Faculty and Staff Accomplishments

Dr. Robert Sharp, the D.J. O’Connor Endowed Chair of Environmental Engineering, has received a $240,000 research grant for the Hazen and Sawyer and CH2M-Hill joint venture to carry out research in support of New York City Department of Environmental Protection’s Applied Research Program. The work will focus on optimization and implementation of biological nutrient removal at wastewater treatment plants. The funding will support two graduate research assistants and two undergraduate research assistants for a two-year period.

At the annual Water Enviroment Federation’s Technical Exhibition and Conference (WEFTEC), Sharp was co-chair of the workshop Sustainable Solutions for Utilities to Address Carbon Footprint and Resource Recovery on Oct. 11 in Orlando, Fla. At the workshop, he presented the paper “Optimizing Nutrient Removal Through Carbon Management and Beneficial Reuse.” Another paper “DON and CON in Seven BNR Wastewater Treatment Plants’ Processes and Effluents” also was featured at the daylong event. WEFTEC is North America’s largest water quality research, technology and services conference.

In addition, Sharp co-authored the following research papers this past summer: “Chlorine vs. Chloramine: Impact of Disinfection Residual Type on Metal Leaching and Corrosion in Low Alkalinity Water,” presented at the American Water Works Association Annual Conference and Exposition, held in San Diego, Calif., this past June; “Organic Carbon and Nitrogen Fate in Biological Nitrogen Removal Plants,” presented at the International Water Association’s second annual Specialized Conference on Nutrient Management in Wastewater Treatment in Krakow, Poland, this past September; and “Fate of Organic Nitrogen in Seven BNR Wastewater Treatment Plants” and “Biodegradability of Effluent Dissolved Organic Nitrogen: Impacts of Treatment Technology, Process Variables, and Other Effluent Water Quality Parameters,” which were both presented at the Water Environment Federations Biological Nutrient Removal Conference in Washington, D.C., this past June. The latter paper has been invited for full-peer review publication in the Journal of Water Environment Research.

Dr. Thom Gencarelli, associate professor and chair of the communication department, was invited to serve as the external reviewer for a dissertation Pragmatism not Idealism: Radiohead, Technopoly, and the Global Movement for Change by doctoral candidate Phillip Anthony Rose at York University in Toronto on Nov. 3. He was also invited by the New York Society of General Semantics to offer a solo guest lecture on Language Acquisition and Cognitive Development on Dec. 3 as part of the society’s Expanded Seminars series.

Dr. Jeffrey Cherubini, assistant professor of physical education and human performance, published the article “Coaches’ Perspectives on Eighth-Grade Athletes Playing High School Varsity Sports,” which appeared in the fall 2009 issue of The Physical Educator. The paper was co-authored by Tiffany Bentley ’07, who is a physical education teacher in the Irvington, N.Y., school district.

Dr. Nicholas De Lillo, professor of mathematics and computer science, authored the paper “Simulations of Finite State Automata Using the Standard Template Library: Variations on a Theme Using C++.” It was published as No. 266 in the September 2009 issue of the Technical Report Series of the Ivan G. Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems at Pace University.

In addition, De Lillo has been designated an official scholarly paper reviewer for the Association for Computing Machinery’s 41st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, to be held from March 10-13, 2010, in Milwaukee, Wisc.

Dr. Patricia Sheridan, assistant professor of business law, authored the article “The Effect of Tax Apportionment Clauses on Nontestamentary Assets,” which was published in the summer 2009 issue of the Westchester County Bar Journal. It was also selected for inclusion in the Journals and Law Reviews database on WESTLAW, which includes significant articles, comments, notes and similar materials from legal periodicals.

Dr. Anirban De, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, received a research grant titled Understanding the Role of Flexible and Rigid Barriers in Mitigating Surface Blast Effects on Underground Structures. For this project, he will serve as principal investigator from the National Science Foundation. The total award of $158,789 over three years is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Dr. Claire Nolte, professor of history, delivered the lecture Praga caput regni: Celebrating Slavic Prague on the Eve of the Great War at the conference The Changing Landscape of East-Central Europe Since 1700 in Transnational Context held at Oxford University in September.

In addition, Nolte’s article “Our Brothers Across the Ocean: The Czech Sokol in America to 1914” was published in The International Journal of the History of Sport. The article originally appeared in the Czechoslovak and Central European Journal in 1993 and was edited and updated by the author.

Dr. Shawn Ladda, professor of physical education and human performance, delivered the presentation The National Association for Girls and Women in Sport of the United States: Continued Advocacy Toward Equity for All at the 2009 Congress of the International Association for Physical Education and Sport for Girls and Women in Stellenbosch, South Africa, this past July.

Ladda also authored the article “The National Association for Girls and Women in Sport: 110 Years of Promoting Social Justice and Chance,” which appeared in the September 2009 issue of the Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance. It is part of a series of articles for the American Alliance of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance’s 125th anniversary.

Dr. Julie Leininger Pycior, professor of history, authored the article “Making History,” which was published in the book Moving Beyond Borders: Julian Samora and the Establishment of Latino Studies. She presented it at the National Association of Chicano Studies in New Brunswick, N.J., this past April.

Pycior also authored “Bearing Witness: Catherine De Hueck Doherty and the Gospel of Dorothy Day,” the lead article in the spring 2008 issue of Catholic Historian.

In addition, last year Pycior presented the papers “Julian Samora and the Johnson White House” at the American Studies Association conference in Albuquerque, N.M., and “The Johnson Administration and Mexican Immigration” at the Texas State Historical Association conference.