March 23, 2009 (Vol. 9, No. 5)

Quorum: News on Faculty Research

This is the third installment of the "Quorum Series," featuring information on recent faculty research, publications, and presentations.

Julian J. Delacruz
Patricia Kolb
John Locke
Kathleen Lopez
Juliana Maantay
Cheryl Merzel
Janet Munch
Anne Rice
Laura A. Roberts
Christine Rota-Donahue

Julian J. Delacruz

Julian J. Delacruz (Assistant Professor, Economics and Accounting) published the paper "An Instrumental Variable Analysis of the Impact of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Low- and Middle-Income Countries" in the International Journal of Behavioral and Healthcare Research (forthcoming) and presented (with Mine Doyran) "The Economics of the Fashion Industry in Latin America: A Comparative Analysis," at the Oxford Business and Economics Conference, St. Hugh's College, Oxford University (June 22-24, 2008).

He also presented the following papers: "An Instrumental Variable Analysis of the Impact of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Low- and Middle-Income Countries" at the Southeast Economics Association Conference in Washington, DC (November 21, 2008) and "A Brief Contribution to the Debate over the Impact of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic on Economic Growth" at the Business and Economics Society International in Lugano, Switzerland (July 16-19, 2008).

Professor Delacruz participated in the Workshop on Institutional Economics 2008, University of Hertfordshire, U.K. (June 17-18, 2008). He also presented a poster of the paper "A Brief Contribution to the Debate on the Impact of HIV on Economic Growth" at the Unite For Sight Fifth Annual International Health Conference, Building Global Health For Today and Tomorrow, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. (April 12-13, 2008).

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Patricia Kolb

Patricia Kolb (Associate Professor, Social Work) published the article "Interest of racially and ethnically diverse social work students in gerontological social work" in Educational Gerontology, vol. 34, p. 907. She presented the following papers: "Culture and the older adult" at the Consortium of New York State Geriatric Education Centers Trainings in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens (September-November, 2008); "Responding to challenges to providing culturally competent nursing home care" at the Gerontological Society of America, National Harbor, Md. (November 2008); "Providing older adults and their families with culturally competent services for planning and adjustment to nursing home placement" at the Lehman College Department of Social Work's twenty-fifth anniversary conference, Bronx, N.Y. (November 2008); "Social work education for culturally competent practice with nursing home residents" at the Council on Social Work Education, Philadelphia (October 2008); and "A unique M.S.W. program—Jack of all trades or master of one?" at the New York State Social Work Education Association, Saratoga Springs, N.Y. (October 2008). This summer, Professor Kolb will present "Diversity" at the Gerontological Social Work Practice Fellows Seminar Series in Manhattan (June 2009).

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John Locke

John Locke (Professor, Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences) delivered the talk "Prying eyes and wagging tongues: why we eavesdrop and gossip" at the Harvard Club of New York (2008). He presented the following papers: "Complexity of early syllable productions in children with reading disabilities" at the Society for Research on Child Development (2008); "Exocentric compounds, ritual insult, and the evolution of syntax" at the Biolinguistics: Acquisition and Language Evolution conference in York, England (2008); and "Human needs: an ethological approach" at the International Society for Schema Therapy conference in Coimbra, Portugal (2008). Professor Locke published the following journal articles: "The trait of human language: lessons from the canal boat children of England," Biology & Philosophy, vol. 23, p. 347-361 (2008); "Cost and complexity: selection for speech and language," Journal of Theoretical Biology, vol. 251, p. 640-652 (2008); "Lipsmacking and babbling: syllables, sociality, and survival," (eds. Davis, B. L. and Zajdo, K.), The syllable in speech production: perspectives on the frame content theory (Taylor & Francis, 2008); and (with Smith, A. B. and Farkas, L.) "Precursors of dyslexia in early conversational turn exchange," Topics in Language Disorders, vol. 28, p. 5-14 (2008).

