People, Papers, Presentations

People, Papers, Presentations

RICE NEWS

December 2, 1999

Felicia Cavallini, director of the Rice U. Wellness Program, and Jimmy Disch, associate professor and chair, Dept. of Kinesiology, presented “Physical Education Class” at the Measurement of Physical Activity Conference, an international meeting that is part of the Cooper Institute Conference Series at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas, Oct. 14-16.

Marc J. Epstein, visiting professor of management, Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, gave a presentation titled “Measuring Corporate Environmental Performance: An Overview of Current International Trends” Nov. 5 at the U. of Amsterdam. Epstein gave a presentation titled “Creating Accountability for Sustainability” at the 1999 Greening of Industry Conference, U. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C., Nov. 15.

Charles Henry, vice provost and university librarian, was elected president elect/president of the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage, a Washington-based consortium of more than 70 institutions of higher education, museums (including the Smithsonian), art institutes, the Library of Congress, professional societies and some international programs. The American Council of Learned Societies and the J. Paul Getty Trust are the major sponsoring agencies. His term runs as president elect, 1999-2000; as president, 2000-2001. There are a number of programs associated with this initiative, including a series of presentations on academic copyright issues, which Henry hopes to bring to Rice in the next few years.

George Marcus, professor, Dept. of Anthropology, presented a paper on cultural perspectives concerning multinational corporations at a conference on “Mapping the Multinational,” held at Pocantico, the conference center of the Rockefeller Brothers’ Fund, Tarrytown, N.Y., Sept. 30-Oct. 3.

Monica Merz, assistant professor, Dept. of Economics, gave a presentation, with Alex Schimmelpfennig, titled “Career Choices of High School Graduates in Germany” at the German Economic Association, Mainz, Germany, Sept. 30. Merz also chaired the session “Employment and Education.”

Angelo Miele, professor emeritus, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, attended the 50th International Astronautical Congress in Amsterdam, Holland. Miele gave lectures on Sept. 30 titled “Next-Generation Orbital Spacecraft: Single Stage Versus Double Stage” and “Design of Mars Missions” at Delft U. of Technology, Delft, Holland. On Oct. 5 Miele presented “Assessment of Launch Vehicle Advances to Enable Human Mars Excursions,” a paper co-authored with T. Wang, senior research scientist, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, and S. Mancuso, guidance and navigation engineer, AverStar Corp., Fairmont, W.Va. On Oct. 6 he presented “Optimal Trajectories for Earth-Moon-Earth Flight,” a paper co-authored with Mancuso. Miele lectured on “Missions to Mars for Robotic and Manned Spacecraft” Oct. 8 at Imperial College, London.

Don Ostdiek, director of policy studies, Rice, gave a presentation titled “Legislative Professionalism and Member Behavior” at the 1999 American Political Science Association annual meeting, with Margaret Ferguson, Indiana U., Sept. 2-5, Atlanta.

Richard Stoll, professor, Dept. of Political Science, gave a presentation titled “International Trade and Interstate Conflict: The Influence of Domestic Political Institutions” at the Ann Arbor, Mich., meetings of the Peace Science Society, Oct. 10, with Bernadett Jungblut, graduate student, Dept. of Political Science.

Paul J. Sutera, assistant director, Student Center, and ADVANCE adviser, presented a workshop titled “Calling All Leaders” at the Association for College Unions International (ACUI) regional conference hosted at Southwest Texas State U., Oct. 8-10.

Richard Tapia, the Noah Harding Professor of Computational & Applied Mathematics, delivered the keynote address at the 1999 Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) national conference in Portland, Ore., Oct. 7-10. The title of his address was “Some Mathematical Insights Into Car and Bicycle Racing.”

Tayfun Tezduyar, the James F. Barbour Professor and chair, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, gave an invited lecture at the Workshop on Advanced Computing in Science and Engineering, held in Cetraro, Italy, in June. Following the workshop Tezduyar gave a short course on flow simulation and modeling at the U. of Calabria. In July, Tezduyar gave two invited lectures at the international Workshop on Advanced Computational Modeling and Applications, held at the Brazilian National Laboratory for Computational Science. He also gave an invited seminar at the Federal U. of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In August,Tezduyar gave a keynote and an invited presentation at the fifth U.S. National Congress on Computational Mechanics, held in Boulder, Colo., where he was among three honored as the newly-elected fellows of the U.S. Association of Computational Mechanics.

Andrew Whitford, assistant professor, Dept. of Political Science, has been named a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy at the U. of Michigan School of Public Health for 1999-2001. Whitford received a Fulbright Scholarship for summer 1999 for the German-American Fulbright Program German Studies Seminar “Environmental Protection and Alternative Forms of Energy.” Additionally, he published “Voter Choice in Multiparty Democracy: A Test of Competing Theories and Models,” with Kevin Quinn, Harvard U., and Andrew Martin, SUNY-Stony Brook, (1999) American Journal of Political Science, 43 (4) :1231-1247.

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