Roy Baumeister of Psychology wins lifetime career achievement award
Psychologist Roy Baumeister has received the Jack Block Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Baumeister, the lone recipient of this lifetime career achievement award in 2011, is FSU’s Francis Eppes Professor of Psychology and has published more than 450 items, including dozens of scholarly articles and 28 books. He has published in many areas of social and personality psychology, including self-control; self-esteem; emotion; social rejection and belongingness; sexuality; decision making and free will; and self-destructive behavior. The award is named for Jack Block, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley who died in 2010.

Alec Hargreaves speaks in Paris alongside 3 former prime ministers of France
Professor Alec Hargreaves was invited to speak alongside three former French prime ministers at a colloquium in Paris marking the 30th anniversary of the 1981 elections that brought the left to power in France for the first time since the 1950s. Hargreaves was one of just six academics – and the only one from outside France – invited to debate with former premiers Pierre Mauroy, Michel Rocard, and Lionel Jospin at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, France’s foremost political science school. They were scheduled to meet on May 11, exactly 30 years after Socialist Party leader François Mitterrand won the 1981 presidential elections. Hargreaves, director of FSU’s Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, spoke on the significance of the left’s election victory in relation to the hotly debated issue of immigration, on which he is recognized as a leading authority. “Alec Hargreaves is very discreet about his achievements and his reputation,” said William Cloonan, FSU’s Richard Chapple Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics and chair of the department. “He will readily admit to attending a conference, but tends not to mention that he is the keynote speaker.”

Joe Schlenoff of Chemistry is awarded Gutenberg Chair at University of Strasbourg
Joe Schlenoff, chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Mandelkern Professor of Polymer Science, and Distinguished Research Professor, has been awarded a Gutenberg Chair for 2011 at the University of Strasbourg in France. The Gutenberg Chair is awarded annually to promote international research collaborations with scientists at the University of Strasbourg, the largest university in France with 43,000 students and 4,000 researchers. Over the calendar year of 2011, Schlenoff is collaborating with research groups at Strasbourg’s medical school, at CNRS (a national laboratory), and at Strasbourg’s School of Pharmacy. While primarily based at FSU, Schlenoff travels back and forth from Strasbourg to Tallahassee, spending much of the summer in France. The chair award also supports a postdoctoral associate and a graduate student, both of whom are based in Strasbourg. The team will be developing a type of biomaterial, discovered by Schlenoff’s group at FSU, that can be used in implants for the extended release of pharmacologically active molecules. Schlenoff, who holds 20 issued and several pending patents, does research in the field of water-soluble polymers and biocompatible polymer composites and blends. To read more, go to http://www.fsu.com/News-Archive/2011/April/Chemistry-professor-Joseph-Schlenoff-awarded-prestigious-Gutenberg-Chair-at-Universite-de-Strasbourg

Elaine Treharne of English becomes a fellow of the Royal Historical Society
Professor Elaine Treharne of the Department of English has been elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a scholarly organization chartered by Britain’s Queen Victoria in 1868. “Since then the society has evolved from being a club for scholarly gentlemen to its current status as the foremost body for those engaged professionally in the study of the past,” the group’s website says. In addition, the website says that those elected to the rank of fellow must have made “an original contribution to historical scholarship in the form of significant published work.” Headquartered in London, the organization “of nearly 3,000 fellows and members draws together individuals from across the world, engaged professionally in researching and presenting public history, whether in archives, libraries, museums or the heritage industry.” Treharne, who is a member of FSU’s interdisciplinary History of Text Technologies (HoTT) program, specializes in Anglo-Saxon and later medieval manuscripts and texts. In 2009, she was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (of London), one of the oldest and most prestigious Royal Societies in the world.