The following papers are currently in press: "Evolutionary developmental linguistics: naturalization of the faculty of language," Language Sciences; (with Smith, A. B., Lambrecht Smith, S., and Bennett, J.); "A longitudinal study of speech timing in young children later found to have reading disability," Journal of Speech Language Hearing Research; (with Lambrecht Smith, S., Scott, K. A., and Roberts, J.) "Disabled readers' performance on tasks of phonological processing, rapid naming, and letter knowledge before and after kindergarten: a cautionary tale," Learning Disabilities Research & Practice; (with Smith, S. L. and Roberts, J. A.) "Early syllable structure development in reading-impaired children," Journal of Learning Disabilities; and "The development of linguistic systems: insights from evolution" (eds., Guedouzi, J., Loncke, F., and Williams, M. J.), Handbook of psycholinguistic and cognitive processes: perspectives in communication disorders (Taylor & Francis).

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Kathleen Lopez

Kathleen Lopez (Assistant Professor, Latin American and Puerto Rican Studies) published the articles "Afro-Asian Alliances: Marriage, Godparentage, and Social Status in Late Nineteenth-Century Cuba" in Afro-Hispanic Review, vol. 27, no. 1 (2008) and "The Revitalization of Havana's Chinatown: Invoking Chinese Cuban History" in the Journal of Chinese Overseas, vol. 5, no. 1 (2009). She was a guest editor, with Evelyn Hu-DeHart, of the "Afro-Asia" issue of Afro-Hispanic Review, vol. 27, no. 1 (2008).

Professor Lopez will present the paper "'Aliens and Intoxicating Beverages': Portrait of a Chinese Smuggling Scheme in the Americas, 1920" at the Fourth World Confederation of Institutes and Libraries on Chinese Overseas Studies Conference, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China (May 9-11, 2009). She is scheduled to present "A Cuban 'Yellow Peril': The United States and Anti-Chinese Moments in Cuba" at the Latin American Studies Association Congress, Rio de Janeiro (June 11-14, 2009).

Professor Lopez gave a public lecture at Brown University on February 24, 2009 on "Chinese Cuban Transnational Family Histories." She was a panelist at the New Directions in Caribbean Studies Conference, Rutgers University (November 14, 2008). Professor Lopez has received the Ford Foundation Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2008-09, for completion of her book manuscript on the transnational history of the Chinese in Cuba. She joined the Board of Advisers of the Overseas Chinese Documentation and Research Center, Ohio University Libraries (January 2009) and was featured in "The Hybridization of Ethnic Studies," Diverse Issues In Higher Education (September 18, 2008).

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Juliana Maantay

Juliana Maantay (Associate Professor, Environmental, Geographic, and Geological Sciences) published the following journal articles: (with Tu, J. and Maroko, A.) "Loose-coupling an air dispersion model and a geographic information system (GIS) for studying air pollution and asthma in the Bronx, New York City," International Journal of Environmental Health Research, vol. 19, no. 1, DOI: 10.1080/09603120802392868 (January 2009); (with Maroko, A.) "Mapping urban risk: Flood hazards, race, & environmental justice in New York," Applied Geography, vol. 29, no. 1, DOI: 10.1016/j.apgeog.2008.08.002 (e-published October 10, 2008; January 2009); and (with Maroko, A.R. and Porter-Morgan, H.) "A new method for population mapping and understanding the spatial dynamics of disease in urban areas," Urban Geography, vol. 29, no. 7, p. 724-738 (2008).

She also published the following book chapters: (with Maroko, A. and Culp, G.) "Using geographic information science to estimate vulnerable urban populations for flood hazard and risk assessment in New York City," (eds., Showalter, P. and Lu, Y.) Geotechnical Contributions to Urban Hazard and Disaster Analysis (Springer-Verlag, 2009) and (with Maroko, A.R., Calicea, C., and Strelnick, A. H.) "Geographic information systems, environmental justice, and health disparities: The need for an interdisciplinary approach to study asthma and air pollution in the Bronx, New York," (eds., Freudenberg, N., Saegert, S., and Klitzman, S.) Interdisciplinary Urban Health Research and Practice (Jossey Bass, 2009).

