Gaudeamus

The latest article by Marialuisa McAllister, professor emerita of mathematics, is “Fuzzy Graphs and Network Repairs,” in the November 2003 issue of the British International Journal of Computer Mathematics. She says it’s receiving lots of attention from experts in modeling and simulation. Graduate students from an engineering school in Calcutta, for instance, are using her approach to model propagation along the arcs and nodes of a network by means of polynomials. This is a safeguard against network failure.

Dave Roth ’85, artist-lecturer in jazz piano, will perform for the 150th birthday celebration of General Harry C. Trexler, a black-tie gala on April 17 to honor Allentown’s great benefactor. His cohorts for the evening are Steve Gilmore, bass; Warren Vaché Jr., cornet; and Ron Vincent, drums.

Our man in Iraq, Ahmez Hammock-El ’05, has been promoted to sergeant. His parents, Bernard and Verniece, of Glenarden, Maryland, are proud of him, but they’re even happier that he’s due to be rotated home in May.

Our other man in Iraq, Mike Beahm, husband of assistant women’s basketball coach Marge Beahm, came home in March after a long haul attached to the 744th Military Police battalion.

The Physics Department—Joe Powlette, professor and department chair, Ed Roeder, associate professor, and Kelly Krieble ’86, assistant professor—attended the annual meeting of the central Pennsylvania section of the American Association of Physics Teachers, March 26-27 at Bucknell University. Kelly gave a talk on “An experimental study of Mn-doped ferrites using Mossbauer spectroscopy,” about work he and Tim Schaeffer ’04 have designed this academic year. He informs InCommon that ferrites are nothing like the pet weasel that appeared in Along Came Polly.

Kelly also won a close election—he ran unopposed—for section representative to AAPT. He will serve on the section’s executive committee and represent its constituents, colleges and high schools in 30 central Pennsylvania counties, at the AAPT’s biannual meetings. Checking the calendar, he noticed that whereas this year’s winter meeting was in Miami, next year’s is in Anchorage, Alaska. Good timing, Kelly!

Krista Steinke, assistant professor of art (new media), has a short video work called “American Carwash” at City Without Walls, a gallery in Newark, New Jersey, in a show called VIDEO: 1800 frames: 1 minute. It runs through May 12.

Dan Jasper, visiting assistant professor of sociology, has published “Commemorating the ‘Golden Age’ of Shivaji in Maharashtra, India, and the Development of Maharashtrian Public Politics,” in the winter issue of Journal of Political and Military Sociology. Shivaji was a 17th-century Indian general and king.

Joanne Dangelmajer McKeown, associate professor of French, gave a paper at the 14th annual conference of the North American Christian Foreign Language Association, March 26 at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa. Her paper, “Controversy and Ecstasy in the Literary Output of Anna Catherine Emmerich and Dr. Antoine Despine,” was given for a panel on French film and literature. Mel Gibson relied on Emmerich’s visionary writings for some of the imagery in his Passion of the Christ movie—including the sequence in which the raven puts out the eyes of the wicked thief.

Carol Traupman-Carr ’86, associate dean of academic affairs, arranged “Shenandoah” for the MainStreet Brass Quintet. The group had requested this piece for its August tour of England, at which it plans to play American works. When she began work, Carol was surprised to realize that she had never heard the last lines of the song. She couldn’t finish the basic arrangement until she had hunted down the sheet music. Her classmate, Brian Hay ’86, is trombonist in the quintet.

Media Matters

President Rokke was the star of the Morning Call’s op-ed page on March 22, with a piece on terrorism and the upcoming elections. On the same day, Jean-Pierre Lalande, professor of French and chair of foreign languages, was quoted in an article on Spanish troop withdrawal from Iraq in the Express-Times.

The Morning Call was so enchanted with Wynton Marsalis’ master class for jazz ensembles on April 5 that it led the local section on April 6 with multiple photos and a story.

Errare Spellcheckum Est

In the earliest online version of the March 30 InCommon, there was reference to a Bolognese librarian. Bonnie Falla isn’t from Bologna, but her name seems to have thrown Spellcheck for a loop.