Summer 2005
NEWS
Ten Geneseo Faculty Members Awarded 2005 Summer Research Fellowships
By Mary E. McCrank
The College has selected 10 faculty members to receive 2005 summer research fellowship awards for research into areas from across the liberal arts and science spectrums.
The professors will devote two consecutive summer months to their projects.
David Geiger, professor of chemistry, was awarded the 2005 Spencer Roemer Summer Research Fellowship, which goes to support a Geneseo faculty member who has established an outstanding record of research and publication.
Terence Bazzett, associate professor of psychology, and Tze-ki Hon, associate professor of history, were awarded 2005 Mid-Career Summer Research Fellowships, which support the research and creative projects of faculty who have been with the College at least six years.
Dan DeZarn, assistant professor of art, Jordan Kleiman, assistant professor of history, Ruel McKnight, assistant professor of chemistry, Paul Pacheco, assistant professor of anthropology, Sharon Peck, assistant professor of education, Alice Rutkowski, assistant professor of English, and Yuichi Tamura, assistant professor of sociology, were awarded 2005 Presidential Summer Fellowships, which provide newer faculty with an opportunity to undertake research and other scholarly activities.
Geiger will receive $5,000, funded by an endowment from the late Spencer Roemer, a generous benefactor of the College. The award will provide support for Geiger’s research in Synthesis, Photophysics and Quantum Calculations of Platinum Complexes with Potential Use for Energy Storage and Chemical Sensors.
A chemist who is concerned about the environment and with expertise in the area of photochemistry, Geiger has spent the past 20 years focusing his research on the conversion of solar energy into a storable form of energy. With an increased demand for oil, especially from the rapidly industrialized nations of China and India, alternative energy sources must be found. With the Spencer Roemer Summer Research Fellowship, Geiger will investigate a series of platinum-containing compounds that possess characteristics suggesting that they may have utility as components in energy storage and/or sensor devices. These compounds will be prepared using methodologies devised in the laboratory. Geiger will explore their ability to convert light to chemical energy via the formation of new chemical bonds. He will then explore their ability to concert light to chemical energy via the formation of new chemical bonds. When these compounds absorb visible light, energy is transferred to the outer edges of the molecule. Geiger hopes to exploit this property by trapping the energy. These same platinum compounds emit red light when exposed to yellow light. Similar compounds display dramatic changes in color or intensity of the emitted light when they are exposed to small molecules that interact with them. He plans to explore the potential of the complexes for use as components in devices that detect the presence of volatile organic chemicals.
The two faculty members selected to receive the Mid-Career Summer Research Fellowships will each receive $4,000, funded by the Geneseo Foundation. The projects are as follows:
Terence Bazzett’s project, Behavior Genetics, will allow him to complete his textbook, “Introduction to Behavior Genetics.” In addition, he will refine laboratory skills in the gene mapping technique of polymerase chain reaction (PCR). PCR is rapidly becoming a standard technique for work with transgenic animals.
Tze-ki Hon’s project, The Book of Changes in Modern China, will allow him to begin his second book project. In his first book, “The Yijing and Chinese Politics,” he examined the commentaries on the Yijing in late imperial China. To continue his studies, the second book will focus on the Yijing commentaries in modern China. He will trace the Yijing commentary from 1840 to 1949. He hopes to find historical data that will elucidate the role of the Yijing in shaping modern Chinese collective memory, historical consciousness and national identity. He will present some of these findings at an international conference in Singapore in January 2006.
The seven faculty members selected to receive the 2005 Presidential Summer Fellowships will each receive $3,500, funded by an allocation from the President. The projects are as follows:
Dan DeZarn’s project, The Tree Project, is a sculptural installation project to be performed at The Mockbee Center this June in Cincinnati during the International Sculpture Center’s conference. DeZarn has collected scrap southern yellow pine wood from building sites, demolished structures and shipping pallets. At the conference, he will construct an entire pine tree from the scrap lumber he has collected by using methods associated with construction and carpentry. The process will be documented, and the public will be invited to view the construction process. At the end of the exhibition, the tree will be logged with chainsaws and removed from the space.