Professor Maantay presented two papers at the Proceedings of the American Association of Geographers' Annual Meeting (Boston 2008): (with Maroko, A.R.) "Dasymetric mapping of urban population to analyze flood hazard and environmental justice in New York City" and (with Maroko, A.R. and Tu, J.) "Loose-coupling an air dispersion model and a geographic information system (GIS) for studying air pollution and asthma in the Bronx, New York City." She also presented two papers at the Proceedings of NOAA-CREST Symposium (2008): (with Maroko, A.R. and Tu, J.) "Loose-coupling an air dispersion model and a geographic information system (GIS) for studying air pollution and asthma in the Bronx, New York City" and (with Maroko, A.R.) "Mapping population distribution in the urban environment for asthma and air pollution research: The cadastral-based expert dasymetric system (CEDS)."

Professor Maantay was invited to make the following presentations: "Environmental justice strategic enforcement assessment tool (EJ SEAT) in New York City" at the Environmental Protection Agency's National Environmental Justice Advisory Council in Atlanta (October 20-25, 2008); "Using GIS in public health research" at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, Faculty Seminar Series: Public Health and GISc (March 26, 2008); "Environmental Justice Issues in New York City: Research from the Urban GISc lab, Lehman College, 1998–2008" at the Nature, Ecology, and Society Colloquium, Scales of Environmental Justice, CUNY Graduate Center (March 7, 2008); and "The Health Impacts of Global Warming" at Focus the Nation—Global Climate Change Impacts on New York City, a national teach-in at Lehman College (January 31, 2008). She also developed a program and organized a roster of thirteen speakers and panelists for this teach-in.

Other conference presentations include: "Asthma and air pollution in the Bronx: Using the cadastral-based expert dasymetric system (CEDS) to improve population mapping and understanding the spatiality of disease in urban areas" at the International Conference on Urban Health, Vancouver (October 29-31, 2008); "Dasymetric mapping of urban population to analyze flood hazard and environmental justice in New York City" at the Association of American Geographers' Annual Meeting, Boston (April 15-19, 2008); and "Mapping population distribution in the urban environment for asthma and air pollution research: The cadastral-based expert dasymetric system" at the NOAA-CREST Symposium, University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez (February 20-22, 2008.)

Professor Maantay presented the following posters: (with Andrew Maroko) "Using the cadastral-based expert dasymetric system to estimate population distribution" at the 2008 Governor's Island Summer Science Lecture and Poster Series, "Sustainable CUNY/Sustainable NYC," and (with Jun Tu and Andrew Maroko) "Loose-coupling an air dispersion model and a geographic information system for studying air pollution and asthma in the Bronx, New York City."

She presented the following posters in the student/faculty research poster session at the Nature, Ecology, and Society Colloquium/CUNY Graduate Center (March 2, 2008): (with Andrew Maroko) "Residential Segregation and Health Disparities in New York City: A Spacio-statistical Exploration of AIDS, TB, and the Distribution of People;" (with Jun Tu and Andrew Maroko) "Loose-coupling an air dispersion model and a geographic information system for studying air pollution and asthma in the Bronx, New York City;" and (with Andrew Maroko) "Using the Cadastral-based Expert Dasymetric System to Estimate Population Impacted by Flood Hazards in New York City."

Professor Maantay was appointed to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Environmental Justice Advisory Council task force group on developing an Environmental Justice Strategic Enforcement Assessment Tool for 2008-2010. She will be involved in developing a methodology and set of metrics for determining Environmental Justice neighborhoods and environmental burdens for EPA's use in assessing and enforcing federal environmental justice mandates.

In other news, Professor Maantay developed a proposal for a new master's degree in Geographic Information Science (M.GISc.) with a concentration in health and environmental spatial sciences. The Letter of Intent was approved by Lehman in October 2008 and is now pending CUNY approval. In December 2008, she participated in the GOALS for Girls program (Greater Opportunities Advancing Leadership and Science) as a mentor for eighth-grade girls, as part of the Youth Leadership Conference held at the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum. In addition, she participated in an Inside Lehman segment on her asthma and air pollution research (December 2008). Finally, she was interviewed by the New York Daily News for an article on the new community air monitoring survey proposed by the Department of Health and the Mayor. The article appeared in the Tuesday, January 6, 2009 issue.