Science education survey co-created by Paul Cottle is featured in Physics Today
Featured in the July 2011 issue of Physics Today is a science education survey co-created by Paul Cottle of FSU’s Department of Physics. The survey uses data already available online to measure how prepared U.S. high school graduates are to study college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The state ranking tops in the preparedness survey is Massachusetts, while the state ranking lowest is Mississippi. “The big unpleasant surprise is that so few states are doing a good job,” Cottle said. Data used for the survey included information from teacher-certification requirements, Advanced Placement (AP) physics and calculus tests, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and surveys done by the American Institute of Physics. Cottle, FSU’s Steve Edwards Professor of Physics, has been elected vice chair of the Executive Committee of the American Physics Society’s Forum on Education (FEd) this year and will become chair in 2012. FEd exists to involve APS members in activities related to physics education at all stages, from elementary to grad school and life-long learning. APS has more than 45,000 members. To read more about the survey, go to http://physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v64/i7/p29_s1

Religion grad student Shannon Dunn is awarded 2 prestigious national fellowships
Shannon Dunn, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Religion, has been awarded a highly selective $25,000 Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship for 2011-2012. She was also awarded a dissertation completion fellowship for 2011-2012 from the American Association of University Women (AAUW) – which she has had to decline because of rules restricting the acceptance of concurrent national fellowships. “But I am honored nonetheless,” Dunn said about the AAUW award. To give an idea of how selective the Newcombe fellowships are, figures show that for the previous year (2010-2011), only 20 of 670 applicants were awarded fellowships. The Newcombe, administered by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, is intended for doctoral candidates in the final year of dissertation work on religious and ethical values. “The Newcombe award will give me relief from teaching, which I need in order to finish my dissertation in a timely manner,” Dunn said. Dunn, who came to FSU in 2006 and hopes to finish by August 2012, specializes in comparative religious ethics, particularly Islamic and Christian ethics, with a sub-area of concentration in studies of gender and politics. “The focus of my dissertation is gender justice in contemporary Islamic communities in the U.S.,” Dunn said. “In particular, I address how legal conceptions of gender within Islamic sharia and Western liberal political theory are problematic — albeit in different ways — with regard to the concept of private/public spheres.” As a matter of fact, Dunn and fellow graduate student Rosemary Kellison earlier won an award for a journal paper they co-wrote about Muslim ethics and violence against women. Dunn’s advisor is Professor John Kelsay, and she also works closely with Associate Professor Aline Kalbian, both of FSU’s religion department. “Shannon Dunn is a wonderful student,” Kelsay said, “and those of us working with her are very pleased that she has received this recognition.” In turn, Dunn expressed her gratitude. “I am extremely grateful to the Woodrow Wilson foundation, as well as to the many people who have helped me to get to this place.”

Chemistry grad student Corey Thompson wins elite Ford dissertation fellowship
Chemistry graduate student Corey Thompson is among just 20 students nationwide to win a 2011 Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, which includes a stipend of $21,000. Thompson, who works in the lab of Assistant Professor Michael Shatruk of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, is trying to develop new materials for magnets. His dissertation is titled “Magneto-Structural Correlations in Rare-Earth Cobalt Pnictides.” The Ford Fellowship Program, which offers support at the predoctoral, dissertation, and postdoctoral levels, is administered by the National Research Council, an arm of the scientifically elite U.S. National Academies. “Through its fellowship programs, the Ford Foundation seeks to increase the diversity of the nation’s college and university faculties by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, to maximize the educational benefits of diversity, and to increase the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students,” the foundation’s website said. A Miami native, Thompson earned a B.S. in chemistry in 2006 from the University of Florida. To learn more, go to http://www.fsu.com/News/Chemistry-doctoral-student-receives-2011-Ford-Foundation-Dissertation-Fellowship

