The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is once again sponsoring a series of Faculty Research Colloquia. This year, we are excited to hold the colloquia in person (PAD 308) on Fridays in the Fall semester and Thursdays in the Winter semester. All of the colloquia will begin at 3: p.m. with faculty making 20-minute presentations (15 minutes plus 5 minutes for discussion).

We especially encourage new faculty and faculty who have been on sabbatical recently to make presentations, but the colloquia are open to all faculty and I encourage you to participate, present some of your work, and become more familiar with the diversity of scholarly achievements of your colleagues across the CLAS.

You are cordially invited to the final colloquium of the year.

The colloquium will take place Thursday, March 16 in PAD 308. Refreshments will be available at 2:30pm with the presentations beginning at 3:00pm.

The speakers will be:

3:00 pm - Brian Lakey (Psychology) “Applying Relational Regulation Theory to Major Depressive Disorder.”
Relational regulation theory (RRT; Lakey & Orehek, 2011) describes how people regulate their affect, thought and action through ordinary social interaction with social network members (providers).  Basic research in well populations has shown large effects whereby some providers evoke more favorable affect, self-esteem, and other depression-related constructs.   The current study applied RRT to people with probable major depressive disorder (MDD). MDD is a common mental disorder, a leading cause of disability worldwide and conveys elevated risk for mortality.  In the current study, a national sample of 152 depressed participants completed internet surveys in which they rated levels of depression-related constructs experienced when with or thinking about important providers.  Variance components analyses revealed strong effects whereby some providers evoked fewer depressive symptoms, lower negative affect, higher self-esteem, and fewer automatic negative thoughts, among other constructs.  RRT might be a useful framework for identifying and understanding social processes in MDD.

3:25 pm - Steven Dorland (Anthropology) “Relationship Building: Community Based Archaeology in Partnership with Mississauga Nation.”
In this paper, I provide an overview of our community-based archaeology project with Mississauga Nation, Learning about Learning. Established in 2019, this research project in southern Ontario is a community driven educational program for youth across the six Mississauga First Nations that bridges archaeology and Indigenous knowledge through hands-on learning and the centering of Mississauga voices and perspectives. A central component of our project is providing capacity building for youth through transferable skill development and paid training of archaeological and cultural heritage methods. In this paper, I highlight the importance of relationship building and how this is entangled in all project stages, including, development, application, and knowledge dissemination practices. I emphasize the importance of creating true partnerships that continuously challenge the outside researchers involved in this project to unlearn traditional ways of knowing and doing and to learn about learning the Mississauga way. Archaeology is a very effective tool and resource for Indigenous communities, but only when we democratize knowledge and work alongside each other to meet their needs and interests.

3:50 pm - Charles Ham (Classics) “Ovid on the Soul: Philosophy and Politics in Augustan Rome.”
The Roman poet Ovid (43 BCE - 17 CE) was the preeminent poet of his generation and his works have exercised an enormous influence on subsequent literary and artistic traditions. At the same time, Ovid’s poetry has often been viewed as stylistically brilliant but lacking in substance. I challenge this latter idea by arguing for Ovid’s sophisticated use of Greek and Roman philosophy to comment on his political and cultural milieu. Ovid’s poetry is an important witness to the Augustan age, a crucial period in Roman history which saw the gradual transformation of Rome from a republic into an imperial autocracy. In this talk, I discuss Ovid’s appropriation in his elegiac poem Fasti of some of the Greek philosopher poet Empedocles’ (5th c. BCE) ideas about the soul and cosmic history, which Ovid places into dialogue with important aspects of Augustan political ideology such as Rome’s rebirth under Augustus after a long period of civil strife.

4:14 pm - Alex Nikitin (Biology) “How Ponto-Caspian Steppe Nomads Conquered the Bronze Age Europe.”
At the end of the Stone Age (ca. 5000 years ago), Europe experienced a profound transformation. The agrarian-egalitarian lifeways of “Old Europe” were replaced by the system of elite dominance, a pastoralism-based economy, and a different worldview. All these new features were brought to Europe by the nomads from the Great Eurasian Steppe in a sweeping takeover that was anything but peaceful. This talk analyzes the identity of these steppe invaders and attempts to correct the misperception about the people and the events behind this pivotal event in the history of Europe.

