Semester assignments announced for 1999-2000 academic year

 

The following faculty members are recipients of 1999-2000 semester assignments. Their projects relate to the educational mission of the University and involve research in different fields. Faculty are awarded assignments for such activities as writing scholarly works and textbooks, developing new research techniques and skills, collaborating with colleagues in other places, writing novels, creating artistic works, and developing curricula.

The 1999-2000 recipients, departmental affiliation, and their projects are:

Paul J. Abbas, speech pathology and audiology, to develop techniques to expand his research on the physiology of cochlear implants including developing an animal model to simulate characteristics of cochlear implant recipients.

Laird Addis, philosophy, to write a book on the ontology of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Addis will study everything that Nietzsche published on his theory of reality and bring to bear earlier work of his own to produce a critical, comprehensive study of Nietzsche's ontology.

Kay Amert, journalism, to focus on the work of Simon de Colines, an important sixteenth-century printer-publisher. Growing out of Amert's prior research on Colines' books and printing types, this project will advance the understanding of Colines and his work.

Steven A. Aquilino, prosthodontics, to spend his semester assignment at the University of North Carolina, participating in a cost utility analysis of replacing missing posterior teeth and auditing selected courses and research seminars in oral epidemiology.

Florence E. Babb, anthropology and women's studies, to complete a book manuscript based on research conducted in Nicaragua from 1990 to 1998. Her book considers the changing situation of women in urban manufacturing cooperatives and a working class barrio.

Patrick B. Bauer, law, to complete his examination of the development and contemporary operation of Iowa's distinction between deferential appellate review of judge-found facts in actions at law and non-deferential appellate review of judge-found facts in equitable proceedings.
Marvin Bell, creative writing, to write poems for two new books of poetry, one of which will be in the spirit of Shakespeare's The Tempest. He also will edit essays for a prose collection.

Dan Berkowitz, journalism & mass communication, to examine U.S. and Israeli news content over a series of international events and issues; and compare Israeli perceptions of their social roles to those of U.S. journalists.

Randall P. Bezanson, law, to examine the structure, practices, and policies of publicly traded newspaper corporations to determine how they reconcile their obligations to stockholders and readers.

M. Asghar Bhatti, civil & environmental engineering, to develop an interactive set of class notes to teach finite element analysis in the form of Mathematica notebooks.

Barbara Ann Biesecker, rhetoric, to continue work on a book on the impact of visual culture in contemporary American society, including travel to Washington, D.C., to research the Enola Gay exhibit, the Star Wars exhibit, and the Women in the Military Services Memorial.

Art Borreca, theatre arts, to co-edit The Norton Anthology of World Drama which will fill a need for a drama anthology that combines traditional Western drama with diverse works by women, minority, and non-Western dramatists.

Margaret F. Brinig, law, to explore the question of whether adopted children are treated as favorably by the people who adopt them as are biological children.

Victor Camillo, mathematics, to spend fall semester at the University of Murcia, Spain, to continue research in infinite matrix rings.

Thomas L. Casavant, electrical & computer engineering, to solidify a collaboration with the Human Genome Project research community; do research and write publications for cross-development between his work in high-performance computing and genomics; and develop a new course in bio-informatics.

Diana Fritz Cates, religion, to write an article on the ethics of informed consent in clinical medicine for The ethics of medical care: Emotion, narrative, and community, a book she is co-editing. The article applies the theoretical perspective of an ethic of care to the problem of abortion and abortion counseling.

Carolyn Colvin, curriculum & instruction, to complete six years of research with Mexican-origin families in a rural Iowa community and write a book on this work. Her book will focus on the issue of literacy, from the viewpoints of parents and of rural communities and schools.

Perle Slavik Cowen, nursing, to complete a text for a developmental stimulation intervention program that assists professionals in enhancing parental competence and infant development in families at risk for child maltreatment.
Jeffrey Cox, history, to travel to Great Britain to research and write a book titled The British missionary movement, 1700-1950.

Lowell Cross, music, to build a second version of the electronic chessboard used originally in John Cage's Reunion (1968). Cross designed and constructed the original device. The moves of the chess games were responsible for the unfolding, progress, and "structure" of the musical event.

