Four employees who work in the Whitehead College Academic Advising and Assessment Center were named Everyday Heroes in the War Against Racism and Intolerance by the YWCA of Riverside. Assistant Director Priscilla Aquino and administrative assistants Gloria Alexander, Susan Griffin and Mary Martinez were honored for demonstrating the best in race relations in their everyday lives.

Associate Professor of Biology Caryl Forristall started her sabbatical over the summer at the House Ear Institute studying the development of the frog ear and the genes involved.

Fran Grace, assistant professor of religion studies, presented a paper at the National Women's Studies Conference in Boston in June, wrote an article on Methodist minister Madeline Southard in collaboration with another scholar, Cynthia Cornell Novak, and participated in a Religious Studies Teaching Workshop in Santa Fe in July funded by the Lilly Foundation. She is reviewing final proofs for her biography, "Carry A. Nation: Retelling the Life," and expects it to be published by Indiana University Press by the end of the year.

Government Professor Robert Jackson presented a paper on "Ethics in Politics" to the Australian Political Science Association and Center for Law and Justice in Canberra, Australia this fall, work he completed this summer while a distinguished research professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. He also completed the fifth edition of "Politics and Canada."

Kathie Jenni, associate professor of philosophy, participated in a spring conference on "The Boundaries of Freedom of Expression and Order in a Democratic Society" at Kent State University in Ohio as part of the 30th anniversary of the Kent State shootings. The conference was the first of an annual series of freedom of expression conferences to coincide with the remembrance of the May 4 shootings.

Daniel Kiefer, associate professor of English, led a seminar on Jane Austen's novels earlier this year at the Rancho Mirage Public Library. Kiefer discussed the novels "Mansfield Park," "Northhanger Abbey" and "Persuasion." Kiefer led a seminar series on three other Austen novels last year.

Victoria Lewis, instructor in the theatre arts department, presented "Claiming Community–the Dilemma of difference and Disability in the People’s Theater" at the Society for Disabilities Studies in Chicago and "Other Voices–1982-2000–Re-imagining Disability for the American Theater" at the National Endowment of the Humanities Summer Institute on Disability Studies at San Francisco State. She was also a panelist on the National Endowment of the Arts Theatre Panel in Washington D.C. and produced Lynn Manning's solo show "Weights" as the co-director of the Mark Taper Forum’s Other Voices Play Lab.

Teresa Longin, assistant professor of chemistry, spent the summer at the University of Colorado, Boulder working on research in the lab of professor Carl Koval. Longin tested the results of theoretical studies she did on photofacilitated transport in liquid membranes. If the membranes turn out to be as effective as her theoretical studies suggest, they will remove the radioactive waste, then concentrate it for more efficient storage. She received a $25,000 grant for her work from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research fund.

Economics Professor Chris Niggle has been studying Social Security reform proposals with a Haynes grant for the past year. His paper entitled "The Political Economy of Social Security Reform Proposals" was accepted by Journal of Economic Issues. Several of his opinion pieces on the topic have been published in the Redlands Daily Facts and San Bernardino County Sun.

James Pick, professor of management and business, was co-chair of BITWorld 2000 in Mexico City this summer. BITWorld is an international academic conference on information systems held each year in a developing nation. Assistant Professor of Management and Business Nanda Viswanathan also attended the conference. Pick presented three papers and co-chaired the doctoral symposium. Following BITWorld, Pick was invited for two days of meetings by the Mexican National Statisical Bureau in Aguascalientes.

Assistant Professor of Communicative Disorders Laura Polich spent August in Nicaragua studying the language development of deaf children learning Nicaraguan sign language as part of a faculty research grant. She also finished a study on hearing aid use among deaf and hearing-impaired children in Managua.

The Salton Sea Database Program took first place for the Best Group Presentation at the 20th ESRI International User Conference held in June in San Diego. More than 9,000 Geographic Information Systems (GIS) users from all over the world attended the conference. The university sponsored an exhibit booth and an education fair booth and presented a major poster session. At the Map Gallery, staff members were on hand to talk about their posters and associated projects. Individual presentations were given by Project manager Mark Sorensen on "Cross-Media Database–Conceptual Design and Present Status," senior GIS analyst Kenneth Althiser on "An Automated Processing Approach to Image Interpretation of the Land-Water Interface at the Salton Sea," and program director Timothy Kranz and student intern Joseph Buckles on "Reconstruction of Prehistoric Lake Cahuilla and Early American Settlement Patterns in Southeast California Using GIS."

History Professor James Sandos succeeded in getting Rancho Camulos in Ventura recognized as the legitimate home of Ramona, the heroine of Helen Hunt Jackson’s 1884 epic novel. Rancho Camulos was designated a National Historic Landmark on Feb. 16. Edna Kimbro, preservation consultant for the Rancho Camulos Museum, credits Farquhar Professor of the American Southwest Sandos, who wrote a well-received article for California History and gave a presentation in Sacramento to the Western History Association. She said the designation was a result of his work and "powers of persuasion."

David Schrum, assistant professor of chemistry, conducted research in June at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. He used capillary electrophoresis to develop analytical methods to analyze some of the peptides and proteins involved in Alzheimer's research. Schrum also built his own computer interfaced capillary electrophoresis instrument with the help of a research student this summer at Redlands.

An article on "Designing a Competency-Based Masters in Management Program for Mid-Career Adults" by Assistant Professor Jim Spee and Associate Professor Teri Tompkins, both faculty in management and business, was published in the Journal of Management Education’s special issue on competency-based education. The article is based on the university’s new master’s degree in management program.

In August, Jim Spickard, associate professor of sociology and anthropology, was in Oslo, Norway giving a talk on "Fashioning a Post-Colonial Sociology of Religion" at the 15th Nordic Conference in Sociology of Religion. He was one of three speakers at the conference. His speech will be published as a lead article in the Journal of Church, Religion, and Society, the leading Scandinavian journal in that field. He also has a book contract with the NYU Press to edit a collection of articles on the use of ethnography to study religions. In addition, he is revising the software he uses for teaching statistical analysis in sociology.