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Cheryl Merzel

Cheryl Merzel (Associate Professor, Health Sciences) published the articles (with VanDevanter, N. and Irvine, M.) "Adherence to Antiretroviral Therapy among Older Children and Adolescents with HIV: A Qualitative Study of Psychosocial Contexts" in AIDS Patient Care & STDs, vol. 22, issue 12, p. 977-987 (2008) and (with Bleakley A., Messeri P., VanDevanter N., Gift, T., Malotte, C.K., and Middlestadt, S.) "Check Out That Body: A community awareness campaign in New York City" in Journal of Primary Prevention, vol. 29, p. 331-339 (2008). She was the principal investigator on the CUNY Research Foundation's PSC CUNY 39 Research Award, "Assessing Measures of Community Capacity for Health Promotion" (July 7, 2008-June 30, 2009). This project is a systematic review of measures of community capacity found in the multidisciplinary literature. Profesor Merzel was also the co-principal investigator (with Andrea Anderson-Hamilton) on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's "Evaluation of Tobacco Policy Change, awarded to ActKnowledge/Center for Human Environments," CUNY Graduate Center (March 1, 2009-February 28, 2011). This project is an evaluation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Tobacco Policy Control program, which supports local, statewide, and regional organizations and tribal groups nationwide to advocate for effective tobacco prevention and cessation policy.

In other news, Professor Merzel was a facilitator of the Roundtable on Diabetes' Coalition-Building Leadership Challenges, Opportunities, and Requirements. Finding Your Inner Leader: An "Aha!" Conference, Kingsborough Community College, June 2008. She has been invited to join the Association of Schools of Public Health DrPH Competencies Development Project Critical Analysis Workgroup. Finally, Professor Merzel is a member of the Evaluation Work Group, New York City Food and Fitness Partnership (convened by City Harvest and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene).

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Janet Munch

Janet Munch (Associate Professor, Library) presented the paper "At Home in the Bronx: Children at the New York Catholic Protectory 1865-1938" at The Bronx is Up: Urban Social Work Issues and Resolutions, 25th Anniversary Conference on Urban Social Work, Lehman College (November 18, 2008) and at Researching New York 2008, the New York State Historical Association meeting, Albany (November 20, 2008). She received the IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services) grant Connecting to Collections Bookshelf (August, 2008). Professor Munch also received a plaque from the CUNY Institute for Irish American Studies for "ongoing advice and assistance" (May 2008). She was a grant reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities/American Library Association Traveling Exhibits (June 2008 and February 2009).

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Anne Rice

Anne Rice (Assistant Professor, African and African American Studies) published the book chapter "White Islands of Safety and Engulfing Blackness" in Representing Segregation: The Aesthetics of Living Jim Crow and Other Kinds of Racial Division, eds. Brian Norman and Piper Kendrix Williams, with a foreword by Joycelyn Moody, afterword by Cheryl Wall and "sound off" by Trudier Harris (forthcoming from SUNY Press). She presented the paper "Anti-Lynching Photography" at the Great Lakes American Studies Association Conference, University of Notre Dame (March 19, 2009) and was a panel member at Rutgers University, celebrating publication of a special issue of African American Review and the forthcoming SUNY Press anthology Representing Segregation (March 10, 2009).

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Laura A. Roberts

Laura A. Roberts (Assistant Professor, Counseling, Leadership, Literacy, and Special Education) presented the papers "Identifying the Barriers of Transition for Students with Disabilities" at the North Atlantic Regional Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (September 2008) and "Developing a Strategic Plan for Students with Disabilities Transitioning to Adulthood" at the American Counseling Association (March 2009).

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Christine Rota-Donahue

Christine Rota-Donahue (Lecturer, Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences) received the CUNY Doctoral Student Research Grant. She also served as a CUNY Baccalaureate program mentor to Maurren Durkin, who was awarded the 2008 Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellowship.

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