Robert W. Cruden, biological sciences, to extend his previous research on relations among pollen grain size, ovule number, and pollination efficiency in plants with primary pollen presentations to plants with secondary pollen presentations. The work will be done in Australia because of its many plant families with secondary pollination presentation.

John T. Delaney, marketing/management and organizations, to study the effectiveness of a reform recently adopted by the National Labor Relations Board -the settlement judge program.

Mary Depew, classics, to finish a draft of a book, Myth, Mimesis, and Innovation in Greek Hymn. Depew's book examines the history of Greek hymns, composed and performed from at least 750 B.C.

Richard De Puma, art and art history, to research and begin a book examining Italian forgeries of Etruscan art. The book will trace the intricate relationships of specific forgers, dealers, scholars, and collectors.

Lon Drake, geology, to complete a manual for discussion sections in introductory environmental science courses. The manual will include 30 environmental research projects for individuals or teams.

Steve Duck, communication studies, to continue examining relationships involving persuasion, through studies that apply his ideas to adolescents' everyday talk and decisions [not] to use tobacco, the everyday talk of married couples, and everyday social support in the networks of chronically ill people.

Richard L. Dykstra, statistics & actuarial science, to develop and study statistical procedures concerning distributional orderings, particularly stochastic ordering, hazard rate ordering, and likelihood ratio ordering.

Barbara Eckstein, English, to examine literary texts about New Orleans in the years after World War II to understand how literature acts as a form of social memory, so as to articulate which social events a literary text carries forward as social memory and to assess whether these social memories in literary form contribute to the sustainability of the city.
Jan Fassler, biological sciences, to gain expertise and facility in the use of bioinformatics tools.

Ed Folsom, English, to finish a book of historical literary criticism, Walt Whitman and the Cultures of Convention; develop a Web-based hypertext archive of the works of Walt Whitman; and design and edit a textbook edition of Whitman's Leaves of Grass, to be called Leaves of Grass: The Historical Edition.

Sukumar Ghosh, computer science, to study "controlled recovery" from system failures in distributed systems such as computer networks, the Internet, and industrial control systems that maintain vital services such as telephones or electrical power.

Robert O. Glasgow, art and art history, to create a body of new work in printmaking and papermaking, which will complete the series titled Family Group. His goal is to synthesize conceptual and formal issues that have emerged in this series thus far.

Thomas S. Gruca, marketing, to study hospital regulation in Ontario to analyze how hospitals operate, compete, and survive with more comprehensive regulation than in the U.S.

Wendelin Guentner, French and Italian, to complete a book, The Sketch in Nineteenth-Century Cultural Discourse in France. This study transcends the boundaries that traditionally separate the academic disciplines of art history and literary history, and contributes to the body of interdisciplinary work which has come to be called "expanded" French studies.

Gary N. Gussin, biological sciences, to acquire skills to use computer-based molecular model building to address the control of gene expression followed by a genetic and biochemical analysis of predicted inter-molecular interactions.

Timothy M. Hagle, political science, to use three extensive databases to examine issues involved in the decisions of the Supreme Court justices to grant review to cases during the Vinson Court era (1946-1952).

L. Kathy Heilenman, French and Italian, to extend her research area into the neurolinguistics of second language acquisition.

Loreen A. Herwaldt, internal medicine, to study the published narratives of 30 authors who have written about their experience of serious illness, and also transcripts of interviews with these authors, so as to understand the patient's experience of illness and of health care.

Peter Hlebowitsh, curriculum & instruction, to review unexamined archival material on the noted educator, Ernest Horn, and prepare a series of essays on the character and influence of his curriculum innovation work during his tenure at the UI laboratory school.

Richard P. Horwitz, American studies, to work on a book, The Roots of American Studies. He will also use a Fulbright award at Beijing University in the People's Republic of China to exchange views with leading intellectuals and to consult on rapidly evolving curricular and program developments.

Subhash C. Jain, civil and environmental engineering, to complete a monograph on hydraulic design of drop structures; explore the possibilities of interaction among the civil engineering faculty of Osmania University, India and the UI; and participate in the research activities of the Computational Fluid Dynamics group at the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research.

