Faculty Research Lectures

 

Each year the faculty at the University of La Verne are invited to present the results of their research and scholarship that have been sponsored through research funding from programs within the university or through sabbatical awards. Faculty from the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Education and Organizational Leadership, the College of Business and Public Management or the College of Law offer lectures that are open to the public every week on campus.

Here is a brief overview of the current lectures available at this site on iTunes.

Click on any of the pictures to launch the iTunesU site.

 

Granquist Megan Granquist, Assistant Professor of Movement & Sports Science, “Rehabilitation Adherence Measure for Athletic Training” October 26, 2009. Professor Granquist discusses her research on athletes’ personality, stress and coping behaviors that contribute to athletic injury and adherence to rehabilitation protocols. Dr. Granquist has developed a Rehabilitation Adherence Measure for Athletic Training (RAdMAT) to assess rehabilitation adherence by athletes and athletic trainers.
Gratz Reed Gratz , Professor of Music, “New Compositions for Quartet and Arthroplasty” November 2, 2009. Professor Gratz presents a series of compositions influenced by events in his life designed for improvisational musicians. His presentation includes performance of these works with a quartet of his musical colleagues.
Leaver Jon Leaver, Assistant Professor of Art History, “The Aesthetics of the Occult: Black Magic in Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal” November 9, 2009. Professor Leaver discusses Baudelaire’s use of evocative symbols in poetry, like black magic, to conjure up past experiences or absent people. Memory , like the mystical is a unifying force that connects all things. Ultimately, however, while memory may seem to provide us with an occult-like certainty, it only provides us with an irretrievable past.
Hills Ann Hills, Associate Professor of Spanish “Traitor:  Betrayal in the Narrative of Jorge Luis Borges” November 23, 2009. Professor Hills' talk emphasizes the issues of morality, historical relativity and fictional discourse in examining the character and function of betrayal in the texts of Argentinean novelist Jorge Luis Borges.  Dr. Hills discusses the socio-psychological and rhetorical implications of Borges’ exposition through narration of the traitor’s self-transmutation and redemption.
Dillon Sean Dillon, Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts, “Approaches to Scriptwriting”, Monday, November 30, 2009.  In this presentation, Dillon, who has worked in the entertainment industry for twenty years, discusses the variety of ways in which he has engaged in the process of storytelling in the course of writing and directing plays, short subjects, and feature film projects.  The approach to scriptwriting may be influenced by the medium in which the story is to be told, the length of the project, whether it is for entertainment or for informational purposes, whether it is to be serious or funny, whether the writer is working alone or with collaborators, the intended audience, factors related to production, or any number of combinations of the above listed factors.  Furthermore, storytelling beyond the formal script may be greatly influenced in directing and editing.  In his latest projects, Dillon has worked without a traditional script.
Urbizagastegui Shelley Urbizagastegui, Assistant Professor, Assistant Librarian :“Peruvian Medicinal Plants”   Monday, December 14, 2009 has researched the use of medicinal plants in the pueblo of Viruhuayra in Peru. She has identified 34 medicinal plants used to treat such illnesses as diarrhea, fever, and stomach problems and has detailed their scientific and local names along with localities, recipes and descriptions along with photographing and videotaping specimens. This research will produce a bibliography of medicinal plants in the Peruvian Andes which will be housed on CD-ROM in the local Andes community schools.
Young Dr. Young discusses her research on the impact of teacher training on the teacher’s ability to provide for the needs of medically fragile students for cognitive developmental learning from kindergarten through the sixth grade. Her study, surveying members of the Association of Education for Children with Medical Needs, concluded that teacher preparation is lacking in classroom training, experience, or curriculum which addresses the specific needs of this student population.
Branin Dr. Branin’s research explored the costs and effects of elder caregiving on the work life, health status and well-being of working caregivers. After surveying over 200 working caregivers and categorizing her respondents into three ethnic groups, White-non-Hispanic, African-American, and Hispanic, she described the relationships between respondents self-reported skills as caregivers and their perceived detriments in work related benefits.
Walker This lecture considers the current state of teacher discourse and reflection. Based on studies of content area teachers' use of multiple texts in social studies fields like economics, experienced teachers whose practice is grounded in craft knowledge and ideas about principled practices, are profiled. Their integrative, multimedia approaches to hands-on student learning practices are described. They are all proponents of new and digital literacy practices in classroom simulations. The process of practical argument might offer other content area teachers a useful framework for teacher reflection based upon teachers' craft knowledge and principled practice.

