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Research Updates April 2011

Joanna Ruocco, a PhD candidate in creative writing, has just been awarded FC2’s Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize for “Another Governess/The Least Blacksmith-A Diptych.” The prize includes publication by FC2 and $15,000.

Art Professor Lawrence Argent will join award-winning architect Curtis Fentress and designer Michael McCoy in a discussion of art’s role in public architecture at a panel discussion and book signing at the Tattered Cover LoDo on May 18.

Nick Cutforth, a professor in the Morgridge College of Education, co-authored an article, “Improving the Quality of Physical Education in Rural Schools,” at www.pelinks4u.org. Cutforth is working with the  Colorado School of Public Health’s Rocky Mountain Prevention Research Center to improve children’s health in Colorado’s San Luis Valley and other rural communities in the state. The effort is funded by a $1.8 million grant from the Colorado Health Foundation.

Law Professor Rock Pring co-authored an article, “Increase in Environmental Courts and Tribunals Prompts New Global Institute,” in the Journal of Court Innovation 3:11 (April 2011). He published a chapter, “Evaluación de Impacto Ambiental en los Estados Unidos de América de conformidad con la Ley Nacional de Politicas Ambientales de 1969,” in the 2011 book La Naturaleza Jurídica de la Evaluación del Impacto Ambiental: Alálisis de Derecho Comparado, the first Spanish-language book to do a comparative study of EIA laws in Mexico and other leading countries. An English-language edition will follow later this year. Pring co-presented “The Role of Specialized Environmental Courts and Tribunals Around the World” on April 1 at the inauguration of the new International Judicial Institute for Environmental Adjudication at Pace University Law School in White Plains, New York. On April 8, he presented “The Judiciary and Climate Change” at a conference on The Role of Law in Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. He  presented “The Judiciary and Climate Change”  at the International Conference on Legislation and Climate Change, sponsored by the State of Campeche Ministry of the Environment and the Autonomous University of Campeche, on April 9 in Campeche, Mexico.

Korbel School PhD candidate Najim Dost presented a paper, “NGO-State Wage Differentials in Afghanistan,” at the 3rd Annual Conference on Democracy and Governance at the University of Connecticut. The paper argued that the wage-gap between employees with similar qualifications, but hired by different types of organizations in Afghanistan, is creating significant distortions in the labor market and undermines the ability of the state to continue delivering basic services once the aid community leaves the country. To address this issue, the paper presented three policy options and assessed the relative strengths and weaknesses of each.

On April 2, Lamont Professor Lawrence Golan conducted a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, the Pathétique, with the Yakima Symphony Orchestra. The performance was recorded and broadcast on public television throughout the state of Washington as well as some areas of British Columbia.

B. Afeni McNeely Cobham, affiliate faculty in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, presented a paper, “Inciting access and equity: The self-efficacy of tenured Black Women faculty,” at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in New Orleans. Cobham also contributed a chapter, “White College Students,” to the book Multiculturalism on campus: Theory, models, and practices for understanding diversity and creating inclusion (Stylus Publishing, 2011).

Daniels College Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs Daniel Connolly published the second edition of his co-authored book, Technology Strategies for the Hospitality Industry (Prentice Hall).

Tripp Baltz, instructor in the liberal studies and bachelor’s completion programs at University College, edited and published a memoir, Both Ends Burning: My Story of Adopting Three Children from Haiti (author: Craig Juntunen) in June 2010. The book is a story not only about adoption, but about the worldwide orphan crisis.

Alison Schofield, assistant professor in religious studies and the Center for Judaic Studies, has been invited to participate in a regional conference organized around her new ideas about who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, presented in her recent monograph on the scrolls. The May 2011 conference, sponsored by the University of Oregon, is entitled “Sectarian Communities in the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Colloquium with John Collins and Alison Schofield” and consists of a systematic evaluation of the evidence and arguments presented in her book (From Qumran to the Yahad: A New Paradigm of Textual Development for the Community Rule, 2009) as well as that by Yale Professor John Collins (Beyond the Qumran Community: The Sectarian Movement of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2010).

