Webcam  |  VU Homepage  |  VUMC  |  Exploration  |  Jobline  |  Parking  |  People Finder  |

9/03/02

Appointments and Elections
Raymond N. DuBois Jr., professor of medicine, cancer biology and cell biology, and Mina Cobb, Wallace Chair in Gastroenterology and Cancer Prevention, have been appointed to the National Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases Advisory Council of the National Institutes of Health. The appointment is a four-year term.

Gordon Gee, Chancellor, was selected by The College Board to serve on The Commission on Writing in America’s Schools and Colleges, an advisory committee of nationally recognized writing experts. The College Board is adding writing to the new SAT, and will seek input from the commission on defining the important role of writing, and making recommendations to improve the quality of writing in the county. The first meeting is scheduled for Sept. 30.

Elise McMillan, director of development at the Kennedy Center, was appointed by Gov. Don Sundquist to the newly formed State Health Plan Advisory Board. The Board is charged with developing a health plan for the State of Tennessee.

Colleen Conway-Welch, dean of the School of Nursing, was recently selected by Secretary of Health and Human Service Tommy Thompson to serve as a member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service Secretary’s Council on Public Health Preparedness. The first meeting was held in Washington, D.C., Aug 26-27. The council will advise the secretary on ways to improve the public health and health care infrastructure to better enable federal, state and local governments to respond to a public health emergency or bio-terrorist event.

Awards and Honors
Elizabeth Boyd, senior lecturer of American and Southern Studies, was awarded the Georges Lurcy Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Deep South Regional Humanities Center at Tulane University.

GayNell Doll, assistant editor of Vanderbilt Magazine, recently won first place in The Tennessean’s eighth-annual fiction writing contest.

Jessica Howard, editorial assistant at the Vanderbilt Register, received three writing awards at the 2002 National Federation of Press Women’s state affiliate communications contest. Howard received first place for “Special Articles: Education”; and second place in categories “Feature Story, Non-daily Newspaper” and “Special Articles: Social Issues.”

Matthew Lang, graduate student, was awarded a Ministry Fellowship by the Fund for Theological Education. Lang is one of 40 award recipients nationally.

Papers and Presentations
Jimmy L. Davidson, professor of electrical engineering, professor of materials science and engineering, delivered an invited paper titled “Diamond Microelectromechanical Structures” to CIMTEC, the 10th International Ceramics Congress and Third Forum on New Materials in July in Florence, Italy. He also presented “Characterization of High Temperature Diamond MEMS” to HITEC, the International High Temperature Electronics Conference for electronic devices and integrated circuits designed to tolerate temperatures higher than the existing military requirement of 125 degrees Celcius, held June 2-5, in Albuquerque, N.M.

Isabel Gauthier, assistant professor of psychology, Rene’ Marois, assistant professor of psychology, and Jeffrey Schall, professor of psychology, recently attended “Attention & Performance XX — Functional Brain Imaging of Visual Cognition” in Erice, Italy. Schall was invited to deliver a tutorial presentation. Gauthier and Marois were invited as observers and presented the results of recent research in a poster session. Attendance was limited to 65 participants with representation from Europe and Japan as well as North America. Reports from the meeting will be published by Oxford University Press in a book series that is among the most prestigious and influential in psychology.

Luigi Monga, professor of French and Italian, gave a special guest presentation on “Truth Versus Fiction in Travel Narrative” at the 55th Kentucky Foreign Language Conference in Lexington April 16. Monga presented a paper on “Traducir el viaje: ilustraciones y mapas como expresiones de la narración odepórica” at the VI Congreso Internacional de Caminería Hispánica in Madrid June 27.

Patricia Ward, professor of French and comparative literature, presented a paper in August at a conference on “Victor Hugo and Language” at the Centre Culturel International de Cerisy-la-Salle in France. The conference was part of a number of such meetings honoring the 200th anniversary of Hugo’s birth. The title of Professor Ward’s paper was “L’invective politique de V. Hugo: serment, enonce performatif, imperatif moral, le cas de ‘Napoleon-le-Petit.’”

Items for “Faculty and Staff Notes” should be sent to Jessica Howard, via e-mail to jessica.howard@vanderbilt.edu, via fax to 343-7313 or by mail to the Vanderbilt Register, 708 Baker Building, 110 21st Ave. S., Nashville, TN 37203.