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Lawrence University Artist Series Presents the King’s Singers

The Lawrence University Artist Series will start its 2004-05 “Performing Arts at Lawrence” season with a performance by the vocal ensemble, King’s Singers.  The concert will take place on Friday, October 29, 2004 at 8:00 p.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel.  Tickets for this event are available at the Lawrence University Box Office, 920-832-6749, and range from $15 for students to $22 for adults.

Founded at King’s College in Cambridge in 1968, the King’s Singers are one of the world’s most sought-after and acclaimed vocal ensembles. Known for presenting diverse programs encompassing a wide range of repertoire, they have performed throughout North America in such prestigious venues as New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in the major halls of Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Internationally, the King’s Singers uphold a strong presence across most of the globe. The group has performed in the major halls of London, Paris, Rome, Salzburg, Vienna, Amsterdam, Budapest, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Beirut, Taipei, Hong Kong, Macao, Seoul, Tokyo, and Mexico City, among other cities.

This extraordinary vocal ensemble is equally at home singing Renaissance madrigals, transcriptions of orchestral classics, folk music in various languages and popular songs; this wide-ranging repertoire is reflected in the ensemble’s more than 70 recordings, which have won several Grammy nominations. In addition to their sold-out concerts in recital orchestral and festival venues worldwide, the King’s Singers are also familiar to American television audiences through their numerous television appearances, including Evening at Pops with the Boston Pops, their own six-part series broadcast on A&E, and numerous appearances on NBC’s The Tonight Show and The Today Show.

For additional information on this and other “Performing Arts at Lawrence” series concerts, please visit www.lawrence.edu/news/performingartsseries.

Defying Constituents Wishes: Lawrence University Political Scientist Discusses Why Elected Officials Can Do It

Political scientist Christian Grose examines the reasons why elected representatives can support positions contrary to the voters of their district and still get re-elected in a Lawrence University Science Hall Colloquium.

Grose, assistant professor of government at Lawrence, presents “Why do Legislators Deviate from their Constituents’ Preferences” Wednesday, Oct. 13 at 4:30 p.m. in Science Hall Room 102. The event is free and open to the public.

Grose will discuss recent research he has conducted on elected officials’ “valence advantage,” that is, those advantages a representative has that are unrelated specifically to policy decisions, such as personal charisma, constituency service or the delivery of federal largess to district constituents. His findings indicate that the amount of money or “pork” that an elected representative is able deliver to his/her state or district is directly related to the extent to which that representative can take positions that are contrary to the views of his or her constituents.

A specialist in congressional representation and behavior, elections and public opinion, Grose joined the
Lawrence faculty in 2002. The recipient of the American Political Science Association’s 2004 Carl Albert Award for the nation’s best doctoral dissertation in the area of legislative studies, Grose earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and history at Duke University and his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Rochester.

Nobel Laureate Discusses Breakthrough Research on Absolute Zero in Lawrence University Science Colloquium

Nobel Prize-winning scientist Eric Cornell, whose ground-breaking research resulted in cooling atoms to the lowest temperature that had ever been achieved, discusses his work and the bizarre things that occur at these extremely low temperatures in a Lawrence University Science Hall Colloquium.

Cornell presents “Stone Cold Science: Things Get Weird Around Absolute Zero” Thursday, Oct. 14 at 4:15 p.m. in Youngchild Hall, Room 121. The event is free and open to the public.

In 1995, Cornell and his research partner Carl Wieman, used laser light and the process of evaporative cooling to achieve a temperature a few billionths — 0.000,000,001 — of a degree above absolute zero, a temperature far colder than even the farthest depths of deep space. Cornell will explain how and why scientists reach such record low temperatures and the unusual ways atoms behave in this ultra-cold state.