Tara Bannon Williamson, an adjunct professor of library sciences, published an article, “Materials Matchmaking: Articulating Whole Library Advisory,” in Reference and User Services Quarterly.

Chemistry and biochemistry Assistant Professor Scott Pegan co-authored an article, “Structural analysis of a viral ovarian tumor domain protease from the crimean-congo hemorrhagic Fever virus in complex with covalently bonded ubiquitin,” in the Journal of Virology 2011 Apr;85(7):3621-30. Two DU undergraduates and a doctoral student in the new molecular cellular biophysics program are among the article’s co-authors. The work centers on atomic level structural resolution of a key enzyme in Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) virus. CCHF is a tick-borne, negative-sense, single-stranded RNA nairovirus that produces fever, prostration, and severe hemorrhages in humans. It is considered a dangerous emerging disease with fatality rates ranging up to 70 percent. Originally identified in the former Soviet Union and the Congo, CCHF has rapidly spread across Europe, Asia, and Africa. There is no treatment for CCHF.

Thomas Walker, program director of Intergroup Relations & LGBTIQ in the Center for Multicultural Excellence, co-wrote a chapter — “(re)Training Ourselves: Professional who Facilitate Intergroup Dialogue” — in the book Facilitating Intergroup Dialogues: Bridging Differences, Catalyzing Change (Stylus Publishing, 2011).

Physics and astronomy Research Professor Robert Amme and Research Assistant Jeffrey Corbin presented a paper, “A 3-D Virtual World for Distance Learning in Nuclear Science and Technology,” at the 2011 American Nuclear Society Topical Meeting on Nuclear Training and Education on Feb. 6 in Jacksonville, Fla. Amme has been named Seaborg Member of the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History in Albuquerque, N.M.

Andrea Stanton, a lecturer in religious studies, authored the article “‘Pioneer of Olympism in the Middle East’: Gabriel Gemayel and Lebanese Sport”, forthcoming in the International Journal of the History of Sport. She edited Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, volumes I-III (Golson). Stanton presented a paper, “Governing an ‘Empire on Air,'” at “Building Empires on Air: Histories and Geopolitics of Radio and Empire” — part of the Texts, Contexts, Cultures research program supported by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation, National University of Ireland, Galway.

Communication studies Associate Professor Elizabeth Suter co-authored “Parental management of adoptive identities during challenging encounters: Adoptive parents as ‘protectors’ and ‘educators'” in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 28, 242-261 (2011). She also co-authored “Modeling and performing theories of relational communication” in Communication Teacher, 25, 51-55 (2011).

Chelsey Baker-Hauck, editorial director in University Communications, served as a judge for the Society of Professional Journalists national Mark of Excellence awards competition in April.

Andrew Goetz, a professor in the geography department and Intermodal Transportation Institute, was invited to deliver a lecture, “Investment in Transport Infrastructure and Economic Development: Recent Debates in the United States,” at the Transport Studies Unit in the School of Geography and the Environment at Oxford University on March 9. Goetz also was invited to Loughborough University (UK) on March 11 for a research presentation as part of an air transport seminar on the political economy of sustainability in air transportation.

ABC’s “Nightline” and NPR’s “Fresh Air” featured segments about Law Adjunct Professor T. Markus Funk‘s landmark “Operation Family Secrets” racketeering case. The 130-witness, 3-month racketeering trial was the nation’s most extensive mob-murder racketeering case. The Attorney General presented Funk — a Perkins Coie litigation and white collar partner and former Chicago federal prosecutor — with the U.S. Department of Justice’s highest trial distinction.

DU Writing Program faculty members Doug Hesse, Eliana Schonberg, Richard Colby, Jennifer Campbell, Kelli Custer, John Tiedemann and Rebekah Schulz Colby presented “Major Findings from a Longitudinal Study of Writing” at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) in Atlanta on April 8. The research team studied the writings, attitudes and practices of 59 DU undergraduates across their entire college careers. CCCC is the nation’s largest and oldest professional association of writing researchers and teachers.

Charles Patti, James M. Cox Professor of Customer Experience Management at the Daniels College of Business, served on a panel discussion of the future of advertising at the annual conference of the American Academy of Advertising in Mesa, Ariz., on April 8.

