December 2004

CLA UPDATE FOR FACULTY & STAFF

Toby Parcel

Between now and the start of the year, the School of Liberal Arts will be making its transition to the College of Liberal Arts.

Last month, Purdue's Board of Trustees approved our request, as well as many other schools on campus, to change "school" to "college." This renaming better reflects the number of programs in Liberal Arts and is more consistent with how academic units are named at our peer institutions.

The scholarship and teaching in Liberal Arts continue to be recognized. The Department of Communication was praised at its annual conference, National Communication Association (NCA), this past month. Three of Communication's programs – interpersonal, organizational and health – were ranked nationally in the top 10 by NCA.

Also, Robert Novak, faculty member and associate head in the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences was named a fellow by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). This prestigious honor was in recognition of his 27 years of dedication to the field.

These are significant examples of others recognizing the accomplishments that Purdue's Liberal Arts continues to make. The accolades are a great way to wrap up 2004 as we look forward to 2005.

I also want to thank the 13 faculty who participated in our second Working with the Media workshop in early November:

• Margie Berns (English);
  
• Joshua Boyd and Patrice Buzzanell (Communication);
  
• Paul Dixon and John Kirby (Foreign Languages and Literatures);
  
• Robert Novak (Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences);
  
• Andrew Buckser (Sociology and Anthropology);
  
• Barbara Dixon (Dean's Office);
  
• Doug Hurt (History);
  
• Betsy Hoza, and Kip Williams (Psychological Sciences);
  
• and David Sigman and Steve Visser (Patti and Rusty Rueff Department of Visual and Performing Arts).

The workshop, offered by the Purdue News Service, is a great opportunity for faculty to learn about the value of publicizing Liberal Arts discovery by working with the news media. This past year our research and programs have been reported on by high-profile news outlets, including:

  The New York Times (Christine Weber-Fox and Anne Smith);
 Wall Street Journal (Susie Swithers and Terry Davidson);
 ABC TV (Robert Novak);
 Los Angeles Times (Glenn Sparks);
 Christian Science Monitor (Erina MacGeorge);
 The Associated Press (Paul Dixon);
 and US News World and Report (Tom Templin) and (Franklin Lambert).

Good luck as you finish the semester.

Happy Holidays!

Toby L. Parcel

RESEARCH REPORTS

Purdue communication program ranks in the top 10

Three programs in Purdue's Department of Communication were ranked among the top 10 in the United States by the nation's largest communication association.

The department's graduate program was ranked fourth in interpersonal communication, and seventh and eighth in organizational and health communication, respectively, by the National Communication Association.

"These national rankings reflect the quality of research in the Department of Communication, as well as how we prepare doctoral students to enter the academic arena or the professional sector," said Howard Sypher, a professor of communication who led the department since 2002. "Our alumni are leaders in the profession, helping us increase our visibility. At the same time, Purdue continues to recruit the best students and faculty." More

Purdue, Japanese researchers to create more human-like robots

Purdue's Department of Health and Kinesiology is part of a four-year project to enable humanoid robots to move more like people and adapt quickly to new situations so that they can complete a variety of tasks they weren't specifically programmed to perform.

"What we are going to try to do is capture the essence of how people learn movement skills," said Howard Zelaznik, professor of health and kinesiology.

Zelaznik & research team

Zelaznik will collaborate with a Purdue professor of electrical and computer engineering who specializes in robotics, and researchers from the Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Japan, which leads the world in humanoid-robot research.

The work is funded with a four-year, $900,000 grant from the National Science Foundation's Information Technology Research program.

Zelaznik explained that humans are able to automatically combine a series of basic movements, such as pushing, lifting or grasping, to perform new tasks spontaneously.

"For example, if I asked you to open a door and you were carrying two bags of groceries, you would know how to do that the first time through because you have in your repertoire the flexibility to combine old skills into new ones," Zelaznik said. "We'd like to see whether we can figure out if there is a computationally reasonable way for a robot to take a set of skills and combine them into new skills rather efficiently, flexibly and quickly." More

'Seven Against Thebes' - Winning the American West, Latin style

Charles Ross

The Latin epic that influenced a Japanese film classic and a Hollywood Western now has a more modern voice, thanks to a Purdue University English professor.