Jordan Kleiman’s project is titled, The Appropriate Technology Movement in American Political Culture. Originating in England in the early 1960s as an alternative strategy for international economic development, the movement defined itself by advocating technologies that are small in scale, democratically controllable, low in capital commitment, environmentally sustainable and adaptable to local cultural conditions. As technologies turned their attention to the reconstruction of American society, they attempted to democratize and render ecologically sustainable the nation’s economy by coupling appropriate “hardware” with an array of “appropriate institutions” ranging from cooperatives and community land trusts to collateralized loan programs and local currencies. Kleiman’s account of the movement will be the first scholarly book on the subject, evaluating the movement’s effectiveness in articulating and implementing its social vision and placing the movement’s ideology and practice in the historical context of American political culture.
Ruel McKnight’s project, Characterization of the Fundamental Factors Controlling Drug-DNA Interactions, will yield further understanding of how various substitutes in drug molecules govern their binding to DNA. Many clinically important therapeutic drugs, notably those belonging to the anthracycline anticancer class, bind DNA non-covalently as a prerequisite for carrying out their functions. However, many aspects of why these molecules bind their target DNA sequences are not fully understood. The long-term goal of this work is to develop a fundamental knowledge of the determining factors that govern drug-DNA interactions, and to use these basic principles to develop a broader sense of rules that can be applied to other similar systems.
Paul Pacheco’s project, Investigating Ohio Hopewell Settlement Patterns in Central Ohio: Archaeology at Brown’s Bottom, will conduct evacuations at the Brown’s Bottom site near Chillicothe, Ohio. The students will be trained in archaeological field methods and will visit important prehistoric sites, such as the Serpent Mound, during planned field trips. In the fall, these students will participate in research projects associated with the analysis of the artifact collection that are recovered during the excavation, which will result in research presentations at both regional and national conferences. Pacheco will use this research to pursue a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Sharon Peck’s project, Literacy and the Art of Puppetry, will compile a book manuscript which addresses theory, research and practices of puppetry in education and literacy instruction. The book will provide a significant review of research in the field, data from ongoing classroom research and interviews with teachers and performers who use puppetry in education. It will delve into the rich rationale for using puppetry in literacy education, the interplay between puppetry and voice and agency, and the artful considerations that puppetry offers to enhance student thinking.
Alice Rutkowski’s project, Imagined Equality: Fictional Solutions to the Problem of Race in Early Reconstruction, will rework her dissertation, which she completed in the fall of 2003. Scholars of literature have found little interest in reconstruction, the period of rebuilding and turmoil that followed the American Civil War. Rutkowski’s project identifies and analyzes literary works by four women writers, three white and one black, written during this period and argues that these works all attempt to assert themselves in the public sphere by using creative literature to advocate for the post-emancipation rights of blacks. The writers — Lydia Maria Child, Anna Dickinson, Frances E.W. Harper and Rebecca Harding Davis — and their works share not only a date of composition, but a set of tropes — interracial love, cross-racial adoption and the valorization of the black male soldier — that radically suggest an important place for newly freed blacks in American society.
Yuichi Tamura’s project, The Meiji Restoration, is a historical case study of the Meiji Restoration, a revolutionary transformation of Japan in the 19th century. The Meiji Restoration has been treated as an exceptional type of revolutions among prominent sociologists who developed sociological theories of revolution by comparing multiple cases. Tamura will examine original writings by historians and empirically reconstruct historical contexts and action sequences that resulted in the Meiji Restoration. In doing so, the research will attempt to highlight other significant social factors that facilitated a particular form of revolutionary change in Japan. Tamura hopes his research will contribute modestly to further advancement, modification and refinement of sociological theories of revolutions.