2007-2008

Arts and Sciences graduate students at Tufts University excelled in a variety of areas during the 2007-2008 academic year. Below is a listing of some of their notable achievements:

Art and Art History
During the 2007-2008 academic year, Art and Art History graduate students delivered research papers at conferences and meetings in, among other locations, Canada and Massachusetts. These events included the Street Conference at the University of California, Irvine and Tufts University's Beyond the Classroom Forum.

In addition, graduate students published articles and received a number of awards and other honors. William Arning, curator at MIT's List Art Center, worked on the Chantal Akerman retrospective titled Moving through Time and Space, Nina Bozicnik earned a Curatorial Fellowship from the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts (Nina was also honored with the Tufts Graduate Student Teaching Award), and Nicole Evans received a fellowship to attend the Smithsonian Latino Museum Studies Program in Washington, DC.

Of the students who graduated from the master's-only program, Rhonda Saad is currently pursuing a Ph.D. (with a focus on modern and contemporary art of the Arab world) at Northwestern University and John Tyson is pursuing a Ph.D. at Emory University where he is studying modern and contemporary art.

Biology
During the 2007-2008 academic year, twenty biology graduate students delivered research-related presentations within the United States and abroad.  These presentations took place at conferences and meetings in, among other locations, Belgium, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Portugal.  These events included the International Symposium on Avian Endocrinology, the annual meeting of the Animal Behavior Society, and the Adaptive Motion of Animals and Machines Conference.

In addition, twenty-eight graduate students published articles in leading journals and other publications.  These students included David DesRochers, who contributed an article in Ecoscience, as well as Noah Wilson-Rich, who co-authored articles in Medical Hypothesis and the Journal of Invertebrate Pathology.  These students were joined by Haihua Zhang and Jocelyn Muller, whose articles appeared in Molecular Cell and the Journal of Ecological Anthropology, respectively.

Graduate students received outside research funding as well.  These students included Alexander "Sasha" Keyel, who received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship, Brian Tavernia, who received support from the Norcross Wildlife Foundation and the Nuttall Ornithological Society, and Molly Dickens, who received funding from Sigma Xi (The Scientific Research Society).

Beyond these funding awards, graduate student Minda Berbeco was accepted into an NSF program in graduate education titled "Debating Science," and David DesRochers received a travel award from the Society for Conservation Biology to present his research at their annual meeting.

Chemistry
During the 2007-2008 academic year, fifteen chemistry graduate students delivered research-related presentations within the United States and abroad.  These presentations took place at conferences and meetings in, among other locations, California, China, and Louisiana.  These events included the American Chemical Society's National Meeting, Gordon Research Conferences, and the annual meeting of the Biomedical Engineering Society.

In addition, twenty-three graduate students published articles in leading journals and other publications.  These students included David Rissin, who co-authored an article which appeared in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Dan Killelea and Victoria Campbell who co-authored an article which appeared in Science.

In addition, thirty-five graduate students were supported by outside research funding.  These included: Faith Dukes and Ashleigh Baber who were supported on National Science Foundation (NSF) grants, and Laila Dafik and Jonathon Tres Brazell who received support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Students from the department received other honors as well.  Heather Tierney received a Best Poster Award from the Materials Research Society, and Ragnhild Whitaker and Erin Iski received awards for outstanding academic performance and contributions to Tufts undergraduate education, respectively, during the university's annual Graduate Student Awards.

Beyond these individual honors, graduate students from the department distinguished themselves through their group achievements—the most notable being Victoria Campbell, Erin Iski, Toni Lamoureaux, Michelle Lee, and Shannon Stroble, who were recipients of a Training Tomorrow's Innovators Fellowship as part of the department's Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) grant.  Shannon Stroble also spent part of the summer of 2008 at NASA mission control in Arizona analyzing data from the Mars Phoenix Lander mission.

Child Development
During the 2007-2008 academic year, child development graduate students delivered research-related presentations within the United States and abroad.  The presentations took place at conferences and meetings in, among other locations, Illinois, Italy, and New York.  These events included conferences for the American Education Research Association, the European Association for Research of Adolescence, and the Society for Research on Adolescence.

Graduate students also published articles in leading journals and other publications.  These students included Joan Riley Driscoll, who co-authored an article in the journal Infant and Child Development, as well as Elizabeth Norton and Maryna Vashchenko, who contributed articles to Mind, Brain, and Education and the Clinical Social Work Journal, respectively.

On the funding front, Elizabeth Norton received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship and Iris Ponte was the recipient of an American Education Research Association Dissertation Grant.  These students were joined by Mona Abo-Zena, who received funding through the Society for Research on Adolescence's Young Scholars Program, Alicia Doyle Lynch and Kristen Fay, who participated in an Advanced Training Institute at the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill with support from an American Psychological Association Fellowship, and Yibing Li, who participated in an Advanced Methodology Training Institute at the University of Virginia, also with support from an American Psychological Association Fellowship.