Charles Ross, chair of the comparative literature program, translated from Latin into American verse the "Thebiad," which was first published by Publius Papinius Statius in A.D. 92. His Thebaid: Seven Against Thebes will be published by John Hopkins University Press in December.

Statius' epic strongly influenced European literature, Ross says. It also provides an apt analogue to the famous Japanese film The Seven Samurai and the Hollywood film that imitated it, the 1960s Western Magnificent Seven, which starred Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen.

"Each of these works features seven heroes who fight a losing battle in what seems to be a good cause," Ross says. More

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

Christmas continues to be a Dickens of a holiday

No matter how flashy the holiday season gets, the Victorian-era spirit of Charles Dickens will always be present, says a Purdue University English professor.

"Dickens continues to be one of the chief spokespersons for the holiday season," says William J. Palmer, an English professor who studies Charles Dickens and film.

Dickens' influences permeate the holiday, Palmer says. For years, people have celebrated the holiday season in Dickens' style with Victorian-era decorations in their homes or communities. Now, people can even eat like Dickens.

"In the last five years, some of the most popular Dickens items have been cookbooks and guides for drink mixes," Palmer says. "This is not surprising because his novels are filled with food and drink, especially his Christmas stories. Just think about the large turkey Scrooge brings the Cratchit family on Christmas Day." More

Basketball brawl moves fans to center court

Sports fans can't hide behind their home teams anymore, says a Purdue University social psychologist.

"Fans at a basketball game, like any member of a large audience, feel a sense of anonymity watching from the stands," says Kipling Williams, who researches bullying and ostracism. "The lights are on the court and the fans, surrounded by thousands of others, feel like they are invisible.

"But the incident between the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons dispels the myth that fans are anonymous. As bad as the event was, the sanctions – fans banned from arenas and the possibility of criminal charges – will make it clear to fans that they can be accountable for their behavior." More

Prof: Religion distinguishes red states from blue states

The religious composition of states helps to explain why some states went red while others went blue in the presidential election, says a Purdue University sociologist who studies religion.

"Many political commentators and strategists overlooked how significant religion would be in this election," says James D. Davidson, a professor of sociology. "Not only did the exit polls show moral values as a primary concern for many voting Americans, but now, looking more closely at the states, it also is easy to see how religious identification played a role in going blue or red."

In 31 states (including the District of Columbia), the majority of voters chose Republican candidate President George W. Bush, while 20 states were claimed by Democrat candidate Sen. John Kerry.

"But those colors also represent different religions," Davidson says.

The red states have the largest populations of Protestants and Mormons. The blue states have larger populations of Catholics, Jews, people with "other" religions (such as Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism), and people with no religious affiliation. More

Purdue survey expert: Numbers in political polls may be deceptive

Most political polls can't predict the outcome of presidential elections because such polls are based on individual preferences and don't equate to Electoral College votes, says a Purdue expert on survey methodology.

"The point estimate has nothing to do with the results in a national election," says John Stahura, a professor of sociology and director of Purdue's Social Research Institute. "State polls mean more, because they're based on popular vote and can actually be a pretty good predictor."

Individual polls could be extrapolated by state to get an Electoral College estimate, but a sample of 600 to 1,000 people for each state would be required. Most big polling companies use at most 100 respondents from any one state in national polls and usually use fewer than 100 to none from most states, Stahura says.

But the biggest problem Stahura sees in the methods of national polling companies is that they don't report response rates, which could miss polling up to 70 percent of the people who are called. With response rates that low, it's difficult to project the results to the population, he says. More

OTHER NEWS

Purdue offers opportunity for teachers interested in East Asia

A history professor is providing a rare opportunity to make teaching about East Asia more accessible. Thanks to Sally Hastings' seminar, middle and high school teachers can receive as much as $1,000 in funding and materials in return for a $20 seminar registration fee.