Please join your colleagues for collegial, corporeal, and cerebral refreshment!

2022-2023 schedule

Faculty, you are cordially invited to the upcoming CLAS faculty research colloquium of the academic year. The colloquium will take place in PAD 308 with refreshments at 2:30 p.m. and the presentations begin at 3 p.m. 

FALL
Friday September 16

Friday, Oct 14

Friday, Nov 18

Winter:

Thursday, Jan 19

Thursday, Feb 16

Thursday, March 16

Program for March 17, 2022

The speakers were: 

Brian Smith (Chemistry) “Understanding mechanisms of antibiotic resistance in bacteria.” 

David Álvarez (English) “Reclaiming the Strait of Gibraltar? French Rapper AbdelMalik's Journey to Morocco.” 

John Weber (Geology) “Trinidad and Tobago Geogenomics: reconciling and synthesizing published genetics data into a comprehensive geologic, paleogeographic and geomorphic model.” 

To join the colloquia, and receive the Zoom link to the presentations, please complete the short form to register to receive the Zoom link (if you have previously completed the form, there’s no need to do so again). Please join your colleagues for collegial and cerebral refreshment! 

January 20, 2022 speakers were

Program

Amy Russell (Biology) “Trust (the studbook) but verify: African painted dogs in captivity”.

Sofia Karampagia (Physics) “The level densities of atomic nuclei and their role in nucleosynthesis.”

Ian Winkelstern (Geology) “The last time the world warmed: New Interglacial fossils and climate data from South Carolina.”

To join the colloquia, and receive the Zoom link to the presentations, please complete the short form to register to receive the Zoom link (if you have previously completed the form, there’s no need to do so again).

Please join your colleagues for collegial and cerebral refreshment!

November 19, 2021

The speakers were:

Alisha Karabinus (Writing & Digital Studies) “Working at Play: Reports from a Survey of Game Design Professionals on Student Hobbyist Experience”

Will Bowers (Biology) “New considerations for investigating tree water use”

Mario Fific (Psychology) “Two faces of facial holistic perception”

Program for Nov. 19

___________________________

October 15

Program

The speakers were

Michael Wolfe (Psychology) “Are we aware of changes to our health?”

Peter Zhang (Communication Studies – School of Communications) "Of Interlinguality and Translation."

Imran Mazid (Advertising and Public Relations – School of Communications) “Facebook and Instagram to Tackle Covid-19: An Analysis of Social Media Strategies of Top Hospitals in Australia, Canada, U.S.A., and U.K.”.

The colloquium scheduled for Thursday, March 12 was POSTPONED.

The speakers will be:

Matthew Christians (Cell and Molecular Biology) “Breaking Down Light Responses in Plants.”

Matthew Crippen (Philosophy) “Architectural Values and Human Behavior.”

Sofia Karampagia (Physics) “The level densities of atomic nuclei and their role in nucleosynthesis.”

George McBane (Chemistry) “Tumbling water in space.”

Thursday, February 13. 

The speakers were:

Ginny Peterson (Geology) “How micro- and crystal lattice-scale observations can inform tectonic-scale understanding of mountain building: An example from ocean crustal rocks embedded in the root of the southern Appalachian Blue Ridge.”

Beth Gibbs (Music, Theater and Dance) “Applications of Co-Teaching in Elementary Music”

David Eick (History) and Janel Pettes Guikema (History) “Games as ‘defining moments’ of the college experience: The impact of reacting to the past in French”

November 15, 2019. 

The speakers were:

Rachel S. Anderson (English) “A System of Belief: The Biopolitics of Saints’ Relics in Late Antique/Early Medieval Christianity.”

Jeffrey Kelly Lowenstein (Communications) “Working with Students To Exposing Systematic Inequality in America's Reverse Mortgage Market.”

John VanRegenmorter (Geology) “The Sternberg Fossil Collection at Grand Rapids Community College.”

Steve Glass (Movement Science) “Compensatory muscle activation patterns during instability training using a novel, water-filled training device.”

