Faculty and Staff Accomplishments

Dr. Seamus Carey, professor and chair of the philosophy department, authored the book Growing Up with Your Children: 7 Turning Points in the Lives of Parents, which was published in November. He is also the author of The Faithful Parent: Discovering the Spirit of Purposeful Parenting (2007) and The Whole Child: Restoring Wonder to the Art of Parenting (2003).

Dr. Pamela Chasek, assistant professor of government and director of the international studies program, was honored with a Washington Semester Program Special Recognition Award at American University on Nov. 6. In the citation, Chasek was acknowledged as a renowned scholar of international environmental policy, multilateral diplomacy, and international organizations. It was Chasek’s initiative that led to Manhattan College becoming affiliated with the Washington Semester Program in spring 2002.

Dr. Zella Moore, assistant professor of psychology, presented 15 separate peer-reviewed presentations at the annual national convention of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies in November. They examined a variety of clinical constructs, including clinical anger and its behavioral manifestations; emotion regulation and eating pathology; attachment styles and negative affect; educational issues in clinical psychology; the psychological treatment of court mandated violent offenders; and mindfulness processes. Seven current and former Manhattan College psychology majors were co-authors of six of the 15 presentations.

Dr. Robert Geraci, assistant professor of religious studies, recently presented two papers: “Between Evangelism and Education: Transhumanist Religion in Pop Science and Science Fiction” at the annual meeting for the American Academy of Religion in Montreal, Canada, on Nov. 8; and “Evolution and the Politics of Religious Practice” at the College of Mount Saint Vincent panel celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species on Nov. 19.

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.