Gaudeamus:

Susan Scholtz, associate professor of nursing, is the latest member of the nursing faculty to complete her doctorate. She defended her dissertation, “Examination of the Effects of Expressive Writing on Student Threat Apperception in Clinical Education,” at Widener University last month. Dana Dunn was on her committee.

Bill Washer, artist-lecturer in music, makes a small tour of the area each week, playing jazz guitar at Indulge! in Bethlehem on Sundays, Petro’s in Allentown on Tuesdays, the State Street Grill in Clark Summit on Wednesdays, and Close Quarters in Lake Harmony on Fridays. Bill was out for a couple of weeks with a concussion, a fractured wrist, and a lot of bruises from falling off a ladder trying to clean out the gutters of his home in Long Pond, but he returned to teaching two weeks ago.

Allen Smith III ’03 presented a paper with Dr. Margaret Terry, a specialist in infectious diseases at Lehigh Valley Hospital, at the World AIDS Conference in Barcelona, Spain, in July 2002. Their work tracks HIV-infected patients with a history of hepatitis A and B to see how medications for one condition affect the other. They will continue their study and present the next round of results at the 2003 conference, to be held in Paris in July.

Allen, who holds an R.N. from the former Allentown Memorial Hospital, works in the AIDS Activity Office of Lehigh Valley Hospital. He is a member of the first class that will graduate from St. Luke’s Hospital Commemorative School of Nursing at Moravian College and is the program’s first working nurse to return to school to complete the bachelor’s degree.

Antonio Phillips ’95, who is currently enrolled in the teacher certification program through DCGS, received a community leadership award January 15 from the Allentown branch of the NAACP.

Music students Brent Missimer ’04, Haddon Heights, New Jersey, and Corrinn Smith ’04, Yardley, played classical guitar and flute for the Bethlehem Garden Club fundraiser March 27. They also play Friday evenings at the Confetti Café.

Dana Dunn, professor of psychology, served as an external reviewer for the psychology program at York College of Pennsylvania, meeting with faculty, students, and senior administrators to discuss curriculum, assessment procedures, teaching and scholarship, and facilities. He was there under the auspices of the American Psychological Association and the Society for the Teaching of Psychology.

Btw, Dana also met the chair of York College’s behavioral sciences department, a forensic anthropologist who was part of a team that exhumed the Boston Strangler some years back to see what they could learn about the serial killer.

Kelly Krieble ’86, assistant professor of physics, spent his spring break in Salt Lake City with students Steve Sweeney ’03, Saylorsburg, John Lesoine ’03, East Stroudsburg, and Aditya Khanna ’05, India. They attended the annual National Conference on Undergraduate Research, held March 12-15.

John and Steve described their honors projects on the magneto-optical Kerr effect; Aditya offered a poster presentation of his work on chaos in lasers, a summer SOAR project. “We got to some unusual presentations. including one student’s research into the activity commonly referred to as ‘cow-tipping’, ” Kelly says.

In addition to the spectacular Wasatch Mountain scenery, their visit was memorable because “on the day we got there, Elizabeth Smart was found, which made for an exciting couple of days, what with all the hoo-ha surrounding that news event.”

Kelly, incidentally, will be a new member of the Alumni Association’s Board of Trustees after its April meeting. Others on the slate are Audrey Weaver ’98, Richard Subber ’69, and Robert Houser ’65.

Clarke Chapman, professor of religion, presented a paper on “Anti-Terrorism and Religion: The Search for a Solution” at the mid-Atlantic section of the American Academy of Religion, March 13 in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Clarke also attended the national meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics, January 10-12 in Pittsburgh, where he presided over discussion of a new anthology of Karl Marx’s writings on religion.

Composer Melissa Spangenberg ’03, Quakertown, was awarded the Reimers scholarship, which is funded by the proceeds of the Great Artists Series.

Errare humanum est

The man who said “The great tragedy of science is the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly fact” was the gifted scientist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95), grandfather of Julian Huxley, evolutionary biologist, and Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World. The editor of InCommon thanks Chris Jones, eagle-eyed assistant professor of biology, for catching her error in attributing it to the wrong Huxley.