This newsletter, prepared monthly, provides highlights of H&SS faculty and graduate student recent accomplishments including: grant awards, program and curricular initiatives, appointments, publications, performances, conference papers, and the like.

AWARDS

Jan Fernheimer, Asst. Prof. in LL&C, was awarded The Rhetoric Society of American Honorable Mention under its Dissertation of the Year Award.

Ron Sun, Prof. in Cognitive Science, was selected to receive the 2008 Hebb Award from the International Neural Network Society (INNS). The award is conferred once a year after a careful nomination and deliberation process, and recognizes achievement in biological learning. Sun will receive the award – which consists of a plaque and cash prize – during the 2008 World Congress on Computational Intelligence.

APPOINTMENTS

Linnda Caporael, Prof. in STS, was made a Fellow in the Association for Psychological Science (APS), the major association for research psychologists in the U.S., and she accepted a position on the Editorial Board of Psychological Review, the premier APA (American Psychological Association) journal for psychological research and theory.

Jan Fernheimer, Asst. Prof. in LL&C, has been selected as the editor for a special issue of College English dedicated to Rhetoric and Jewish Studies.

John Gowdy, Prof. in Economics, was appointed to the Scientific Committee for the 2008 conference of the International Society for Ecological Economics to be held in Nairobi, Kenya, August 7-11, 2008.

Ekaterina Haskins, Assoc. Prof. of Rhetoric in LL&C, was selected as this year's recipient of the Karl Wallace Memorial Award, given by the National Communication Association to support research in rhetorical studies. The award, to be presented in Chicago in November, will support Prof. Haskins's ongoing investigation into the construction of public memory in post-Communist Russia.

Sal Restivo, Prof. in STS, was appointed Special Lecture Professor, Northeastern University, Shenyang, China.

Ron Sun, Prof. in Cognitive Science, served as the program chair of the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, which took place successfully in Orlando, Florida, 8/12/2007-8/17/2005.  http://www.ijcnn2007.org. 

PUBLICATIONS, PERFORMANCE, & EXHIBITIONS

James Adams, Prof. and Head of Economics, will present an early version of “Is the U.S. Losing its Preeminence in Higher Education?” at an NBER Pre-Conference on U.S. Universities in a Global Market.  The article will be published in an NBER volume. 

Linnda Caporael, Prof. in STS, published an invited article, "Why We Are Still Social," in InMind.org, a new online journal founded and published by students at Free University, Amsterdam.

Mark Changizi, Assist. Prof. in Cognitive Science, will publish “Perceiving-the-Present and a Systematization of Illusions” in Cognitive Science with Hsieh A, Nijhawan R, Kanai R & Shimojo S (2007),  and will publish a new trade book to appear in 2008: Super Human Vision: How Nature Shaped Our Fantastic Visual Powers, BenBella Books(2008).

Cheryl Geisler, Prof. and Head of LL&C, and Shaun Slattery, PhD in Communication and Rhetoric 2007, published, "Capturing the Activity of Digital Writing: Using. Analyzing and Supplementing Video Screen Capture"   in Digital Writing Research: Technologies, Methodologies, and Ethical Issues, Ed. Heidi A. McKee and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss,  Hampton Press, 2007.   Prof. Geisler and Barbara Lewis published "Remaking the World Through Talk and Text: What We Should Learn from How Engineers  Use Language to Design."  In R. Horowitz (Ed.), Talking texts:  How Speech and Writing Interact in School Learning, Erlbaum, 2007.

John Gowdy,  Prof. in Economics, published “Toward an Experimental Foundation for Benefit-Cost Analysis” in Ecological Economics 63, 649-655. Prof.  Gowdy and Richard Howarth, are editors of a special issue of Ecological Economics “Sustainability and Benefit-Cost Analysis: Theoretical Assessments and Policy Options.” The articles included are based on a workshop assessing the current state of benefit-cost analysis hosted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in December 2005.

David Hess, Prof. in STS, published Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry: Activism, Innovation, and the Environment in an Era of Globalization. Market Block Books in downtown Troy and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences co-hosted an author’s reception and book discussion for David’s book on August 31. 

Michael Mascarenhas, Assoc. Prof. in STS, (editor) published Syllabi and Instructional Materials for Environmental Sociology, 6th ed.  2007 Washington: American Sociological Association Press.  His article   “Supermarkets and Supply Chains in North America” appeared in Supermarkets and Agri food Supply Chains: Transformations in the Production and Consumption of Foods, David Burch and Geoffrey Lawrence (eds). With Jason Konefal, Carmen Bain, and  Lawrence Busch.