Cornell joined the scientific staff at JILA, one of the nation’s leading research institutes jointly operated by the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in 1990. He holds Fellow status at JILA, is a senior scientist at NIST and has a faculty appointment in the physics department at the University of Colorado. A graduate of Stanford, he earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In addition to winning the 2001 Nobel Prize for Physics, Cornell was the recipient of the 2000 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics from the Franklin Institute, which recognizes outstanding achievement in science and technology, was awarded the 1998 Lorentz Medal by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in recognition of important contributions to physics and the 1997 King Faisal International Prize for Science for significant advances that benefit humanity. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the Optical Society of America.

Lawrence University Art Historian Awarded Prestigious Metropolitan Museum Research Fellowship

Lawrence University Assistant Professor of Art History Alexis Boylan has been named one of 39 international recipients of a 2004-05 fellowship from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Boylan was awarded a Chester Dale Fellowship to support research she is conducting for an article on American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, famous for his civic monuments, most notably those of Civil War heroes, and his bronze bas-relief of author Robert Louis Stevenson.

The fellowship will enable Boylan to spend three months this fall in New York, studying at the Metropolitan Museum, which has two versions of the Saint-Gaudens’ sculpture of Stevenson.

Boylan’s article, “‘Not a Bit Like an Invalid:’ Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson,” examines the relationship between the sculptor and the famed Scottish novelist. She will focus on the artist’s decision to present Stevenson ill and in bed in his 1887 work, exploring the rationale behind Saint-Gauden’s decision to shift from his more typical style of portraying heroic men and instead sculpt Stevenson — a man he admired and considered a good friend — as weak and infirm in this piece.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art awards fellowships to scholars and graduate students from the United States as well as from around the world to undertake research projects at the renowned museum or abroad. Established in 1974, the program supports research in art history, archaeology and art conservation.

Among the 39 recipients, Boylan was the only scholar from a liberal arts college awarded one of the 2004-05 Metropolitan Museum fellowships, which also went to scholars at Columbia, Harvard and Princeton universities, as well as Oxford University and the University of the Sorbonne, among others.

A specialist in 19th- and 20th-century American and European art, Boylan joined the Lawrence faculty in 2002. She earned a bachelor’s degree in history at Bryn Mawr College and a Ph.D. in art history at Rutgers University in 2001.

Political Commentator, Columnist Arianna Huffington Dissects Presidential Election in Lawrence University Convocation

Nationally syndicated columnist, best-selling author and well-known political commentator Arianna Huffington shares her insights on the upcoming presidential election Thursday, Oct. 7 in a Lawrence University convocation.

Huffington presents “The 2004 Election: What’s at Stake?” at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. The address, the second in Lawrence’s five-part 2004-05 convocation series, is free and open to the public.

Hailed as one of Washington’s “most influential commentators” by Newsweek magazine, Huffington, 54, is the author of 10 books, including the 2003 New York Times’ best-seller “Pigs at the Trough,” a scathing indictment of corporate greed and political manipulation.

A one-time staunch conservative whose ideology has since evolved toward more populist views and who now operates outside the two-party system, Huffington ran for governor as an independent in California’s 2003 state recall election — won by Arnold Schwarzenegger — and then wrote a behind-the-scenes account of the election in the book “Fanatics and Fools,” which was published earlier this year.

Politics is a favorite topic for Huffington’s books. In addition to “Pigs at the Trough,” she tackled the subject of political corruption and the need for campaign finance reform in her 2000 book “How to Overthrow the Government” while 1998’s “Greetings from the Lincoln Bedroom” provided a satirical, Alice-in-Wonderland-like fantasy look at the Clinton administration.

Two of Huffington’s most popular books were vivid biographies of world famous artists. Her works “Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend” in 1981 and “Picasso: Creator and Destroyer” in 1988 both became international bestsellers. She launched her literary career by challenging modern feminism in “The Female Woman” (1974), criticizing the women’s liberation movement for “denying or ignoring the longings of millions of women for intimacy, children, and a family.” The book was eventually translated into 11 languages.

A familiar face on the television talk show circuit, Huffington was a frequent guest on “Politically Incorrect” and teamed with Al Franken to provide campaign coverage of the Democratic and Republican conventions in 1996. She also has appeared regularly on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” CNN’s “Crossfire” and Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor” and “Hannity & Colmes.”

