activity newsletter06.pub - Richard Stockton College of New Jersey

Michelle Craig McDonald, Assistant Professor of Atlantic History2Regional Reliance:Coffee, the Caribbean, and the Early American Economy,1765-1825AbstractMichelle Craig McDonald in the Department of Historical Studies is currently working on a bookmanuscript that uses the history of the coffee industry to gauge the strength and durability ofNorth America’s economic, social, and political relationships with the West Indies during the latecolonial and early national periods. The first three chapters concentrate on pre-RevolutionaryAmerica and consider coffee production, trade, and consumption within the larger context ofBritish imperialism. The last three chapters determine how these processes changed after U.S.independence. In so doing, this study broadens our understanding of Caribbean and LatinAmerican plantation systems during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, offers newmodels for legal and illegal Atlantic trade networks, and explores the assimilation of an exoticcommodity into American mainstream culture.Aakash Taneja, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Information SystemsThe central theme underlying my research effort is to engage in multidisciplinaryresearch projects in Information Systems (IS) with a strong emphasis in the area ofinformation security and privacy. My main focus is to understand the human,managerial and technical issues related to information security and privacy in homeand organizations. I recently used higher order conceptualization of theory ofplanned behavior from psychology along with constructs from organizationbehavior, criminal justice and public health to identify and assess the determinantsof employees’ intention towards adverse usage of IS assets. This research is complete and its resultswill be submitted to various scholarly journals within next few months. I am also conductingresearch on home user information security and recently presented a paper under title of“Facilitators and Inhibitors of Home User Information Security - A Crime VictimizationApproach”, at 37th Annual Meeting of the Decision Sciences Institute at San Antonio. Theresponse at the conference was encouraging and we’ll be seeking grant to advance the study.Besides this, I am also working on analyzing the inter-disciplinary nature of IS and it’s evolution asa scientific discipline. A research paper that utilizes bibliometrics and social network analysis todelineate the changes taking place in the knowledge network of IS is currently under review at amajor IS journal. Studies related to IS adoption and usage in organizations interests me a lot. I canforesee the innovative usage of technology at Stockton to be a fruitful area for research related toIS adoption in educational institutions that will help in our teaching efforts and will be beneficial toboth academics and practitioners alike.Believing that teaching and research goes hand in hand together, I am very excited about theopportunities available at Stockton and look forward to work with colleagues at Stockton.

Sara Martino, Assistant Professor of PsychologyI have been working on several different research projects thisyear. I have been collaborating with Christine Ferri and MarcelloSpinella in Psychology on a study of gratitude. We collected datathis summer and again this fall. We hope to publish our findingsthis year. In addition to this project, I have been working on aqualitative study of the data. Several undergraduate students havebeen helping us to analyze gender differences in gratitude. We justsubmitted our qualitative findings to APA to be considered fortheir annual conference in August. I am also collaborating with acolleague of mine, Dr. Erin McLaughlin, on a project involvinghigh school students who self-mutilate. We developed a narrativetherapy intervention based on previous research I did at TempleUniversity and we are beginning our intervention at New EgyptHigh School in December. We also served as keynote speakers forthe ADACO (Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Council of OceanCounty) conference in Toms River, NJ. We provided informationon our project to school counselors, drug and alcohol abuse3counselors and mental health administrators in Ocean County, NJ. Finally, I have two studentsworking with me on focus group research, examining the effects of the media on the rise of obesityamong women.Rachel Martin, Associate Professor of Teacher EducationSara (right) with Dr. ErinMcLaughlinRachel Martin presented a session, "Pushing the Boundaries of Critical Multicultural Education:Two Views," at the annual conference of the National Association for Multicultural Education inPhoenix this fall. In January, she will present at the International Conference on Teacher Educationand Social Justice in Chicago. Her session there is entitled "What's This Book Doing in a LiteracyCourse?" Both sessions are based on the premise that preparing preservice students to successfullyteach literacy acquisition means preparing them to acknowledge their own biases regarding race andclass, and to reconsider their deep-seated beliefs in a fixed notion of "ability."Mark Sullivan, Assistant Professor of Marine ScienceYoung American eels (Anguilla rostrata) undergo one of the more fascinating journeys in the animalkingdom – beginning their lives as small larvae in the Sargasso Sea and subsequently traveling1000s of miles back to the North American estuaries their parents left one year prior. Unfortunately,once individuals return to freshwater, the challenge is not over. The final biological hurdlesfacing these fantastic voyagers form the backbone of research I am currently conducting in theMullica River–Great Bay watershed in collaboration with the Rutgers University Marine Field Station.Preliminary results from this work were presented this fall at the 136 th Annual American FisheriesSociety meeting in Lake Placid, NY and published in the Journal of Fish Biology (69:1081-1101).