 
Marcus Ken Marcus, Associate Professor of History, Ring Festival@La Verne: 1.“Wagner, Schoenberg, & American Culture” Monday, February 1, 2010. Professor Marcus discusses the history of popularity of opera in the United States in general and specifically in the Los Angeles area. He details the popularity of the music of Richard Wagner throughout the history of the Hollywood Bowl and other operatic venues in Los Angeles. He also addresses the influence that Wagner had on the music and music theory of Arnold Schoenberg.
Meek 2

 

Jack Meek, Professor of Public Administration, “Citizen-Centered Sustainability” examines conservancies as potential exemplars of jurisdictions working across jurisdictional lines in developing metropolitan sustainability policies. Conservancies promote environmental values locally constructed and shared across municipal jurisdictions. These conservancies hold promise in expanding influence in metropolitan land use, in building partnerships across and among local jurisdictions and in enhancing citizen participation through membership expansion and distributed governance.
Clark Alfred P. Clark, Associate Vice-President for Academic Affairs and Professor of Humanities. Ring Festival@La Verne: 2.German Nationalism and the Rise of The Ring. Wagner created the Ring concurrently with the gathering together of the German nation state, beginning with the revolutions of 1848 and concluding soon after for formation of the Second Empire in 1871. This lecture explores the significance of these compatible developments on each other .
Zwerling Elizabeth Zwerling, Associate Professor of Journalism, “Rural News Network in Montana” Monday, March 1, 2010. At this time of change and upheaval in the journalism industry, innovative J-schools across the country are looking to offer students various entrepreneurial Web journalism training and experience. Professors at the University of Montana created the Rural News Network. Journalism students travel to small towns that have lost their local paper or never had one, and involve residents in starting up local news websites with the goal of handing the sites' operation and upkeep to those community members at the projects' close. The first Rural News Network publication, the Dutton Country Courier, was launched in the spring of 2007. The following fall, the journalism students, several of whom were Native American with ties to the state's Crow Indian Reservation, launched Crow Agency's first local news outlet, CrowNews.net. Both publications today are going strong with regular community contributors and negotiations for handoffs currently in progress.
Kolpin Thierry Kolpin, Assistant Professor of Education “Alcohol, Tobacco and other Drug Prevention for Elementary School Aged Children” describes his research on the effects of a third grade Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug (ATOT) Prevention Program using a randomly assigned treatment/control group design. Intervention group students received ten sessions of the Too Good For Drugs Prevention Program during lunch hours, while the control group participated in regular lunch time activities. Results for several attitude questionnaires and other measures reflection differences between experimental and control groups are discussed.
Hayes Cleveland Hayes, Assistant Professor of Education, “‘Why I teach’: One mid-20th century Mississippian Educator’s Pedagogical Perspectives and Practices” Monday, March 22, 2010. Through the use of critical race counterstories and counternarratives Dr Hayes’ talk examines the teaching philosophies, pedagogy and lived experiences of one Black female, his grandmother, Olivia Smith, educator from Mississippi. Black teachers in Mississippi felt an obligation to arm their students with the necessary “tools” to combat the overt racism their students were going to face. Smith brought into the classroom experiences, expectations and teaching practices that had a profound effect on African-American student achievement which influenced the expectations she held for her students and the perceptions and the motives for teaching.
Capraroiu Gabriela Capraroiu, Assistant Professor of Modern Languages, “Montage:  Visions of Romanian Modernism 1918-1939”, Monday, March 29, 2010, examines the role Spanish modernists Maria Teresa Léon and her husband, Rafael Alberti, played in remapping the space of literary modernism trough poetry translation. Commissioned by the Writers’ Union, a transnational institution responsible for the tug-of war between political power and writers in Eastern Europe. Alberti and Léon’s translations and personal writings on Romania give evidence of a split between ethics and aesthetics that never became complete or resolved in the works of translators and translated poets.
Werner David Werner, Associate Professor of English. Ring Festival@La Verne: 3.  “My Precious Illusion: Rings of Power in Wagner and Tolkien” Monday, March 29, 2010.  Both Wagner and Tolkien make important use of the idea of a ring of power “to rule the world,” but there are obvious inconsistencies inherent in the idea.   Who truly, for example, wants to run trash collection in Slovakia?   Yet the idea of absolute power is intoxicating, lending its aura to everything and everybody, from Plato to conspiracy theory.
Pollock Don Pollock, Professor of Communications "The Current State of Aboriginal Filmmaking in Australia". When I first visited Australia in 1987 Aboriginals were attending art school and using modern techniques to paint and draw. They were also expressing new takes on old themes. I figured that by 2005 Aboriginals would be attending film schools and making movies. My idea proved correct. I spent the spring 2005 semester as a visiting researcher in the indigenous studies program at Macquarie University, just outside Sydney. I watched many Aboriginal film and met a number of Aboriginal filmmakers. This lecture and clip presentation looks at the current state of Aboriginal Filmmaking in Australia as of 2005.
Bentley Donna Bentley, Librarian and Professor,  “Designing Web-Based Tutorials to Enhance Students’ Research Skills”,   Monday, April 12, 2010
Dillon - Wagner