Extending her political interests beyond the literary world, Huffington co-founded the Center for Effective Compassion, a Michigan-based organization that promotes faith-principled service to the poor as an alternative to government-run social programs, and The Detroit Project, a national campaign that links fuel efficiency to national security and the country’s reliance on foreign oil. She also serves on the board of directors of the Points of Light Foundation and A Place Called Home, two organizations that foster community solutions to social problems.

Born in Athens, Greece, Huffington moved to England at the age of 16 and earned a degree in economics from Cambridge University, where she became only the third woman ever elected president the Cambridge Union, the university’s famed debating society.

President Jill Beck Opens Lawrence University’s 155th Academic Year with Matriculation Convocation Focusing on Value of Personalized Instruction

Jill Beck makes her official public debut as Lawrence University’s 15th president Thursday, Sept. 23, opening the college’s 155th academic year with her first matriculation address.

Beck, who was named the successor of long-time Lawrence president Richard Warch in January and assumed the president’s duties in July, will deliver the address “The Value of Individualized Instruction in
Liberal Education” at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. The event is free and open to the public.

Beck will discuss the importance of highly individualized, one-on-one personal interaction between students and teachers and why that kind of close collaboration is so essential to effective learning.

Prior to her appointment as president of Lawrence, Beck spent eight years as dean of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California-Irvine. During her tenure as dean, she founded ArtsBridge America, a national model for the advancement of educational arts partnerships between universities and K-12 communities, and established the da Vinci Research Center for Learning Through the Arts, an interdisciplinary center for research focused on learning across disciplines.

A native of Worcester, Mass., Beck earned a bachelor of arts degree from Clark University in 1970 and her Ph.D. from City University of New York.

In addition to opening the new academic year, Beck’s matriculation address also launches Lawrence’s five-part convocation series for the 2004-05 academic year. Other scheduled speakers in the convocation series include:

Oct. 7 — Columnist, author and political commentator Arianna Huffington

Feb. 8 — Georgia Congressman and noted civil rights activist John Lewis

March 8 — Human rights activist and Partners in Health medical director Joia Mukherjee

May 26 — Columbia University President Lee Bollinger

LU Psychologist Receives Second National Honor for Scientific Research

For the second time this year, Lawrence University psychologist Peter Glick has been recognized with Fellow status by a national psychological organization.

The American Psychological Association, the world’s largest scientific and professional organization with nearly 150,000 members, has named Glick a Fellow for “outstanding contributions in the field of psychology.” Glick joins a select body of psychologists to obtain APA Fellow status. Only three percent of the Washington, D.C.-based association’s current membership have been recognized as Fellows.

Glick’s APA honor comes on the heels of his election in June as a Fellow in the American Psychological Society (APS). He is the first psychologist in Lawrence history to hold Fellow status in both national organizations.

In announcing Glick’s selection as a Fellow, APA membership committee chair Janet Matthews said Glick’s “diligent work and commitment” have enhanced the field of psychology and “the public is better served.”

“It is especially gratifying to receive recognition for my scientific contributions from the largest and most venerable national organization in psychology,” Glick said of his latest honor. “Such recognition more typically goes to researchers at larger universities, where research productivity is emphasized over teaching. I’m particularly proud of having achieved some degree of prominence in psychology while maintaining my commitments as a teacher at a small, undergraduate liberal arts college.”

A social psychologist who joined the Lawrence faculty in 1985, Glick’s research interests focus on both the subtle and the overt ways in which prejudices and stereotypes foster social inequality. In research he co-authored, Glick introduced the concept of “ambivalent sexism,” asserting that not just hostile, but subjectively benevolent views of women as pure, but fragile, reinforce gender inequality. Such “benevolent sexism,” Glick argues, rewards women for conforming to conventional gender roles and results in hostile attitudes toward women who fail to do so.

In collaboration with research associate Susan Fiske of Princeton University, Glick developed the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, which has since been administered to more than 30,000 people in 30 countries. The research earned them the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues in 1995.