Donald F. Vitaliano, Prof. in Economics, and Gregory Stella, “How Increased Enforcement Can Offset Statutory Deregulation: The Case of the Community Reinvestment Act,” Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance, Vol. 15, No. 3, August 2007,262-274. Donald S. Siegel and Prof. Vitaliano, "An Empirical Analysis of the Strategic Use of Corporate Social Responsibility", in the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Vol. 16(3), Fall 2007, 773-792.

LECTURES AND PANELS

James Adams, Prof. and Head of Economics, attended a three-day colloquium on “What’s New in Econometrics?” held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, July30-August1, 2007.

Linnda Caporael, Prof. in STS, was interviewed by RadioŠTUDENT, of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Ron Eglash, Assoc. Prof. in STS,  gave two invited talks, one on cultural approaches to computing at the NSF-funded STARS alliance in Charlotte NC, and a second on fractals at the  MathScience Innovation Center in Richmond VA. His paper "Oppositional Technophilia"  was accepted for publication in "Social Epistemology," a pre-print is available at www.ccd.rpi.edu/Eglash/temp/techphile%20essay.doc />
Jan Fernheimer, Asst. Prof. in LL&C, lead a workshop, "Rhetoric and Jewish Studies." at the Rhetoric Society of America Summer Institute held here at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in June.

Nathan Freier, newly appointed Asst. Prof. in LL&C, completed his dissertation, Children Distinguish Conventional from Moral Violations in Interactions with a Personified Agent, at the Information School of the University of Washington.

John Gowdy, Prof. in Economics, gave the Keynote Address at the Australia New Zealand Society for Ecological Economics, Noosa Heads, Australia, July 3-6, “Behavioral Economics and Climate Change Policy.”

Ekaterina Haskins, Assoc. Prof. of Rhetoric in LL&C, presented a paper, entitled "Religion, Public Memory, and the Crisis of Soviet Identity" at the Biannual meeting of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric held in Strasbourg, France on July 24-28.

David Hess, Prof. in STS, gave the paper "Undone Science and Knowledge Gaps" at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.

Michael Mascarenhas, Asst. Prof. in STS, was invited by the Fisheries and Aquaculture Economics and Policy Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, to be an Expert Consultation on "Improving policy formulation and planning in aquaculture development".  This Expert Consultation was recommended by Member Countries who met in New Delhi, India in September 2006 for the COFI (FAO Committee on Fisheries) Sub-Committee on Aquaculture and in Rome in March 2007 for COFI.  Dr. Mascarenhas also presided over the Section on Environment and Technology Roundtable Session, American Sociological Association’s Annual Meeting. New York: August 10-14, 2007.

Paul Miyamoto, Clinical Assoc. Prof. in LL&C, designed and produced exhibition and promotional materials for Chesterwood, the studio and residence of Daniel Chester French, a National Trust for Historic Preservation site in Stockbridge, MA. French was the sculptor for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC and numerous other famous commissions.  Exhibit materials included: Prospectus; Announcement Postcard; Rack card promotion; Guide and map book; Artists Catalog; Site Markers.  He also held a Solo exhibition at Dusk, Troy, NY  with a suite of 10, 16 x 20" gouache on paper works.

Hansjoerg Neth, Research Assist. Prof. in Cognitive Science, organized and chaired a symposium on " Immediate Interactive Behavior: How Embodied and Embedded Cognition Uses and Changes the World to Achieve its Goals " at this year's Cognitive Science Conference (in Nashville, TN), with participants Rich Carlson, Wayne Gray, Alex Kirlik, David Kirsh, and Stephen Payne, and published in the proceedings of the 29th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 33–34).  An online forum exists at http://iib-wiki.cogsci.rpi.edu .

Debbie Rowe, LL&C Graduate Student, presented,  "How Users Process Procedural Illustrations: Evidence from Qualitative and Quantitative Data." at the Society for Technical Communication's 54th Annual Conference, Technical Communication Summit.

Sal Restivo, Prof. in STS, presented two invited lectures at the Research Center for Philosophy of Science and Technology, Northeastern University, Shenyang, China:  Lecture 1: "Science Studies: The Elusive Sociological Imagination and the Pursuit of the Hard Case."  Lecture 2: "Legacies: Needham, Marx, Nietzsche, Zhuangzi and Science East and West."