Tom Romero II, associate professor of law, presented “The Blue Line as the Color Line: A Historical Account of Post-Urban Water Infrastructure, Development, and Social Equity” at the Beyond Dams and Diversion panel at the 20th Annual Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute Conference in Denver March 3. He co-resented “Connecting Sustainable Development and Social Justice in the Post-Metropolis: Observations from the Law Faculty of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law” at an April 6 DU Marsico Scholar workshop on Urbanization, Nature, and Socio-Politics: A North-South Debate. He reviewed Living the Four Corners: Colorado Centennial State at the Headwaters in 39 Colorado Lawyer 59 (December 2010). In addition, he contributed to ySteams, Steel, and Statutes: True Tales From Colorado Legal History (2010). At the Ira C. Rothgerber Conference in Denver on January 27, Romero co-moderated a panel with Sturm Dean Marty Katz on Popular Constitutionalism and Civil Rights.

Master’s student Erika Ross presented a poster, “A non-denatured whey protein supplement (Immunocal®) protects neurons from mitochondrial oxidative stress and delays disease onset in the mutant SOD1 mouse model of ALS” at the  Keystone Symposia on Neurodegenerative Diseases: the Molecular and Cellular Basis for Neurodegeneration in Taos, N.M., in February. Eleanor Roosevelt Institute Assistant Professor Dan Linseman and students Heather Wilkins, Whitney Hulick, Aimee Winter and Danielle Kirchhof contributed to the research.

Daniels College Dean Christine Riordan published a column, “It’s a Matter of Mindset: Ten Principles for Unleashing Critical Thinking,” in the March 21 Huffington Post Denver edition.

John Soma, professor of law, spoke on the topic of U.S. and E.U. privacy at the Colorado Research Institute for Security and Privacy conference, held at DU April 1. A National Science Foundation grant supports the conference.

Law Assistant Professor Bernard Chao will be a conference fellow at Modest Proposals 4.0, held April 8 at the Cardoza Law School. On April 5 he moderated a panel of patent attorneys from the Denver area, “Patent on the Patent Reform Act.”

William Shutkin, lecturer and executive director of the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute, hosted the 2011 RMLUI conference on March 3–4, with 440 registered attendees and three keynotes. On March 31 he presented “Collapse, Conundrum, Collective Action: Pursuing Sustainable Communities in the Age of Ideology” at the University of Montana’s Natural Resources and Environmental Policy Forum Lecture Series. On April 14, he will host a symposium, “Rebuilding Newark: A Sustainable Community Development Strategy for Urban America,” at the Sturm College of Law. The event is co-sponsored by Sturm, the Community Economic Development Clinic and iCast, a Denver sustainable development nonprofit. Shutkin co-authored “Just the Right Amount: Municipal Water Efficiency, Population Growth and Climate Change” to be published in the summer 2011 issue of the University of Denver Water Law Review.

Viva Moffat, an assistant professor of law, presented “Overlapping Copyright & Trademark Protection” at the University of Southern California IP Institute on March 22. On April 8, she will be a conference fellow at the “Modest Proposals” conference at Cardozo Law School.

Law Professor Tom Russell published an essay, “’Keep Negroes Out of Most Classes Where There are a Large Number of Girls’: The Unseen Power of the Ku Klux Klan and Standardized Testing at the University of Texas, 1899–1999,” in the book Law, Society, and History: Themes in the Legal Sociology and Legal History of Lawrence M. Friedman (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Eli Wald, Charles W. Delaney Jr. Associate Professor of Law, in March was appointed to the Colorado Supreme Court Chief Justice’s Commission on the Legal Profession. The committee is charged with studying the culture of the legal profession in Colorado with a focus on the development of professional identity, social responsibility and practice skills in Colorado’s law schools. In Denver on March 28, Wald presented “Conflicts of Interest: Understanding the ‘Ethical Screen’ and Its Utility or Can You Represent the Bank and the Borrower?” at the 15th Annual Seminar on Real Estate Restructuring sponsored by CLE International.

Law Associate Professor Rachel Arnow-Richman presented “A Contract Theory of Employment” at the Suffolk Law School in Boston on March 25, 2011.