Ph.D. student Meg Brown of English department wins Mellon fellowship
Meaghan Brown, a Ph.D. student in FSU’s interdisciplinary History of Text Technologies (HoTT) program, is one of just 15 students nationwide to win a $25,000 Mellon Dissertation Fellowship for Research in Original Sources. The fellowship will enable Brown to travel to England, where she will study the 16th century print industry in England and continue to work on her dissertation, to be titled "A Good Report of England: Shaping the Nation in Early Modern Print." While there, Brown plans to do archival research in the British Library, the National Maritime Museum, the Lincolnshire Archives, and the University Libraries at Oxford and Cambridge. Brown has been working on her project under the direction of Professor Anne Coldiron, herself an award-winning scholar, and was one of the first students to join FSU’s innovative HoTT program. “Meg’s dissertation project is very promising, which heralds good things to come from this talented emerging scholar,” Coldiron said. Professor Elizabeth Spiller, who heads HoTT, is thrilled at Brown’s fellowship. “This fellowship is dedicated to supporting work in original source materials in ways that align precisely with HoTT’s focus on the history of the material features of texts, so I am particularly pleased at this national recognition for Meg.” Brown, who received her bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and a master’s from the University of Texas-Austin, is happy with the scholarly environment she has found at FSU. “History of Text Technologies has been one of the most flexible and adventurous learning environments I’ve ever had the privilege of participating in,” Brown said. In Spring 2011, Brown was also awarded one of FSU’s International Dissertation Fellowships and participated in a seminar at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. She will begin her studies in England in August 2011. To read more, go to http://www.fsu.com/Featured-Stories/FSU-grad-student-plans-HoTT-research-with-25-000-Mellon-Fellowship

Grant leverages expertise of A&S faculty to help state’s science teachers
This summer, faculty members from the College of Arts and Sciences have been working with more than 200 middle- and high-school teachers from across northern Florida to help them take their science knowledge and teaching methods to the next level. The project is called Biology Institute and Online Support: Collaborative Opportunities to Promote Excellence in Science (BIOSCOPES) and is being led by biologist Joseph Travis, dean of the college. It is part of a $3.64 million professional development program funded by the Florida Department of Education’s Math and Science Partnership. “With new science standards in the schools and an increasing emphasis on science for the future, we need to help teachers stay abreast of new discoveries and new ways to bring those discoveries to the classroom,” Travis said. Co-principal investigators on the grant are Laura Lang, Rabieh Razzouk, Mabry Gaboardi, and Danielle Sherdan of the Learning Systems Institute. The program was designed and put into place by the Florida Center for Research in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (FCR-STEM). For more information, go to http://www.fsu.edu/news/2011/05/25/science.teachers/

Darrin McMahon of History speaks at Atlantic magazine’s Aspen Ideas Festival
Darrin McMahon, the Ben Weider Professor of History, and philosopher Sissela Bok, a senior visiting fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, co-presented a talk on “The History of Happiness” at the Aspen Ideas Festival, held June 27-July 3 in Aspen, Colo. The festival, co-sponsored by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic magazine, is billed as an international gathering of inspired and provocative thinkers, writers, artists, business people, teachers, and other leaders drawn together to delve deeply into a world of ideas, thought, and discussion. Speakers in the 2011 lineup included Lance Armstrong, Sandra Day O’Connor, Thomas Friedman, Arianna Huffington, David Axelrod, Steven Chu, Alan Greenspan, Queen Noor of Jordan, Wynton Marsalis, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, Chris Matthews of MSNBC, and Derek Bok, former president of Harvard. The presentation by McMahon and Sissela Bok focused on what the history of happiness reveals about the present of happiness and was part of the festival’s “happiness track,” organized by Harvard University psychiatry Professor Daniel Gilbert. McMahon wrote the 2006 book Happiness: A History.

Austin Mast of Biological Science to work on $10 million NSF digitization project
Biology Associate Professor Austin Mast will team up with FSU Professor Greg Riccardi and University of Florida researchers as part of a five-year, $10 million National Science Foundation (NSF) project to digitize biological specimens. It will be called Integrated Digitized Biocollections or iDigBio. Materials to be digitized include field notes, photos, 3-D images, vocalizations, and other scientific and geographic information. Mast has previous experience with digital biological collections as director of FSU’s Robert K. Godfrey Herbarium, and the new project will digitize biological collections scattered around the country. The information will be valuable not only to scientists but to policymakers and the general public. “When a bug crawls out of a crate in a shipping warehouse,” Riccardi said, “customs officials need to determine if that species will create environmental problems and what to do about it.” Riccardi is director of the Center for Information Management in Scientific Communication in FSU’s College of Communication and Information. To read more, go to http://www.fsu.com/News/Florida-State-to-take-part-in-10-million-project-to-digitize-nation-s-biological-collections

