Faculty members put their knowledge into action so students and others are able to benefit from it. Recently, faculty have presented at conferences, been featured as experts in regional, national and international media sources, published articles, presented research, and much more.
Aswini Pai
Archie F. MacAllaster and Barbara Torrey MacAllaster Associate Professor of Biology Aswini Pai has been nominated and inducted to the Board of Directors of ASIANetwork for a three-year term. Pai is coordinating the ASIANetwork’s "Engaging India" initiative.
ASIANetwork is a consortium of over 140 North American colleges that promote education about Asia within the liberal arts. The member colleges prepare their undergraduates for a world in which Asian societies play prominent roles in an increasingly interdependent world.
Pai’s research focuses on her work as an ethnobotanist and plant ecologist. Her work encompasses working on pollinator communities in small- scale agriculture and medicinal plant species in northern New York and India.
Jeff Frank
Professor of Education Jeff Frank was recently featured by The New York Times for his expertise in the article “Every Tech Tool in the Classroom Should Be Ruthlessly Evaluated.” The article focuses on the overuse of technology in classrooms, with experts advocating for a comprehensive reevaluation, emphasizing that educational tools should be driven by educators rather than tech companies.
Frank referenced his recent paper, “Sounding the Call to Teach in a Social Media Age: Renewing the Importance of Philosophy in Teacher Education.” He shares that students are “hungry for experiences that make them feel alive and authentically connected to other people and to deeper sources of value. Though filtering and managing life through technologies offers safety, predictability and a sense of control, it also leads to life that can feel extremely small, constraining and lonely. Teaching can offer a powerful way to pierce this bubble.”
Alexander K. Stewart
Associate Professor of Geology Alexander K. Stewart was recognized by the New York Power Authority for having been awarded a grant from the St. Lawrence River Research and Education Fund (SLRREF) for a project entitled, "Exploring precipitation and streamflow sensitivity in conifer species using tree rings: the foundation of a pre-contact streamflow reconstruction of the St. Lawrence River." This project includes support for student research assistants who will be helping develop regional tree-ring chronologies and tying them to climate and streamflow.
Stewart has worked with students on numerous geologic research projects such as dating rockfall events in Alaska, leaf-wax work in the Adirondacks, glacier-lake sediments in the High Andes, and the impact of geomorphology on the Battle of Sackets Harbor. Currently Stewarts research focuses on tree ring science, glacial geology, and geology.
Laura Mills-Smith
Assistant Professor of Psychology Laura Mills-Smith had her peer-reviewed article published in the journal Reading Psychology. Mills-Smith shares how the factors that influence caregiver and child enjoyment of shared reading are similar but not completely the same. When sharing in the reading of picture books, children enjoy reading when their caregivers do. Caregivers' enjoyment of this reading is related to their child's enjoyment but also to their role as the reader. The project presented within Mills-Smith's paper benefited from the contributions of former independent study students Anna Castilleja '20 and Bruna Travassos '20.
Mills-Smith's research is focused on the ways in which social interactions and development support cognitive development in infancy and early childhood.
Ashley Rife
Adjunct Assistant Professor of the First-Year Program and Performance and Communication Arts Department Ashley Rife presented her research titled "Neon Memories, Nostalgiawave, and the End of Electronicon " at the Popular Culture Association (PCA) National Conference in Chicago. PCA is an interdisciplinary organization united by a belief that popular culture has myriad impacts on contemporary life, and therefore, warrants serious exploration through scholarship.
Rife’s research explores the experiential and affective aspects of nostalgia at the Electonicon music festival, the premiere festival for the microgenre of vaporwave. Characterized by nostalgic mash-ups of lo-fi beats, slowed decades-old pop and R&B samples, vintage computer sounds, and consumer soundscapes, vaporwave has often been characterized as nostalgic for virtual utopias that never existed. However, as exemplified by emerging strains of vaporwave, the genre has more breadth and potential to provide insights into hyper-mediated forms of nostalgia born online. The research forwards the term nostalgiawave to conceptualize the affective and performative aspects of the collective nostalgic experiences at Electronicon. Drawing upon participant observation at the 2023 music festival, the research presents nostalgiawave as a unique, yet generalizable concept that helps expand existing theories of nostalgia by envisioning it as co-experiential performance. The research argues that through shared experiences, like those at Electronicon, we can complicate the postmodern problem of our hyper-corporate, consumerist past.
