Faculty and staff awards, honors, and appointments

Congratulations to the following faculty and staff members for their notable awards, honors, appointments and promotions:

John Behnke (University Police) has been appointed Campus Public Safety Officer.

Peter D.G. Brown, distinguished service professor of German emeritus, contributed four chapters to a book published in Russian titled “Oskar Panizza: A Scandalous Case,” edited by Sergey Monakhov (Moscow 2014). Brown is a leading authority on Panizza, a 19th-century German author, about whom he has written three books and numerous articles.

Deanna Knapp (Disability Resource Center) Disability Resource Center Services Coordinator.

Art Education Assistant Professor Aaron D. Knochel will be a keynote speaker at the 2014 New York State Art Teachers Association in Albany, N.Y., on Nov. 22.  Knochel’s keynote will review trends in understanding data as a form of performance measurement, as a phenomenon for artistic exploration, and as a pathway to understanding learning in the arts. For more information log on to http://www.nysata.org/2014-conference.

Giordana Grossi (Psychology), Suzanne Kelly (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies), Alison Nash (Psychology), and Gowri Parameswaran (Educational Studies) recently published a multidisciplinary critique of evolutionary psychology in the journal Dialectical Anthropology. In each of the four peer-reviewed articles, each author challenges a number of assumptions made by evolutionary psychologists. The four articles are titled

  • “Tofu feminism: Can feminist theory absorb evolutionary psychology?” (Kelly);
  • “Are stone-age genes created out of whole cloth? Evaluating claims about the evolution of behavior” (Nash);
  • “A module is a module is a module: Evolution of modularity in evolutionary psychology” (Grossi);
  • “Are evolutionary psychology assumptions about sex and mating behaviors valid? A historical and cross-cultural exploration” (Parameswaran).

In addition, Grossi, Kelly, Nash, and Parameswaran co-authored “Challenging dangerous ideas: A multi-disciplinary critique of evolutionary psychology, ” an introduction to the four articles.

Jennifer Maphis (Office of Development and Alumni Relations) has been appointed Secretary 1.

Rosalie McIntosh (Admissions) has been appointed Keyboard Specialist 1.

Molly Polos (Admissions) has been appointed Keyboard Specialist 1.

Karla Vermeulen, assistant professor (Psychology), has received a $9,999 grant from NYS Department of Health for her project titled, “NYS DOH 2014-15 Disaster Mental Health Education and Training.”