Friday, October 18.

The speakers will be:

Imran Mazid (Advertising and Public Relations) “Virality of Social Change Messages on Facebook: A Study of Advocacy and Relationship Building Strategies of LGBTQ Advocacy Organizations.”

Michael Lombardo, Pat Thorpe (Biology), Sango Otieno, Dan Weglarz, and Alyssa Hawker (Statistics). “The factors that affect Tree Swallow egg mass vary yearly.”

Corey Anton (Communication Studies) "Absence, Incompleteness, Negation and Non-Being in Language and Communication."

Mark Luttenton (Biology) “Higgins Lake: Ecological Status and Trends”

Please join your colleagues for collegial, corporeal and cerebral refreshment!

March 14

The presenters included:

Al Steinman (AWRI), Sookkyung Cho (Music, Theater and Dance) and Hannah Seidel (Music, Theater and Dance) “Raising Water Awareness through Science, Music, and Dance”.

David Alvarez (English) “Infra-maritime travails: clandestine crossings of a Mediterranean Strait”

Quinn Griffin (Classics) “A Renaissance Reader of Juvenal's Satire 1”

Brad Ambrose (Physics) “For Every Action…  Having an Impact on Preservice STEM Teachers through a CLAS Faculty Exchange in Germany”

Please join your colleagues for collegial, corporeal and cerebral refreshment!

February 14

Ten Big Ideas identified by the National Science Foundation. All of the presentations were given by members of the Physics Department.

Joshua Veazey – “Quantum Leap”

Brett Bolen – “Windows on the Universe”

Ben Holder – ”Growing Convergence Research”

Richard Vallery – “A Convergence of Fields: Using Fundamental Physics to Understand Materials”

Fourth CLAS faculty research colloquium of the academic year.

The colloquium was held on Thursday, January 17. 

The speakers were:

David Zwart (History) Being Dutch American during World War II: Efforts at Maintaining Ethnoreligious Identity and Institutions

Hermann Kurthen (Sociology) “Present at the Destruction. Findings from Interviews with Foreign Policy Experts in Washington, D.C. in Fall 2017.”

Allison Manville Metz (Music, Theatre and Dance) “Victors of Character at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum: Theatre for Young Audiences and High Impact Community Engagement”

Abdullah F. Alrebh (Sociology) “Education in Arab World: From Totalitarianism to Democracy”

Please join your colleagues for collegial, corporeal and cerebral refreshment!

Friday, November 16, 2018

The speakers were:

Kyle Barnes (Movement Science) “Running Economy of Highly Trained Male and Female Distance Runners in Marathon Racing Shoes vs. Track Spikes”

John Gabrosek (Statistics) “R-E-S-P-E-C-T: The role of race, gender, and radio consultants on radio airplay in 1960s Chicago, Il and Grand Rapids, MI – Part 1”

Len O’Kelly (School of Communications) “R-E-S-P-E-C-T: The role of race, gender, and radio consultants on radio airplay in 1960s Chicago, Il and Grand Rapids, MI – Part 2”

Sherry Johnson (English) "A Hope to Remember."

Dalila Kovacs (Chemistry) “A bridge (not) to far: Cheminformatics at the crossroad between Chemistry and Toxicology”

Date:  Thursday, March 15, 2018

The speakers were:

Leon Lou (Psychology) “Why most people cannot draw accurately from observation.”

Michael Lombardo (Biology) “College-aged women that play throwing sports have masculine hands.”

Theodore F. Towse (Biomedical Sciences) “Quantifying Human Brown Adipose Tissue Mass and Activity.”

Abdullah Alrebh (Sociology) “Political Islam in Charge of a Nation.”

Friday, September 15, 2017

Special topic “Narratives supporting change—where science and storytelling meet.”

The speakers were:

Brian Deyo “Strange Narratives for Strange Times: Eco-fiction in/and the Anthropocene.”

Elena Lioubimtseva  “Teaching about climate change at the time of alternative facts.”

Robert Hollister "Understanding What Climate Change Really Means"

Beth Peterson "Winged Words." 

