Faculty Development Newsletter May 2003

Frank Boyer (Economics) escorted the “The Students In Free Enterprise” (SIFE) team to the Regional SIFE Conference in Reston, Virginia on March 31st and April 1st. The team won the first-runner-up trophy in competition.

Williabel Davis (English) reviewed a local creative writing genealogy project entitled “Oliver White Hill: A Giant with Roots in Chester.” Mr. Hill was a principal attorney involved with development and litigation of the Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education lawsuit, and thus has played a critical role in the Civil Rights movement in this country. The contest was sponsored by the law office of B. Friend Briggs and held on May 1, the occasion of Mr. Hill’’s 96th birthday. Thirty-one entries by sixth-grade children were presented for judging.

Michelle Delano (Art) judged a student art show at Virginia State University. She continues to give workshops in Creative Thinking at the Virginia Museum, where she also runs "Creativity Spa”s. And she completed a collaborative mural, done in conjunction with two of her students and working with low-income children through the Boys and Girls Club of Richmond for New Visions/New Ventures (a non-profit entrepreneurship incubator).

Delano will be judging the Hopewell School District’s art show at the end of this month. This summer she will be working with teenagers at the Museum on an Afro-centric creativity project.

Together with Roland Havis (Psychology and Sociology), she is working on a multi-media installation entitled “BornDead In the House of Water." She will also be developing a project, "Digital Reliquaries,” which will be exhibited in the fall.

Delano was a source for an article on breaking through creative blocks due to appear in the June issue of Richmond magazine; RBC should appear in the piece.

Alexandra Duckworth (English) and Rachel Finney (Spanish) took several creative writing students belonging to the on-campus group “Wild Minds” to Charlottesville for The Festival of the Book, March 21-23.

Tim Evans (English) presented a “Math Monday” lecture on “H. D. Thoreau as Essayist” on March 24.

Esther Floyd (English) will spend the summer preparing to take her Ph.D. comprehensive exams in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She will be working on her dissertation—“First-Generation College Students in the Freshman-Composition Classroom”—as well.

Rachel Finney (Spanish) gave a “Math Monday” presentation on “Teaching with the Internet” on March 17.

Roger Franklin (Computer Science) was a presenter at the National School Board Association’s annual conference in San Francisco, CA.

Linda Jefferson (English) serves on an advisory board for a future PBS documentary focusing on the Prince Edward County school closings of 1959-64. The board service relates to her phenomenological dissertation study on the same topic.

Jeremy Jordan (Mathematics) offered a “Math Monday” talk entitled “A Simple Game or Two” on March 28.

Leslie Thysell (Accounting) will attend the Accounting Educators’ Conference on June 3, sponsored by the Virginia Society of CPA’s.

Lee Woodruff (Biology)and Tom Milton (Biology) attended an April 4-5 Virginia Association for Biological Education conference at Radford University. The theme was “river stewardship” and the two were introduced to several laboratory activities involving ways to determine the health of a stream by sampling its organisms.

On April 18-19, Woodruff participated in a meeting of the Virginia Canals and Navigation Society that met in Danville, VA. The focus was “a history of the Dan River” and attendees visited various sites.

During May or June, he will participate in the Summer Archaeology Field School at Longwood University and be involved with excavations at Staunton River State Park. In August, he plans to attend a week conference of the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association in the Adirondack Mountains of New York to try to learn something about constructing birch bark canoes.