Faculty/Staff Activities

David Domozych, professor of biology, presented a paper titled "The homogalacturonans of the desmid Penium margaritaceum and their role in cell wall structure and development" at the "The Biosynthesis of Plant Cell Walls" symposium, held at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California, Aug. 4-7, 2005. The conference was sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Co-authors of the paper are Ashley Serfis and Sam Hocine (Skidmore students, class of 2006) and Sarah Kiemle, Michelle Riccio and Michael Gretz of the Department of Biological Sciences, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Michigan.
      In addition, Domozych  participated in a workshop titled "Biofilm Structure Quantification and Image Analysis," held at the Center for Biofilm Engineering of Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, July 21-22, 2005. The workshop dealt with applications of confocal laser scanning microscopy and digital image analysis to the investigation of complex microbial consortia in biofilms.
      He also completed a one-week intensive training course dealing with Variable Pressure Scanning Electron Microscopy at the JEOL Institute, Peabody, Mass., May 9-13, 2005.      

Timothy Harper, assistant professor of management and business, was the guest speaker Jan. 15 at a ceremony to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Glens Falls, N.Y. The celebration included a march through the city's downtown and a ceremony at the Christ Church United Methodist. 

Katherine Hauser, associate professor of art history, gave a presentation titled "The Myth of the Self-Expressive Artist" to Skidmore alumni in Vero Beach, Fla.,  (at the Vero Beach Museum of Art) Jan. 11 and in Sarasota, Fla., Jan. 13. Dan Nathan, associate professor of American studies, gave a presentation titled "Remembering and Forgetting the Black Sox" to Skidmore alumni in Naples, Fla.,  Jan. 9 and in Delray Beach, Fla.,  Jan. 10.  The Skidmore Alumni Clubs of Florida and the Office of Advancement coordinated the programs.

Susan Kress, professor of English, led a workshop for new chairs of English departments (with Iain Crawford, dean of Wooster College) last June at the Association of Departments of English Summer Seminar at Georgetown University.  ADE is an organization dedicated to the education and training of chairpersons of college and university English departments.
      In October she conducted a review of the Dickinson College English Department with Cynthia Lewis of Davidson College.

Ruth Lakeway, professor emerita of music, was recently recognized by the Saratoga Care Foundation as the fifth honor recipient of the foundation's Legacy Society for her commitment to Saratoga Care and for her dedication to the Saratoga community. 

Reg Lilly, professor of philosophy, began delivering a series of lectures on "tragically divided being" at the Collège Internationale de Philosophie in Paris (to which he was elected a Correspondent last spring). In October and November he gave the first four lectures, "L'histoire hégémonique," "L'analytique d'ultimes," "De l'être à la psychanalyse," and "Le traumatisme et le singulier." In the spring of 2007 he will give four more; the titles have yet to be determined.

Doretta Miller, Robert Davidson Professor of Art, attended the fifth edition of the Florence Biennale Dec. 3-11.  Recognized by the United Nations as an official partner in the program "Dialog Among Nations," the biennale drew 800 artists from more than 70 countries.  Its featured exhibition of contemporary art included three gouache paintings by Miller.  She shared a fourth prize in graphics (works on paper) with an artist from South Africa.

Monica Minor, director, Higher Education Opportunity Program, was Skidmore's representative to the Century Program of the Foundation for Excellent Schools, which works to motivate students in high-need communities to succeed beyond high school.  Through the foundation, Minor and colleagues from Cornell and the State University of New York visited Hawaii in January to assist middle school students with early planning for college.

Mary Odekon, associate professor of physics, presented a paper titled "The Correlation Dimension of Young Stars in Dwarf Galaxies" at the American Astronomical Society meeting Jan. 11 in Washington, D.C.
   At the same meeting, Yu Chen '06 presented a related paper titled "The Correlation Dimension of Young Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud."

Jay Rogoff, lecturer in English, appeared Nov. 11 on WAMC public radio as part of a special Roundtable tribute to Veterans' Day, reading and discussing his poem "Folding the Flag" with host Paul Elisha.
    In addition Rogoff gave a talk, "Shakespeare Without Words:  Balanchine's Most Rare Dream," prior to the New York City Ballet performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, July 8 at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.  He presented it again for Skidmore College friends and alumni July 9 at the Tang Museum.  On July 15, he interviewed NYCB principal dancer Wendy Whalen in a SPAC pre-performance program, "The Mysteries of Agon."     

Jeff Segrave, professor of exercise science, gave an invited panel presentation titled "Dealing with Elder Care" at the NCAA National Convention session on "Athletics:  Life in the Balance" Jan. 6 in Indianapolis, Ind.

Linda Simon, professor and chair, Department of English, read a paper titled "The Spark of Love:  Electricity as Sexual Metaphor" at a Nov. 11 conference sponsored by the Centre de recherché sur l'intermedialite, a research group of the University of Montreal and McGill University.

Mary Zeiss Stange, associate professor, women's students and religion, attended an international symposium on "Women, Diversity and Human Rights" Dec. 7 and 8 at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, where she delivered a paper titled "Goddesses and Amazons:  Religious Images of Female Power in Feminist Activism."
    In addition, she has been appointed to a two-year term on the Citizen Advisory Council of the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks.

