9 Receive McGregor Research and Teaching-Assistantship Grants By Sue Kropp
	Earlier Stories about McGregor-Oresman Researchers and Teaching Assistants: Murder in the Chemistry Lab (August 24, 1998) The Verdict Has Been Decided in the Chemistry Lab Murder Trial (December 17, 1998) 6 Receive McGregor-Oresman Research and Teaching Assistantship Grants (March 31, 1999) 10 Faculty Members to Conduct Research with Students under McGregor-Oresman Grants This Summer and Fall (May 18, 1999) 8 Receive McGregor-Oresman Research and Teaching Assistantship Grants (February 24, 2000)		JANUARY 11, 2001--Nine members of the College Faculty received grants from the College's McGregor Fund in December. The grants are similar to those offered through the McGregor-Oresman Fund in the past. They enable faculty to hire students to help on research projects or undertake teaching assistantships during spring semester. Albert Borroni, acting director of the Oberlin Center for Technologically Enhanced Teaching (OCTET) and lecturer in neuroscience, will develop with Lara Petrak, a senior from Cranberry, Pennsylvania, a computer program that acts like a rat. "The point of developing the program is so that we can study the animal without always using the animal," says Borroni. "We will also be able to formulate more precise questions to research using the computer. Ultimately, it may be possible to use the technology to study human behavior and reactions." Yolanda Cruz, professor of biology, will work with two students to compile reading materials and web-site addresses for a new colloquium, Biology and People. The colloquium, to be taught to 15 first-year students this fall, aims to "develop an appreciation for and understanding of current, recent, or impending discoveries and developments in biology with actual or potential applications to medicine, agriculture, and conservation," Cruz says. Stephen FitzGerald, assistant professor of physics, and Marie Rinkoski, a double-degree senior from Green Bay, Wisconsin, will conduct experiments on novel carbon materials. Using a high-pressure system built by Oberlin students, Rinkoski will force high-pressure gas molecules into the spaces between carbon molecules and observe the molecules as they are confined to such a small volume. FitzGerald and Rinkoski will then fit the data--gathered at various pressures and temperatures--to theoretical models. Joanna Burch-Brown, a sophomore from Blacksburg, Virginia, will help Deborah Geis, visiting associate professor of English, in a writing-intensive colloquium called Theater, Politics, and Community. As a teaching assistant, Brown will be a liaison between Oberlin College and community groups; plan, organize, and execute theater exercises central to the course; and help students in the colloquium with written work. Gillian Johns, assistant professor of English, is taking her Ph.D. dissertation, "Going Southwest: American Humor and the Rhetoric of Race in Modern African-American Fiction and Authorship," a step further by broadening her coverage of African-American humorists who make use of features of southwestern humor. Seson Taylor, a senior from Pittsburgh, will help Johns with her research by conducting electronic searches for critical discussions of humor in works by William Wells Brown, Charles Chesnutt, Langston Hughes, Chester Himes, and Ishmael Reed, among others. Taylor will study the materials and document the uses to which the discourse of southwestern humor is put and present her findings to Johns. Susan Kane, associate professor of art, will work with Wendolyn Antibus, a senior from Bluffton, Ohio, to revise the Sangro Valley Project's computerized databases. The databases contain records, drawings, and digital images for all excavated pottery and small finds (coins, glass, architectural terracottas, metal objects, and special pottery) found during the past three years of the project's excavations. As a research assistant, Antibus will reorganize and update the existing pottery database to reflect the new excavation system; incorporate digital images into the database; and transfer the small-finds records from paper to the database. James Millette, professor of African-American studies, is preparing for reissue an out-of-print collection of essays—Freedom Road—that he edited, and which was published in 1988 by the José Martí Publishing House in Cuba. Millette is working with a research assistant who will scan, proofread, update references, and type the final version of the manuscript to ready it for publication. Anuradha Needham, associate professor of English, is completing an essay, "The Small Voice of History: Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things and Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh, for Ariel: A Journal of International Literatures in English. Menna-Heiwot Demessie, a sophomore from Hudson, Ohio, will be Needham's research assistant, collecting and evaluating critical reviews that have been written about the two novels. "Menna's research will help me analyze the authors' attempts to activate the small and hidden voices of women in historical narratives and to re-envision the task of writing such narratives," says Needham. Tai Collins, a sophomore from New Orleans, will help Adenike Sharpley, lecturer in African-American studies, develop a new course, Dance within the Diaspora: Concentration Cuban Folkloric. As a research assistant, Collins will be responsible for developing and synthesizing materials needed to teach a new course on Cuban dance forms. Collins also will travel to Cuba with Sharpley during the semester to collect, collate, and translate materials, and to study Cuban dances firsthand.
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