Sean Dillon, Assistant Professor of Theater Arts. Ring Festival@La Verne: 4 “Beyond the Mystic Chasm: Wagner Conjures for the Theatre” Thursday, April 8, 2010 This lecture delineates Wagner's innovations in the design of the theatrical performance space and the way these innovations have shaped the relationship of the audience to the performance.

 
Lamkin Dr. Kathleen Lamkin, Professor of Music.  Drama in Wagner’s Ring:  Music Propels the Action" Wednesday, April 21, 2010 Ring Festival @ La Verne 5. This lecture focuses on Wagner’s innovative and radical concepts of music and drama. Through the unification of text, theater and music into the Gesamtkunstwerk or total artwork Wagner gives music the power to narrate and advance the drama through a system of leading motives. Excerpts of Bayreuth productions of The Ring of the Nibelung are viewed demonstrating Wagner’s masterful implementation of his total artwork concept.
Cary Cindy Cary, Associate Professor of Education “Continuity of Care in Infant/Toddler Child Care Programs” Monday, May 10, 2010.The lecture details Dr. Cary's dissertation study which identified social, political, and economic trends and events that will occur by the year 2013 that will influence the implementation of continuity of care in infant/toddler child care programs. She discusses the trends and events that received the highest median scores from the expert panelists.
Duncan Kathy Duncan, Assistant Professor of Management, “In and Out of the Closet: Gay and Lesbian Pastoral Leadership” Monday, April 19. This research used an exploratory mixed methods approach to study gay and lesbian pastoral leadership. An online survey instrument, The G Quotient Assessment and personal interviews were used. The sample population consisted of 74 gay and lesbian Protestant pastors who completed the survey and 16 who were interviewed. The level of leadership behaviors and beliefs of the gay and lesbian pastors were found to be similar to those of gay and lesbian business managers. There were also unique aspects to church and pastoral leadership that included spiritual aspects, a sense of calling, a servant-leader approach and specific ministry skills.
Deitz Janis Dietz, Professor of Business Administration, “The Myth That the  Major Matters in Johnny’s Future” Monday, May 17, 2010. This research tested the theory that a specific major or choice of college has a significant impact on one’s “success” as measured by the Fortune 500 Chief Executive Officers in 2007. Data were collected on college, birth date, undergraduate and graduate degrees, and total compensation. Results showed no statistical correlation between major, type of college (Ivy League vrs. State school) and total compensation or the ranking of the company in sales. However, a graduate degree did show some relationship to compensation, though it was not statistically significant.
Barrett Robert Barrett,Professor of Law and Business, “Business, Ethics, and Law: A Triple Oxymoron? Or a Workable Approach to Teaching Students Business Decision-Making?” Monday, May 24, 2010. This lecture discusses the origins and development of a new course based upon research into a effort to integrate business, ethics and law into a comprehensive examination of how these disciplines can be used to examine issues that arise in decision making. Examples of moral and legal ambiguities are discussed and methods and techniques useful in classroom situations are presented.