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

Calendar
Tuesday, Dec. 2. YSU Board of Trustees meets in the Presidential Suite of Kilcawley Center: 8 a.m., Investment Subcommittee; 9 a.m., External Relations Committee; 10 a.m., Academic and Student Affairs Committee.

Tuesday, Dec. 2, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. YSU’s sixth annual SMARTS — Students Motivated by the Arts — Holiday Open House. The SMARTS Center is located at 258 Federal Plaza West in downtown Youngstown, adjacent to the DeYor Performing Arts Center. During the open house, the SMARTS Store will be open for holiday shopping, and there will be hands–on art activities for children and light refreshments. The public is invited. For more information or to learn more about SMARTS, call 330–941–ARTS or visit www.fpa.ysu.edu/smarts.

Wednesday, Dec. 3, 7 p.m. The Dana School of Music presents “Carols & Cocoa” and the “Holiday Concert” in Stambaugh Auditorium on Fifth Avenue in Youngstown. Tickets may be purchased in advance either in person at the Bliss Hall Box Office or by phone at 330–941–3105.

Wednesday, Dec. 3, 7:05 p.m. YSU women’s basketball plays St. Francis (Pa.) in Beeghly Center.

Thursday, Dec. 4. YSU Board of Trustees meets in the Presidential Suite of Kilcawley Center: 8 a.m., Audit Subcommittee; 9 a.m., Internal Affairs Committee; 10 a.m., Finance and Facilities Committee.

Thursday, Dec. 4, 7:05 p.m. YSU men’s basketball takes on Horizon League foe Valparaiso in Beeghly Center. The men also play Saturday, Dec. 6, 7:05 p.m., against Butler.

Friday, Dec. 5, and Saturday, Dec. 6, 8 p.m. YSU’s Ward Beecher Planetarium presents “Skywatch: Star Maps.” The planetarium shows “Wilbear’s Adventure” at 1 and 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 6.

Saturday, Dec. 6, noon. Annual Football Awards Banquet will be in the Chestnut Room of Kilcawley Center.

CEO of Parsons Corp. honored at fall commencement

Youngstown State University alum John Allen Scott, president and chief operating officer of Parsons Corp., will receive an honorary doctor of science degree at YSU’s fall commencement 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 14 in Beeghly Center.

Scott, who lives in Arcadia, Calif., earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from YSU in 1971 and a master’s degree in industrial engineering from Texas A&M University in 1973.

Boasting 12,000 employees and $4 billion in annual revenue, Parsons is one of the world’s largest engineering and construction companies with infrastructure and defense projects across the globe. For more information on the company, visit http://www.parsons.com/.

Scott, a member of the YSU President’s Council and the YSU Centennial Capital Campaign Cabinet, is a recognized expert in the technologies and processes for the destruction of the world’s stockpile of chemical and biological agents and weapons. He has played a key role in the design, construction and operation of every major chemical agent demilitarization facility in the world. He holds multiple patents on the processes to dispose of chemical agents and explosives and has authored and presented numerous papers on related subjects throughout the world.

Scott, who joined Parsons in 1985, received the Dwight Look College of Engineering Outstanding Alumni Award and the Department of Industrial Engineering Outstanding Alumnus Award from Texas A&M. He also received the Captains of Industry Award from the Institute of Industrial Engineers and the U.S. Army Toxic Hazardous Materials Agency Outstanding Service Award.

YSU prof part of team that discovers galaxy collisions

John Feldmeier, YSU assistant professor of astronomy, is part of a team of astronomers that has discovered a high–speed collision between two galaxies in the nearby Virgo cluster.

“Due to the striking nature of the astronomical images involved, it has received a lot of notice,” Feldmeier said.

The team, led by Jeffrey Kenney, professor and chair of astronomy at Yale University, studied images taken by the wide–field Mosaic imager on the National Science Foundation telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Ariz. The team found evidence that high–speed collisions between large elliptical galaxies may prevent new stars from forming. The findings were to be published in a November 2008 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Feldmeier, who joined YSU’s faculty in 2006, said the study concerns discovering that the giant elliptical galaxy M86, in the heart of the Virgo cluster, has interacted with another galaxy in the Virgo cluster, NGC 4438. The two galaxies are connected by tendrils of ionized hydrogen.  

“This discovery provides some of the clearest evidence yet for high–speed collisions between large galaxies, and it suggests that the consequences of such collisions are a plausible alternative to black holes in trying to explain the mystery of what process turns off star formation in the biggest galaxies,” Kenney said in a press release from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.

In addition to Kenney and Feldmeier, other co–authors of the study are Yale graduate student Tomer Tal; Hugh Crowl, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Massachusetts; and WIYN Observatory Director George Jacoby.
 
To learn more about Feldmeier and his research, visit http://www.as.ysu.edu/~jjfeldme/.

Faculty/staff awards, presentations, publications
Doug Faires, professor emeritus, Mathematics, has co–authored The Contest Problem Book VIII, published by the Mathematical Association of America. Faires and co–author

David Wells of Pennsylvania State University directed the American Mathematics Competitions from 2000 through 2007, and the book includes problems and solutions from those competitions. A subsequent volume will be released later this year. 

Stephen Ray Flora, professor, Psychology, made three presentations at the Association for Behavior Analysis International Conference in Chicago. He presented a workshop titled “Applying Behavior Analysis to Improve Health, Fitness, Diet, Healthy Lifestyles and to Optimize Athletic Performance,” and gave a presentation titled “Rapid Strengthening and Extinction of Conditioned Avoidance and Disgust Responses to the Verbal Stimulus ‘Love’.” Finally, working with YSU psychology major Lindsey Hardie, Flora presented “The Use of a Multiple Baseline Design and Nicotine Gum in Achieving Smoking Cessation.”  

Eleanor Congdon, assistant professor, History, attended the International Maritime Economic History Association conference at the Greenwich Naval Observatory in Greenwich and the World History Association Conference in London. She presented a paper at the IMEHA conference titled “Venetian Roundships Around 1400 AD” and spoke at the WHA conference on the subject “Venetian and Ottoman Relations in the Aegean: Military Actions and Trade during the ‘War’ of 1469–1482.” While in London, Congdon also spent four days conducting research in the library and manuscript room at the University of Cambridge. 

Rosanna M. O’Neil, head of collections services, Brian K. Brennan and Lisa M. Garofali, library media technical assistants, and Kevin J. Whitfield, catalog librarian, all of Maag Library, attended a two–day workshop at Kent State University titled, “Archival Description: DACS, MARC, and EAD.” The workshop focused on how archival collections are organized and described, the creation of archival finding aids, and how to generate metadata versions of these descriptions. 

Carol M. Lamb, assistant professor, Engineering Technology, presented a paper titled “Assessment Process: A View from the Trenches” at the American Society for Engineering Education National Conference in Pittsburgh. The paper was co–authored by David G. Kurtanich, associate professor, Engineering Technology, and was published in the proceedings of the conference. 

Howard Mettee, professor, Chemistry, coauthored a paper, titled “Mechanical & Chemical Modification of Wood Materials — Compressed Wood and Oxidized Charcoal,” which was published in the Web–based journal BioResources. 

Robert J. Beebe, professor, Educational Foundations, Research, Technology and Leadership, traveled to Paris to present a research paper titled “State Principal Standards: Development, Alignment, and Implementation,” which discusses Ohio’s efforts to develop and implement standards for school principals. He was lead author, working with faculty from Kent State University, the University of Akron and Ashland University. Ohio has been among the leading states in making standards–based reforms, and Beebe has been involved in the effort since its inception. The paper was accepted for publication in the official proceedings of the conference. Beebe is also serving in a leadership role in Educational Insights, a progressive national educational think tank, developing a position paper, “The High School of the Future.”

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