (sociology) transferred
two Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grants
from Duke University to AU: $1,349,169 for
“Impact Assessment of HIV Prevention Programs” (HIV Synthesis Project) and $1,392,527
for “Structural Interventions and HIV Prevention
among Sex Workers and Their Clients in India.”
Publications
& Productions
MUSTAFA AKSAKAL (history) published
“Why Did the Ottomans Enter a European War in
1914?” in Beyond Dominant Paradigms in Ottoman and Middle Eastern/North African Studies:
A Tribute to Rifa’at Abou-El-Haj, eds. Donald
Quataert and Baki Tezcan (ISAM, 2010).
ANDREA BONIOR (PhD clinical psychology ’04)
published her first book, The Friendship Fix: The
Complete Guide to Choosing, Losing, and Keeping
Up with Your Friends (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2011).
VICTORIA CONNAUGHTON (biology) and colleagues published “Bipolar cells in the zebrafish
retina” in Visual Neuroscience 28 (2011).
KATHLEEN DECICCO-SKINNER (biology)
and colleagues published “Loss of tumor progression locus 2 (tpl2) enhances tumorigenesis and
inflammation in two-stage skin carcinogenesis” in
Oncogene 30:4 (January 27, 2011).
NOAH GETZ (performing arts) released two
CDs in July: a solo, Still Life, featuring pieces
written for Getz; and Voyage, featuring Pictures
on Silence, Getz’s harp and saxophone duo.
USAID awarded CAREN GROWN (economics)
$163,415 for year one of a two-year contract to
serve as senior gender advisor at the agency. As
the senior technical expert, she will develop strategies on gender issues and plan major programs.
GLENN MOOMAU (literature) published “The
Pulpwood Yard” in storySouth 31 (Spring 2011).
MARY HANSEN (economics) received a
$207,665 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to create a data set of personal bankruptcy
cases from 1898 to 2000.
L. D. RAFEY (CAS ’81) published Martin
Truemartin (CreateSpace, 2010), a fantasy novel
for young adults and adults. The book received the
NABE Summer 2011 Pinnacle Book Achievement
Award for Juvenile Fiction and received a five-star
review from Foreward Clarion.
CIGNA Corporation awarded ROBERT KARCH
(SETH) $44,498 for his “Expatriate Market Size
Study.”
ERIC LOHR (history) received $39,376 from the
National Council for Eurasian and East European
Research for his project, “Imperial and Revolutionary Russian Citizenship,” a historical analysis of
the concepts and practices of Russian subjecthood and citizenship.
STEPHEN MACAVOY (environmental science)
was awarded $15,000 by the University of the
District of Columbia for his study, “Determination
of Seasonal Source Variation of Hydrocarbons,
Fatty Acids, Organics, and Nutrients in the Anacostia River: Stable Isotape Ratios of Specific
Compounds.”
GISHAWN MANCE (psychology) received a
$40,197 award from John Hopkins University
(funded by a NIH/NIMH grant) for a study, “Preventing Depression in Disconnected African-American Adolescents and Young Adults.”
PAUL WINTERS (economics) received a
$96,500 grant from the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations to study smallholders farming in Ethiopia.
PETER KUZNICK (history) and Oliver Stone
coauthored an article, “Barack’s Betrayal,” for the
New Statesman (April 14, 2011).
JEFFREY REIMAN (philosophy and religion)
published “What is Fair Punishment?” in Journal
of Catholic Social Thought 8:1 (Winter 2011).
GRETCHEN SCHAFFT (anthropology) coauthored Commemorating Hell: The Public Memory
of Mittelbau-Dora (University of Illinois, 2011).
RICHARD SHA (literature) published “Towards
a Physiology of the Romantic Imagination” in
Configurations (Johns Hopkins University, 2011).
MYRA SKLAREW (literature, emerita) published “Enough” in the Textbook of Interdisciplinary Pediatric Palliative Care (Elsevier, 2011) and
“Bly in prose: the song of the body, the memory of
rhythm” in the Fortnightly Review (2011).
MARTHA STARR (economics) published
Consequences of Economic Downturn: Beyond
the Usual Economics (Pelgrave Macmillan, 2011).
It includes chapters by colleagues JON WISMAN
and CAREN GROWN and AU doctoral student
coauthors, Bart Baker and Emcet Tas.
21
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