A&S students to go abroad for Fulbrights in 2011-2012
Four FSU students have won Fulbright awards and two students have been named Fulbright alternates, said Craig Filar, director of FSU’s Office of National Fellowships. William Boyce – who graduated summa cum laude in Spring 2011 with a B.A. in history, creative writing, and religious studies – has received a full grant to go to the United Kingdom, where he plans to do research at the University of Glascow on the relationship between theology and the arts. Also receiving a full grant is poet Jacob Newberry, who is pursuing his Ph.D. in creative writing and who plans to go to Israel with his Fulbright. Winning a Fulbright English teaching assistantship for South Korea is Lara Musser, who graduated magna cum laude in Spring 2011 with a B.A. in anthropology and literature. Another winner of a teaching assistantship, Jesse Damiani, has declined the award and instead will pursue an M.F.A. in creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Damiani graduated summa cum laude in Spring 2011 with a B.A. in creative writing and a B.A. in media production. An alternate for the full grant award is Dianna Bell, a graduate student in the Department of Religion, who proposed a project for Mali. And an alternate for a teaching assistantship in Argentina is Michael Shea, who graduated summa cum laude in Spring 2011 with a B.A. in literature and philosophy.

New $1.5M grant will aid virologist Fanxiu Zhu in study of cancer linked to AIDS
Virologist Fanxiu Zhu, an expert on a type of cancer linked with AIDS, has received a new $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Zhu studies viral proteins associated with Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS), a onetime rare cancer that began to appear frequently in the early days of the AIDS epidemic and whose trademark symptom was unsightly skin lesions. Even today, it is still the most common cancer in some parts of Africa. “Kaposi’s sarcoma has become the defining symptom of AIDS, so studying the virus that causes KS is obviously important for understanding AIDS and AIDS-related cancers,” Zhu said. That virus is known as human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8) or KS-associated herpesvirus (KSHV). Zhu, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Science, has been zeroing in on a viral protein called “open reading frame 45” (ORF45). “In fact, Dr. Zhu has discovered that the protein is ‘packaged’ with each new virus, meaning that it is present when a virus infects a new cell,” said P. Bryant Chase, chair of the biology department. “Dr. Zhu’s work on KSHV ORF45 aims to give us a drug target that is specific to the virus,” Chase said. “The newly funded studies should take him even closer to that goal.” To read more, go http://fsu.edu/news/2011/06/02/cancer.research/

Botanist Akshinthala Prasad discovers new kind of algae
While taking a new look at an old algae sample from Northeast Florida’s St. Johns River, FSU botanist Akshinthala K.S. K. Prasad has discovered a new genus and species of microscopic plant. The discovery, which concerns a kind of algae called diatoms, was made possible by a state-of-the-art electron microscope at Florida State University. Prasad has named the new diatom Livingstonia (which denotes the genus) palatkaensis (which denotes the species). The name is in honor of FSU biology Professor Emeritus Robert J. Livingston, with whom Prasad collaborated for many years and whose grant funded the study that produced the algae sample nearly a decade ago, and Palatka, Fla., a town near the sample site. “Our discovery is both exciting and humbling because it underscores what we still don’t know about our aquatic environment,” Prasad said. Along with FSU doctoral alumnus James A. Nienow, Prasad describes the new plant in the scientific journal Phycologia. To read more and to see an image of the new plant, go to http://fsu.edu/news/2011/06/29/new.species/

Huffington Postpicks up op-ed piece by Ian MacDonald of EOAS
An op-ed piece co-written by oceanography Professor Ian MacDonald was a featured blog on the Huffington Post website on July 15, 2011. Titled “The BP Spill One Year Later: Renewing Trust Along With Ecology,” the piece talks about how complacency has settled in now that the spill is out of the headlines. MacDonald and his co-author, John Amos of Sky Truth, say that while there have been more than 5,000 reports of oil and related hazardous material spills in the Gulf since the well was capped, investigation of those alleged spills has been lacking. The authors call for more vigilant monitoring of the Gulf and stepped-up prosecution of offenders. To read the blog, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-r-macdonald/the-bp-spill-one-year-lat_b_900404.html

