October People Notes

Daniel Abramson has been awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor of art history by the Tufts Board of Trustees.

Gustavo A. Alfaro has been named professor of Romance languages emeritus by the universityÕs Board of Trustees.

Dr. Floyd L. Atkins, assistant dean for students at the School of Medicine, had some of his photography published in the April 5 edition of The New England Journal of Medicine.

Nancy Carroll, coordinator of certification and placement in the education department, facilitated and presented at a workshop titled ÒSupporting and Retaining New Teachers: Programs and StrategiesÓ at the annual joint conference of the New England Association for Employment in Education and the Massachusetts Association of School Personnel Administrators. The presentation detailed the efforts of the Tufts Education Alumni Committee (TEACh) in programming and outreach to pre-service and new educational professionals. The conference was attended by college career counselors and school personnel directors from throughout New England. top

David Cavitch has been appointed professor of English emeritus by the Tufts Board of Trustees. top

Barbara Connolly, assistant professor of political science, has left Tufts to take a faculty position at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Ind. top

John Durant has been awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor of civil and environmental engineering by the universityÕs Board of Trustees. top

Elizabeth K. Eaton, director of the Health Sciences Library since 1982, left Tufts on October 5 to become executive director of the Houston Academy of Medicine, Texas Medical Center (TMC), Jesse Jones Library in Texas. The library serves the 42 institutions at TMC. At Tufts, Eaton was instrumental in designing and modernizing the new library in the Sackler Center, which formally opened in 1986. She helped lead a strategic planning effort that led to the development of the Health Sciences Database (HSDB), a curriculum management database for the Tufts health sciences schools. Earlier this year, the HSDB received a CIO Enterprise Value Award. Tufts University was the first academic institution to receive this award. top

Kevin P. Gallagher, research associate at the Global Development and Environment Institute, was a featured speaker at the Quebec City symposium jointly held by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, the World Conservation Union and the United Nations Environment Program last spring. He was a discussant on two panels: ÒSustainability in the Hemispheric Integration SystemÓ and ÒRegional Lessons in Competitiveness and Sustainable Trade.Ó He gave a presentation, ÒDesigning an Environmental Review of ChinaÕs Accession to the WTO,Ó at the China Council for Cooperation on Environment and Development in Beijing, China, from August 29 to September 1. top

James M. Glaser, associate professor of political science, received the Best Paper Award from the Elections, Voting Behavior and Public Opinion section of the American Political Science Association. The paper, ÒWhite Voters, Black Schools: Structuring Racial Choices with a Checklist Ballot,Ó was selected from more than 200 papers on public opinion and election topics presented at the 2000 convention of the American Political Science Association. A revised version of the paper will be published in the January 2002 issue of the American Journal of Political Science. top

John Hammock, associate professor and director of the Alan Shawn Feinstein International Famine Center at the School of Nutrition Science and Policy, stepped down after a five-year term as director in September to pursue his long-standing interest in the economic, social and political forces linking the United States with Latin America. Hammock will be working to develop a new program of research and action at the nutrition school, focusing on the United States and its relations with Central America and the Caribbean. The program is supported by a development grant from Share Our Strength. The program will explore issues of migration, food security and alternative models of sustainable survival, and consider the implications of the growing disparity between rich and poor in the region. Under HammockÕs leadership, the Famine Center has grown into a major focal point for research, education and action in the area of humanitarian assistance in disasters and complex emergencies. top

Hosea Hirata has been awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor of Japanese by the Tufts trustees. top

Dr. Dolrudee Jumlongras, assistant clinical professor of pediatric dentistry at the School of Dental Medicine, has been named a diplomate of the American Board of Pediatric Dentistry. top

Kenneth I Kaitin, director of the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, was the keynote speaker at the global launch of the multinational pharmaceutical firm PharmaciaÕs new R&D initiative. The event was held in San Diego on March 30 and repeated in Paris on April 3. Kaitin spoke on the challenge of pharmaceutical innovation in the current highly volatile economic and political climate. top

Elizabeth Kline, senior researcher at the Global Development and Environment Institute, will launch her Mature Urban Centers Project this fall via a three-part public forum series on ÒCities in the 21st Century.Ó The Cambridge Forum will host each forum (October 17, October 24 and November 7) at 3 Church Street in Harvard Square at 7:30 p.m. The project focuses on how to sustain community improvements once urban centers become successful. Lessons learned about equity and preventing the gradual erosion of the achievements will be shared with people revitalizing depressed urban centers as well as people planning and designing new ones. For more information about the forums and the project, contact Kline at espartan@aol.com or call (617) 864-6539. top

Leeann Kluskiewicz, alumni relations officer/Tufts Club manager, has been promoted to assistant director for constituent relations in the Office of Alumni Relations. She has been on the alumni relations staff since December 1999, managing the membership, finances and events of the Tufts Club, along with serving as principal liaison to four key Boston-based alumni groups: The Jumbo Club, the Association of Tufts Alumnae (ATA), the Boston Tufts Alliance (BTA) and the TUAA Continuing Education Committee. Before coming to Tufts, she was an alumni relations programming assistant and reunion coordinator at her alma mater, Fordham University in New York City. Kluskiewicz will be responsible for Homecoming, Alumni Weekend, regional clubs, student-alumni activities and other events. top

