Paul Dolan, professor, physics, has been appointed to serve on the Committee on Physics in Pre-High Education for the American Association of Physics Teachers. He will serve in this position until 2012.

Lidia Filus, professor, mathematics, co-authored a paper titled "Families of Multivariate Distributions Involving ‘Triangular' Transformations," which will be published in Communications in Statistics – Theory and Methods.

Suzanne Gaskins, professor, psychology, wrote the article "Designing Exhibits to Support Families' Cultural Understandings," which recently was published in the Exhibitionist. She co-organized and chaired an invited symposium titled "Collaboration in the Study of Childhood: Anthropological Perspectives on Learning" at the American Anthropological Association annual meeting in November in San Francisco. Gaskins also presented a poster titled "Putting Observation in its Cultural Place" at a pre-conference workshop at the Second Congress of the International Society for Cultural and Activity Research in September in San Diego. She also recently signed a contract with Alta Mira Press to publish a new book titled The Anthropology of Learning in Childhood.

Marian Gidea, professor, mathematics, edited a volume titled "A Special Issue in Honor of the Contributions of Donald Saari to the Mathematical Aspects of Celestial Mechanics" for Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems, American Institute of Mathematical Sciences in 2008. He also co-authored two papers that were published in Advances in Space Research, Vol. 42, 2008: "Resonant Motion, Ballistic Escape, and Their Applications in Astrodynamics" and "Resonance Transitions Associated to Weak Capture in the Restricted Three-Body Problem." His recent presentations include: "Perturbations of Geodesic Flows Producing an Unbounded Growth of Energy" at the 7th AIMS Conference of Dynamical Systems and Differential Equations, in Arlington, Texas, in May 2008, and at the 5th International Symposium HAMSYS 2008, in Guanajuato, Mexico, in July 2008; "Geometria Situs of Instability of Dynamical Systems with Several Degrees of Freedom" at the Conference on Stability and Instability in Mechanical Systems at the Centre de Recerca Matematica, in Barcelona, Spain, in September 2008; and "Detection of Diffusing Orbits in the Three-body Problem" at the Applied Mathematics Seminar, at the University of Zaragoza, Spain, in November 2008.

Lisa Hollis-Sawyer, associate professor, psychology, presented a "best practices" session at the E-Learn 2008 Conference in Las Vegas, Nev., in November. Her talked focused on issues of adaptive and effective instruction in fully online courses for a diverse student population, encompassing both undergraduate and graduate students and their associated learning needs.

Jaime Mendoza, specialist, advising and tutoring, will have his art work published in the forthcoming book Masters of Today, which will profile personalities and art trends that shape contemporary art.

Marina Polyashuk, associate professor, mathematics, accepted an invitation to join the editorial board of Journal of Multicriteria Decision Making in Economics & Finance.

Ed Stuart, professor, economics and international/intercultural studies, gave a presentation on the "Economic Outlook for 2009" for the APICS Highlands Chapter in January.