April People Notes

Julian Agyeman, assistant professor of urban and environmental policy and planning, has been invited to become a member of the National Academies' Board on Radioactive Waste Management.

Leena Bitar, D04, has been chosen to be a 2003-04 Boston Albert Schweitzer Fellow. She is the sixth Tufts dental student in as many years to receive this prestigious community-focused fellowship. In addition, Bitar received a $2,500 ADEA/Listerine Preventive Dental Scholarship at the national conference of the American Dental Education Association in San Antonio March 8-12, where she also presented her community health initiative, "Smile, Share and Care," as part of the Student Excellence in Education and Service Symposium.

Dr. Bess Dawson-Hughes, director of the Bone Metabolism Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA), gave a presentation on "Current Advances in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Osteoporosis" last fall in Fort Lauderdale and Miami, Fla. She gave presentations on "Current Advances in the Prevention and Treatment of Osteoporosis" at Brown University on January 16 and at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., on January 30.

David Elkind, professor and chair of the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development, has received the Dale Richmond Award from the Child and Adolescent Division of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The annual award is usually given to a non-physician who has made outstanding contributions to the lives of children and families. Elkind's research interests include cognitive and social development in children and adolescents and the causes and effects of stress on children, youth and families.

Dr. Lisa M. Foley, assistant clinical professor of oral and maxillofacial radiology and forensics at the School of Dental Medicine, recently returned from the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the American Society of Forensic Odontology meetings, held concurrently in Chicago. During February, while attending the conferences, Foley was called back as an activated member of the FEMA/Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (DMORT), which responded to the tragic Station nightclub fire in West Warwick, R.I. She spent a week in Rhode Island, working intensively with the Rhode Island Medical Examiner's Team, DMORT pathologists and odontologists and team members. They were able to identify all the victims of the nightclub fire.

Dr. Marshal Folstein has stepped down as chair of psychiatry at the School of Medicine. Dr. Jonathan Schindelheim is serving as acting chair.

Dr. Paul Friedmann, professor of surgery, will receive this year's John C. Gienapp Award from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), along with Dr. William Williams, a pediatrician at the University of North Carolina. The two doctors co-chaired the council's work group that established new standards for resident duty hours. Gienapp was ACGME's executive director from 1980 to 1998.

Dr. Jeffrey K. Griffiths, associate professor of family medicine and community health, has been invited to serve on the Epidemiology and Disease Control 3 Study Section, Center for Scientific Review, which reviews grant applications to the National Institutes of Health.

Eulogio Guzman has joined the faculty as a lecturer in visual and critical studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. He completed his doctoral studies in art history at the University of California at Los Angeles, specializing in pre-Columbian art and Islamic art. He is a published illustrator and has received several fellowships and awards, including an Edward A. Dickson Graduate Fellowship and an Instructional Excellence Honors Teaching Award. He served as curator for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's exhibition on "Made in California: Art, Image and Identity, 1900-2000" and as a cultural consultant for Walt Disney Imagineering. He has taught courses in art history at the University of California at Santa Barbara, California State University and Mesa San Diego Community College.

Dr. Aidee N. Herman, assistant clinical professor of periodontology at the School of Dental Medicine, has been appointed chair of dental affairs for the Latin America Health Institute in Boston.

Marcie Hershman, lecturer in English, gave a series of lectures and readings at Arizona State University (ASU) under the auspices of its Cultural Participation Program and Office of Public Events. Among the classes she addressed as a visiting writer were those in American Jewish literature, HIV studies and women's studies. She also visited ASU's literacy program in Phoenix for third and fifth graders and showed them how to make their own "books." The final event was a reading and discussion of her memoir, Speak to Me: Grief, Love and What Endures, on the stage of ASU's Gammage Auditorium.

