February 20, 2007 (Vol. 5, No. 2)

Lehman Faculty Contributing Scholarship, Scientific Research, and Creative Works

Following is Part 2 of the Quorum Series for 2007, presenting highlights of the research being conducted by Lehman College faculty.

Thomas W. Ihde
Gisela Jia
Dimitra Karabali
Linda Keen
Julian Laderman
Alissa Mallow
Carl Mazza
Janet Butler Munch
Vincent Prohaska
Anne Rice

Thomas W. Ihde

Thomas W. Ihde (Associate Professor, Middle and High School Education; Director, CUNY Institute of Irish-American Studies) wrote the book chapter "Linguistic Perceptions of the Irish-speaking Districts: On-line Versus In-person," pp. 91-96 in L. Ashley & W. Finke (eds.) Language in the Era of Globalization (Cummings & Hathaway Publishers, 2005). He also published the article "Irish Language Learning Textbooks Published in the United States: 1873-1904," in New Hibernia Review 9, pp. 137-151 (2005).

Professor Ihde has presented the following papers: "The Great Irish Famine and the Irish Language," at the Representation and Preservation Conference on "Ireland's Great Hunger" at Quinnipiac University (2005); "Irish Language Syllabus Design: Balancing the Needs of Irish and Diaspora Students," at the Mid-Atlantic Regional ACIS Annual Meeting at Drew University (2005); "Irish American Identity and the Irish Language" at the Affecting Irishness Conference at Trinity College, Dublin (2006); and "Human Rights Curriculum: Keeping Language in the Picture," at William Paterson University's 25th Annual ESL/Bilingual Education Conference (2006).

He has been awarded a grant from the Irish Government's Department of Community, Rural, and Gaeltacht Affairs for Irish Language On-Line Course and Degree Development (2006-2008). In addition, Professor Ihde was invited to deliver the Inaugural Barra Ó Donnabháin Lecture at Glucksman Ireland House, held at New York University (2006). His talk was entitled "Eugene O'Growney (1863-1899): A Progressive View of the Irish Language."

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Gisela Jia

Gisela Jia (Associate Professor, Psychology) published the following book chapters: "Native Chinese speakers learning English as a second language," Handbook of Chinese Psycholinguistics, pp. 61-69 (Cambridge University Press, 2005); (with D. Aaronson, D. Young, S. Chen, and J. Wagner) "Bilingual Mandarin-, Russian- and Spanish-English speakers' grammatical proficiency in their two languages," Studies in Language Sciences, Vol. 4, pp. 160-171 (Kurosio Publishers, 2005); (with W. Strange, Y.H. Wu, J. Collado, and Q. Guan) "Age differences in perceptual sensitivity to new speech sounds: The younger the better?" Proceedings of the 29th Boston University Conference on Language Development, pp. 306-319 (Cascadilla Press, 2005); (with A. Fuse, J. Chen, H.Y. Kim, and F. Aquino-Garcia) "Object and action picture naming in five languages: Methodological implications," Proceedings of the 8th Annual International Conference of the Japanese Society for Language Sciences, pp.79-84 (2006).

Professor Jia has also written the following articles: (with W. Strange, Y.H. Wu, J. Collado, and Q. Guan) "Perception and production of English vowels by Mandarin speakers: Age-related differences vary with amount of L2 exposure," Journal of Acoustical Society of America, 119 (2), pp. 1118-1130 (2006); (with K. Kohnert, J. Collado, and F. Aquino-Garcia) "Action naming in Spanish and English among sequential bilinguals," Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 49, pp. 588-602 (2006).

Professor Jia has presented the following papers at academic conferences: (with A. Fuse, J. Chen, H.Y. Kim, and F. Aquino-Garcia) "Object and action picture naming in five languages: Methodological implications," 8th Annual International Conference of the Japanese Society for Language Sciences, Tokyo (June 2006); (with D. Aaronson, Z. Popivker, and J. Chen) "Heritage language maintenance among immigrants in the US," Conference on language acquisition and bilingualism, Toronto (March 2006); (with K. Kohnert, J. Collado, and F. Aquino-Garcia) "Action naming in Spanish and English among sequential bilinguals," at the 3rd International Symposium on Bilingualism, Barcelona (March 2005).

In addition, she has given two invited talks: "Learning words in two languages. How do bilingual infants and toddlers do it?" at New York University (December 2006) and "Heritage language maintenance of Chinese immigrants in the United States" at Cornell University (February 2006).