Friday, September 18. The speakers were:

1. Michael Lombardo (Biology) "Why don't girls throw like boys? The ecological causes and evolutionary consequences of throwing in the genus Homo."

2. Devereaux Kennedy (Sociology) "How to make sense of the sense we make of social life"

3. Charlyn G. Partridge (Annis Water Resources Institute) "Utilizing genomic tools to explore diversity and adaptation in natural populations."

4. Marie Ullrich (Film & Video Production) "The Alley Cat, a Case Study." 

March 19, 2015. The speakers were:

1. Henry E. Duitman (Music) "Opera and Musical Theater, Life in the Pits."

2. Diane Rayor (Classics)  "The 2014 Sappho Papyri Discoveries."

3. Brian Lakey (Psychology) "Can Ordinary Conversation Account for Perceived Support's Links to Mental Health?"

4. Renee Zettle-Sterling (Art and Design)

Please join your colleagues for collegial, corporeal and cerebral refreshment!

Speakers for February 19, 2015

Brian Deyo (English) "The Anthropocene as Thought-Event: What's New in the Environmental Humanities."

Kevin Strychar (Annis Water Resources Institute) “Climate Change: Why it Isn’t a Myth Perpetuated by Bad Science.”

Robert Hollister (Biology) “Impacts of Climate Change on Tundra Vegetation.”

Please join your colleagues for collegial, corporeal and cerebral refreshment!

Speakers for January 22, 2015

1. Joe Jacquot (Biology) “Raccoon roundworm prevalence in Southwestern Michigan”

2. Merritt Taylor (BMS) "Identifying Genetic Determinants of Stem Cell Differentiation in the Developing Embryonic Nervous System"

3. Donald Zinman (Political Science) "The Heir Apparent Presidency"

4. Kirsten Strom (Art and Design) “The Darwinian Uncanny:  Surrealism, Animals, and Evolution.”

Please join your colleagues for collegial, corporeal and cerebral refreshment!

Speakers for Friday, November 14, 2014

1. Georgette Sass (Biology) “A good mutant is hard to find; so what to do with a misfit like the delorean mutant?”

2. Robert Deaner (Psychology) “Does the Sex Difference in Competitiveness Decrease in Selective Sub-populations? A Test with Intercollegiate Distance Runners.”

3. Sufen S Lai (English) “Taming the Warrior Shrew: Ethnicity and Malleable Loyalty in the Construction of Women Generals in Chinese Ming-Qing Novels"

4. Laura Stroik (Biomedical Sciences) “The evolution of dietary competition in the earliest primates.”

Please join your colleagues for collegial, corporeal and cerebral refreshment!

Speakers for Friday, October 17, 2014

Bruce Ostrow (Biology) “Stem cells and stem cell therapies: potencies and potentials.”

Sebastian Maisel (Arabic and Middle East Studies) “Double Minority – Yezidi Perspectives from Syria and Iraq.”

Vandana Pednekar-Magal (School of Communications) “From Somewhere Else: Transnational Communities and Media.”

Daniel A. Bergman (Biomedical Sciences) “Toxin-induced behavioral alterations in the crayfish.”

Speakers for September 19, 2014

Dalila Kovacs (Chemistry) “Green Chemistry”

Rob Franciosi (English) “Remember Us”: Facing the Holocaust in Ben Hecht’s We Will Never Die.

Paul Cook (Chemistry) “X-ray crystallographic analysis of the bacillithiol biosynthesis enzymes.”

Brett Bolen (Physics) “Black Holes in Expanding Spacetime”

Speakers for February 20, 2014

John Gabrosek (Statistics) Digital “Textbook Publishing – The Case of STA 215”

Sheldon Kopperl (Biomedical Sciences) "Science from the Sages and Medicine from the Mystics." 

Agnieszka Szarecka (Cell and Molecular Biology)  "Computational Modeling of Mutation Effects in a Class D Beta-Lactamase OXA-24"

Speakers for January 23, 2014

Brian Lakey (Psychology) “What can the social lives of college students tell us about inner-city opiate addicts?”

Jennifer Gross (Psychology) “Forecasting the Effectiveness of College Teaching: Student Perceptions and Quiz Performance.”