Drama
During the 2007-2008 academic year, drama graduate students delivered research-related presentations throughout the United States.  These presentations took place at conferences and meetings at, among other locations, Louisiana, Missouri, and Virginia.  These events included the Kennedy Center's American College Theatre Festival, the American Society for Theatre's Research Conference, and the Mid-America Theatre Conference.

Drama graduate students also published articles in leading journals and other publications.  These students included Sean Edgecomb, who contributed articles to the anthologies We Will Be Citizens:  New Essays on Lesbian and Gay Drama and Performance Studies: The Key Concept, and Meron Langsner who authored five articles which appeared in, among others, Puppetry International and the Electronic Journals of Martial Arts & Sciences.  Langsner also received a National New Play Network playwright residency (one of only three individuals in the United States to be recognized with this honor) and a Massachusetts Council on the Humanities Grant for Playwriting.

Graduate student Virginia Anderson was a sponsored fellow at the Centers for Disease Control's National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention.  She also completed her second term as president of the American Society for Theatre Research's Graduate Student Caucus and directed the musical "Cabaret" at Tufts' Arena Theatre.

Education
During the 2007-2008 academic year, fourteen education graduate students delivered research-related presentations within the United States and abroad.  These presentations took place at conferences and meetings in, among other locations, Hawaii, Minnesota, the Netherlands, and New York.  These events included the annual conferences of the National Center for Technology and Engineering Education Research and the Association of Teachers of Mathematics in New England, as well as the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society and the International Congress on Mathematical Education.

In addition, several graduate students published articles in leading journals and other publications.  These students included Mara Martinez and William Church, who co-authored articles which appeared in The International Journal on Mathematics Education and the International Journal of Engineering Education, respectively.

Education graduate students received outside research funding as well.  Gabrielle Cayton received a dissertation grant from the American Educational Research Association and the Institute of Education Sciences, while Araceli Ortiz earned both a 3M Ingenuity Grant and a Motorola Foundation Innovation Generation Grant.  These students were joined by Rory Kondrad (who received a Roothbert Scholarship) and Aaron Price (who received funding to be a visiting scholar at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Illinois).

English
During the 2007-2008 academic year, English graduate students delivered research-related presentations throughout the United States.  The presentations took place at conferences and meetings in, among other locations, Illinois, New York, Texas, and Washington.  These events included the International Conference on Narrative, the Victorian Literature and Culture Seminar, and the Modern Language Association Convention. 

In addition, graduate students published articles and received a number of awards and other honors.  These students included Barbara Orton, who contributed a selection of poems to the Yale Review, and Jason Clemence who had an article selected for publication by Media and the End of the World.  These students were joined by Ashley Shelden, who was awarded a year-long graduate fellowship from Tufts University's Center for the Humanities, and Laurel Hankins, who received a Tufts Graduate Student Council (GSC) Outstanding Contribution to Undergraduate Education Fellowship.  In addition, Kristina Aikens and Margaret Toth received Advanced Graduate Student Awards from the Tufts English Graduate Organization (TEGO), and three fellow students (Erin Kappeler, Anne Moore, and Ashley Shelden) earned Tufts Graduate Institute For Teaching (GIFT) Fellowships.    

History
During the 2007-2008 academic year, history graduate students delivered research-related presentations throughout the United States.  The presentations took place at conferences and meetings in, among other locations, California and Illinois.  These events included the joint national meeting of the American Culture Association/Popular Culture Association and the Journal of Film and History Conference.

In addition, graduate students published articles and received a number of awards and other honors.  These students included Jodi Larson, whose article on postwar campaign songs was not only selected for publication by the Journal of Popular Culture but received its William E. Brigman Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Paper.  Larson was joined by Neilesh Bose, who received a Diversity Dissertation Fellowship from the Center for Citizenship, Race, and Ethnicity Studies (CREST) at the College of Saint Rose in New York, and Sarah Waheed, who received a Council of Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Mellon Research Grant.

Mathematics
During the 2007-2008 academic year, mathematics graduate students delivered research-related presentations within the United States and abroad. These presentations took place at conferences and meetings in, among other locations, Canada, Switzerland, and England. These events included the annual meeting of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and the International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

Graduate students from the department received a number of travel grants to attend conferences and meetings. These students included Jamison Wolf and Meredith Brown, who received National Science Foundation (NSF) travel grants to attend both the Levy Conference in Denmark and Cornell University's Probability Summer School, and Cristian Gonzalez Martinez, who received summer research funding as a Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher at Oxford University.

