2006-2007

Arts and Sciences graduate students at Tufts University excelled in a variety of areas during the 2006-2007 academic year. Below is a listing of some of their notable achievements:

Art and Art History
Art and Art History graduate students presented their work at several conferences and meetings in 2006-2007. Some of these events included the International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, Michigan), the annual meeting of the Space Between Society (Annapolis, Maryland), the International Medieval Congress (Leeds, England), and the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association's Annual Conference (Bellingham, Washington).

Students in the department also received awards and other honors, the most notable being Ben Zweig who received a Fulbright Scholarship to study at Sweden's Uppsala University during the 2007-2008 academic year, and Carrie Butt, recipient of the Copley Society of Art's Robert C. Vose, Jr. and Ann Peterson Vose Scholarship for the Study of American Art History.

Biology
During the 2006-2007 academic year, five biology graduate students (Nicole Cyr, Molly Dickens, David DesRoches, Jocelyn Muller, and Randi Rotjan) received outside funding to pursue their research. This funding came from, to name a few, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Switzer Foundation, and the Smithsonian.

Biology graduate students also made their mark outside of Tufts, evidenced by the articles they authored or co-authored (which appeared everywhere from the American Journal of Physiology to Science) and their participation in a number of domestic and international meetings and conferences. These events included the Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America (San Jose, California), the International Society for Reef Studies European Meeting (Bremen, Germany), and the National Conference of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (Phoenix, Arizona).

Chemistry
Several chemistry graduate students received funding or other honors during the 2006-2007 academic year. Four students (Ashleigh Baber, Timothy Blicharz, Irene Li and Victoria Campbell) received Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) Fellowships, while two others received research funding from the United States Air Force (Olena Rabotyagova) and the University of Connecticut's National AUC Facility (Deniz Yüksel).

Along with seven articles they authored or co-authored, graduate students in the department also delivered twenty-three presentations at conferences and meetings held throughout the world. These events included the International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy (Columbus, Ohio), the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Lausanne, Switzerland), the Gordon Conference (Ventura, California), and the JCF Fruehjahrs Symposium (Chemnitz, Germany).

Child Development
Working with faculty and fellow students, Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development graduate students authored or co-authored numerous research-related articles, which appeared in books, academic journals, and other publications, in 2006-2007. These articles were part of publications such as Mind, Brain, and Education, the Journal of Research in Childhood Education, the Journal of Youth Development, and the recently published Encyclopedia of Human Development.

Child development graduate students were a fixture at several domestic and international conferences and meetings, sharing their research at, among others, the Annual Meeting of the American Education Research Association (Chicago, Illinois), the European Society for Research in Developmental Psychology's Conference (Jena, Germany), the International Conference on Adoption Research (Norwich, England), and the European Early Childhood Education Research Association's Conference (Reyjavik, Iceland).

Graduate students from the department also received funding and other recognition, including Iris Ponte (who received a Fulbright scholarship to conduct research in China), Elizabeth Norton (the recipient of a 3-year National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship) and Michael Niewiecki who received the "Wind Beneath Their Wings Award" from the Westborough, Massachusetts Special Education Parent Advisory Council for his clinical and consultation work on behalf of young students with autism and emotional disorders.

Classics
As part of the Concordia Foundation Fellowship program, nine classics graduate students participated in archeological field projects during the 2006-2007 academic year. These field project participants included James Artz (Athenian Agora excavations, Athens Greece), Skylar Neil and Jessica Pesce (Stanford Monte Polizzo Project and the Tufts Marsala Survey, Sicily, Italy) and Shayna Meyers (Greco-Canadian excavations at Argilos, Greece).

In addition, Robin Ngo and Ryan Hughes, both of whom recently graduated from the master's-only program, plan to pursue their Ph.D.'s at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan, respectively. Two other recent graduates, Robert Wanner and Christina Triantafillou, are pursuing Ph.D.s in archaeology at the University of Leicester and Oxford University in the United Kingdom, respectively.

Drama
During the 2006-2007 academic year, drama graduate students delivered twenty-two research-related presentations. These presentations took place at conferences and meetings within the United States and abroad, including the American Society for Theatre Research's annual conference (Chicago, Illinois), the International Federation of Theatre Research's (IFTR) conference (Helsinki, Finland), and the Popular Culture Association/American Cultural Association's Conference (Boston, Massachusetts).

In addition to their presentations, students from the department published their work in several leading drama-related publications as well, including Meron Langsner, whose articles were included in Text and Presentation, The Fight Master, and the Electronic Journals of Martial Arts and Sciences, and Virginia Anderson, whose review of the Beijing People's Art Theatre's production of "Teahouse" was included in Theatre Journal. (Anderson was also accepted into the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts' Larry Kessler Scholars Program).

Also, graduate student Adrienne C. Macki received both a $20,000 research fellowship from the American Association of University Women and a $900 dissertation grant from the American Society of Theatre Research and Dassia Posner received a Mellon Dissertation Fellowship.