Genevieve Boarman, a visiting professor of lawyering process, presented “Policy is Not Enough: Using Economics to Add Depth to an Argument” at the Capital Area Legal Writing Conference at George Washington University Law School on Feb. 25.

Law Professor Rock Pring co-presented the Fedder Lecture, “Imagine — A World of Environmental Justice,” at the University of Maryland School of Law on March 18 in Baltimore. On March 20, Pring was presiding judge in the final round of the annual Stetson International Environmental Law Moot Court competition, hosted by the University of Maryland School of Law. Law students from a dozen countries argued an International Court of Justice case modeled on the BP Deepwater oil well disaster.

Law Librarian Fellow Kathryn Michaels wrote “Exam Taking Tips for Law Students,” which is being reprinted in the CCH Canadian Limited law student monthly electronic newsletter.

Don Smith, director of the Sturm College of Law Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program, published a letter to the editor in the March 19 Wall Street Journal in response to an op-ed about the European Union.

David Kopel, adjunct professor of constitutional law, authored an op-ed, “Why Obamacare mandate penalty can’t be a tax,” in the March 4 issue of the Orange County Register. He authored an entry in The Thirties in America on the Pittman-Robertson Act.

In January 2011, law Assistant Professor Wendy Duong spoke about “Overcoming Career Obstacles” at the Networking for Professional Women and Entrepreneurs seminar sponsored by the Science and Culture Association of Houston and the Houston office of Prudential Financial Inc. She published “The Southeast Asian Story: Victims Of Human Trafficking As The Forgotten ‘Prisoners Of Conscience’ — Some Proposed Legal And Non-Legal Measures” in the Seattle University School of Law Journal of Social Justice (spring 2011). Her novel Mimi and Her Mirror, about the resettlement experience of Vietnamese Americans and female minority lawyers in the U.S., will be published in June 2011 (AmazonEncore); her book Postcards from Nam, about Vietnamese boat people, will be released by AmazonEncore in July 2011. Her historical novel Daughters of the River Huong, focused on Vietnam’s decolonization, Vietnamese women, and the international legal practice in era of globalization, was reissued this month by AmazonEncore. In April 2011, Duong also published a Vietnamese cultural studies text, Book of the Seven Dreams: a Vietnamese-American Cultural Experience in Fiction, Drama, and Poetry (RobbieDeanPress, 2011).

Ray Kireilis, professor of music, has released a new CD: English Clarinet Quintets. It features the works of Sir Arthur Bliss and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor— both pieces feature solo clarinet with string quartet accompaniment.

In collaboration with 12 colleagues from Japan, the U.S. and the U.K., Toshiya Ueta, DU assistant professor of physics and astronomy, has revealed the circumstellar dust shells around two red giant stars using the AKARI Infrared Astronomical Satellite. They published their findings in the European Astronomy and Astrophysics journal and American Astrophysical Journal Letters. The new AKARI findings reveal dusty veils enshrouding two red giant stars, U Hydrae and U Antliae, with unprecedented sensitivities and accuracies. The dusty veils enveloping these stars are made of the central stars’ own material expelled as part of these dying stars’ final throes. Because red giant stars are responsible for producing the majority of carbon in the universe, it is critical to understand how these old stars supply the universe with one of the most essential ingredients of life. The continuing AKARI investigations will help to decipher the riddle of the cosmic reincarnation of matter surrounding the mystery of the origin of the basic chemical building blocks of life.

Sturm College Adjunct Professor William Brady presented a paper and PowerPoint at the Intersol Conference on Polluted Sites and Soils in Lyon, France, March 28–31. Pierre Andrieux, professor emeritus at the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris Universite VI (the Sorbonne), contributed to the presentation. Brady’s subject was “Environmental Law, Insurance and Soil: Is Soil a Pollutant?” His remarks concentrated on several recent cases, including decisions from the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and the Colorado Court of Appeals.

