Mount FacultyUpdate

Philosophy Professor Receives Book Prize
The Metaphysical Society of America has selected Dr. Brian Henning’sEthics of Creativity: Beauty, Morality, and Nature in a Processive Cosmos as recipient of a Findlay book prize. Brian’s work won in a peer-nominated selection process that took two years. The selection committee considered books published in the last five years, and noted, “Only your book and one other were chosen for Findlay Prizes in the current competition.”

Continuing Studies Faculty News
Dean for Continuing Studies Linda Martinak, Ed.D., was the lead author on an article recently published in the Journal of Continuing Higher Education. The article, “We're So Glad You Asked: Maryland Adjuncts Speak Out On Their Status, Needs And Opinions,” was part of research that included more than 800 survey responses from adjuncts teaching in Maryland. The authors are part of a group called the Maryland Consortium for Adjunct Faculty Professional Development.

Associate Dean Bud Burkhard, Ph.D., participated at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Atlanta (Jan. 4-8), serving as moderator on two panels, “Teaching, Tradition, and Technology: Western History Education in the Middle East” and “Women and War Protest.” He is also the Mid-Atlantic coordinator for the Phi Alpha Theta history honor society, as well as on the editorial boards of the scholarly e-journals Journal of International Women’s Studies and Journal of the Association for History and Computing.

New Tenures
Congratulations to Richard Buck (philosophy), as well as John Larrivee and Raymond Speciale (business, accounting and economics), who recently received tenure.

Richard Buck, Ph.D., joined the Mount faculty in 2001. His research interests are political and legal philosophy; ethical theory; and contemporary Jewish philosophy. Current projects include articles on the moral limits of responses to terrorism, the moral foundations of democracy, and the proper role of religious argument in public political discourse.

John Larrivee, Ph.D., joined the Mount in 2001. He earned his B.A. and M.P.P. from Harvard and his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Raymond Speciale, JD, who joined the faculty in 1996, recently published “Fundamentals of Aviation Law,” an undergraduate textbook used by several universities with aviation management and aviation sciences programs. He is currently working on an article regarding the "reasonable reliance" defense that airmen can invoke in cases of alleged FAA violations.

New Faculty Member
The psychology department is proud to announce the hiring of Jennifer Phillips, Ph.D., as an assistant professor, specializing in experimental psychology. Dr. Phillips earned master's and doctoral degrees in medical psychology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda and held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Tobacco Use and Research Center in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania.  She has been involved with more than 30 scholarly conference presentations, more than a dozen of these as lead researcher. She has a number of journal publications, including a recent acceptance at the prestigious journal Neuroscience.

Sabbaticals Awarded
Karl Einolf, Ph.D., associate professor of business, accounting and economics and director of the Honors Program, will spend a fall 2007 sabbatical investigating socially responsible investing (SRI). He will examine financial managers’ preconception that aligning one’s values with one’s investing strategy is a recipe for disaster in the stock market. He plans to prepare a manuscript to be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal and to develop a course on SRI at the undergraduate and MBA level. Einolf notes, “While I intend to remain objective in my research, I believe I will find that investors can develop strategies to earn healthy returns while remaining true to their value system.” 

David McCarthy, Ph.D., The Father Forker Professor of Catholic Social Teaching, will work on a book during his upcoming sabbatical that has been "brewing for years." He is exploring saints in relationship to theories in moral philosophy and theology. Two lines of inquiry come together as a study of the role of moral exemplars in how we understand and evaluate the goods of life.

Marcia McKinley, JD, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology and pre-law advisor, will write an upper-level textbook during a fall 2007 sabbatical. She has a contract with Allyn & Bacon to write Adolescence: Stories, Research, and Application, which will focus on the new brain-based research on adolescents and include many case studies of adolescents.

Diana Rodriguez-Lozano, Ph.D., associate professor of foreign languages and literatures, will spend the first six weeks of a spring 2008 sabbatical teaching in Cuenca, Ecuador, at CEDEI (Centro de Estudios Interamericanos/Center for Inter-American Studies).  She will then work on final details for four bicentennial trips to Costa Rica that she is organizing. The trips, scheduled for May, June and July 2008, will be open to anyone who would like to celebrate the Mount’s bicentennial through this educational journey.

Management Professor Presents New Book
At the January 10 meeting of the Rotary Club of Frederick, Md., Dr. John Hook, professor emeritus of management, discussed the contents of his latest book, Leading at the Top, and described the characteristics of effective leaders. Marie Keegin, MBA’86, executive director of the Frederick County Office of Economic Development, spoke to the club about what a wonderful teacher John is. Pictured, left to right, are club president Tony Checchia; Rotarians Bob Pastoor, Maury Hassett, Jean Joyce, and Linda Martinak, dean of the Division of Continuing Studies; and Dr. Hook.