"In addition to history, we'll cover such topics as East Asian landscape, Chinese art, folk tales and even Japanese cartoons," said Hastings, associate professor of history. "We'll also take a glance at U.S.-East Asian relations." More

Purdue students to be first to get fit as personal trainers

Fitness session at Ismail

Students planning to pursue a career in personal fitness training have a new option at Purdue, which will be the first university in the nation to offer a four-year degree with a concentration in this area.

"More people are turning to personal fitness trainers to design exercise programs and serve as guides to combat obesity and obtain healthy lifestyles," said Ken Baldwin, program coordinator for personal fitness training at Purdue's Department of Health and Kinesiology. "The certification industry for personal fitness trainers has exploded. As a result, it has become easier for anyone, even without the necessary health background, to acquire a certification because there is no nationally recognized set of standards for performance, ethics, certification and practices. More

Purdue Anxiety Clinic serves children

These children and their parents or other caregivers can participate in a group treatment intervention designed to give kids and parents strategies to manage these fears and worries, says Judy Conger, professor of psychological sciences and director of the Anxiety Clinic, which is housed in the Psychology Treatment and Research Clinics. More

Veteran's Day: Indiana veterans benefit year-round from Purdue speech science students

Speech students

Lindsey Leidig (center) and Mariel Perez (right), both masters students in the Purdue University Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, work with Bill Davis, a patient at the Indiana Veteran's Home.

Since 1998, Purdue's Speech-Language Pathology Clinic has provided speech assessment and therapy services to men and women living at Indiana Veteran's Home.

As part of their clinical experience, graduate students working under the supervision of a Purdue licensed speech-language pathologists provide annual screenings, as well as assessment and therapy services for patients with a variety of speech, language and swallowing disorders.

Sport may offer the game plan for peace in a country gripped by ethnic and religious strife

To some basketball enthusiasts in Lebanon, the game is more than just the national sport.

Coaches and the executive manager of the Lebanese Basketball Federation have traveled to Indiana, where basketball is king, to learn coaching and sports management best practices at Indiana University and to tap the expertise at Purdue University and the University of Notre Dame in youth leadership and peace building.

The Lebanese coaches, all of different religious faiths, will spend three weeks absorbing this expertise as they try to reverse an increasingly disturbing trend of violence at Lebanese basketball games.

"They all agree this is a possible solution," said Don Mitchell, director of the Indiana Center for Cultural Exchange and professor of philosophy. "This could help the Lebanese sporting events become more peaceful but it could also ripple into the homes, hearts and minds of the people involved." More  

FACULTY AND BOOKS

– John Greene and Brant Burleson, professors of communication, received the Gerald R. Miller Book Award for their co-edited book, The Handbook of Communication and Social Interaction Skills. The award is from the National Communication Association Interpersonal Communication Division.

The association also awarded Robin Clair, associate professor of communication, the outstanding book of the year award for her book Expressions of Ethnography. This award is from the Ethnography Division.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Purdue Theater upcoming productions include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Feb. 18-26.

Purdue Repertory Dance Company to perform winter concert

Winter Works 2004

The Purdue Repertory Dance Company will present its Winter Works 2004 Dance Concert on Dec. 9-11 in Stewart Center's Experimental Theatre.

The dance company, which is housed in the Patti and Rusty Rueff Department of Visual and Performing Arts, will perform at 8 p.m. on Dec. 9, 10 and 11. There also will be a performance at 3 p.m. on Dec. 11.

One of the works that will be highlighted will be "And, About, Around," a group work choreographed by Carol Cunningham, professor of dance.

"Through abstract gesture, "And, About, Around" depicts behavioral changes among friends who have spent too much time together in a close environment," Cunningham said. "As the piece unfolds, certain individuals show less tolerance toward those who display peculiar habits. More

Purdue classics program announces first public lecture series

The theme for the inaugural series is Women in the Ancient World. All lectures are free and open to the public.

"The classics are vibrant at Purdue," says Patrice Rankine, director of Interdisciplinary Programs in Classics and associate professor of classics. "There continues to be an increase in the number of students enrolled in Greek and Latin language courses, as well as our mythology courses.

Upcoming speakers for the lectures, which all begin at 8 p.m., include: