Posted on May 17, 2012 News & Information Services

Associate Dean and Professor of Biology Shaily Menon has been accepted into the 2012 Leadership Development Program for Higher Education (LDPHE).  This intensive and prestigious  program features one-on-one mentoring in addition to classes and talks.

Congratulations, Shaily!

Six of the nine Grand Valley State University students to have been named Gilman Scholars for the summer 2012 semester are from CLAS, and will use their scholarships to study abroad.

Grand Valley ranks among the top schools in terms of Gilman Scholarship winners. Collectively, the nine students will get $34,500 in scholarships.

The Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program is operated by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and the Institute for International Education. 

The scholarship recipients, along with their home town, major, and country of study are listed below:

• Lydia Benkert, from Grand Rapids, a theatre and women and gender studies major, will study in Ghana;

• Megan DeKievit, from Jenison, a music and anthropology major, will study in Thailand;

• Chaz Hernandez, from Loves Park, IL, a cell and molecular biology major, will study in Costa Rica;

• Nikole LeCompte, from Muskegon, a psychology major, will study in Jordan;

• Joe Swartz, from Rockford, a history major, will study in China;

• Morgan Talbert, from Jackson, a biomedical sciences major, will study in Ghana;

The deadline for students who want to apply for winter 2013 Gilman Scholarships is September 25. 

For more information, contact Amanda Cuevas, cuevasam@gvsu.edu or visit gvsu.edu/fellowships.

Assistant Professor Mario Fific of Psychology has received a grant from the National Science Foundation of $111,743  to support his work on Stopping Rule Selection Theory.   Congratulations!

Professor Fific has provided this introduction to the nature of his work on decision making: 

Stopping Rule Selection (SRS) Theory

The critical step facing every decision maker is when to stop collecting evidence and proceed with the decision act. This is known as the stopping rule, and it is thought to be the central component of successful decision making. For example, one have to decide how many houses to visit before making the final decision to buy one. Similarly, how many doctors’ opinions one should have before making a final decision about the risky surgical procedure.   If a decision maker has perfect knowledge of all aspects of the environment that generates the evidence, the Bayesian calculus can be used to find the most optimal stopping rule.

The experimental evidence so far has documented several violations of the optimal rule predictions. This evidence suggests that human decision makers do not use the optimal stopping rule. More importantly, perfect knowledge about the environment is not available for most decision makers because the world is constantly changing. Even if decision makers could possess perfect knowledge, the human cognitive system has strictly limited computational powers, thus making the use of the optimal rule unrealistic.

Over the years, several unconnected explanations have been proposed that suggest nonoptimal approaches can account for some of the observable violations of the optimal stopping rule in human decision making. The current research proposes a unifying explanation for these violations based on a new stopping rule selection (SRS) theory. The main innovation here is the assumption that for any given decision problem, a decision maker draws from a large set of different kinds of decision strategies and stopping rules and is not limited to using a single stopping rule. The SRS theory hypothesizes that there is a storage area for stopping rules—the so-called decision operative space (DOS)—and a retrieval mechanism that is used to select stopping rules from the DOS. The SRS theory has shown good fit to challenging data published in the relevant literature so far.

Roberto Prosseda at the Grosser Saal of the Berliner Philharmonie, in Berlin, Germany as

planned encore, on May 6, 2012 played a klavier arrangement by GVSU assistant professor of Music Giuseppe Lupis. The piece was Gounod's Marche Funebre d'une Marionette.

Not only did Prosseda acknowledge Professor Lupis’ work before presenting the

encore, he recognized Lupis in the house and asked him to stand at the end of the

performance. Lupis was treated to what he describes as “cheerful applause”.

Professor Lupis continues to keep up an impressive schedule of performances, festivals

and teaching in Europe and America over the summer months.

    

Hundreds of people showed up to take part in the joint Grand Valley/Lake Express open house.

Megan DeKievit, of Jenison Michigan is the recipient of the nationally competitive Freeman-ASIA Scholarship to study music in Taiwan this summer and fall semesters. DeKievit will study at Mahidol University College of Music which was established with an aim to produce music students of high quality, with good taste and with a social conscience. DeKievit is a double major in music and anthropology as well as a member of the Honors College.