Professor Jia will be working as a consultant and expert for the California State Department of Education to develop Early Childhood Language and Literacy Standards for Bilingual Children (December 2006-June 2007).

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Dimitra Karabali

Dimitra Karabali (Professor, Physics and Astronomy) published the following articles: "Electromagnetic interactions of higher-dimensional quantum Hall droplets," Nuclear Physics B 726, pp. 407-420 (2005); "Bosonization of the lowest Landau level in arbitrary dimensions: edge and bulk dynamics," Nuclear Physics B 750, pp. 265-288 (2006); (with V.P. Nair) "Quantum hall effect in higher Dimensions, Matrix Models and Fuzzy Geometry," Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General 39, pp. 12735-12763 (2006).

In 2006, she was invited to speak at the conference on "Noncommutative Geometry and Quantum Physics" in Calcutta, India, and at the 26th International Colloquia on Group Theoretical Methods in Physics at the CUNY Graduate Center. She also delivered seminars at Syracuse University and at City College, CUNY (December 2006).

Professor Karabali has been awarded a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation for the project "Gauge theories in (2+1) dimensions and quantum Hall effect in higher dimensions" (November 2005) and a two-year grant (with V.P. Nair and A.P. Polychronakos of City College, CUNY) from the CUNY Collaborative Incentive Grants Program for "Problems at the Interface of High Energy and Condensed Matter Physics" (September 2005). She has received two PSC-CUNY grants, each for one year, for "Exploring higher dimensional quantum Hall droplets" (July 2006) and "Higher dimensional QHE and Wess-Zumino-Witten actions" (July 2005).

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Linda Keen

Linda Keen (Professor, Mathematics and Computer Science) edited the book (with R. Devaney) Complex Dynamics: 25 years after the appearance of the Mandelbrot set, Contemp. Math (Amer. Math. Soc., 2006), and she wrote (with N. Lakic) Hyperbolic Geometry from a Local Viewpoint (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Three of her articles appeared in the Complex Dynamics book, cited above: (with S. Yuan) "Parabolic perturbation of the family Ôlambda tan z"; (with N. Lakic) "Accumulation points of iterated function systems"; and "Problems from the sessions at the Snowbird Conference." In addition, she wrote the following articles: (with J. Gilman) "Two generator discrete groups: hyperbolic handlebodies," Geometria Dedicata, 110, pp. 159-190 (2005); (with N. Lakic) "Random holomorphic iterations and degenerate subdomains," Proc. AMS, 134, no. 2, pp. 371-378 (2006); and (with J. Gilman) "Planar families of discrete groups," in The geometry of Riemann surfaces and abelian varieties, Contemp. Math., 397 (2006). The following articles will appear in 2007: (with N. Lakic) "Accumulation constants of iterated function systems with Bloch Target domains," Annals of Finnish Acad. Sci. (2007); (with N. Lakic) "A generalized hyperbolic metric for plane domains," Proceedings of the Ahlfors-Bers 2005 Conference (2007); and (with N. Lakic) "Limit Points of Iterated Function Systems," in Proceedings of Conference of Teichmuller Theory, Allahabad, 2006.

Professor Keen also published a Book Review of Indra's Pearls by D. Mumford, C. Series, and D. Wright (Cambridge University Press, 2002), which appeared in Math Intelligencer (2005).

She has presented the following papers: "Limit Points of Iterated Function Systems," Workshop on Teichmuller Theory in Allahabad, India (Jan. 2006); "Computer graphics and the Geometry of Complex Polynomials," Main Lecture of the Kovalevsky Days Meeting of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences; and "Chaos in dimension two" at the Colloquium at St. John's University.

In other news, she has been awarded a PSC-CUNY grant for research in Complex Dynamics and Kleinian Groups, as well as a grant from the National Science Foundation for a Scholarship and Mentoring program for mathematics and computer science majors.

She is also the new Chair of the Board of Trustees of the American Mathematical Society and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA.

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Julian Laderman

Julian Laderman (Associate Professor, Mathematics and Computer Science) published A Bridge to Simple Squeezes (Liberty Publishing House, 2005), which received the "2006 Book of the Year Award" from the American Bridge Teachers' Association.

