BGSU Zoom News

Thursday, September 21, 2017

Root to lead Society for Conservation Biology North America | Sheffer work lauded by Toni Morrison

Karen Root

ROOT TO LEAD SOCIETY FOR CONSERVATION BIOLOGY NORTH AMERICA

Dr. Karen Root, an associate professor of conservation biology, will have the opportunity over the next six years to greatly expand her contribution to conservation and to the community of professionals who share her values. Root was recently elected to the leadership of the Society for Conservation Biology North America. She will serve as president-elect for two years, then president for two years and finally past-present for another two years.

Her deeply felt commitment to both the cause and her peers led her to take on the role with the society.

"This is an organization I believe in," she said. "They're highly motivated, very passionate people giving so much of themselves and doing the thing they care most about, all on a volunteer basis. It's my professional home where I feel most comfortable."

With members from academia, the private sector and governmental agencies, the society is a strong and united voice for the role of science in policy and management decision making. As its vision statement says, "The Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) envisions a world where people understand, value, and conserve the diversity of life on Earth. We envision SCB, a global community of conservation professionals, as a leading scientific voice for the study and conservation of Earth's biological diversity."

Root's research over the last 24 years has focused on the conservation of native biodiversity, including ecological surveys, habitat and population modeling, and conservation planning and management

Rogers on Antarctic cave life – LiveScience
Forum on Lake Erie water quality – The Blade
Optimal Aging Fair – BG Independent News
American Brass Quintet to perform, teach – Sentinel-Tribune
Presentation on banned music – BG Independent News
Algal bloom study – Sandusky Register
Recording-listening club – Sentinel-Tribune

Jolie Sheffer's book "The Romance of Race" was quoted positively by Toni Morrison.

SHEFFER WORK LAUDED BY TONI MORRISON

The work of Dr. Jolie Sheffer, associate professor of English and American culture studies, has been noted by famed author Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and Pulitzer Prize, whose novels about the African American experience and history have earned her a place in the American canon.

Morrison wrote about and quoted Sheffer's 2013 book "The Romance of Race" in her new book, "The Origin of Others," which is the printed version of the 2016 Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University.

The extended quotation, which includes the lines "Jolie A. Sheffer's excellent rendition of the means by which 'belonging,' that is, creating a coherent nation out of immigrants, took place…," appears in Morrison's chapter/lecture on "The Romance of Slavery."

Sheffer, who is also director of BGSU's Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, has studied and written about notions of identity and community in U.S. culture. "The Romance of Race," published by Rutgers University Press, examines the role of minority women writers and reformers in the inauguration of modern American multiculturalism.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FUNDS ON TAP FOR EXTERNAL GRANT Principal investigators

Bargaining unit faculty members who are the principal investigator on external research grants during fiscal year 2017 now have available extra money for professional development.

As part of the second collective bargaining agreement between the BGSU Faculty Association and the University (Article 23, Section 5.3), these faculty members are to receive a percentage of the facilities and administration costs (indirect costs) generated by the grant as a professional development fund. Both the faculty association and the administration agreed upon this incentive as an important way of recognizing and rewarding successful faculty members who have received external grant awards.

Faculty members who have received start-up packages of $50,000 or more now receive an amount equal to 2.5 percent of the indirect costs generated by the grant. Those who have not received that amount of start-up will receive 5 percent of the generated facilities and administration costs.

Bent Frequency

NEW-MUSIC DUO BENT FREQUENCY TO PERFORM

Innovative saxophone and percussion duo Bent Frequency will perform at BGSU Sept. 25 as part of the Music at the Forefront concert series sponsored by BGSU's MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music. The 8 p.m. concert in Bryan Recital Hall at the Moore Musical Arts Center is free and open to the public.

The duo, percussionist Stuart Gerber and saxophonist Jan Berry Baker, are known for cutting-edge new music and have commissioned more than 20 works and given numerous performances of this new repertoire across the United States, Mexico and Europe since 2014. They will perform "Hazy Moonlight" by composer Dr. Elainie Lillios, a professor of music composition in the College of Musical Arts. Lillios received a highly competitive 2016 Barlow Endowment Commission for Music Composition to write a work specifically for Bent Frequency, and has collaborated closely with Gerber and Baker on the piece.

"Hazy Moonlight" will not be the first Barlow commission to be performed by Bent Frequency, who performed the premiere of one by composer Mark Engebre. Their work is international in scope, including commissions from seven American composers and two European composers. In 2015-16 they premiered a composition by Laurent Durupt funded by a grant from the French American Cultural Exchange, along with works by several others. In addition to the work by Lillios, their 2017-18 agenda features commissions by John Liberatore and Zack Browning.

Music at the Forefront is an annual concert series featuring performances by accomplished and innovative performers of contemporary music. For more information, contact Kurt Doles at the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music at 419/372-2685 or kdoles@bgsu.edu.