A Freeman-ASIA scholarship provides need-based funding to assist the recipient

with the cost of the study abroad program and related expenses,

including airfare, basic living costs, local transportation, books, etc. Freeman-ASIA is sponsored by the Freeman Foundation, a private foundation with offices in New York, NY, Stowe, VT and Honolulu, HI. The Freeman Foundation’s major objectives include strengthening the bonds of friendship between the United States and countries of East Asia. Through education and educational institutes, the Foundation hopes to develop a greater appreciation of Asian cultures, histories, and economies in the United States and a better understanding of the American people and of American institutions and purposes by the peoples of East Asia.

Students interested in applying for a Freeman-ASIA Scholarship are encouraged to contact Amanda Cuevas, Director, Frederik Meijer Honors College at 331-3219 or fellowships@gvsu.edu. Visit http://www.iie.org/en/programs/freeman-asia for full award

details.

Aubrey McMahan was one of five students worldwide to receive a full Ibn Battuta Merit Scholarship for Peace and Diplomacy for a four-week session in summer 2012.  Through the scholarship, tuition and housing costs are fully covered.  The other recipients are from the UK, Turkey, Portugal, and Russia. These scholars were selected because of demonstrated excellence and dedication to the study of the Arabic language. 

In addition, McMahan also received a Lebanon Summer Fellowship to participate in the 2012 Cultural and Educational Exchange Experience for American University Students.  This

fellowship is co-sponsored by the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations (NCUSAR) and the Lebanon Renaissance Foundation (LRF).  She was also named a 2011 Truman Scholarship

Finalist.  McMahan aspires to pursue a career with the U.S. Department of State and work in the Middle East region. 

She is an International Relations major and member of the Honors College.

   

Mario Amaya Velazquez and Angela Tramontelli won Sister City scholarships

Keith Oppenheim, Assistant Professor and Coordinator, of the Broadcasting major in the School of Communications

The AEJMC, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, administers a grant which is funded through the Scripts Howard Foundation. The program is called: Social Media and Multiple Platforms: Learning from the Pros, Bringing it to the Classroom. The goal is to help educators learn about professional applications of social media by making a 2 week visit to a news outlet and learning what they do. There are six locations that applicants can pick from which included The Chicago Tribune, WEWS – an ABC station in Cleveland, C-SPAN in DC., The Oregonian, a newspaper in Portland and a two more.

Applicants have to target a place they wish to go .   Keith sais,  “I picked Cleveland because it was the one television station on the list, which from my perspective, is most relevant to my teaching.”

Keith explains how the award will benefit his work and that of his colleagues, “The grant gives me $3,000 for travel and expenses and an additional $1,000 to have a representative from WEWS make visits to our program during the next academic year. I would be interested in letting colleagues know so we might share that as a resource. Meantime, I will be setting up the visit with WEWS. I hope to make a video out of the project.”

Amy Matthews (PSY) and David Austin (MTH) have been named CLAS Commencement Marshals for Winter 2012.

Recently, Tony Glaab of the University bookstore met with CLAS Unit Heads to discuss initiatives to keep book costs down for students (for more on these initiatives, see http://websrv-gr.server.gvsu.edu/gvnow/index.cfm?articleId=FE19248D-BA33-A597-05B2D8C57D10B769 ). 

With great sesnitivity to good pedagogy as well as student budgets, the Unit Heads will help their faculty members to understand the changing textbook landscape and the economics of bundles, online options, rentals and other new methods of provision and their consequences for buy-back. 

Filmmaker and script writer Tom Caltabiano has a special affection for Grand Valley students and has made multiple visits to campus to work with students in Affiliate Professor Frank Boring's Film and Video Production classes.  On his most recent visit, he made a time lapse film which captures many aspects of his visit including all of Frank's classes, a campus walk and the signing of the final beam of the Pew Library and Learning Commons.  The entire film is 2 minutes and 21 seconds long.

Which notable campus personalities can you spot?   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXEpHET94wk

It is the very highest kind of accolade that comes to those on the recommendation of not only collegaues who have known them for 30 years, but also many students.  When the CLAS Academic Advising Center's Caroline Cascini was presented with the AP Commitment to Students Award, it was this very sort of praise she was receiving.

One student said that Caroline was the sole reason she had the strength to remain in college and finish her degree. Another said, "Anyone can tell that Caroline Cascini does her job to the fullest in the smiles of the students leaving her office. "  A third admitted, "For a while there, I kept Caroline's office number on my cell phone's speed dial. "

Perhaps most telling of all is this: "Caroline's nomination for this award is bittersweet for me. All this time I considered myself her favorite. Now however, I see that Caroline passed out 'special treatment' to all of her clients."

All of CLAS celebrates Caroline's commitment and effectiveness.