Glick serves on the editorial board of four professional journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Psychology of Women Quarterly and regularly delivers lectures at conferences and universities across the country as well as abroad.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology at Oberlin College and his Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Minnesota.

U.S. News & World Report Cites Lawrence University in Three Categories in Annual “Best College’s Guide”

Lawrence University’s outstanding overall educational experience, its distinctive Freshman Studies program and its diverse international student body are all cited by U.S. News & World Report in the magazine’s most recent annual college rankings.

In U.S. News’ 18th annual “America’s Best Colleges” report released Friday (8/20/04), Lawrence was included among the top quarter of the nation’s 217 leading national liberal arts colleges for the sixth consecutive year, earning a 53rd ranking in the “Best Liberal Arts Colleges” category.

Additionally, U.S. News recognized Lawrence in two other categories. For the third year in a row, Lawrence was included among U.S. News’ list of “first-year experiences” based on the strength of Freshman Studies, the college’s signature curricular program. The first-year experiences list is one of eight special categories the magazine uses to highlight what it describes as “outstanding examples of academic programs that are believed to lead to student success.”

The eight special categories are not distinguished by institutional size or type, but include those cited most frequently in a survey of college presidents, chief academic officers and deans of students. Institutions are not numerically ranked in the special categories, but listed alphabetically. Lawrence joined Duke, Princeton, and Stanford universities, among others, who were recognized for first-year programs.

Using enrollment figures from the past academic year, the magazine also ranked Lawrence seventh among all liberal arts colleges in percentage of international students enrolled with 11% of the student body comprised of international students. Lawrence students came from 49 countries, Hong Kong and the Palestinian Authority, in addition to 48 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Williams College of Massachusetts was named the top national liberal arts college for the second consecutive year, while Amherst College, last year’s second-ranked institution, and Swarthmore College, which the magazine ranked third a year ago, tied for second in this year’s rankings.

In compiling its annual “America’s Best Colleges” guide, U.S. News and World Report uses data from 15 separate indicators of academic excellence such as selectivity, graduation rates, student retention, faculty resources and alumni satisfaction. Each factor is assigned a “weight” that reflects the magazine editor’s judgment as to how much that measure matters. Each school’s composite weighted score is then compared to peer institutions to determine final rankings.

For the rankings, U.S. News evaluates nearly 1,400 of the nation’s public and private four-year schools, dividing them into several distinct categories. In addition to the best liberal arts college category, other rankings are based on universities that grant master and doctorate degrees and colleges that are considered “regional” institutions, such as St. Norbert College or UW-Oshkosh. rather than “national” ones, like Lawrence.

Lawrence University Scholar to Edit Major Volume of the Political Writings of Jonathan Swift

Bertrand A. Goldgar, the John N. Bergstrom Professor of Humanities and Professor of English at Lawrence University, has been named by the Cambridge University Press as a contributing editor to a landmark new edition of the works of Jonathan Swift.

The United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Board has awarded a grant of £553,661 over five years (approximately $1.02 million) to support the compilation of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift, which will be published in 15 volumes between 2006 and 2011. The multi-volume edition will be the first scholarly edition of Swift’s collected works in 40 years and, according to the Cambridge University Press, will be the first ever to provide full textual and explanatory information for Swift’s texts.

Funding from the grant will support the creation of an electronic archive of all the authoritative texts of Swift’s prose and assist the general editors, Claude Rawson (Yale University), Ian Higgins (Australian National University, Canberra), and David Womersley (University of Oxford), in the preparation of the texts for the printed edition.

The Anglo-Irish author Swift, born in Dublin in 1667, is widely acknowledged as the foremost satirist in the English language. Best known, perhaps, for his novel “Gulliver’s Travels” (1726), which was intended as a satirical indictment of human nature, Swift wrote extensively, with an array of books, political pamphlets, prose, letters and poetry to his credit.