Andrew C. Hess, director of Programs in Southwest Asia and Islamic Civilization at the Fletcher School, was the luncheon speaker for the Connecticut World Affairs Council Forum in Stanford, Conn., on March 14, when he spoke on "Big Bang Politics in the Middle East." On March 21, Hess presented a lecture, "U.S. Foreign Policy and the War on Terrorism in Iraq," at Carol College in Helena, Mont. On April 18-19 at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Hess will be part of a two-day panel on "Dubai Conglomerated." The conference on the city of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is sponsored by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai, UAE.

Sibyl Johnston, lecturer in English, recently wrote and piloted an online creative writing course and published a short story in Primavera Magazine.

Hugh Joseph, director of the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, participated in an educational and partnership-building visit to Cuba February 23-March 7. Food First/The Institute for Food and Development Policy sponsored the trip for leaders of projects supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Food and Society Initiative. The purpose of the visit was to provide those working to create local and community-based food systems an opportunity to learn from the Cuban experience of establishing a more ecologically sound, community-based food system.

James A. Joseph, director of the HNRCA Neuroscience Laboratory, presented the Glen Foundation Award for Aging Research Lecture on "The Impact of Caloric Restriction versus Caloric Selection in Brain Aging" at the annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America last November in Boston. Joseph will chair the 2003 American Aging Association meeting on "Nutritional Modulation of Aging and Age-Related Diseases," which will take place June 6-9 in Baltimore, Md. Other HNRCA scientists who will participate in the meeting include Jose Ordovas, director of the Nutrition and Genomics Laboratory and chair of "The Relationships Among Diet, Aging and Age-Related Diseases" session, and Dr. Ernst Schaefer, director of the Lipid Metabolism Laboratory and chair of the "Fats: The Good, the Bas and the Ugly" session. Dr. Mohsen Meydani, director of the Vascular Biology Laboratory serves as a member of the program committee.

Nicole Kelley has joined the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development and is directing the department's communication efforts, which include alumni relations, publicity, web site redesign and graduate student recruitment. Kelley has five years of professional communications experience, primarily as a senior writer for a leading software company. Prior to that, she worked in publishing and taught composition and American literature at several area colleges. She holds an MFA from Emerson College.

Tara Lewis has joined Fletcher's Office of Development and Alumni Relations as associate director for major gifts. She comes to Tufts from the Office of Gift & Estate Planning at Boston University, where she was a gift planning officer. Lewis did her undergraduate work at the University of New Hampshire and earned her law degree from Boston University. She is fluent in German and Russian and speaks some Italian.

Larry Minear, director of the Humanitarianism and War Project at the Alan Shawn Feinstein International Famine Center, was invited to participate in a roundtable discussion at the fourth annual meeting of the International Studies Association (ISA) in February in Portland, Ore. The topic was "The Responsibility to Protect: Perspectives from Social Science and Humanitarian Praxis." Minear joined colleagues Dr. Ramesh Thakur, vice-rector of the UN University and a member of the International Commission for Intervention and State Sovereignty; Charlotte Ku, executive director of the American Society of International Law; Elizabeth Cousens of the Social Science Research Council; and Prof. Ken Menkhaus of Davidson College for the roundtable. The ISA was founded in 1959 to promote research and education about international affairs.

Julia Motl, J98, has joined Fletcher's Office of Development and Alumni Relations as annual fund coordinator to launch and manage a Young Alumni Leadership giving program at the $500 to $999 level. Motl also will help with other elements of Fletcher's annual giving program, including Telefund. She previously worked in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions at Tufts, where she was assistant director. Motl is fluent in German.

Dr. David Pladziewicz, M84, a cardiologist and Tufts clinical instructor, has been appointed medical director at Lawrence Memorial Hospital (LMH) in Medford, Mass. He is also director of the Affiliated Teaching Program in Cardiology at LMH.

Maribel Rios, assistant professor of neuroscience, is one of 117 scientists and scholars in the United States and Canada to be awarded a 2003 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship. The fellowships are awarded annually to recognize and support young scholars in seven fields: chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience and physics. Winners receive grants of $40,000.