Rife’s research is on contemporary interpretations and uses of the past through a critical and rhetorical lens.
Karl Schonberg
Professor of Government Karl Schonberg was featured as an expert in an Inside Higher Ed (IHE) article after being asked to comment live on their coverage of the congressional testimony of Columbia University President Nemat Shafik on April 17, 2024. Schonberg was also interviewed after the testimony and quoted in IHE's coverage of the hearings the following day where he was featured as an expert regarding the upcoming congressional testimony of Columbia University President Shafik.
Schonberg argued within the article “Columbia’s President Heads to Capitol Hill” that Sally Kornbluth of MIT, Claudine Gay of Harvard and Liz Magill of University of Pennsylvania failed to speak with moral clarity, stating “A lot of people were surprised that three presidents of such prominent universities couldn’t clearly articulate an ethical position about hate speech on their campuses and antisemitism in particular.”
In the article "Experts Largely Impressed with Shafik’s Performance" Schonberg shares how “Columbia beat UPenn and Harvard,” and goes on to reiterate his feelings that Kornbluth, Gay, and Magill spoke without “moral clarity” at their hearing.
In his most recent feature on Inside Higher Ed, “A President Battered but Not Broken” Schonberg shares how this is “an incredibly difficult situation to manage because of the intensity of emotion on all sides and the competing cross-currents of pressure from different constituencies on campus, alumni and government.”
Michael Schuckers
Charles A Dana Professor of Statistics and Data Science Michael Schuckers was highlighted by his department for his talk “A.I. Interactions with Sports Data” at the virtual Midwest Sports Analytics Meeting. The presentation by Schuckers and Cris Ippolite of FantasyOMati focused on ChapGPT and other large language models (LLMs) and how they are gaining attention, with efforts to leverage them for improving accessibility to sports analytics. Schuckers, an expert in sports analytics and data science, collaborated with Ippolite to discuss how LLMs can assist Fantasy Football users in making decisions for their teams.
Throughout his career, Schuckers has received funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He has conducted sports analytics work for a Major League Baseball team, a National Hockey League team, and additional sports organizations. Schuckers is an author and co-editor of the Quantitative and Mathematics Support Centers: A Handbook for Directors of Quantitative and Mathematics Support Centers. Among the courses he regularly teaches at St. Lawrence are Applied Statistics, Probability, Mathematical Statistics, and Statistical Methods of Data Collection.
Sahar Milani
Associate Professor of Economics Sahar Milani authored a short blog article for INOMICS, a career website for economists. In the article, “The Economics of Heavy Metal Music,” Milani explains how the tools of economics can be used to study cultural goods, such as heavy metal music. She is currently teaching Heavy Metal New York City, a course that explores heavy metal music culture from a social science perspective, as part of the New York City Semester Program. Throughout the course students are immersed in vibrant music culture, attending both jazz and heavy metal concerts, and learning from insightful guest lectures from famous metal musicians.
Milani also published a blog at Inomics.com, a career website for economists. Milani outlines curriculum resources for instructors who want to incorporate macroeconomics into their environmental economics courses.
Milani is an innovation economist with research interests that include environmental economics, macroeconomics, and the financing of innovation. At St. Lawrence, she has taught courses on personal finance, environmental economics, natural resource economics, the economics of innovation, and macroeconomics. She is directing St. Lawrence’s off-campus program in New York City during the 2023-2024 academic year.
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St. Lawrence’s Faculty Focus is a regular roundup of noteworthy faculty news.