Korbel School Professor Haider Khan published op-eds about Egypt in the Christian Science Monitor on Feb.11, AOL news on Feb. 4 and History News Network on Jan. 31. He was interviewed about Egypt by Fox News and Channel 9. Khan co-authored a monograph, China’s National Innovation System at the Crossroads (LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2010), and authored a book chapter, “Economic Growth and Environmental Degradation with Possible Implications for Climate Change: Panel Data Evidence from BRIC Economies,” in Sustainable Energy Handbook (Nova Scientific Publishers). His chapters on China’s development strategy and energy security and on India’s informal sector and women (the latter co-authored with Anushree Sinha) are forthcoming in a book on southern engines of growth (Oxford University Press). He also has a broader chapter on development strategies forthcoming in a book with the same title from WIDER, Helsinki and Oxford University Press. He has been advising  several international organizations and national governments on issues related to the financial crisis, energy and infrastructure and presented several papers on these subjects at various international forums. He chaired an academic session at the January meetings of the American Economic Association/Allied Social Science Associations. He will be chairing a session at the forthcoming ISA conference in Montreal.

Derigan Silver, an assistant professor of media, film and journalism studies, published “The framers’ First Amendment: Originalist citations in U.S. Supreme Court freedom of expression opinions” in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 88(1), 99-120. Silver’s article “Media censorship and access to terrorism trials: A social architecture analysis” was published in the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy 25(2), 101-150.

Studio art Associate Professor Sarah Gjertson is having a solo exhibition of he work — “Married with Children … Or Not” — at Regis University through April 14. The exhibit opened March 15 and she gave an artist talk on March 24. The exhibition is a body of new work she completed over the last year and is a satirical look at American culture’s expectations of marriage and procreation. Works in the show consist of sculpture, film, installation and works on paper.

University College Adjunct Professor Mark Merkow published an article, “An Ecosystem for Continuously Secure Application Software,” in the Air Force’s CROSSTALK publication.

Erik Estrada, an adjunct professor of law, recently was named to the board of directors of the Colorado Center on Law and Policy and vice-chair of the board of directors of the Tony Grampsas Fund, a program of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Estrada is a graduate of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and a lawyer at Davis Graham & Stubbs LLP.

Finance Lecturer Irina Khindanova published a paper, “Location Factors for Non-Ferrous Exploration Investments,” in the Journal of Applied Business and Economics, 2011, Volume 12(1).

Law assistant professors Robin Walker Sterling and Christopher Lasch served as volunteer judges for the Denver Urban Debate League City Championship, held at the Sturm College of Law March 18–19. On March 7–9 they served as members of an eight-person faculty responsible for teaching lawyers, investigators and other Colorado public defender staff to conduct training sessions in which they formulate teaching and learning outcomes, consider criteria and tools for assessment of learning, and provide effective feedback to their participants. The presentations developed at this two-and-a-half day training will ultimately be used in the public defender office’s annual conference in September. On March 8, Walker Sterling co-presented “Counseling Children and Youth in Times of Crisis: Tips to Achieve Success and Avoid Pitfalls” in a national teleconference call co-sponsored by the American Bar Association Section of Litigation Children’s Rights Litigation Committee. On March 10 she presented “The Negative Effects of Juvenile Detention” at Juvenile Delinquency Practice: Translating Current Research into Convincing Advocacy, a training for Colorado attorneys who represent children in delinquency and dependency proceedings. The training was co-sponsored by the Colorado Juvenile Defender Coalition.

Mark Safty, adjunct professor of renewable energy project development law, presented “Electric Utility Contracts for Non-Lawyers” at the Electric West 2011 – Energy Industry Contracts for Non-Lawyers Conference  in Long Beach, Calif. He presented “Financing Issues in Renewable Energy Development on Federal Lands” at the Renewable Energy Development on Federal Lands Program and “Transmission Financing”  at the Financing Transmission Expansion Program, both organized by Electric Utility Consultants Inc. in San Diego. Safty was the program moderator at the Western Regional Council meeting of the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), held in Denver March 31; he will be a major presenter at ACORE’s annual RETECH conference in Washington, D.C., in September. He’ll present a 2-day course on utility contracts in Denver in April, will present at the Caribbean Renewable Energy Conference in Jamaica in May, and plans to present a 2-day program on renewable energy power purchase agreements in Chicago in June.


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