Paul Dolan, professor, physics, was appointed vice chair of the Committee on Physics in Pre-High School Education of the American Association of Physics Teachers.

Angeles Eames, executive director, assessment and program review, recently presented "Cast Study: Finding the Right Assessment Tools for a First-Year Program" at the 2009 Assessment Institute, which was held in Indianapolis. Her contribution about "Using Direct and Indirect Evidence in General Education Assessment" was recently published in the book Designing Effective Assessment: Principals and Profiles of Good Practice.

Lidia Filus, professor, mathematics, recently published and/or presented the following: "On Multicomponent System Reliability with 'Weakly Dependent' Component Life Times" at the Mathematical Models in Reliability Conference in Moscow, Russia, in June; "Stochastic Models for Reliability of Parallel System with Physical Interactions of its Components" at the 13th International Conference on Applied Stochastic Models and Data Analysis in Vilnius, Lithuania, last summer; "Pseudoexponential Modeling of Cancer Diagnostic: Testing, Estimation and Design" at the Third International Conference on Cancer Risk Assessment, Mathematical, Statistical, and Computational Methods in Porto Heli, Greece, where she also was a member of the International Organizing Committee, in July; and "'Microshocks-Microdamages' Type of System Component Interaction, Failure Models" at the 15th International Conference on Reliability and Quality in Design in San Francisco in August.

Ana Fraiman, professor, chemistry, chaired a session at the International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation, held in November in Madrid, Spain. During the session a paper she co-authored titled "Chem-Wiki: Increasing Collaboration through Online Lab Reporting Using Web 2.0 Technology" was presented.

Rick Hallett, professor, linguistics, presented his paper "'The Vividness of the Country': A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of an Indian Ministry of Tourism Website" at the 31st All-India Conference of Linguists earlier this month in Hyderabad, India. His paper "The Intertextuality of Porn Titles" was presented at the Sex and Language Verbal Workshop at the Austrian Linguistics Conference held in Salzburg, Austria also earlier this month.

Edmund Hansen, director, Center for Teaching and Learning, recently led a pre-conference workshop titled "Planning for Conceptual Understanding: A New Approach to Course Design" at the 34th Annual Conference of the Professional and organizational Development Network in Higher Education in Houston, Tex.

Tom Meskel, instructor, teacher education, recently presented "How to Thoroughly Enjoy Your First Four Years of Teaching Mathematics and Still Receive Tenure" at the annual meeting of the Illinois Council of Teachers of Mathematics in Peoria, Ill.

Rose Sperazza, assistant professor, music, was recently invited to join the Roster of Artists at Vandoren, Inc. Vandoren is an international company and recognized leader in the music industry, specializing in clarinet reeds and accessories. The roster includes some of the most accomplished clarinetists and educators in the field.