Faculty-Staff Achievements, Dec. 7, 2015

Recognition

Catherine White Berheide, professor of sociology, has been elected to a three-year term as president of the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

Berheide was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa at Beloit College, and received an M.A. and Ph.D. at Northwestern University. She has a distinguished history of service to Phi Beta Kappa, as an officer of Skidmore's Phi chapter (1982-1985), as a long-time member of the national organization’s board,  senate (2000-2012), and as co-chair of the Phi Beta Kappa Task Force on Stipulations (2008-2011). Most recently she served as vice president of the society (2012-2015).

As a Phi Beta Kappa senator, Berheide was active with the senate’s awards committee (2000-2009) and as a member (1994-2014) and chair (2003-2012) of the committee on qualifications, which vets colleges and universities applying for new Phi Beta Kappa chapters.

Berheide’s academic career began in 1976 at Indiana University Southeast, after which she moved to Skidmore College, where she has been teaching since 1979. She  twice chaired the Sociology Department (1982-1987, and 1990-1992), and was director of Women’s Studies three times, most recently from 2008 to 2011. She has been a Carnegie Scholar twice, has won the Hans O. Mauksch Award, and has served as secretary of the American Sociological Association (2012-2013). Berheide is the author of five books and more than 50 scholarly articles on work, gender, and undergraduate education.

As PBK president Berheide says she will “continue to strengthen the Society’s role, nationally and locally, as an advocate for the liberal arts and sciences through the associations, chapters, fellows, and other vital initiatives, such as the National Arts and Sciences Initiative, The American Scholar, the Visiting Scholar Program, and the society’s various awards and fellowships.”  She also looks forward to enhancing “the engagement of all our members, especially recent graduates, with each other and with the society’s activities.”

Activities

Tom Lewis, professor emeritus of English, was interviewed by Joe Donahue of WAMC Dec. 4 at Northshire Bookstore. The occasion was a celebration of Lewis’s new book Washington: A History of Our National City. Publisher's Weekly called the work "the most reliable and useful one-volume history of the U.S. capital to date." In Washington, Lewis paints a sweeping portrait of the capital city whose internal conflicts and promise have mirrored those of America writ large. Breathing life into the men and women who struggled to help the city realize its full potential, he introduces us to the mercurial French artist who created an ornate plan for the city “en grande”; members of the nearly forgotten anti-Catholic political party who halted construction of the Washington monument for a quarter century; and the cadre of congressmen who maintained segregation and blocked the city’s progress for decades. In the twentieth century Washington’s Mall and streets would witness a Ku Klux Klan march, the violent end to the encampment of World War I “Bonus Army” veterans, the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and the painful rebuilding of the city in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. The session will air on an upcoming segment of Donahue’s The Book Show.

Publications

Mark Huibregtse, professor of mathematics, has had two papers accepted for publication. The first, titled “Envelopes and Equidistant Sets,” was co-written with Adam  Winchell, Skidmore Class of 2016, and is based on their summer 2014 collaborative research project; it will appear in Involve, a journal devoted to research involving students. The second, titled “Some Elementary Components of the Hilbert Scheme of Points,” will appear in the Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics.

Marla Melito’93, student academic development coordinator, has had several poems accepted for publication. "The Mission" appeared in Hartskill Review, Vol. 2, No. 2; and "Pentimento" appeared in Greensboro Review, No. 98. "The Burqa" will appear in Gargoyle, No. 64, "The Moondial" will appear in a future issue of Roanoke Review, and a section of "The Moondial" is being paired with artwork in a forthcoming Petite Hound.

In the News

Jennifer Delton, professor of history, was a source for a story titled “Younger generations learning lesson of Pearl Harbor” published Dec. 7 in The Daily Gazette.

Jeffrey Segrave, professor of health and exercise sciences, wrote an opinion essay titled “Sports give an injured world strength,” published Dec. 6 in the Albany Times Union and available to TU+ subscribers here.

Sheldon Solomon, professor of psychology, was a source for two recent news stories. Terror management theory, which Solomon has researched and written about with collaborators Tom Pyszczynski, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, and Jeff Greenberg, University of Arizona, was cited by Jessica Stern in a New York Times opinion essay titled “How Terror Hardens Us,” published Dec. 5. He was interviewed by Rachel Gotbaum of Public Radio International’s The World for a segment titled “How Terrorist Attacks Can Change a Nation’s Psyche,” which aired Dec. 7.

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