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Alissa Mallow

Alissa Mallow (Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Social Work) authored (with Diann Cameron-Kelly of Adelphi University) "Unraveling the layers of cultural competence: Exploring the meaning of meta-cultural competence in the Therapeutic Community," Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse 5, 3 (2006). She was also awarded a PSC-CUNY Out of Cycle Grant in 2006 to study how social work students learn to practice in a culturally competent manner.

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Carl Mazza

Carl Mazza (Assistant Professor, Sociology and Social Work) wrote the chapter, "Children of Incarcerated Parents," in Children of the Urban Environment: Linking Social Policy and Clinical Practice, Phillips and Straussner (eds.), (Charles C. Thomas, 2006). Dr. Mazza also published the article, "Brenda: An invisible victim of mandatory sentencing laws for drug offenses," Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addictions, Vol. 6, Issue 4, 2006.

Professor Mazza presented the following papers at conferences: "Mending the Heart: Working with Incarcerated and Post-Release Fathers and their Children," New York State Social Work Education Association Annual Conference (November 2006), which was presented along with Nathan Moore, a social work major at Lehman; "From Prison to Classroom: Undergraduate Social Work Students Transitioning from Prison," New York State Social Work Education Association Annual Conference (November 2006), co-presented with Dwight Stephenson; "Sins of the Father: Incarcerated Fathers and their Children," Cornell University at the National Conference on Fatherhood (October 2006); "And Then the World Fell Apart: The Plight of Incarcerated Children," NYC Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers (December 2006); "Transitioning from Prison to Home: Reentry and the Reconstituted Family," Greenhaven Correctional Facility Conference on Parenting (December 2006); "Incarcerated Fathers and Reentry," NYS Conference on Responsible Fatherhood, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the NYS Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (December 2006).

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Janet Butler Munch

Janet Butler Munch (Associate Professor, Library) spoke at the LACUNY Archives & Special Collections Roundtable program, "Digital Projects within CUNY Libraries," at John Jay College on the Bronx Business for Everybody website (November 2006). She also led two CUNY Institute for Irish-American Studies book club discussions on Jaywalking with the Irish, and Green Suede Shoes (Fall 2006).

Professor Munch was awarded a mini-grant from the New York Council for the Humanities for public program aspects of the American Library Association's Traveling Exhibit, "Elizabeth I: Ruler and Legend," which was hosted by the Leonard Lief Library August 23 - October 6, 2006. As chair of the LACUNY Professional Development Committee, she moderated its 2006 PSC-CUNY Grants Workshop at Baruch College (September 2006). She was also a grant reviewer for 2007 PSC-CUNY Research Awards submitted through the Library Panel.

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Vincent Prohaska

Vincent Prohaska (Associate Professor, Psychology) presented the following papers at conferences: "Finding Money," 77th Annual Meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Baltimore (March 2006); "Accessing Teaching Resources," Psi Chi Teaching Workshop of the 18th Annual Conference of the Association for Psychological Science, New York City (May 2006); (with D. DelValle and M.P. Toglia) "Temporal Characteristics of True and Illusory Memories," a poster presented at the 47th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Houston (November 2006); (with D.A. Zellner and K. Goodwin) "Advancing Undergraduate Research Through Psi Chi," (with R.F. Rycek and S. Pearcey) "Hosting a Regional Discipline-Specific Undergraduate Research Conference," and (with L. Rueckert and D.A. Zellner) "Doing Research When You (and Your Students) are Overworked, Underpaid, and Overstressed," all of which were workshops presented at the 11th National Conference of the Council on Undergraduate Research, DePauw University in Indiana (June 2006).

In other news, Prof. Prohaska has been elected as the National President-Elect of Psi Chi, the National Honor Society in psychology. He represented Psi Chi at the American Psychological Association's Educational Leadership Conference (September 2006), and he will also represent Psi Chi and the Council on Undergraduate Research in a new organization that seeks to coordinate efforts focused on improving high school and undergraduate education in psychology.

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Anne Rice

Anne Rice (Assistant Professor, African and African American Studies) published the article, "How We Remember Lynching," NKA Journal of African Art (Fall 2006). In March 2006, Professor Rice presented the paper "There is No More Time: Marion Palfi's Anti-Lynching Photography," at the Irish Association of American Studies in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and she delivered the paper, "Breaking Silences: African Women Writers and Human Rights," at the African Studies Association in San Francisco. She was awarded a PSC CUNY Grant for the Summer of 2006 for research at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson.

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