David Vessey (Philosophy)  “A contemporary version of the Book of Nature.”

Michael Lombardo (Biology)  “Why don't USA based scientists publish studies on the role of innate variation in athletic performance?”

Speakers for November 15 speakers

Jeffrey A. Potteiger (Movement Sciences and Graduate Dean) “Effects of macronutrient ingestion during and after exercise on substrate oxidation in women with varying body composition.”

Paul Murphy (History) “Humanism, secular intellectuals, and cultural authority in twentieth-century America.”

Sok Kean Khoo (Cell and Molecular Biology) “Circulating microRNAs: a new paradigm for Parkinson’s disease biomarkers.”

Richard Vallery (Physics) “Antimatter and Matter: Using PALS to Study Novel Materials.”

October 18 speakers were:

Gregory Maytan (Music)  “Scandinavia 2: The process of researching, rehearsing for, recording, editing and designing a self-made professional CD.”

David Eick (Modern Languages and Literatures)  "Dictionary Wars in Old Regime France: The French Academy vs. Furetière."

Martin Burg  (Biomedical Sciences) “Using Drosophila to study the effects of histamine deficiency on behavior.”

Levi Gardner (Sustainable Community Development Initiative) ”Biological Diversity, Agriculture, and the Liberal Arts.”

All faculty are welcome to attend.

Speakers for September 20, 2013.

Cynthia L. Thompson (Biomedical Sciences)

Giuseppe Lupis (Music)

Benjamin Holder (Physics)

Mark Luttenton (Biology)

Please join your colleagues for collegial, corporeal and cerebral refreshment!

November 16, 2012 speakers were:

Henry E. Duitman (Music) "Thurmond's Note Grouping: Lessons for Conductors."

Kelly Ross (English) "Emily Dickinson and the Reflex Arc." 

Michael Wroblewski  (Anthropology) "Indigenous Amazonian Media in the Era of Constitutional Interculturality in Ecuador."

Stephen M. Rybczynski (Biology) "The effects of inquiry instruction of students' attitude towards an introductory biology laboratory course."

Please join your colleagues for collegial, corporeal and cerebral refreshment!

Friday, October 19, 2012 speakers were

Chuck Pazdernik - "'The Fates have given men an enduring heart': An ethic of sustainability in archaic Greek poetry."

Peter Wampler - "Sustainability of water supply in Haiti and capacity building through scholarships for Haitian students."

Sheila Blackman - "Seed banking as a critical tool in sustaining managed ecosystems."

Heather Van Wormer - "Extinctions, Environmentalism, and Ecovillages: Sustainability in New Zealand."

Please join your colleagues for collegial, corporeal and cerebral refreshment!

September 2012 speakers were:

Thomas Walker (Political Science)

James Smither  (History)

Corey Anton (Communications)

Giuseppe Lupis (Music)

CLAS Faculty Research Colloquium Thursday, January 19, 2012

Speakers include:

Figen Mekik –  “How has climate changed in Earth’s past and how does modern climate change compare?”

Craig Benjamin – “Big history and global climate change.”

Shaily Menon – “Forecasting global change: the ‘super wicked problems’ of land, sea, and climate change”

Elena Lioubimtseva – “Russia's role in the post-2012 climate change policy: uncertainties and contradictions.”

March 17. 2011 Speakers were:

Thomas C. Pentecost (Chemistry)

Virginia Peterson (Geology

John Bender (Chemistry)

Mark Luttenton (Biology)

Feb 17 colloquium speakers were:

Joel Stillerman (Sociology)

James McNair (Annis Water Resources Institute)

Jodee Hunt (Biology)

David Kurjiaka (Biomedical Sciences)

January 20, speakers were:

Figen Mekik (Geology)

Dan Golembeski (Modern Languages and Literatures)

Renee Zettle-Sterling (Art and Design)

Yakuta Bhagat (Annis Water Resources Institute)

October 15, 2010 Colloquium speakers 

Austin Bunn (Writing) "Devised Playwriting: Experiments in New Play Collaboration"

The "devised play" -- constructed from interviews, improvisations, and historical research - has become an established, new feature of contemporary American and British theatre, with the successes of Frost/Nixon, This Beautiful City, The Laramie Project, and Anna Deveare Smith's ground-breaking monologues. In the winter of 2010, fifteen students in Advanced Drama Workshop (WRT 440) began writing a play together about the founding of Grand Valley State University, timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary. ("Founding" opened Nov. 12th on campus.) But what does the collaboration between faculty and students in the arts look like? What can the experience of this devised play tell us about the best (and worst) practices of the form? This presentation will overview "Founding's" development, in light of the recent production on campus.