Economics
During the 2006-2007 academic year, graduate students Lala Xun Ma and Kaipin Shan completed their master's thesis, researching interpersonal trust and social interactions and labor markets, respectively.

In addition, graduate students in the department launched the Graduate Economics Society, which was named an "outstanding graduate student organization" by the Tufts University Graduate Student Council (GSC).

Education
Education Students in the department's Mathematics, Science, Technology, and Engineering (MSTE) M.S. and Ph.D. program authored or co-authored several articles and book chapters during the 2006-2007 academic year. These works appeared in, to name a few, the Journal of Mathematical Behavior, the International Journal of Engineering Education, Astronomy Education Review, and the Journal of STEM Education.

In addition, over 80 students developed their field-based experiences as supervised student-teachers at elementary, middle, or high schools in the Boston-area. Of these, 18 students were full-time interns in urban schools as part of the department's Urban Teacher Training Collaborative (UTTC), a program which supports students interested in teaching in urban settings.

English
During the 2006-2007 academic year, graduate students in the Department of English received research-related support or awards from, among others, the Holocaust Educational Foundation (Emily King), the Graduate Institute for Teaching at Tufts (GIFT) (Ashley Shelden), and the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (Abby Manzella).

Graduate students in the department also delivered fourteen presentations at conferences and meetings--such as the annual Modern Language Association Conference (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), the British Women Writer's Conference (Lexington, Kentucky), and the International Conference on Narrative (Ottawa, Ontario)--and published articles in leading English-related publications such as the Sigma Tau Delta Review, Scribner's American Writers Series, and Literature Compass.

German
Melanie Adley and Silvia Seidel graduated from the German program, a master's-only degree track at Tufts, during the 2006-2007 academic year. Adley is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, while Seidel is pursuing her MBA.

History
During the 2006-2007 academic year, graduate student Neilesh Bose received a dissertation-writing fellowship from the College of Saint Rose's Center for Citizenship, Race, and Ethnicity Studies, Greg Liakos received a Tufts University Research Travel Grant to conduct research in Great Britain as part of his master's thesis, and Lata Parwani, a current doctoral student in South Asian History, received a Tufts University Graduate Student Research Award for her project titled: "Recovering Lost Sindhi Hindu Voices: Locating Sindh in Partition Historiography."

On the programmatic front, the department launched a new doctoral program in Global History.

Mathematics
Graduate students in the Department of Mathematics presented their work at conferences, meetings, and other events over the course of the 2006-2007 academic year. Specifically, graduate student Erin Munro presented a poster at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (Boston, Massachusetts) and traveled to Edinburgh, Scotland to participate in the Organization for Computational Neurosciences Annual Meeting.

Outside the classroom, graduate student Malena Espanol interned at the software company Mathworks and portions of the code she helped develop will be included in future releases of MATLAB, a leading computational software program. Espanol also co-authored an article, which appeared in the SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, and presented her research at the International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics in Zurich, Switzerland.

On the awards front, graduate students Jamison Wolf and Meredith Brown received financial support from the National Science Foundation to attend the International Levy Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark and Cristian Gonzalez-Martinez was awarded a "Marie Curie, Early Stage Researcher" fellowship which allowed him to work in the mathematics department at Oxford University during the summers of 2006 and 2007.

Music
The Department of Music said goodbye to several outstanding students who graduated from the master's-only program during the 2006-2007 academic year. Some of these former students, like Jiwon Chang and Beau Kenyon, are currently pursuing careers as music teachers at locations such as the St. George's School in Newport, Rhode Island and the Kingsley Montessori School in Boston, Massachusetts. Three graduates (Julian Wason Cook, Maria Guarino, and Katie Stufflebeam) have continued their graduate studies as Ph.D. students at the University of Virginia (Cook and Guarino) and at UCLA (Stufflebeam), respectively.

Occupational Therapy
During the 2006-2007 academic year, graduate students in the Department of Occupational Therapy participated in the work of a number of nonprofit organizations, rehabilitation clinics, hospitals, and related settings as part of the fieldwork requirement of the program. This work took students everywhere from the New England Sinai Rehabilitation Center (Amanda Hamm) to the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital (Shannon Small). Students participated in the work of other settings as well, providing community service to organizations such as the Walnut Street Center of Somerville, Massachusetts (Reese Himmer), the Charlestown, Massachusetts Boys and Girls Club (Lisa Newcombe), Morgan Memorial Goodwill of Boston (Bernadette Keegan), and the South Boston Neighborhood House (Jamie Weiner). Collectively, students in the department participated in almost 200 fieldwork placements, and 11 students also completed practicum experiences at, for example, Community Rehab Care of Medford, Massachusetts (Sarah McGinley), the Medford, Massachusetts public schools (Amy Urquhart), THOM Boston Early Intervention (Kate Sangster), Massachusetts General Hospital (Ritika Trehan), Mount Auburn Hospital of Cambridge, Massachusetts (Michelle Magnifico) and Boston's Brigham & Women's Hospital (Harpreet Kaur).

