Faculty Research Statements-Collected in 2008
Communications
Dr. Nichola Gutgold, Associate Professor of Communications
Dr. Nichola D. Gutgold studies women's mediated rhetorical messages. Her work has included studies of women politicians, newscasters and the special rhetorical challenges facing women and the United States presidency.
English
Dr. Barbara Cantalupo, Associate Professor of English
Dr. Cantalupo's research interests are two-told: women writers and 19th century American authors, especially Edgar Allan Poe. She is founding and current editor of The Edgar Allan Poe Review and author of three edited books on American literature: Emma Wolf's Short Stories in The Smart Set (AMS Press, 2009), Other Things Being Equal by Emma Wolf (Wayne State UP, 2002), and with Richard Kopley, Prospects for the Study of American Literature (II) (AMS Press, 2009). She has published articles on 19th century American authors Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar A. Poe, Emma Wolf, Thomas Holley Chivers, Mordecai Noah as well as articles on 20th century American authors and artists including Tillie Olsen, Ray Federman, Karen Finley, and Yvonne Rainer. She is currently working on a book-length manuscript on Poe and the visual arts.
Dr. Margaret Christian, Associate Professor of English
Dr. Margaret Christian has a special interest in early modern literature and religion in England. She is working on a book for Manchester University Press on Edmund Spenser's romance epic The Faerie Queene (1596). Spenser used allegory to dramatize the political and religious issues of his day, a method that drew on Elizabethan methods of biblical exegesis. A project related in location and timeframe, Sitting in Moses' Chair, will analyze the official religious rhetoric of the sixteenth century (the prayer book, the state-sponsored sermons, and other publications of the established church) as dramatic tests. During the period of English transition between medieval Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, monarch, bishops, priests, and people were discovering new roles, and religious rhetoric offered them "scripts" to read from or hear performed and "parts" (dramatic characters) to try out. For her next project, My Share: Living on One Six-Billionth, Dr. Christian is learning about development economics and environmental issues to make cross-cultural comparisons .In the summer of 2006, she began traveling to interview and photograph families who are living on their "fair share" of the earth's wealth and resources to see how people live on about $9500 per year in 18 different countries.
The image is from the Edmund Spenser Home Page at http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/spenser.
To view images of the book Dr. Christian is researching, please visit http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/redcrosse.gif
Education
Dr. Xenia Hadjioannou, Assistant Professor of Elementary Education
Xenia Hadjioannou is Assistant Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the Lehigh Valley Campus of Penn State University. Dr. Hadijoannou's research focuses on observing, describing, understanding, and supporting practices that nurture literacy development. Much of her work involves the study of language-in-use: examinations of individuals and groups as they are interacting within and outside classroom settings. Another significant aspect of her research concerns the educational and social implications of specific linguistic choices made in the context of diverse interactions. Within this research strand falls her examination of non-standard dialect use in educational settings and her study of authentic classroom discussions. She has also conducted studies on context-sensitive implementations of exemplary instructional practices.
To view additional research by Dr. Hadjioannou please click here
Dr. Mary Hutchinson, Assistant Professor of ESL Education
Dr. Mary Hutchinson has been active in examining community-based service-learning, an issue at the forefront of higher education and change. This research, by nature, focuses on "seamless learning" and understanding the complexity of teaching and learning from a systematic perspective which accounts for the many variables inherent in education. Under the heading of Engagement Scholarship, she has focused her efforts on examining the pedagogy of service learning. More recently, her work in ESL and the grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of English Language Acquisition, she has begun to study the impact of a teacher development program.
Please click here to view additional research by Dr. Hutchinson.
Kinesiology
Dr. Douglas R. Hochstetler, Associate Professor of Kinesiology
Dr. Hochstetler's scholarly work focuses on bot philosophical and historical aspects of sport and physical activity. His research interests in sport philosophy include sport ethics, and the place of meaning in physical activity. Recent projects focus on the use of narratives as a means for moral education in sport as well as the importance of location with respect to meaning in movement. His research interests in sport history include intercollegiate football in the 1920s-1930s. Recent projects address the development of a fair play ethos at Cornell University in the 1920s-1930s, and more recently, moral development through intercollegiate athletics.