John Kreifeldt has been named professor of mechanical engineering emeritus by the universityÕs Board of Trustees. top

Norman I. Krinsky, professor of biochemistry emeritus and a scientist at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA), delivered the Robert S. Harris Lecture at MIT on March 15. The title of his talk was ÒCarotenoids in Health and Disease.Ó He also delivered the CARIG Lecture at the Experimental Biology 2001 meeting in Orlando, Fla., on April 2. The title of that lecture was ÒCarotenoid Research in the Past and Present Millennia.Ó Krinsky participated in a symposium on age-related macular degeneration on April 2, when he spoke on ÒPossible Biologic Mechanisms for the Protective Role of Lutein and Zeaxanthin.Ó top

Pierre-Henri Laurent, professor of history, presented papers on European Union foreign policy at the June meeting of the European Union Studies Association in Madison, Wisc., and at the Chinese ministries of Foreign Affairs and Economic Affairs in Beijing in July. top

Cris Merck, who worked for the Development Division at the School of Veterinary Medicine for 12 years, has left Tufts to take a new position with the Nantucket Historical Association. top

Rebecca New has been awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor of child development by the Tufts Board of Trustees. top

Zbigniew Nitecki, professor of mathematics, spent the summer at the Institute for Mathematical Stochastics of Georg-August University in Goettingen, Germany, as Gastdocent under the auspices of the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst (DAAD), a German government-sponsored program to bring foreign scholars to Germany. In addition to teaching a graduate course and conducting a seminar on dynamical systems theory, he spoke on ÒMaps of the Interval and Surface DynamicsÓ at a conference on Nonhyperbolic Dynamical Systems, and carried out a research project on topological entropy with colleagues at Goettingen. top

George Norman, William and Joyce Cummings Professor of Entrepreneurship and Business Economics at Tufts, and Darlene C. Chisholm, associate professor of economics at Suffolk University, have received a two-year research grant from the DeSantis Center for Motion Picture Industry Studies at Florida Atlantic UniversityÕs College of Business to study competitive dynamics in the U.S. motion pictures exhibition market. The project is titled ÒCompetitive Dynamics, Spatial Competition and Product Differentiation in U.S. Motion Pictures Exhibition Markets.Ó The grant is the first to be awarded by the DeSantis Center, whose mission includes serving as a center for scholarly activity in the motion picture industry field. The project will empirically examine the competitive dynamics in the U.S. motion pictures exhibition market using recent theoretical developments in the modeling of spatial competition and product differentiation. This objective will be accomplished by commissioning the collection of a new dataset on demographics and movie theater attributes from two major U.S. metropolitan areas. The data will be used to examine the determinants of theater location decisions, patterns of exit and entry in exhibition, the selection of ownership structures and dynamic competition in specific film programming within the selected markets. The comprehensive dataset will become part of the electronic archives at the DeSantis Center so that scholars working in the fields of finance, marketing and management can explore related theoretical and managerially relevant research projects. top

Colin Orians has been awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor of biology by the universityÕs Board of Trustees. Orians, along with graduate students Mark Fields and Ben Babst, attended the Gordon Research Conference on Plant-Herbivore Interactions earlier this year in Ventura, Calif. All three gave poster presentations. top

Karen Panetta has been awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science by the Tufts Board of Trustees. top

Jan A. Pechenik, professor of biology, presented a paper at the annual Marine Benthic Ecology meeting last spring at the University of New Hampshire. Benthic ecologists study the biology and interactions of organisms living in or on the bottom of marine and freshwater ecosystems. PechenikÕs paper, co-authored with undergraduate Jennifer Hsieh and graduate students Wei Li and Steve Untersee, concerned the adaptive value of a unique shell avoidance behavior that he and associate professor Sara Lewis documented several years ago for a Nahant, Mass., population of hermit crabs. Wei Li also presented a paper at this meeting about the causes and consequences of a close association between hermit crabs and a snail that lives primarily on shells occupied by the hermit crabs. The paper was co-authored with Pechenik and with fellow graduate student Untersee, who also attended the meeting. Pechenik also has had a paper published in the Proceedings of the First National Conference on Marine Bioinvasions (M.I.T. Press). His paper addresses several widely overlooked factors that could influence the invasion potential of species transported to new locations as larvae in ship ballast water. Pechenik continued his work on invasive marine species in France this past summer. top