In addition, graduate students from the department published articles in leading journals and other publications. Both Erin Munro and Malena Espanol co-authored articles, respectively, in BMC Neuroscience and the SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing: Copper Mountain Special Issue, and Gianluca Caterina submitted a paper to Physica A.  Erin Munro was also honored by SIAM for her work as president of the organization's Tufts student chapter and was one of only 41 people in the United States to receive a NSF Mathematics Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Music
During the 2007-2008 academic year, several music graduate students delivered research-related presentations or performed musical compositions within the United States and abroad.  These presentations/performances took place at conferences and musical events in, among other locations, Australia, Brazil, and Massachusetts.  Some of these events included the Art of Record Production 2008 Conference and the World Dance Alliance of the Americas Conference, as well as a 24-hour music marathon which was organized by graduate students Phil Acimovic and Elliot Cless. 
Several students graduated from the master's-only program and are currently pursuing their Ph.D.'s.  These students included Marc Gidal (who's pursuing a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at Harvard University), Cinzia Scafetta (a Ph.D. student in musicology at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom), Samuel Dorf (who's a musicology Ph.D. student at Northwestern University), and Julie Raimondi (who, along with fellow graduate Katie Stuffelbeam, is pursuing a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at the UCLA).

Occupational Therapy
During the 2007-2008 academic year, occupational therapy graduate students delivered research-related presentations at conferences and meetings throughout the United States.  These events took place in, among other locations, California and Massachusetts and included the annual conferences of the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) and the Massachusetts Association for Occupational Therapy (MAOT).

Graduate students from the department received a number of awards and other honors.  These students included Jan Hollenbeck, who received a grant from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and Twyla Fink, the recipient of a Joy Ann Sambur Greisen Scholarship.  Hollenbeck and Fink were joined by Melinda Morgrage and Kimberly Smith, both of whom received support through the Bekenstein Family Endowment, Alicia Zeh-Dean, who received a Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service Civic Engagement Fellowship, and Jane Crimmins, the recipient of the Marjorie B. Greene Award, which is given annually by the department to a student who has demonstrated outstanding achievement in the areas of leadership and involvement in student and professional activities.

Physics
During the 2007-2008 academic year, physics graduate students delivered research-related presentations at conferences and meetings throughout the United States. These events took place in, among other locations, Illinois, Minnesota, and Texas, and included the Physical Electronics Conference, the North American Thermal Analysis Society Meeting, and the AVS National Symposium. 

Several graduate students published articles in leading journals and other publications.  These students included Daniel Cherdack, Matthew Hare, and Benjamin Whitehouse, all of whom co-authored articles in Physical Review D.

In addition, physics graduate students received outside research funding or other honors.  Graduate students Daniel Cherdack (who also received a Burlingame Fellowship), Matthew Hare, and Samuel Hamilton all received funding from the United States Department of Energy, while Huipeng Chen (who also received a North American Thermal Analysis Society Travel Grant) and Lei Yu received support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Petroleum Research Fund, respectively.

Psychology
During the 2007-2008 academic year, twenty-three psychology graduate students delivered research-related presentations within the United States and abroad.  These presentations took place at conferences and meetings in, among other locations, California, Canada, Georgia, and Texas.  These events included the annual meetings of the Psychonomic Society, the Society of Psychophysiological Research, and the American Association of Blacks in Higher Education, as well as the Social and Affective Neuroscience and International Infant Studies conferences.

In addition, twelve graduate students published articles in leading journals and other publications.  These students included Evan Apfelbaum, who contributed an article to the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, as well as Nicole Jurdak and Kathryn Handwerger, who co-authored articles in Nutritional Neuroscience and the Journal of Traumatic Stress, respectively.

On the funding front, Nicholas Rule, Negin Toosi, and Kathryn Handwerger received National Science Foundation (NSF) pre-doctoral fellowships. These students were joined by Kristin Pauker (a Jacob Javitz Fellowship recipient) and Jasmine Yap (who received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Research Service Award grant).

Students from the department were honored in other ways.  Evan Apfelbaum received a travel award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) and Neil Cohn was honored with the 2007 M. Thomas Inge Award for Comics Scholarship. In addition, the American Association of Blacks in Higher Education honored Kristin Dukes with its doctoral student award and Emily Slocombe received a graduate student travel award from the Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning
During the 2007-2008 academic year, urban and environmental policy and planning graduate students delivered research-related presentations at conferences and meetings within the United States and abroad.  These events took place in, among other locations, Maine, Pennsylvania, and Spain and included conferences held by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) and the International Society for Third-Sector Research (ISTR).

In addition, several graduate students received funding or other honors.  Graduate students Holly Elwell and Ryan Fattman were selected as Rappaport Public Policy Fellows by Harvard University's Rappaport Institute, and Kara Hubbard was awarded a Baltimore City Mayoral Fellowship.  These students were joined by Abby Lindsay, who received a research fellowship from the Tufts Institute of the Environment.

Beyond these individual honors, graduate students from the department were also recognized for their group work, the most notable being Alison Corwin, Soledad Gaztambide, Abby Lindsay, and Jessica Miller who received a "Best Application of the Planning Process" award from the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP).

Students who graduated from the master's-only program in 2007-2008 are working in a number of different areas, including Danielle Lipes (a Town Planner/Conservation Agent in Swampscott, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts), Melissa Peters (who is working as an Environmental Planner for Camp Dresser & McKee, Inc. of Chicago, Illinois), and Craig Nicholson (a Project Manager for Ajax Partners, LLC of Lexington, Massachusetts).