Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Rebecca Koopmann ’89 recently presented a paper at the “Galaxy Wars: Stellar Populations and Star Formation in Interacting Galaxies" Conference held at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tenn. “ALFALFA HI Content and Star Formation in Virgo Cluster Early-Type Dwarfs” describes Koopmann’s research on the hydrogen gas contents of nearby galaxies as revealed by the ALFALFA (Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA) survey using the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico. Koopmann also hosted an NSF-sponsored Undergraduate ALFALFA Team group meeting at Union for faculty and students in July. The meeting drew participants from Siena and Skidmore colleges to campus, while participants from Cornell University, Georgia Southern University, Humboldt State University and Lafayette College joined via teleconference. Students from each institution presented summaries of ALFALFA research progress during the summer. SreyNoch Chin ’12 presented Union’s progress report.
Terry Weiner, the Chauncey H. Winters Professor of Comparative Social Analysis, gave a paper at the Society for the Study of Social Problems Annual Meeting in San Francisco in August. The paper, titled “The ‘Cooling Out Function’ of Higher Education Revisited: Do Financial Aid Policies Reproduce and Legitimate Racial and Class Inequality?,” reviews federal, state and institutional college aid policies to see if they have significantly increased opportunity for lower class students.
“Learning through Publishing the Pi Sigma Alpha Undergraduate Journal of Politics,” an article by Zoe M. Oxley, associate professor and chair of the Department of Political Science, recently appeared in PS: Political Science and Politics. Co-authors are Benjamin Bauer ’08, Whitney Ogás ’08, Omar Shakir ’08 and Rosalee A. Clawson, associate professor at Purdue University. The article is based on their experiences hosting the undergraduate journal.
Ann Fleming Brown, director of Admissions, recently was named to the Board of Trustees of Schenectady County Community College by Gov. David Paterson. Her term expires in 2016.
Mary Parlett-Sweeney, director of Academic Computing, was elected to a three-year term on the Board of Directors of the Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges (CLAC) at its 2009 annual conference at Occidental College in Los Angeles in June. An active member of the consortium, Parlett-Sweeney served as co-coordinator of the 2008 conference, held at Union. She currently is on the program committee of the Educause Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference, scheduled for January 2010 in Baltimore, Md.
“God: An Obituary,” a collection of essays, by English Professor Peter Heinegg, has been published by the University Press of America. Heinegg’s latest collection argues that the three major monotheistic religions are philosophically bankrupt, psychologically infantile and partly responsible for such contemporary evils as misogyny, homophobia and animal cruelty. The book expands on ideas developed in “Good God! (And Other Follies): Essays on Religion” (2006).