Julianna Baggott of English speaks out on National Public Radio
Associate Professor Julianna Baggott of the Creative Writing Program was featured on National Public Radio’s (NPR) All Things Considered, reading a short essay about the aftermath of Osama Bin Laden’s death. The essay, entitled “Cheering the End of Bin Laden: Let the Kids Yell,” aired as part of the May 3 broadcast. It defended the spontaneous celebrations that sprang up in many U.S. cities after the announcement that the terrorist leader had been killed. The celebrations prompted several high-profile criticisms, and Baggott sought to counter those. “I deeply understand feeling out of sync, emotionally, with your countrymen,” said Baggott. “But I think people are mistaking relief and a release of fear and collective breath-holding for hate.” She also expressed hope that young people might learn what it means to “[raise] their voices, loudly, together” and use that discovery in more practical ways in the future. “It's a good skill to learn because maybe before the next war starts, they'll be the ones who learned to take to the streets, chanting; maybe next time it will be in protest against war. They were claiming their voices. Let them remember it proudly.” Baggott has published columns at npr.org and appeared on several programs, including Tell Me More and Talk of the Nation.

Physics grad student and psychology grad student are named P.E.O. Scholars
Jennifer Misuraca and April Smith, Ph.D. students in the College of Arts and Sciences, have each won a $15,000 P.E.O. Scholar Award for 2011-2012 from among hundreds of candidates in the United States and Canada. Misuraca, a physics student whose advisors are Professor Stephan von Molnar and Professor Peng Xiong, is researching spin-based electronics. The P.E.O. money is helping her to do summer research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, to present her research results at conferences, and to buy analytical software. According to the Department of Physics website, Misuraca has already had her research published, including an article (of which she is first author) in the prominent physics journal Physical Review. Smith is a psychology student whose advisor is suicide researcher and Lawton Professor Thomas Joiner. “Part of my research focuses on understanding disordered eating in minority populations,” she said in her web profile. “Having an eating disorder can result in many painful consequences, including suicide.” Smith says the P.E.O. award will fund some of her research costs, enable her to present her research at national conferences, and help to defray the cost of a yearlong internship. Both students were nominated for their awards by the local members of P.E.O. International. The initials stand for “Philanthropic Educational Organization,” a sisterhood founded in 1869 and dedicated to motivating and educating women to achieve their dreams. To read more, go to http://ogfa.fsu.edu/News/In-the-News/Doctoral-Students-Named-P.E.O.-Scholars

Language students win highly competitive Boren Scholarship for study abroad
FSU undergraduates Madison Marks and Brandon Beardsley, who have taken Arabic classes in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, have each won a Boren Scholarship for 2011-2012. These scholarships provide as much as $20,000 to U.S. undergraduate students who want to study abroad in countries considered strategic to U.S. interests. Marks, a Middle Eastern studies major who expects to graduate in 2013, intends to study Arabic in Jordan during the entire 2011-2012 academic year, while Beardsley, double-majoring in international affairs and Middle Eastern studies, intends to study Arabic in Syria during that time. Additionally, in Summer 2011, Marks received a Winthrop-King scholarship from FSU for study in Amman, Jordan, where she will continue to study while on the Boren Scholarship.