Dr. Grannum R. Sant, Charles M Whitney Professor and chairman of urology at the School of Medicine and urologist-in-chief at the New England Medical Center, was appointed associate editor of the International Journal of Urogynecology and Pelvic Floor Dysfunction. He has been appointed a member of the International Editorial Advisory Board to the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in the United Kingdom, the only urologist on this editorial board, and managing editor for urology of eMedicine Journal. Sant was a visiting professor in Hamburg, Germany, where he gave a keynote address on ÒThe Mast CellÑa Neuroeffector Cell in the Pathogenesis of Interstitial CystitisÓ at the 6th International Conference on Interstitial Cystitis last spring. Sant served as co-editor of the June 2001 supplement to the journal Urology that was titled ÒInterstitial Cystitis 2001ÑAn Evolving Clinical Syndrome.Ó top

Sharan L. Schwartzberg, professor and chair of the Boston School of Occupational Therapy (BSOT), was the invited speaker at Massachusetts General Hospital in celebration of Occupational Therapy Month in America. On April 11, she presented a research paper on ÒInteractive Reasoning in Occupational Therapy PracticeÓ to the occupational therapy inpatient and outpatient staff. This topic is the subject of her forthcoming book with Prentice Hall. The audience included several graduates of the BSOT as well as a student currently doing fieldwork at MGH. top

Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama and Oratory, was at the Lincoln Center in New York City in June to receive a George Freedley Award from the Theatre Library Association for his book, The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre, which was named one of the best theater books of 2000. In July, he appeared on the BBC-4 television series ÒCulture FixÓ as an expert on theatrical transvestism. Senelick has just been re-elected to the executive committee of the American Society for Theatre Research. top

Rosalind Shaw, associate professor of anthropology, has developed a community service component to her course on the ÒMemories of the Slave Trade,Ó which links students to activities of the Medford Historical Society and curricular development projects in the Medford public schools. She presented a paper, ÒThe Color of the Sacred: Racially Marked Spirits in Africa and the Americas,Ó at meetings of the American Anthropological Association, and she recently received a faculty research award to support a new round of fieldwork in Sierra Leone that will explore the demobilization of child soldiers and reconciliation with their local communities. top

Vickie Sullivan, associate professor of political science, presented a paper, ÒBecoming a God: Machiavelli and Shakespeare on Coriolanus and Julius Caesar,Ó at Notre Dame University for the inaugural symposium of the Nancy Reeves Dreux Chair in Government and International Studies. The symposium was titled ÒMachiavelli and Shakespeare: Political Philosophy and Poetry.Ó During her visit, she also delivered a talk to Notre DameÕs political theory faculty and graduate students on ÒMachiavelli on Machiavelli.Ó top

Jeff Taliaferro, assistant professor of political science, delivered a lecture on ÒContainment and U.S. Strategic DoctrineÓ as part of the ÒThe Roots of StrategyÓ course offered through the Defense Leadership Management Program (DLAMP) on September 13. DLAMP is a graduate-level training course for civilian employees of the Department of Defense. ÒThe Roots of Strategy,Ó offered in conjunction with the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University, is an intensive two-week course held in Sturbridge, Mass. On September 20, Taliaferro delivered a talk on his book project, ÒThe Balance-of-Risk: Great Power Intervention in the Periphery,Ó at the Political Psychology and Behavior Workshop sponsored by Harvard UniversityÕs Center for Basic Research in the Social Sciences. top

Reed Ueda, professor of history, has been appointed an associate of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard. He will be working with Mary C. Waters, professor of sociology at Harvard, on The New Americans, a special project of Harvard University Press that will examine the populations of immigrants arriving in the United States since the 1960s. top

Thanos M. Veremis, Konstantinos Karamanlis Professor of Hellenic and Southeastern European Studies, is co-editor of a new publication, The Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, which premiered in March and will be published three times a year by Frank Cass, London. Dimitrios Triantaphyllou, F98, is an associate editor. VeremisÕ thematic history of modern Greece, Greece: The Modern Sequel, will be published in December by C. Hurst & Co. of London and New York University Press. His paper on Kosovo was published in September by the WEU Institute of Paris. top

Alexander Vilenkin, professor of physics and director of the Tufts Institute of Cosmology, has had his research profiled in articles in BritainÕs New Scientist and in GermanyÕs Bild der Wissenschaft in recent months. His work also has been cited in The New York Times, and he was interviewed by BBC Radio in June. top

Paul Waldau, clinical assistant professor at the School of Veterinary MedicineÕs Center for Animals and Public Policy and Department of Environmental and Population Health, will give an invited talk on October 7 at the National Cathedral on Washington, D.C., on the topic of religion and animals. top

Timothy A. Wise, deputy director of the Global Development and Environment Institute (G-DAE), joined with Mexican researchers to present a workshop on the environmental impacts of the North American Free Trade Agreement at the PeoplesÕ Summit of the Americas in Quebec City last spring. Organized by a broad coalition of trade union and non-governmental groups from across the Western Hemisphere, the PeoplesÕ Summit brought together 2,500 citizen delegates to develop alternative proposals to the Free Trade Area of the Americas being advanced by heads of state during controversial meetings in Quebec April 20-22. Frank Ackerman, director of the research and policy program at G-DAE, gave an opening talk on ÒCan Openers and Comparative Advantage,Ó a critique of neo-classical trade theory, at the PeoplesÕ Summit. top