Faculty Notes

(Published in @John Jay on October 8, 2008) Peer Review Jeremy Travis (President) was named chair of the New York State Juvenile Justice Task Force by the Hon. David Paterson, Governor of New York State. Over the coming year, the newly constituted task force is charged with developing strategies for transforming the state’s juvenile justice system and developing what Travis hopes will be “a more comprehensive and less punitive approach” to handling juvenile offenders. Maria Volpe (Sociology) won the 2008 Lawrence Cooke Peace Innovator Award, presented by the New York State Dispute Resolution Association in collaboration with the New York State Unified Court System Office of ADR and Court Improvement Programs. Volpe will also be the honoree at the Network for Peace Through Dialogue recognition night on October 30 in New York City. Wanda Fernandopulle (Student Development) was selected as an Association for Institutional Research Fellow for the upcoming National Conference on First-Year Assessment, to be held October 12-14 in San Antonio, Texas. Joseph King (Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration) won the 2008 Roberta Thornton Award, presented by the CUNY Graduate Center’s PhD Alumni Association in recognition of his outstanding achievement as a criminal justice practitioner and scholar. Presenting… Keith A. Markus (Psychology) spent five weeks visiting the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, on an Erskine Fellowship to work with Professor Brian Haig on a joint methodological research project. While there, he presented a colloquium on "Construct Validity and Causal Modeling." Closer to home, at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association in Boston, Markus presented a poster titled “Abductive Inferences to Psychological Variables: Weighting Competing Criteria” coauthored by Samuel W. Hawes, a John Jay alumnus, and Rula J. Thasites, a current John Jay student. Janice Bockmeyer (Government) presented her paper, “The Politics of Supra-local Nonprofits: Do ‘Good Practices’ Reset the Community Metacenter?” on a panel discussing Local Networks, Race, Immigration and Identity at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in August. Larry Sullivan (Library) taught a four-day seminar on elite deviance to government officials at St. John’s College in Belize City, Belize, in March. He also gave a lecture on community justice at the National Police Academy in Belmopan, Belize, on March 12. He presented the paper, “Family Values and Domestic Violence: The Polish Paradigm,” at the annual meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in Cincinnati in March. This paper was based on research he did at Warsaw University on a Kosciuszko Foundation grant.

Between the Covers Elise Langan (Government) published an article on “Assimilation and Affirmative Action in French Education Systems” in the fall 2008 issue of European Education. She was named a visiting scholar at New York University's Center for European Studies. Kimora (Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration) published an article titled “The Punishment Potlach: A Way Out” in the fall 2008 issue of Insights, a publication of the Offender Preparation and Education Network Inc. In the article, Kimora and her coauthor, attorney Mark Hazelbaker, contend that this punishment potlach in the United States has ignored the cost of criminal justice, and they advocate an aggressive program of intervention for incarcerated individuals. Larry Sullivan (Library) had his article “Prison is Dull Today: Prison Libraries and the Irony of Pious Reading” published in the May 2008 issue of PMLA, the journal of the Modern Language Association. His review essay of The Encyclopedia of the Library of Congress appeared in the April 2008 issue of Library Quarterly. Keith A. Markus (Psychology) recently published an article contrasting alternative causal interpretations of statistical models, titled “Hypothesis Formulation, Model Interpretation and Model Equivalence: Implications of a Mereological Causal Interpretation of Structural Equation Models” in the summer 2008 issue of the journal Multivariate Behavioral Research. A recent issue of the journal Measurement included his article “Constructs, Concepts and the Worlds of Possibility: Connecting the Measurement, Manipulation, and Meaning of Variables,” as well as his rejoinder “Putting Concepts and Constructs into Practice: A Reply to Cervone and Caldwell, Haig, Kane, Mislevy, and Rupp.” Markus also published a critique titled “Abductive Inferences to Psychological Variables: Steiger’s Question and Best Explanations of Psychopathy,” in the summer 2008 issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychology. The critique was coauthored by John Jay alumnus Samuel W. Hawes and current student Rula J. Thasites.