Three from A&S win Graduate Research Fellowships from NSF
FSU alumna Kim Reuter, undergraduate Vivek Pal, and grad student Akinobu Watanabe have won Graduate Research Fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The fellowships, which the NSF awards to promising graduate students each year to foster upcoming talent in the research sciences, gives students $30,000 per year for three years to cover education costs and living expenses. Reuter, who graduated in 2009 with a degree in biology, was previously a winner of an Undergraduate Research and Creativity Award while an undergraduate. “When I found out that I won the fellowship, I couldn’t stop smiling for at least three days,” said Reuter. She will be continuing her studies beginning this fall at Temple University, where she plans to focus on applied conservation biology. Pal graduated in Spring 2011 with a degree in math and has accepted an offer to continue his studies at Columbia University. “I am really excited and honored to be selected for the NSF Graduate Fellowship,” Pal said. “This award will help me focus my time and energy on research in number theory at Columbia.” Pal was also a recipient of a Goldwater Scholarship in 2010. Watanabe, a master’s student in biology, came to FSU from the University of Chicago and is working on a research project on growth in crocodilian species. “Being awarded the fellowship gave me a lot of encouragement and motivation because it meant that the scientific community saw significant potential in myself and my work,” said Watanabe. “The fellowship will allow me to travel to institutions around the globe to collect data from specimens that are not readily available in the U.S. … It will undoubtedly provide many valuable opportunities for my research and career.” Graduate students and faculty members seeking more information about national awards for graduate students should contact the Office of Graduate Fellowships and Awards. http://ogfa.fsu.edu

Susan Blessing appointed to national physics committee
Susan Blessing has been appointed by the American Physical Society (APS) to the 2011 APS Committee on the Status of Women in Physics (CSWP). This committee, founded in 1972 to address the encouragement and career development of women physicists, consists of nine volunteer members appointed by the APS president for a three-year term. Throughout its 37-year history, CSWP has been an active sponsor of studies, programs, and publications to foster women in physics. Blessing is the director of the Women in Math, Science and Engineering (WIMSE) Program at FSU. Women remain underrepresented in the numbers of physics degrees awarded at all levels in the United States. For example, according to NSF statistics for the academic year ending in 2006 (the most recent year represented on the website), women earned fewer than 21 percent of bachelor’s degrees in physics, fewer than 24 percent of master’s degrees in physics, and fewer than 17 percent of doctoral degrees in physics.

Anders Ericsson to give invited lecture about gifted children at APA annual conference
Psychologist Anders Ericsson, an internationally known expert on how people achieve amazing levels of expertise, has been chosen to deliver the Esther Katz Rosen Lecture on Gifted Children and Adolescents at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. He is scheduled to present the lecture in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 6, 2011. “The lectureship honors Esther Katz Rosen, Ph.D., a prominent clinical psychologist who specialized in working with children and was drawn to helping gifted children achieve their potential,” the APA website says. Ericsson’s research on expertise, which he says can be achieved through 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, is often featured in major news outlets, recently including The New York Times, The Guardian, and The St. Petersburg Times. Ericsson is FSU’s Conradi Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology.

Undergrad meteorology student Wright Dobbs wins summer internship in Germany
The German Academic Exchange Service, known officially as Deutscher Akademischer Austasch Dienst (DAAD), has awarded one of its Research Internships in Science and Engineering (RISE) to FSU undergraduate Wright Dobbs. Dobbs, a rising junior studying meteorology, was one of about 650 students chosen from a pool of around 1,600. He will be studying in the city of Muncheberg, working with three other students from the U.S. and Canada on issues related to climate change. “We will mostly be studying the impact of drained and un-drained peatlands on gas emission from the soil,” said Dobbs. Dobbs credits Phillip Sura of the meteorology department for his help during the application process, as well as Craig Filar of the Office of National Fellowships, who brought the opportunity to his attention. “I highly recommend that anyone who wants to pursue an internship in any field of study should see Dr. Filar,” he said. “He is a phenomenal help to any student.” The RISE program brings biology, chemistry, physics, earth sciences, and engineering students from the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada to Germany each summer to work at colleges and universities across the country. It is sometimes thought of as the German equivalent of a Fulbright award. Students receive stipends to help cover expenses and are housed by the partner universities and research institutions where they study.

Undergrad creative writer Amanda Parker wins fiction prize
The Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers awarded FSU undergraduate Amanda Parker its undergraduate fiction prize at its 2011 conference in Fairhope, Ala. The contest judges chose Parker’s story “Limbo in Bithlo” over entries from students at a dozen universities in the Gulf Coast region. The story was the result of a writing exercise in creative writing Associate Professor Elizabeth Stuckey-French’s class. Assistant Professor Ned Stuckey-French, who directed Parker’s honors thesis and taught her in a nonfiction workshop, commented on Parker’s enthusiasm and ability in multiple genres. “The Stuckey-Frenches have been coming at her from both sides — fiction and nonfiction,” he said. “Amanda can hit for power from both sides of the plate.”

