The Academic Minute from 05.25 – 05.29
Monday, May 25th
Brian Harward – Allegheny College
Congressional Responsiveness to Presidential Power
Brian M. Harward, Ph.D. is Professor and Robert G. Seddig Chair in Political Science at Allegheny College in Meadville, PA where he has taught for 10 years. He is also the Director of the Center for Political Participation on campus. He is a well-known and prolific writer who just published his fifth book entitled The Presidency in Times of Crisis and Disaster. He has published more than 50 articles and presented at over 50 conferences on topics as varied as presidential campaigns, local and national elections, presidential power, congressional oversight, civic and political engagement. He earned his PhD from the University of Georgia, Athens, GA in 2003.
Tuesday, May 26th
Janyl Jumadinova – Allegheny College
A Submersible Robot that Tests Water Quality
Dr. Janyl Jumadinova is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. She teaches courses in introductory programming, algorithms, compilers, artificial intelligence, and multi-agent and robotic systems. She works with students on research-project collaborations that produce publishable results. Her research is driven by the goal of designing autonomous systems that can improve our quality of life. She has designed robots that help those with special health needs continue living independently at home, especially patients who are ill or elderly.
She integrates methods from computational economics, game theory and market-based techniques with emergent computational techniques in intelligent systems to solve these problems. Her broad research interests include information aggregation, multi-agent and multi-robot systems, wearable sensor technologies, crowdsourcing, game theory, and artificial intelligence. She holds a bachelor’s degree in management information systems, a master’s in mathematics and a doctorate in information technology from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Wednesday, May 27th
Caryl Waggett – Allegheny College
Links Between Lead Poisoning and Food Insecurity
Dr. Caryl Waggett is an Professor, Global Health Studies, at Allegheny College in Meadville, PA. She teaches and conducts research at the intersection of human health and the environment, exploring how humans change and modify their natural and built environments, and how in turn these environments impact human physical and social health and well-being. Her current research focuses around children’s health and indoor environments, building upon my research findings of elevated lead levels in children and high percentage of homes and yards in rural northwest Pennsylvania failing federal EPA safety thresholds. Based on these results and extensive community input, she founded and is the Director of Healthy Homes — Healthy Children, a not-for-profit initiative designed to address rural children’s health, including cardiovascular health, asthma / respiratory diseases, and toxics exposures.
Thursday, May 28th
Eric Pallant – Allegheny College
There is a lot to Learn From Sourdough Bread
Dr. Eric Pallant has been a professor of Environmental Science at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania since 1987. He is also chair of the department of Environmental Science and Sustainability, #2 in the United States, with 250 students majoring in this subject. In 2018, Dr. Pallant received a Best Paper Award for “Preparing University Students to Facilitate UN Sustainable Development Goals.”
Pallant served as a prestigious Fulbright Scholar on two occasions. In 2017, he taught Global Consumption at Lancaster University in England and researched the impacts of the Industrial Revolution on food production. In 2001, he taught sustainable development techniques to graduate and undergraduate students from around the Middle East in Ketura, Israel. He earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University in Soil Science.
Friday, May 29th
Shannan Mattiace – Allegheny College
Drug Wars and Criminal Violence in Mexico
Dr. Shannan Mattiace is a professor of Political Science and International Studies at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. She teaches and writes on indigenous and social movements in the Americas, immigration and identity, and ethnic politics.
Her work has been published in Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, Latin American Research Review, The Journal of Economic History, Estudios Mexicanos/Mexican Studies, among other venues. She is the author of To See With Two Eyes: Peasant Activism and Indian Autonomy in Chiapas, Mexico, a co-editor of Mayan Lives, Mayan Utopias. She currently edits the Mexican politics and government section of the Handbook of Latin American Studies at the Library of Congress. She earned her doctorate from the University of Texas.
