The Academic Minute for 2018.05.07-05.11

Academic Minute from 5.07 – 5.11

Monday, May 7th
Amy Cook – Stony Brook University
The Art and Science of Casting
Amy Cook is Associate Professor in English and Theatre Arts and Graduate Director in the Department of Theatre Arts. She specializes in the intersection of cognitive science and theories of performance and early modern drama.

Tuesday, May 8th
Mark Montgomery – Grinnell College
International Adoption
Mark Montgomery is Donald L. Wilson Professor of Enterprise and Leadership, and Professor of Economics, at Grinnell College. He is coauthor, with his wife and colleague Irene Powell, of Saving International Adoption (Vanderbilt University Press, January 2018.) Mark teaches Mathematical Economics, Econometrics, the Economics of Education, and Environmental Economics. His research has appeared in numerous academic journals including The Review of Economics and Statistics, Economic Inquiry, The Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control among others; his essays have been published by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, The Times Higher Education, The Conversation and other places. His commentary has been heard on Public Radio International’s To the Best of Our Knowledge. He is coauthor, with Irene Powell, of a mystery novel, Theoretically Dead (New Victoria Publishers, 2001). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 1982. He and Irene Powell have three grown children, two of them adopted.

Wednesday, May 9th
Robert Edgell – SUNY Polytechnic Institute
Re-Imagining Entrepreneurship
Dr. Edgell is currently an Associate Professor of Technology Management, Co-Director of the Joint Center for Creativity, Design, and Venturing, and had volunteered for one year to be the Interim Dean of the College of Business Management at SUNY Polytechnic Institute. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Swiss Business School in Zurich and has delivered research papers and lectures at Stanford University’s Law School, the University of California San Francisco’s School of Dentistry, the California College of the Arts, and the University of St. Gallen. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor at American University’s Kogod School of Business where he was named Outstanding Faculty. Also, he has taught at San Francisco State University’s College of Business.

Thursday, May 10th
Christopher Schmidt – University of Indianapolis
The Teeth of Herculaneum
Christopher W. Schmidt is Professor of Anthropology, Director of the Bioarchaeology Laboratory, and Director of the Anthropology Graduate Program at the University of Indianapolis. He received his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1998, where he developed his expertise in bioarchaeology and dental anthropology.  His research efforts primarily focus on diet in ancient people.  But he is also engaged in research concerning cremation and the analysis of thermally altered human remains.  Recently he has developed the DENTALWEAR project, which is an international, collaborative effort to study dental microwear texture in ancient groups from around the globe.

The DENTALWEAR project includes people dating from the Upper Paleolithic to the 1800s; they come from every inhabited continent and a wide range of subsistence strategies.  To date, the project has yielded data from over 1,000 people.  Ultimately, the hope is to improve our ability to identify dietary regimes so that we are better at contextualizing cultural phenomena such as settlement patterns, disease prevalence, and violence.

Friday, May 11th
Bessie Lawton – West Chester University
Ancestry DNA Tests
Dr. Lawton is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication, and her BA (Journalism) and MA (Communication Research) from the University of the Philippines. Her research interests include intercultural and interracial communication, as well as identity negotiation.