Dr. Hochstetler is published in a wide range of scholarly journals, including those in higher education circles (i.e., Quest) as well as those at the particular level (i.e., The Physical Educator and Strategies). He is a member of the Editorial Board for Quest, a publication of the National Association of Kinesiology and Physical Education in Higher Education and is an Executive Committee member of the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport.
Psychology
Dr. Peter Behrens, Assistant Professor of Psychology
An important role that Penn State faculty have in the University is to be engaged in professional research. For Dr. Behrens, this has meant primarily delving into the fascinating subject of the history of Psychology in a variety of ways, from the earliest students and programs in Psychology in the 19th century to the more recent ways in which Psychology appeared in radio broadcasts in the 1920's and 1930's. Beyond the study of Psychology's past, undergraduate students have assisted Dr. Behrens in other areas of research, which has been valuable for them to prepare for their own professional careers. Students have collected and analyzed data in drug and alcohol addiction, horticultural therapy in a psychiatric day program, and studied childhood depression in Lehigh Valley elementary school students. These projects have resulted in written reports, and even presentations at professional meetings, such as the Undergraduate Research Conference at the University of Scranton.
Sciences
Dr. Tai-Yin Huang, Associate Professor of Physics
Dr. Huang's research focuses on dynamics, chemistry, and energetics, in the Mesosphere/Lower Thermosphere region. She is a theorist in Aeronomy, specializing in analytical approach, numerical simulation, and data analysis. The projects that Dr. Huang has been involved are about, but not limited to, exothermic heating, secular variations of minor species and airglow emissions, wave ducting, the formation of Mesospheric Inversion Layers (MILs), tidal variation of atomic oxygen, nonlinear response of minor species, and lightning-inducted transient emissions (LITEs).
The first noted accomplishment of Dr. Huang's career at Lehigh Valley is that her first National Science Foundation (NSF) proposal as a sole PI was awarded in 2004. It is also the first research NSF proposal ever funded at this campus. Dr. Huang has recently been awarded her, also Penn State Lehigh Valley's, second NSF grant in 2008. With the NSF grants and funding from the campus and University, she has employed several undergraduate research assistants to work in several research projects outlined below. Most of the students presented or co-presented the research findings at national and international professional meetings and in-house conferences.
The mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT) is a region full of active photochemical and dynamical interactions. It is also a region where waves and wave-dissipative processes can play an important role in the energetic, dynamics, and chemistry of the atmosphere. There are waves of various kinds propagating through the atmosphere like gravity waves, tides,and planetary waves. Dr. Huang's research primarily focuses on the effects induced by gravity waves. Most of gravity waves originate from the lower atmosphere. They act as a vehicle for energy and momentum transport to the middle and upper atmosphere. Therefore, understanding gravity waves is essential in understanding atmospheric dynamics and long distance energy transport.
The physical explanation for the existence of gravity waves is that when the force of earth's gravity and the stabilizing restoring force produced by the atmospheric density gradients become comparable with compressible forces, the resultant disturbances are gravity waves. They can be generated by many sources like jet streams, tidal waves, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, nuclear explosions and thunderstorms.
The image showing an intensity enhancement in the OH airglow layer (located at~87 km) accompanying by lightning is from ISUAL onboard the FORMOSAT-2 satellite. Find out more about Dr. Huang's research at http://www2.lv.psu.edu/tuh4/profile.htm
To view images of Dr. Huang's research please click here.
Dr. Jacqueline S. McLaughlin,
Associate Professor of Biology
Presently, she is working on three specific research projects with colleagues, graduate students, and undergraduate, all of which "blend research with teaching."
See: http://www.lv.psu.edu/Academics/ugradresearch.htm
She has had numerous research articles published in peer-reviewed journals, books and on professional web sites. She has earned numerous awards for her excellence in both teaching and research including: The National Association of Biology Teachers' (NABT) 2001 Four-year College and University Outstanding Teacher Award; The Pennsylvania State University's most prestigious teaching award, the 2003 George Atherton Award; Penn State Lehigh Valley’s 2007 Outstanding Research and/or Creative Accomplishment Award; and, most recently, The Pennsylvania State University’s 2010 Spirit of Internationalization Award and The Pennsylvania Council for International Education's 2010 David A. Portlock Outstanding International Educator Award.
Dr. McLaughin's homepage: http://www2.lv.psu.edu/jxm57/