Gordon Thompson, professor of music, recently attended the 50th annual meetings of the Society for Ethnomusicology in Atlanta where he chaired a panel, "Hip Hop on Three Continents."  He also read an encomium to his teacher, Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy on the occasion of the Society naming Jairazbhoy an honorary member.

Jinying Ye-Germond, lecturer in Chinese, attended the American Council of Teaching Foreign Language convention Nov. 19 in Baltimore.

Publications, Exhibitions & Performances

Joel Brown, senior artist-in-residence, Music Department, performed with his band Triple Play Nov. 10 at Southeastern Oklahoma State University.

Terry Diggory, professor of English, contributed the entry on Frank O'Hara in the just-published, five-volume Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry, edited by Jeffrey Gray (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2006).

David Domozych, professor of biology, published a paper titled "The extracellular polymeric substance of the green alga Penium margaritaceum and its role in biofilm formation," in the journal Biofilms (Cambridge University Press), Vol. 2. Co-authors included Sunny Kort '06, and Tim Yu '04 and Sarah Benton '04. The paper dealt with the biochemistry and physiology of algal-based biofilms found in transient wetlands of the southeastern Adirondacks.

Mary Ann Foley, professor and chair, Department of Psychology, and Hugh Foley, professor of psychology, are the authors of papers accepted by Memory and Cognition.  The first is titled "Source monitoring judgments about anagrams and their solutions:  Evidence for the role of cognitive operations information in memory"; and the second is titled "Anticipating partners' responses:  Examining item and source memory following interactive exchanges."  The second paper was co-written with J.A. Durley and A. T. Maitner, visiting students who participated in Skidmore's NSF-sponsored summer research and who are now in graduate school. 

Corey Freeman-Gallant, associate professor and chair, Department of Biology, recently had a paper accepted for publication in the journal Animal Behaviour. The paper is titled "Asymmetrical incest avoidance in the choice of social and genetic mates" and was co-written by Nathaniel Wheelwright (Bowdoin College) and Robert Mauck (Kenyon College).

Susan Kress, professor of English, has published an essay titled "The Mysterious Life of Kate Fansler" in the Fall 2005 issue of Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature.

Doretta Miller, Robert Davidson Professor of Art, had recent work featured in a two-person exhibition with Tom Schottman from Nov. 6 to Dec. 13, 2005 at the Oakroom Artists Gallery in Schenectady.

Josh Ness, assistant professor of biology, is co-author of "Environmental forcing and the temporal dynamics of a competitive guild of cactus-tending ants," with W.F. Morris, W.G. Wilson, and J.L. Bronstein, appearing in Ecology, Vol. 86, No. 12, December 2005, published by the Ecological Society of America.

Mary Crone Odekon, associate professor of physics, is the author of an article on "A Very Liquid Heaven," the recent exhibition in the Tang Museum, in the September/October 2005 edition of Mercury magazine, Vol. 34, No. 5.

Jay Rogoff, lecturer in English, has published two poems:  "Folding the Flag" in The Progressive, Vol. 69, No. 10, October 2005; and "Making a Fool of Myself Over Maria Kowroski" in Literary Imagination, Vol. 7, No. 3, Fall 2005.
    He has also had the following poems accepted for publication:  "Dance Class" by Chautauqua Literary Journal, "The Guy Who Passed Me Doing 90 MPH and Playing the Trumpet" by The Georgia Review, "Sublimated" by The Kenyon Review, "The Golden Chamber" and "In Hiding" by Notre Dame Review, "Butterfly Effect" and "Iconography" by Prairie Schooner, and "Cain's Gift" by Shenandoah.
   "The Touchstone," his extended essay-review of six books on dance, appeared in The Southern Review, Vol. 41, No. 3, Summer 2005.  The works discussed include Nancy Reynolds and Malcolm McCormack's No Fixed Points:  Dance in the Twentieth Century; new biographies of George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and Margot Fonteyn; and a photographic tribute to Frederick Ashton.

Mary Zeiss Stange, associate professor of women's studies and religion, is the author of an essay titled "'The White Man's Wounded Knee' or Whose Holy War Is This, Anyway?  A Cautionary Tale" which is included in Democracy and Religion:  Free Exercise and Diverse Visions (Kent State University Press, 2004).  The book was listed among the Outstanding Academic Titles of 2005 by Choice:  Current Reviews for Academic Libraries (January 2006).

Gordon Thompson, professor of music, is the author of articles on the following topics: Alap, Bhajan, Dhrupad, Filmıgıt, Folk Dance, Gat-Tora, Ali Akbar Khan, Vilayat Khan, Khayal, Amir Khusrau, Music: An Introduction, Natya Shastra, Qawwalõ, Raga, Sarod, Ravi Shankar, Sitar, Tabla, Tala, and Thumrı included in the Encyclopedia of India (Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006).  The article on Folk Dance was co-written with two current Skidmore students, Shelley Smith '06 and Kasha Rybczyk '07.

Benjamin Van Wye, lecturer in music, is the author of "Alexandre-Pierre-François Boëly:  Complete Works," which appeared as the featured review essay in The American Organist, October 2005.

Skidmore Intercom
Skidmore College
815 North Broadway
Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
518.580.5000
intercom@skidmore.edu