In addition, 16 occupational therapy graduate students traveled to New Orleans to assist with the continuing relief effort there. The group, dubbed "OT Gulf Support," volunteered at local hospitals and rehabilitation centers and helped gut homes that had been affected by Hurricane Katrina. This was OT Gulf Support's second trip to New Orleans, as they provided assistance during the 2005-2006 academic year as well.

Philosophy
In 2007, Tufts reaffirmed its longstanding reputation as the institution with the best philosophy Ph.D. program placement record in the world. Students applying to Ph.D. programs (after completing the department's terminal philosophy master's program) earned acceptance into some of the top ranked schools in the United States. These recent graduates, and where they have continued their educations, include: Avery Archer (Columbia University), Laura Beeby (University of Sheffield), Talia D'Abrama (University of Texas) Andrew Jewell (UCLA), Blakely Phillips (Indiana University), Ignacio Prado (University of Texas), and Ang Tong (NYU).

The department often admits talented students with backgrounds in law who are interested in deepening their understanding of philosophy. Brandon Hogan, for example, will be interrupting his master's work to complete a degree at the Harvard Law School this fall and Anthony DiClaudio is taking a leave of absence from the program to accept a federal clerkship with the Honorable Norma L. Shapiro of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Physics
Working with faculty and fellow students in their respective research groups, physics graduate students co-authored 68 papers (and 15 recently submitted for publication) during the 2006-2007 academic year. These papers appeared in a wide range of refereed physics journals, including Physical Review Letters, Physical Review D, Physics Letters B (Particle Physics and Cosmology), and Thermochimica Acta.

In addition, many students attended and gave presentations during meetings held at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Batavia, Illinois), the Conference on Physical Electronics (Urbana, Illinois) and the AVS National Symposium (Seattle, Washington).

Several physics graduate students also received fellowships and other recognition in 2006-2007. Chang Liu, Robert Thompson, Peter Malave and Benjamin Whitehouse won Burlingame Fellowships and Spencer Smith received a Graduate Institute For Teaching (GIFT) award.

Psychology
Over twenty psychology graduate students received funding for their research or other recognition during the 2006-2007 academic year, including Evan Apfelbaum (who received an early researcher award from the American Psychological Association), Tali Ditman (the recipient of an American Psychological Association dissertation research award), Kristin Dukes (who received a travel grant from the Association for Psychological Science), Kathryn Handwerger (the recipient of a graduate fellowship award from the National Science Foundation), and Neil Cohn, whose paper titled "The Grammar of Comics" was recognized with the M. Thomas Inge Award for Comics Scholarship at the 2007 Popular Culture Association Conference.

Psychology graduate students also authored or co-authored over twenty research-related articles or book chapters (which appeared in, to name a few, the American Journal of Psychiatry, Applied Cognitive Psychology, Psychological Science, Social Neuroscience, and Biological Psychiatry) and delivered seventy-three presentations during this period as well. These presentations took place both within the United States and abroad, and included the annual meetings of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (Palm Springs, California), the Japanese Psychological Association (Fukuoka City, Japan), the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (Memphis, Tennessee), and the Psychonomics Society (Houston, Texas).

Studio Art (offered in collaboration with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
Studio art graduate students traveled to a variety of domestic and international locations as part of the school's Bartlett and Montague Travel Grants program. The grants provide students with travel opportunities that enhance their studio practice and bring them into direct contact with global and national fine art. Travel grant recipients for the 2006-2007 academic year include:

Dawit Petros (who traveled to Red Rock Canyon State Park in California, and Manitoba, Canada to produce film, installation and performance work), Matthew Meta (who attended London's Performance Studies International #12, an international conference which explored the relationship between performance and the fight for human rights), Darren Miller (who traveled to the Blue Mountain Center in Blue Mountain Lake, NY for an artist's residency), Vasia Markides (who went to Cyprus to film her documentary on the reunification of the Greek and Turkish sides of Cyprus), Laura Torres (who traveled to Ecuador to produce art work based on local consumer culture) and Andrea Wenglowskyj (who photographed the Ukrainian-American summer camp, Noviy Sokil, in New York. Wenglowskyj was awarded the prestigious Josef Karsh Award in photography for this work).

Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning
During the 2006-2007 academic year, Abby Lindsay was selected as an Environmental Leadership Program (ELP) fellow, one of only 24 in the Greater Boston Region, and Monica Magari and Abby Yenco, with Associate Professor and Department Chair Julian Agyeman and alumna Kara Fitzpatrick, received a grant from The Anonymous Foundation to research vacant lot reclamation and transformation in Boston.

In addition, graduate student Nicole Guanzon was one of only 14 Tufts students to receive the Tufts University Presidential Award for Citizenship and Public Service, E. Franklin Miller received the Robert M. Hollister Award for Graduate Student Citizenship, and recent graduate Jesse McEntee was a fully-funded visiting scholar at Cardiff University's Center for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability, and Society.

Graduate students in the department were also active outside of Tufts. As part of their internship requirement, 40 students interned at locations such as Massachusetts Advocates for Children (Quincy Chang), the Mystic River Watershed Association (Alex Clee), and the Office of United States Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (John Foss).