Benjamin J. Kaplan, history, to work on a book, Divided by Faith, which examines religious toleration and religious violence in Europe between the Reformation and the French Revolution.

Philip W. Klein, Spanish and Portuguese, to research computational linguistics to develop a Spanish parser, a program that enables the machine to understand natural language input and to respond appropriately in the same or another language.

William H. Klink, physics and astronomy, to reformulate relevent quantum mechanical equations and solve them, using techniques he developed based on mathematical symmetry principles.

Michel Laronde, French and Italian, to complete a book manuscript in both English and French entitled Questioning the Canon: Literary Stereotypes and Post-coloniality in France. The book evolved from a body of literature by second-generation writers of Maghrebian origins.

Susan C. Lawrence, history, to study the history of human dissection in Western medical education.

Russel V. Lenth, statistics and actuarial science, to write a monograph on statistical power and sample-size methods for statistical studies.

Michael S. Lewis-Beck, political science, to complete a book, Economics and Democracy., which will bring together research, including his own, regarding the effect of economic change on election outcomes, political parties, public policies, and democratic performance.

Debora L. Liddell, counseling, rehabilitation, & student development, to expand her previous work on the moral orientation of individuals (college students) by broadening her focus to the ethical community, so as to develop a model for a just and caring college community.

Meridean Maas, nursing, to evaluate the psychometric properties of measures assessing nursing-sensitive patient outcomes for elders. The results will be used as the basis of a research proposal to the National Institute of Nursing Research.

Heather MacDonald, urban and regional planning, to expand her previous research to a book-length treatment of rural housing finance. This book will investigate how financial restructuring has changed access to credit in different rural communities, and develop policy implications.

Douglas Madsen, political science, to complete a textbook on the foundations of political life. Its point of departure will be the fundamental paradox of all politics: Human beings are, and necessarily must be, simultaneously both selfish and cooperative.

Kim Marra, theatre arts, to synthesize collected archival data and write the remaining major section of her book, Taming American Actresses: Male Impresarios, Female Stars, and Theatrical Frontier Conquests, 1865-1930.

Jeffrey S. Marshall, mechanical engineering, to develop a new approach to large-eddy simulation of turbulent fluid flows using vorticity wavelet at the Institut de Mecanique des Fluides de Toulouse, in France.

Robert L. Merlino, physics and astronomy, to co-author a textbook reflecting his research area, Introduction to the Physics of Dusty Plasmas. The proposed text is designed to be a standard reference source for space physics, astrophysics, and applied plasma physics.

Louis Messerle, chemistry, to learn about biomedical targeting of small molecules to tumor cells and cell surface receptors and to develop the requisite chemistry to apply these strategies to targeting metal clusters to these sites.

David W. Murhammer, chemical and biochemical engineering, to study general molecular biology techniques in the UI Department of Microbiology. In addition, time will be spent studying baculovirus molecular biology at U Wyoming and antioxidant enzymes and related molecular biology techniques in mammalian cells at the UI.

Charles Ray Newsom, physics and astronomy, to participate in the Fermilab charm baryon production and decay project.
Mercedes Nino-Murcia, Spanish and Portuguese, to study the language of "desplazadas"-women displaced by political violence in Colombia.

Gregg C. Oden, psychology and computer science, to refine the final theoretical, analytic, and empirical work on a new model of human decision making under risk.

Mark J. Osiel, law, to write an ethnography of the contemporary litigator in order to uncover what is meant by "the importance of practical judgment."

Alan Peters, urban and regional planning, to focus on methodological improvements needed to better measure the economic benefits that firms derive from the goods and services produced by state and local governments.

Leighton Pierce, communication studies, to complete three short film/video projects exploring representations of domestic space. He also will develop skills in multimedia authoring.

Edward L. Pizzini, science education, to continue study of the use of teacher-leaders in professional staff development, paying particular attention to impact on the implementation of standards.

Robert A. Rorex, art and art history, to prepare for publication his research on Chinese paintings illustrating literary texts and the relation of text to painting.