Goldgar’s contribution to the Cambridge edition, “Swift’s English Political Writing, 1711-1714,” covers Swift’s literary engagement in the politics of early 18th-century London. Although he formerly considered himself a Whig in terms of political philosophy, Swift joined the Tories in 1710 and edited the Tory Examiner for a year. A staunch defender of the Tory party and its leadership, Swift turned his biting satire against the Whigs and their policies, producing such influential political pamphlets as “The Conduct of the Allies” (1711), “Remarks on the Barrier Treaty” (1712) and “The Public Spirit of the Whigs” (1714).

In “The Conduct of the Allies,” Swift claimed that Whig self-interest was instrumental in needlessly prolonging the War of the Spanish Succession, a charge that is said to have led to the dismissal of the commander of the anti-French alliance, British general John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough.

A member of the Lawrence University faculty since 1957, Goldgar is an internationally recognized expert on 18th-century political satire and one of the world’s leading scholars on the life and work of “Tom Jones” creator Henry Fielding.

He is the author or editor of seven books, including “The Curse of Party: Swift’s Relations with Addison and Steele” (University of Nebraska Press, 1961); “The Literary Criticism of Alexander Pope” (University of Nebraska Press, 1965); “Walpole and the Wits: The Relation of Politics to Literature, 1722-1742” (University of Nebraska Press, 1976); “Henry Fielding, The Covent-Garden Journal and A Plan of the Universal Register-Office” (Wesleyan University Press, 1988); “Miscellanies by Henry Fielding, Esq., Volume 2” (Wesleyan University Press, 1993); “Miscellanies by Henry Fielding, Esq., Volume 3: Jonathan Wild” (Wesleyan University Press, 1997); and, most recently, “The Grub Street Journal, 1730-1733” (Pickering & Chatto, 2002), a four-volume edition with introduction and annotation. He also wrote the Afterword for “Plagiarism in Early Modern England” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Lawrence University Political Scientist Cited With National Dissertation Award

A Lawrence University government professor’s research on representation of African-American interests in Congress has been honored with a national award by the American Political Science Association.

Assistant professor of government Christian Grose has been named the recipient of the APSA’s 2004 Carl Albert Dissertation Award for the nation’s best doctoral dissertation in the area of legislative studies.

Established in 1999, the award recognizes outstanding work on national or subnational topics focusing on Congress, parliaments, state legislatures or other representative bodies. Grose is the first faculty
member at a liberal arts college to receive the award. Three of the four previous winners teach at Yale, Harvard and Duke universities.

Grose will receive his award, which includes a $400 cash prize, Labor Day weekend at the annual American Political Science Association meeting in Chicago.

“The award is quite competitive,” said Bruce Oppenheimer, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, who served as chair of the APSA committee that reviewed the nominations and selected the winner for the Albert award. “Because the degree-granting department must first nominate a dissertation before it can be considered, only the very best dissertations are put forth for consideration.

“What separated Christian’s dissertation from the other excellent ones that were nominated was the substantive importance of his findings about the representation of African-American interests in Congress, his integration of rigorous statistical analysis with extensive interviews and field research findings and the overall originality of the work.”

Completed early last year through the University of Rochester, Grose’s dissertation, “Beyond the Vote: A Theory of Black Representation in Congress,” examines the effect of electoral structures and the election of black legislators on the representation of black constituents in Congress. Rejecting more narrow measures of representation presented by previous scholars, Grose focused his analysis on three different modes of representation: roll-call voting, “pork” project allocation and constituency service.

Grose found that electing black representatives in Congress, even if the result in the aggregate is a Republican legislature, is the best strategy for achieving “greater” representation for black Americans when measured as activities beyond roll-call voting. To increase the substantive representation of black interests as measured only by roll-call voting, however, the best strategy is to elect Democratic
legislators of any racial ethnicity.

“I’m certainly honored to have my research recognized by my peers,” said Grose. “The news that I had been selected for the Albert award was as thrilling as it was surprising.”

As a political scientist, Grose’s interests focus on congressional representation, racial politics, elections, voting behavior and public opinion. He joined the Lawrence government department in 2002. In addition to his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester, Grose earned his bachelor’s degree in political science and history from Duke University.