Faculty Announcements Winter 2014

Creative Arts and Technology
Congratulations to Professor Peter Gordon for his collaboration with Robert Ashely on his experimental opera “Perfect Lives”. There is a very good synopsis of the piece in the Sunday (January 3, 2014) edition of the NY Times. Peter is noted in this article.

Education Division
Congratulations to Dr. Cheryl Evans on her appointment to the Essex Vicinage Advisory Committee on Minority Concerns (VACMe). The primary responsibility of Vicinage Advisory Committee is to advise the Assignment Judge about issues affecting minorities in the courts especially about eliminating barriers that might impede or deny court access to any minority group, including ethnic racial minorities, disabled court users, and individuals with limited English proficiency. The committee also recommends initiatives to promote equality, fairness and integrity in court programs and services which are of' benefit to all court users, and reviews local efforts to implement the recommendations of the standing Supreme Court Committee on Minority Concerns and its predecessor, the Supreme Court Task Force on Minority Concerns.

Mr. Kenneth Kunz, Instructor of Education and Dr. Peggy O'Reilly, Associate Professor of Education, initiated the third cohort of the Tutoring/Mentoring Project at the Fairview Elementary School in Bloomfield.  This is a special project where a select group of Education Honors students work in classrooms alongside experienced mentor teachers to connect what they are learning in their education studies to practices in elementary classrooms.

Mr. Kunz and Dr. O’Reilly also recently co-presented "Using Anchor Charts to Meet the Diverse Needs of Students" at Fairview School's In-Service Professional Development Day on January 15, 2014.  A recent meeting with Fairview teachers and staff marks the third cohort of a continuing Tutoring-Mentoring Project for exceptional teacher-education candidates.

Mr. Kunz successfully defended his dissertation proposal at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education on November 25, 2013. He is currently conducting a study in which student teachers explore exemplary literacy practices through a study group format.  On March 28, 2014, he will be presented with the Endowed Edward Fry Fellowship for excellence in literacy research at the Rutgers Annual Conference on Reading and Writing.  At the conference, he will be presenting a workshop on "Interactive Techniques for K-3 Guided Reading Instruction." Student teachers participating in the study group will also attend the conference through funds made available by Bloomfield College's Co-Curricular Innovation Grant. 

On February 25th, the Education Division in collaboration with Dean Spies and personnel from Enrollment Management conducted a special orientation event for Advisers from Community Colleges. The purpose of this event is to orient community colleges to the changes in programs offered by the Education Division as well as the services provided by the college for their prospective graduates.  This event was designed to support recruitment to the Education Division's programs.

Humanities DivisionAssistant Professor of History Michelle Chase’s mini-grant proposal to the New Jersey Council on Humanities was successfully funded and will be used to support HIS 251, Curating New Jersey.

Professor of English Paul Genega published the poem Communion in Free Inquiry, the journal of the Secular Humanist Society, and Pulaski Skyway in the debut issue of Narrative Northeast (see entry for Pamela Hughes below).

Professor of Religion Glen Hayes has competed two essays which will published in the next year. The first, “Possible Selves, Body Schemas, and Sandhana: Using Neuroscience in the Study of Medieval Vaisnava Hindu Tantric Texts,” will be published in the May 2014 issue of the online journal Religions while the second, “Exploring the uses of the term ‘sahaja’ in Hindu Tantra: Studying Selected Texts of the Vaisnava Sahajiyas of Bengal” will be published in the anthology Sahaja – The role of doha and caryagiti in the cultural Indo-Tibetan Interface” by Visvabharati Univesity, West Bengal, India.

Adjunct Instructor of English Pamela Hughes launched the online literary and art journal Narrative Northeast with work by Bloomfield Professors Paul Genega, Martie LaBare, Yuichiro Nishizawa and Adjunct Instructor Ashley Sardoni-Davis as well as an extensive interview with Faculty Chair Cheryl Evans on the 1963 March on Washington. The inaugural issue also includes work by BC alumni Quassan Castro, Paul LaTorre, Mikial Millard and Landzy Theodore and current student Vicky Dantel. The journal can be accessed at www.narrativenortheast.com.