(Published in @John Jay on September 17, 2008) PRESENTING… Gloria Proni (Sciences) presented a paper entitled "Chiral Recognition by a CDsensitive dimeric porphyrin host: Recent Advances in the assignment of absolute configuration" at the 235th American Chemical Society National Meeting & Exposition, April 6-10, 2008 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The work was done in collaboration with the laboratory of Dr. Nina Berova in the Chemistry Department of Columbia University. Later in the spring, Dr. Proni presented a research talk, “Detection of Opioids in Urine by NMR Spectroscopy: Preliminary Studies” at the 40th Middle Atlantic Regional Meeting (MARM), May 17–21 in Bayside, Queens. Donna Wilson, a forensic science graduate student, worked on this project as a fulfillment of her thesis requirement. The work was conducted jointly with Elise Champeil (Sciences). In late August, Proni presented a poster titled “Synthesis and Chiral Recognition of a Fish Pheromone by CD-Sensitive Dimeric Zinc Porphyrin Host” at the American Chemical Society National Meeting and Exposition in Philadelphia. Ekaterina Chadwick, an undergraduate forensic science student, coauthored the presentation. Effie Papatzikou Cochran (English) was the lead discussant on a panel titled “Four Interrogating Concepts and Cases: Family, Law, and Language” at the Law and Society Annual Conference in Montreal, Canada, on May 31. Abby Stein (Interdisciplinary Studies) spoke at the International Psychohistorical Association on June 4 at Fordham University. Her presentation was titled, “From His Cradle to Your Grave: How Child Abuse Drives Violent Crime.” Stein also served as the invited “Critical Issues” columnist for the spring issue of ISSTD News, published by the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation's publication. Her column focused on “First Defense: Dissociated States and Criminal Violence.” R. Terry Furst (Anthropology) presented a paper, “A Qualitative Exploration of an Office-Based Buprenorphine Demonstration Program in New York City,” at the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) in Boston. He also presented “A Harm Reduction Approach to the Provision of Bupernorphine” at the conference for the Developments in the Treatment of Dependence on Opiate: Practices and Perspectives, in France, and co-authored “Low Threshold Buprenorphine Prescribing,” a paper presented at the International Harm Reduction Conference in Barcelona, Spain. Elise Champeil and Gloria Proni (Sciences) co-authored the lecture “Use of NMR Spectroscopy for the Detection of Opioids in Human Fluids” that was presented at the American Chemical Society National Meeting and Exposition in Philadelphia in late August. Donna Wilson, a recent graduate of the master’s degree program in forensic science, worked on this project as a fulfillment of her thesis requirement.

BETWEEN THE COVERS Benjamin Lapidus (Art and Music) will have his new book, Origins of Cuban Music and Dance: Changüí, published by The Scarecrow Press on October 28. The book is the first in-depth study of changüí, a style of music and dance in Guantánamo, Cuba, that contributed to the development of salsa. Kimora (Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration) and Michael Aman (Communication and Theatre Arts) co-authored an article, “No Country for Old Men: Psychopathic Elements in an Academy-Award-Winning Film,” in which they stress the importance of criminal justice professionals learning elements of psychopathy from the film. The article appeared in the July/August issue of Community Corrections Report on Law and Corrections Practice. PEER REVIEW Robert Garot (Sociology) has won a faculty fellowship for the spring 2009 semester at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute at Queens College. The fellowship will help facilitate Garot’s research project on “Immigrants and the Law in Contemporary Tuscany.” Allison Kavey (History) has been awarded a $15,000 faculty development grant by the City University of New York to fund her proposal, “Teaching Portfolios: An Analysis of their Uses for History Pedagogy.”

