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October 4, 2002
Quidnunc
Shifting Geoscientists
Earth and environment faculty members Michelle Markley and Mark
McMenamin, and Rachel E. Soraruf '02 will present research at
the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America October
27-30 in Denver, Colorado. Tracy Ryan '03 will also attend the
meeting, along with more than 6,000 other geoscientists.
Mr. Jones Goes
to Washington On September 24, Stephen Jones, associate professor
of Russian and Eurasian studies at MHC, and three other experts
testified in Washington, D.C., before the Commission on Security
and Cooperation in Europe. This Congressional committee was established
in 1976 and is made up of nine senators and nine members of the
House of Representatives, along with officials from the Departments
of State, Defense, and Commerce. It monitors the provisions of
the Helsinki Accords and is mostly concerned with issues of human
rights and security. Jones and others were asked to address Russian
/ Georgian relations and the events in Pankisi Gorge, Georgia,
where Russia is claiming Chechen terrorists are hiding, and the
persecution of religious minorities in Georgia by members of the
Georgian national church. Jones testified before this committee
once before (in 1995). The group was addressed by U.S. Deputy
Assistant Secretary of State B. Lynn Pascoe of the Bureau of European
and Eurasian Affairs in the U.S. Department of State, and Georgian
ambassador Levan Mikeladze.
Pet Project Wei
Chen, Mary E. Woolley Assistant Professor of Chemistry, has received
National Institutes of Health AREA funding for her project titled
"Improvement of the Biocompatibility of PET Implants."
She will receive $136,440 over a three-year period that began
this June. The grant, administered through the National Institute
of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, will allow Chen and
her students to use their work in surface chemistry to design
materials for organ and tissue replacement to which proteins do
not adsorb and cells do not adhere. Chen will try to design new
implants using a new strategy of chemically bonding some new classes
of molecules to polyethylene terephthalate (PET) surfaces. This
is the second AREA grant Mount Holyoke has been awarded this year
(Sarah Bacon, Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Biological
Sciences, received the other) and brings to five the number of
AREA grants currently active. Chen also received a $5,000 grant
from the Office of Naval Research to support organization of a
symposium titled Absorption of Macromolecules at Solid/Liquid
Interfaces at the American Chemical Society meeting in New Orleans,
which is set for March of 2003. The Navy is supporting the conference
because of its interest in antifouling hull coatings.
For They Are Jolly
Good Fellows Dance professors Jim Coleman and Terese Freedman
are joint recipients of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Choreography
Fellowship of $12,500. There were fifty-nine applicants for the
award, which recognizes exceptional work and supports artistic
development and creative work; only three fellowships were awarded.
Coleman and Freedman's ongoing projects include the creation
of a concert of works by regional artists who will perform with
their children. A tour is being planned for Boston and New York
City. They are also choreographing a new duet that will make its
debut at MHC this fall. Asoka Bandarage, associate professor of
women's studies, received a Ford Fellowship for the 2002–2003
academic year. The fellowship will allow her to complete a book
on conflict resolution in Sri Lanka. She will be based at the
Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School
for Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.
In Memoriam Janet Young '47, the only woman in Margaret Thatcher's
cabinet and the first woman leader of the House of Lords, died
June 9. She first made her political mark locally, serving fifteen
years on Oxford's City Council, where she chaired the planning
and education committees. Her political record impressed Prime
Minister Edward Heath, and he made her a life peer in 1971. She
served at the Department of the Environment and then, under Prime
Minister Thatcher, as education minister, before becoming chancellor
of the Duchy of Lancaster and leader of the House of Lords in
1981.
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