Brian Lakey (Psychology) "To what extent is mentoring quality an objective property of mentors?"

Discussions of mentoring quality often include the implicit assumption that quality is an objective property of mentors. That is, some mentors are better than others and mentors can be trained to be more effective. Testing this assumption requires quantifying objective mentoring quality. This can be achieved when multiple observers rate the same mentors. In addition to objective quality, one can also quantify the extent to which such ratings reflect the perceptual biases of observers as well as the unique relationships between specific mentors and observers. A study will be described in which medical residents rated the same faculty members on mentoring quality. The findings were inconsistent with many assumptions about mentoring.

Daniel A. Bergman (Biomedical Sciences) "Crayfish olfaction: why all the stink?"

Olfaction is an ancient sensory system used to detect odor molecules in both terrestrial and aquatic environments. Olfactory receptors, regardless of the environmental surroundings, largely work in a similar manner by interacting with odors (chemicals) that cause specific responses in olfactory sensory neurons. My lab examines how odors are spatially and temporally dispersed within an environment, in what we call a complex odor landscape. We then examine how these odors provide useful contextual information to ultimately cause behavioral responses. Much of this research is accomplished using crayfish as a model research organism. My lab investigates their olfactory and other sensory systems in the context of aggressive interactions, orientation strategies when finding food or mates, neuronal function, development, and pollution effects on chemoreception.

Margaret Dietrich (Cell and Molecular Biology) "Flowering (in the lab) in the Sonoran Desert"

My sabbatical work at the University of Arizona combined two areas of significance in plant biology - salt tolerance and flowering. The CBL10 gene with which I was concerned was originally identified as being important in conveying the ability of Arabidopsis plants to grow in salt. Most crop plants are not tolerant to even moderate levels of salt in the soil. However, heavily irrigated fields, particularly in arid and semi-arid areas, become very salty and cannot support the growth of further crops. An understanding of the basis for salt tolerance by certain plants could aid in the development of crops which are able to grow on less than optimal soils. Plants defective in this particular gene also produce defective flowers. Since the outcome of successful flowering is fruit production, this aspect also directly impacts food supplies. CBL10 encodes a calcineurin B-like protein known to be involved in signal transduction - the process by which cells perceive a signal/cue from outside the cell and convert that information into a cellular response, such as being able to tolerate salt in the soil. I will describe my work directed at understanding the role of CBL10 in flowering and will indicate how undergraduate students will continue this work here at GVSU.

Geoff Lenters (Physics) "A Statistical Smorgasbord: Automated Decision Processes and Image Processing"

The contents of this talk are based upon my recent year-long sabbatical hosted by Dynetics, an engineering company headquartered in Huntsville, AL. My work was mainly Missile Defense related, but I will focus on some statistical techniques, that I learned while working there. The first part will be a brief, conceptual introduction to Bayesian Classifiers, which are used quite frequently in data mining/automated decision-making processes, while the second part will focus on one of the techniques used by X-ray astronomers to process X-ray images.

Speakers of the second CLAS Research Colloquium were:

James N. McNair

Lisa Feurzeig

David Eaton

Michael Lombardo

The first CLAS faculty research colloquium of the academic year featured these speakers:

Toni Perrine "Nuclear Terrorism and Docudrama: Dirty War."

Brian Hatzel "Clinical Implications for Shoulder Stability: How can we incorporate current research."

Paul Cornish "John Adams' Contribution to the Republican Tradition."

Giuseppe Lupis "How to organize a successful International Music Festival in Italy with no funding: the Grumo Festival 2010"