Jessica Jablonski, Visiting Instructor of Psychology4Jessica Jablonski, M.S. is expected to defend her dissertation in the beginning ofthe spring semester. Her research project entitled Characteristics of ParentingAssociated with Adolescent to Parent Aggression used as a framework the literaturerelated to Coercion Theory, which was put forth by Gerald Patterson. Using acorrelational design, the results of her study were statistically significant andsupported both hypotheses: (1) the more inconsistent the discipline, the greater theadolescent to parent aggression, (2) the less parents used positive reinforcement forgood behavior, the greater the adolescent to parent aggression. To date, most of the literature onadolescent to parent aggression has not been grounded in theory, and has focused on familydemographic variables rather than relational factors. Extending Coercion theory to investigateadolescent to parent aggression provides for a more complete understanding of this extreme ofadolescent antisocial behavior.Emari DiGiorgio, Visiting Assistant Professor of WritingEmari was awarded the 2006 Ellen La Forge Memorial Poetry Prize, and her poemswill be featured in the forthcoming Grolier Poetry Annual. In addition, theAssociation of Writers and Writing Programs has accepted her paper “Reduce,Reuse, Recycle: The Three R’s of Revision” for their 2007 edition of AWP’sPedagogy Papers. She is also on the planning committee for Bringing Caregivers Closer: A Segue tothe Humanities, Arts and Integrative Care and was a panel member and scholar-facilitator for theDecember retreat “Living with the Diagnosis and Management of Failure.”Rita Mulholland, Assistant Professor of Teacher EducationI am conducting an action-research project using an animated technology softwareprogram with students experiencing autism in order to determine its effectivenesswith improving expressive language. I will be speaking about the results of thisstudy at the national Council for Exceptional Children conference in Kentucky(April 07), and at the International Special Education Forum in Peru (July 07). Iintend to publish this study.I am a co-author of a book for first year special education teachers to be published by Prentice Hallin January 07: A Practical Guide for Special Educators.In December I will be working with US Aid and the International Reading Association inMacedonia to improve teacher training. Over 200 educators will participate in the workshops. I willmeet with the Minister of Education to report on the progress of the effort over the last year.I am working with an interdisciplinary team to develop an assistive technology resource program:OT, Speech, and MAIT faculty. This effort will provide hands-on experiences with assistivetechnology hardware and software to enhance graduate students’ professional expertise.