Recent FSU physics alum Scott Riggs is first author on paper generating excitement among physicists
An article whose first author, Scott Riggs, received his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in physics at FSU was featured prominently in three separate sections in the April 2011 edition of the prestigious journal Nature Physics. First, there was the scientific article itself. Second, the article was discussed at length in the “News & Views” section. And third, the work was cited in an editorial commemorating the 100th anniversary of the discovery of superconductivity. Riggs, who currently holds a postdoctoral position at Stanford University, received his Ph.D. from FSU in 2010. Besides Riggs, other authors on the paper with Tallahassee connections include FSU Assistant Professor Oskar Vafek of the Department of Physics and Greg Boebinger and Jonathon Kemper of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. “This work was carried out as part of Scott’s thesis work with Greg Boebinger on specific heat measurements on a high temperature superconductor using the 45T hybrid magnet at the Mag Lab,” said Mark Riley, FSU’s Raymond K. Sheline Professor of Physics and chair of the physics department. “Sufficiently high magnetic fields should destroy the superconductivity, but the big result here is that the superconducting gap survives or persists to much higher fields than expected past the zero resistance transition.” Riley said the work was “the talk of a recent APS meeting.” To read the original article, go to http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v7/n4/full/nphys1921.html

David Kirby of English is featured in New York Times column
David Kirby, FSU’s Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English, was recently featured in the business section of The New York Times.  The piece was part of the “Frequent Flier” series written by Times columnist Joan Raymond and took the form of a short essay written by Kirby, as told to Raymond. The essay concerned Kirby’s observations as a traveling poet and the reactions he gets from fellow air travelers when he reveals his profession, many of which center on the low financial prospects a life in poetry offers. “People will politely tell me there’s probably not much money in the poetry business,” Kirby said. “I sometimes will tell them I just wrote a sonnet the other day and wound up selling it for $175,000. Some people may actually believe me. Other times, I’ll say there are all kinds of wealth, and while everybody needs to make a living, it’s really poetry that makes me a rich man.” To read the piece, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/business/03flier.html

Two meteorology undergrads win Hollings scholarships from NOAA
Kyle Ahern of Boynton Beach, Fla. and Nick Trombetta of Plano, Texas, both of whom have finished their sophomore years at FSU, have won the Ernest F. Hollings Scholarship from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The Hollings is a two-year award that funds its scholars at $8,000 per year during their junior and senior years, said Craig Filar, director of FSU’s Office of National Fellowships. A summer research internship at NOAA between the junior and senior years is a key benefit of the scholarship, Filar said.

Poet and Ph.D. alum wins publication with prestigious Crashaw Prize
Salt Publishing announced in May that Rebecca Lehmann is among the winners of the 2010 Richard Crashaw Prize. Lehmann, who received her Ph.D. in creative writing from FSU in the Spring 2011, won for her poetry manuscript Between the Crackups. As part of the prize, the manuscript will be published by Salt later in 2011. Salt was established as Salt Magazine, an Australian poetry journal, in 1990, and today publishes poetry in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States. The Crashaw Prize is awarded each year to between one and four new poets, and provides for simultaneous publication in all five countries. “I'd been working on the manuscript for the past three years, and was so surprised when I got the news that I nearly fell over in my kitchen,” said Lehmann. “It's a great way to finish up my graduate career at FSU.” Lehmann thanked FSU poetry instructors Erin Belieu and Barbara Hamby for providing her with input on the manuscript while it was in progress.
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About the Arts and Sciences News Digest
The College of Arts and Sciences News Digest includes information about the research and educational accomplishments of A&S faculty, staff, and students. Aimed at fostering collaboration and encouraging excellence within the college, items include news about major grant awards, professional honors, scholarly publications, advances in research, and major gifts. If you would like to submit a news item to be considered for the next digest, please send it to Susan Hellstrom at shellstrom@fsu.edu