(Published in @John Jay on August 27, 2008) ON BOARD Laura Drazdowski (Physical Education and Athletics) was appointed head coach of the John Jay women’s softball team. Drazdowski, the College’s Assistant Director of Athletics for Marketing and Promotion, served as interim softball coach for the 2008 season, leading the team to a 12-23 record and a fourth place finish in conference play. “After the hard work the team and I put in last season, I am thrilled to be continuing on the path of success that started last February,” she said. Over the summer, John Jay added two other new head coaches. Carl Nedell was named head women’s tennis coach, succeeding Amy Rowland, who resigned earlier this year. Nedell had previously coached the John Jay men’s tennis team during the 2000 season, and has also coached for Hunter College, James Monroe High School and Forest Hills High School. Jessica Kolackovsky will serve as interim head coach of the women’s swimming team for the 2008-09 season, filling in for Jane Katz, who will be on sabbatical. Kolackovsky served as a volunteer assistant coach under Katz last season, and also serves as the College’s head lifeguard. She was a Big East Conference Academic All-Star as an undergraduate swimmer at Seton Hall University. BETWEEN THE COVERS Andrew Sidman (Government) has an article, “Forecasting Non-Incumbent Presidential Elections: Lessons Learned from the 2000 Election,” due out in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Forecasting. Sidman also has 12 entries in the recently published Encyclopedia of U.S. Campaigns, Election, and Electoral Behavior (Sage, 2008). Mary Gibson (History) received a Senior Fulbright Research Grant and a National Endowment for the Humanities' Fellowship to finish a book on the history of prisons in modern Italy. Her article “Ai margini della cittadinanza: le detenute dopo l’Unità italiana (1860-1915) [At the Margins of Citizenship: Women Prisoners after Italian Unification]” was recently published in the journal Storia delle Donne [Women’s History]. Nathan Lents (Sciences) had his manuscript “Identification and Characterization of a Novel Mdm2 Splice Variant Acutely Induced by the Chemotherapeutic Agents Adriamycin and Actinomycin D” published in the journal Cell Cycle in June. Danielle Sapse (Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration), Elise Champeil and Anne-Marie Sapse (Sciences), working in collaboration with two professors from the University of Rouen, France, had their paper "Interaction of DNA Fragments with Methyl Lithium" accepted for publication in the journal Comptes Rendus des Seances de L' Academie Francaise. The paper applies theoretical methods to the study of DNA fragments interaction with methyl lithium and its possible use for criminal investigation.

Kimora (Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration) and Michael Aman (Speech, Theatre and Media Studies) co-authored an article, “No Country for Old Men: Psychopathic Elements in an Academy-Award-Winning Film,” in which they stress the importance of criminal justice professionals learning elements of psychopathy from the film. The article appeared in the July/August issue of Community Corrections Report on Law and Corrections Practice. PRESENTING… Margaret Wallace (Sciences) was an invited speaker at the Fourth Annual Conference of the Korean Academy of Scientific Criminal Investigation. Wallace’s presentation on “Forensic Science: the Interface between Scientific and the Law” discussed the role of forensic biology in human identification and genotyping of botanical and entomological samples. Wallace was also appointed Foreign Editor of the Journal of the Korean Academy of Scientific Criminal Investigation by the president of the academy. Janice Bockmeyer (Government) moderated the roundtable “Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding at 40: The Midlife Crisis of Community Participation?” at the annual meeting of the Urban Affairs Association in Philadelphia in late April. The roundtable explored the impacts of federal community development policies in the 40 years since the War on Poverty urban initiatives. Edgardo Diaz Diaz (Foreign Languages) addressed a full house of doctoral students and faculty members at the University of Padova, Italy, on April 22. Diaz, an ethnomusicologist, spoke about the meaning and influence of Italian opera in the Caribbean. Kimora (Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration) spoke to members of the Correctional Services Division of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department on May 23, about the educational needs of adult offenders and the programs funded by the National Institute of Corrections. M. Victoria Pérez-Ríos (Government) presented a paper on “Western Bias in International Law: Francisco de Vitoria’s Writings and the Third World School” at the International Studies Association Annual Conference in San Francisco, CA, in late March. Abby Stein (Interdisciplinary Studies) spoke at the International Psychohistorical Association conference on June 4 at Fordham University. Her presentation was titled “From His Cradle to Your Grave: How Child Abuse Drives Violent Crime.” Stein also served as the invited “Critical Issues” columnist for the spring issue of ISSTD News, published by the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. Her column focused on “First Defense: Dissociated States and Criminal Violence.”

PEER REVIEW Maria Hartwig (Psychology) received the "Early Career Award" from the European Association of Psychology & Law, for "her excellent track-record in peer reviewed papers in international journals and chapters in national and international volumes, and for being an inspiring example showing how a young researcher from a small place can find her way to a top position in the international arena.” Peter Dodenhoff (Institutional Advancement) recently completed the requirements for his U.S. Coast Guard merchant captain’s certification. The entry-level license, awarded on the basis of experience, test scores, fitness, character references and other criteria, allows the for-hire operation of merchant and recreational vessels in U.S. coastal waters, including charters and yacht deliveries.