James Avery, Assistant Professor of Political Science5My research focuses on the sources and consequences of public opinion andpolitical behavior. I have several papers that examine the sources and consequencesof political mistrust among African Americans. One paper recently appeared inAmerican Politics Research, another is forthcoming at Political Behavior, and a third isunder review. I am currently working on two projects that use originally collecteddata and will eventually be published as books. One project examines the influenceof black political participation on the quality of substantive representation inCongress and what factors (e.g., race or partisanship of representative, region, and electoralcompetition) may moderate this relationship. One paper based on this project was presented at the2006 meeting of the American Political Science Association and a second paper received the PiSigma Alpha award for best paper presented at the 2006 meeting of the Southern Political ScienceAssociation. The second project examines change in presidential candidates’ ideological positions,media portrayals of their positions, and public perceptions of their positions across the course ofan election campaign. Ultimately, this project seeks to examine several important issues including(1) whether candidates converge on the median voter after the primary elections, (2) the accuracyof media portrayals of candidates’ ideology, (3) the accuracy and sources of public perceptions ofcandidates’ ideology, and (4) the extent to which public perceptions of candidates’ ideologicalpositions influence the decisions of whether to vote and for whom to vote. I am presenting a paperbased on this project at the 2007 meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.Brad J. Porfilio, Assistant Professor of Teacher EducationBrad’s article, The Possibilities of Transformation: Critical Research and Peter McLaren was publishedin the International Journal of Progressive Education in October. This work highlights howPeter McLaren’s theoretical ideas surrounding critical multiculturalism, critical pedagogy, and qualitativeresearch functioned to shape his two-year dissertation study. The project unearths twentyWhite female pre-service teachers’ views and experiences with computing technology and computerculture. He was also invited by Teacher College Record to review Gilberto Conchas’s bookThe Color of Success: Race and High-achieving Urban Youth. The review was published in earlyNovember. He presented his recent essay (with Dr. Curry Malott) on the subject of assessing thevalue of employing two alternative subcultures—hip hop and punk cultures—in teacher educationprograms at the American Educational StudiesConference. The conference was held inSpokane, Washington in early November.Finally, he is co-editing a book with Dr.Curry Malott An International Examinationof Urban Education: The Destructive Pathof Neoliberalism. Scholars from the UnitedStates, Canada, Britain, and Australia arecontributing their ideas in relation to howneo-liberal policies and practices are structuringlife in urban contexts across the globe.The New Faculty/Mentor Brunch in September

Kory Olson, Assistant Professor of French6Kory Olson’s current research involves examining cartographic discourse (mapcolors, text, shapes, and symbols) on both official and tourist guidebooks maps ofParis. He deals primarily with documents published during the first half of theFrench Third Republic (1870-1900). The nineteenth century was turbulent forFrance, with multiple revolutions, monarchies, empires, and republics. Byportraying its capital city on maps as calm, stable, and ready to accommodatevisitors and businessmen, the government hoped to eliminate the growing negativeimpression Paris, and France, had in Europe. Current projects include further archival research inParis expanding his map corpus into the 1930s, a period in which France countered the Europeantrend of voting for right-wing regimes with the election of their socialist Front Populairegovernment in 1936. He has presented recently on Third Republic maps at the 2006 NineteenthCentury French Studies Colloquium in Bloomington, IN and will present research on a 1930s mapat the 2007 Society of French Historical Studies in Houston, TX in March.Michael Lague, Assistant Professor of BiologyMichael Lague is engaged in ongoing research into patterns of sex-based skeletal differences (i.e.,skeletal dimorphism) among living and fossil primates, including our early human ancestors. Hehas recently submitted a grant to the National Science Foundation (as co-PI) and is collaboratingon the proposed three-year project with colleagues from the University of Arkansas and TheGeorge Washington University. Using state-of-the-art technology for quantifying bone shape, thisproject will address problems specific to assessing dimorphism (and, by extension, social behavior)from fossil remains. Dr. Lague is also finalizing revisions for a paper on fossil human jaw bonesthat has been accepted by the Journal of Human Evolution; he is second author and was responsiblefor developing the statistical methods. In addition, Dr. Lague continues to work with a consortiumof individuals centered at the University of Illinois on a set of projects involving the long-termeffects of lower limb joint injury on human gait patterns. During the summer, he was invited to aconference in Illinois to meet with participants and give a presentation on methodological issuesrelated to data collection and analysis.Scholarship NewsPlan to take your classes to the Day of Scholarshipcelebrating and showcasing faculty, student & staff scholarly activitiesPresentations on March 1, 2007; West Quad, 8:30AM - 4:00PMInstitutional Review Board (IRB) at StocktonReviews research involving human participants and meets on the first Monday of every monthAll investigators who are using human subjects are encouraged to follow a self-study trainingprogram and pass a brief exam before their projects will be reviewed by the IRB.You can access an on-line course at the site belowhttp://www.nihtraining.com/crtpub_508/index.html