Christopher D. Roy, art and art history, to write a book on the art of Burkina Faso in West Africa that explains the meaning of art in its social context.

Gerard Rushton, geography, to develop and test geographic information science methods for identifying regions of high disease rates.

Chester S. Rzonca, planning, policy and leadership studies, to undertake a large-scale study of factors predicting high school graduates' decisions to complete four-year post-secondary education, other post-secondary education, or no post-secondary education.

Nathan Eugene Savin, economics, to apply the bootstrap method to test hypotheses in two areas of interest in business and economics: experimental game theory and business and economic time series.

Jerald L. Schnoor, civil & environmental engineering, to revamp the course Environmental Systems Modeling, making extensive use of a UI homepage and Internet software programs and to write a second edition of the course text.

Harold L. Schoen, curriculum and instruction, and mathematics, to meet with collaborators, complete the data analysis, and begin reporting the results of the 4-year national field test of the Core-Plus Mathematics Project (CPMP).

Ronald. D. Schoenwald, pharmaceutics, to write a textbook on the evolution in pharmaceutical care as online patient information becomes more available.

John Beldon Scott, art and art history, to conduct research on primary sources in Roman archives and libraries. He will gather photographs, drawings, and other visual documentation for a book on the history of utilitarian building types in early modern Rome from a sociological perspective.

Carol Severino, rhetoric, to recast and broaden the scope of her 330-page book manuscript, The 'Urban Mission' and the Academic Opportunity Program (AOP) focusing on the history of such programs in American education in general.

Charles R. Shipan, political science, to examine the political factors that underlie the differences in the quality of Medicaid programs, studying how the electoral and institutional context create incentives for politicians to structure Medicaid managed care in specific ways.

Theodore F. Smith, mechanical engineering, to develop design projects for the Program for Enhanced Design Experience for Undergraduate Engineering Students and to develop research related to energy-efficient operation and control of building conditioned-air systems.

Milan Sonka, electrical and computer engineering, to study new approaches to representation of 3-D non-rigid shapes and to develop new strategies for 3-D and 4-D medical image analysis with an emphasis on cardiovascular applications.

Jerry M. Suls, psychology, to write a book about the effects of social comparisons on satisfaction and self-concept. The book will summarize and integrate what has been learned and consider the implications for social policy.

Katherine H. Tachau, history, to complete a book about several 13th-century manuscripts of artistic and historical value, establishing the time, place, and intended readers of these manuscripts and explaining the context of the texts and images.

Wallace J. Tomasini, art and art history, to complete and ready for publication his investigation of the extensive art and literary collections of C.E. Haviland, an American Quaker and industrialist who managed his family's porcelain factory in late 19th and early 20th century France.

James Joseph Tomkovicz, law, to complete research on the Sixth Amendment right to the "effective" assistance of counsel.

Russell Scott Valentino, Russian, to complete the manuscript of Vagaries of Virtue: Commercial Self-interest and National Morality in the Nineteenth-century Russian Novel, which explores the reevaluation of worth that took place in Russia as landed interests were displaced during commercial modernization.

Marcos A. Vargas, operative dentistry, to travel to the Catholic University of Leuven for advanced training in microscopy techniques to evaluate the ultrastructure of resin-dentin enamel interfaces produced by dental adhesives.

Stephen Vlastos, history, to write major portions of a book on prewar Japanese social history titled Radical Agrarianism and the Showa Farm Crisis.

Edward A. Wasserman, psychology, to continue his work in human and animal cognition and to begin a research collaboration on the cognitive processes of baboons at the Center for Research in Cognitive Neuroscience in France.

David Watson, psychology, to examine the implications of different sleep schedules for psychological well-being, focusing on overall quantity of sleep, type of sleep schedule, and consistency of the sleep schedule.

Daniel L. Weeks, biochemistry, to work with Alan Wolffe at the National Institute of Health on experiments aimed at allowing oligonucleotide-mediated inhibition of gene activity.

David F. Wiemer, chemistry, to study two aspects of phosphonate, each of which involves design and synthesis of phosphonates that can mimic some aspects of the biological function of their natural phosphate counterparts and interfere with other biological processes.