Faculty and Staff Notes

Renee Romano, professor of history, comparative American studies, and Africana studies, was featured in an interview on the National Public Radio program The Takeaway on Monday, February 22. In the interview, Romano discussed ongoing battles over how the past should be remembered and what should be done with memorials and monuments to controversial figures such as Woodrow Wilson and Robert E. Lee. Visit this webpage to listen to the interview.

Professor and Chair of Politics Eve Sandberg, along with Seth Binder ’07, contributed the chapter “The Moroccan Spring and King Mohammed VI’s Economic Policy Agenda: Evaluating the First Dozen Years” in The Birth of the Arab Citizen and the Changing Middle East. Stuart Schaar served as author and editor and Mohsine El Ahmadi served as editor of the book.

Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Karl Offen, along with former colleague Robert Rundstrom, published “Indigenous People and Western Cartography" in Cartography in the Twentieth Century, volume 6 in the History of Cartography Series, edited by Mark Monmonier (University of Chicago Press, 2015).

“Mitigating the Effects of Low Birth Weight: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Adoptees” by Assistant Professor of Economics Martin Saavedra has been published in the American Journal of Health Economics. Brian Beach, assistant professor of economics at the College of William and Mary, served as the corresponding author.

Professor of Computer Science Richard Salter and his colleague, Berkeley professor Wayne M. Getz, had two presentations at the 2015 Winter Simulation Conference in December: "The Numerus Platform - An Innovative Simulation and Modeling Building Environment” and "Using Nova to Constructed Agent-Based Models for Epidemiological Teaching and Research.” The former was 90-minute workshop and demo of Salter’s Nova simulation platform. The Winter Simulation Conference is the premier international forum for disseminating recent advances in the field of system simulation. Salter and Getz also presented a 2-hour pre-conference demo of the system.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies Alberto Zambenedetti, along with Paola Bernardini, Joanne Granata, and Teresa Lobalsamo, co-edited Federico Fellini: Riprese, Riletture, (Re)visioni. The collection of essays is the result of three days of studies and celebrations: Fellini: A Disorderly and Passionate Genius of Italian Cinema / Fellini: messy genius and lover of Italian cinema" held at the University of Toronto October 17 to 19, 2013.

Zambenedetti has also written a book review for Parallel Lines. Post-9/11 American Cinema, written by Guy Westwell. Read his review on this webpage.

The paper "Climate modeling in differential equations," written by Professor of Mathematics Jim Walsh, appeared recently in the Journal of Undergraduate Mathematics and Its Applications. The 38-page "module" recounts Walsh’s efforts in bringing climate modeling into Oberlin's Math 234 Differential Equations course.

Walsh also spoke in January at the annual Joint Meetings of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and Mathematical Association of America (MAA) in Seattle, describing his new course Math 305 Mathematics of Climate Modeling in the MAA Session Mathematical Modeling in the Undergraduate Classroom.

Stephen Crowley, professor of politics, chair of Russian & east European studies, and chair of peace & conflict studies, has co-written the article “Is Putin about to face a ‘colored revolution’?” Co-written by Irina Olimpieva, the article was published in The Washington Post.

Barbara Sawhill, Hispanic studies instructor and director of the Cooper International Learning Center (CILC), is working with Radio Ambulante to develop teaching materials for language classes that use Radio Ambulante podcasts to teach Spanish.

On Monday, February 8, the team launched a series of blog posts by teachers who use Radio Ambulante in the classroom as well as examples of their teaching materials. Sawhill’s post, the first in the series, can be seen on this webpage. The lesson plan shared in the post was created with the help of Rebecca Cohen, who serves as a teaching assistant in Sawhill’s HISP 303 course.

Sawhill and Cohen, along with Carolina Guerrero, executive producer of Radio Ambulante, will present on this project at the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (NECTFL) on Friday, February, February 12, in New York City.

Associate Professor of Economics Viplav Saini presented a paper at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Industrial Organization Program Meeting on January 30 at Stanford University. Saini also presented a paper in November 2015 at the Department of Economics at California State University, Fullerton.