Joseph Schloss, formerly head archivist for the Archive of Contemporary Music in New York City, has joined the faculty as a lecturer in music. He received his doctoral degree in ethnomusicology from the University of Washington in 2000. His dissertation, Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop, has resulted in a number of conference presentations and publications. Schloss has received several honors for his work, including the Charles Seeger Prize from the Society of Ethnomusicology and a Humanities Dissertation Fellowship from the University of Washington. He has worked as an adjunct professor of music, jazz and contemporary music at New School University and as a visiting scholar and visiting assistant professor in the music department at the University of Virginia.

Sharan L. Schwartzberg, professor and chair of the Boston School of Occupational Therapy (BSOT), presented a paper, "Self-initiated Group Interaction in Community-based Functional Groups," co-authored with Mary A. Barnes, fieldwork coordinator at BSOT, and Sharon Ray, assistant professor, at a symposium on Current Research in Group Psychotherapy, sponsored by the American Group Psychotherapy Association February 22 in New Orleans. The paper is based on student community-based service learning projects in the Greater Boston area.

Allan Sison, M05, and Dr. Rahul Sharma, a 2000 graduate of the medical school's MD/MBA program, are two of 75 medical students, residents and post-residency physicians chosen to receive leadership awards from the American Medical Association (AMA). They are invited, expenses paid, to attend the AMA's first advocacy conference (formerly a leadership conference) in Washington, D.C., May 3-5.

Vasio Smith is the new user support specialist for Development Division systems. He has several years of experience in the corporate world, providing desktop support.

Catherine Squires and Andrew Wright, both professors of molecular biology and microbiology, have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). They are among 291 new fellows who were honored in mid-February at the AAAS annual meeting in Denver. Squires, department chair, was cited for her "pioneering studies on the regulation and utilization of the rRNA operons," and Wright for his "development and application of methods for visualizing chromosome movement in bacteria."

Dr. Lara Weaver, V00, is the new assistant director of the Division of Teaching and Research Resources in the biomedical sciences department at the School of Veterinary Medicine. After graduating from Tufts, Weaver worked at Charles River Laboratories, first as a clinical veterinarian and then as assistant director of veterinary services. In January 2002, she moved to Children's Hospital as assistant director of animal resources. At Tufts, she will contribute to the school's animal care program, teaching and contract research activities.

Dr. Donald E. Wilson, M62, the dean of the University of Maryland School of Medicine since 1991, has been appointed to the Board of Overseers to Tufts School of Medicine and the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences. Board-certified in gastroenterology and internal medicine, Wilson was professor and chairman of medicine at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Brooklyn for 11 years before becoming dean at Maryland. He is a member of the advisory committee to the director of the National Institutes of Health and chairman of the Maryland Health Care Commission. He is chairman-elect of the Association of American Medical Colleges. He received his undergraduate education at Harvard and graduated from Tufts School of Medicine in 1962.

Arthur Winston, director of the Gordon Institute at Tufts and 2004 president of the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers, will travel to England in early April to present milestone plaques dedicating the Benjamin Franklin House in London and Bletchley Park in Central Milton Keynes. The Franklin House is multi-million dollar project to restore Franklin's place of residence from 1757 to 1775 and to endow scholarships, educational exchange and operating support for the house. It is the only restored place, either in the United States or England, in which Franklin lived and worked. Bletchley Park is the site where 12,000 men and women broke the German code, Enigma, during World War II. Using innovative mathematical analysis and two computing machines developed by Alan Turing, the code-breakers' achievements greatly shortened the war, saving countless lives. The Bletchley Park Trust is working to preserve and restore its core historic buildings.

Timothy Wise, deputy director of the Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE), has co-edited a new book, Confronting Globalization: Economic Integration and Popular Resistance in Mexico (Kumarian Press, 2003). Produced during a three-year collaborative project with Mexican researchers, the book presents nine case studies of globalization's impacts on vulnerable communities and on the environment and examines the alternative approaches to globalization embedded in the organized responses of affected communities.