Below are a variety of items about upcoming events and other news notes on the campus of Youngstown State University.

Sunday, Sept. 7: 
2 p.m., Welcome, Shearle Furnish, Dean of the YSU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

2:15 p.m., Keynote Address: Famine and Mass Violence, by Christian Gerlach of the University of Berne, Switzerland.

3:45 p.m., Panel I: Famine and Colonial Exploitation (“Rinderpest", Drought and Scorched Earth:ﾠ The Relationship between Natural Disaster, Famine and Conquest in Germany''s African Colonies, Dominik J. Schaller, Heidelberg University, Germany). 

Monday, Sept. 8: 
9 a.m., Panel II: Famine as a Weapon: Policies of Famine (Famine and Violence, Famine as Violence in Russia of the early 1920s, Natalia Reshetova, University of London; Case study: Food policy and mass crimes: Lithuania under German occupation 1941–1944, Christoph Dieckmann, Keele University, England).

10:45 a.m., Panel III: Famine as a Weapon?: The Question of Intention (Stalin''s Terror and the Ukrainian Famine of 1932–33: Camouflage for Genocide?, Henry Huttenbach, City College of New York; On famines, genocide, and jumping to conclusions, Mark Tauger, West Virginia University).

2:00 p.m., Panel IV: Social Impact of Famine: Violence and Its Absence (The 1847 food riots in Prussia, Hans Bass, Bremen University of Applied Science; Fighting Hunger: Food in Wartime Japan, Katarzyna Cwiertka, University of Leiden, The Netherlands).

3:45 p.m., Panel V: Social Impact of Famine: Survival Strategies ("Too little to keep them alive and too much to let them die": Nazi Starvation Policy and Jewish Coping Methods in the Ghettos of Nazi Occupied Europe, Helene Sinnreich, Youngstown State University).

5:45 p.m., Panel VI: Social Impact of Famine: Socialist Rule and Political Participation (Primitive Accumulation, Famine, and Mass Repression, 1937–39, Wendy Goldman, Carnegie Mellon University; Hunger and State Violence in the PRC during the Great Leap Forward, Klaus Muehlhahn, Indiana University.

Tuesday, Sept. 9 
9:30 a.m., Starvation and Structural Violence (Structural violence and women''s survival during famines: gender, caste, work and hunger in nineteenth century India, Leela Sami; The Daily Catastrophe: Structural Violence and Mass Starvation in the 20th and 21st century, Andreas Exenberger, University of Innsbruck, Austria).

11:00 a.m., Concluding Roundtable Discussion.

Retired physics faculty member honored by AAPT
Richard Zitto, retired instructor of physics at Youngstown State University, was awarded a Distinguished Service Citation by the American Association of Physics Teachers at its summer meeting in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

The AAPT established the awards program to recognize and honor those who have made significant contributions to the association, to physics education, and to physics research.

Zitto, a past president of the Ohio Section of the AAPT, taught for 41 years at Kenton High School in Ohio, Boardman High School and at YSU. He was one of the seven creators and a director of the YSU Physics Olympics. He also established and directed the Youngstown Area Physics Alliance.

His areas of interest are physics education, pre–service teacher training, and antique physics apparatus. His collection of apparatus is known through out the physics teaching community.

Chairman of the nominations committee for the award was Harvey Leff the immediate past president of AAPT and professor of modern physics at the University of California at Pomona. More information may be obtained at www.aapt.org.

Faculty/staff honors, presentations, publications
Zbigniew Piotrowski, professor, Mathematics and Statistics, recently addressed the Mathematics Department of the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His lecture was titled “Algebra–Free Topological Algebra.”

Will Greenway, professor, English, had two poems published in the Spring/Summer edition of Atlanta Review. The poems are titled “Karmageddon” and “Outlet Mall.” A third poem, titled “Applesauce,” has been published in RHINO Magazine, a poetry journal, and a fourth, “Pwll Du,” has been published in A Swansea Anthology.

Ricky S. George, associate director, Center for Human Services Development, attended the Northern Ohio Violent Crime Consortium April 2–3.ﾠ The training focused on violence prevention and a new crime reduction tactic called Operation Ceasefire.

Julie Blaskewicz Boron, assistant professor, Psychology, co–authored a recently published chapter, “Midlife Cognition: The association of personality with cognition and risk of cognitive impairment,” with Sherry L. Willis of Pennsylvania State University. She also organized a symposium, titled “CREATE: Understanding the potential of healthcare technology to improve the lives of older adults,” which was presented at the Annual Gerontological Society of America Conference in San Francisco. She presented a paper at the symposium, “Complexity of Older Adults'' Medication Regimens,” and presented two posters on cognitive development in adulthood based on participants of the Seattle Longitudinal Study. Additionally, Boron recently attended the Cognitive Aging Conference in Atlanta where she presented a poster, “Effects of facet–level personality on cognitive ability in adulthood: Seattle Longitudinal Study,” and co–authored a poster titled “Understanding older adults'' attitudes about technology use in the home.”  

Michael Clayton, assistant professor, Psychology, presented two papers at the annual international Association for Behavior Analysis conference in Chicago. The first, titled “The Use of Visual Feedback to Reduce Paper Use in a University Computer Lab,” was part ofﾠ a symposium on “Behavioral Approaches to Environmental Consciousness and Sustainable Practices.” The second paper, titled “Increasing Turn Signal Use by Drivers Exiting a University Parking Garage,” was presented at a symposium on Antecedent Events and Traffic Safety. Clayton also published a review of “The Psychology of B.F. Skinner” in The Psychological Record.

Paul R. Carr, assistant professor, Educational Foundations, Research, Technology and Leadership, received an Award of Distinction for Excellence in Scholarship from the Canadian Race Relations Foundation at its biannual conference. Carr was recognized for his recently published book, The Great White North? Exploring Whiteness, Identity and Privilege in Education. He also had three articles published recently. “Education Institutions Negotiating Democracy and Social Justice: The (Im)balance of Power and Accountability” was published in the Journal of Canadian and International Education; and “Experiencing Democracy Through Neo–Liberalism: The Role of Social Justice in Democratic Education,” was published in the Journal of Critical Educational Policy Studies. Carr and co–author Gina Thesee published an article titled “Environmental Interculturalism: The Connection Between Social Justice and Environmental Justice,” in the Journal of Canadian and International Education.

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