Faculty Accomplishments

Sherry Pineau Brown, a lecturer and coordinator of teacher education, was quoted in an article published in the National Education Association's publication NEA Today. In the article, "‘My Empathy Felt Drained’: Educators Struggle With Compassion Fatigue," Brown said that too many educators work in unduly stressful conditions. "The heart of healthy communities are healthy schools, right? And we need healthy adults working within those schools to help our kids because we know they're not healthy,” said Brown, a former high school teacher and coauthor of a recent study on the "cost of caring."

Assistant Professor of Government Nicholas Jacobs and government major Gil Imboye '24 coauthored an article recently published in the peer-reviewed journal American Politics Research. The article, "The Nationalization of Individual Campaign Contributions in U.S. Senate Elections, 1984-2020,"  focuses on U.S. Senators' increasing reliance on campaign donations from outside their state. Analyzing more than 120 million donations between 1984 and 2020, they argue that the nationalization of campaign finance challenges the Senate's representative structure and hints at another dimension of inequality in American politics—those that have geographical-constrained influence versus those with national ambitions.

Lauren Cohen Fisher '13, a lecturer in the Jewish Studies Department, presented a lecture at Bowdoin College titled "The Politics of History: Israel/Palestine 1917–1948." Cohen Fisher's talk focused on "five moments between 1917 and 1948 she considers pivotal to existing Israeli and Palestinian political dynamics: the Balfour Declaration, the White Papers of 1922, the Partition Plan of 1947, Plan D, and the Declaration of the State of Israel," according to an article in the Bowdoin Orient. Cohen Fisher is also the director of Jewish Student Life at Colby.

Assistant Professor of Geology Bess Koffman was the lead author on a paper recently published in the journal Nature Geoscience. The article, "Collaboration between women helps close the gender gap in ice core science," states that, "Within ice core science, woman-led studies contain 20% more women co-authors than man-led studies, and exceed the estimated proportion of women within the community by nearly 10%." In the paper, the coauthors conclude that "collaboration with other women is a key factor in closing gender gaps in science."

Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson was part of the keynote panel at the 2023 New England Council of Latin American Studies Conference. The theme of the conference was "Bridging Knowledges, Technologies, and Cultures in Latin America and the Caribbean." Robinson spoke about the challenges of climate adaptation in the Caribbean alongside the promise of locally led adaptation in the region. The panel was moderated by Dr. Mimi Sheller, renowned dean of the Global School at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Stacy-ann Robinson was an invited speaker at the inaugural Summit for Energy and Environment Solutions at Harvard. She spoke about the role and limits of the United Nations in delivering climate justice to the most vulnerable communities and countries. The summit was a gathering of practitioners, community stakeholders, and students interested in engaging with actionable solutions to the climate crisis and global energy transition. The conference took place over two days in November 2023, with multiple panels and receptions throughout.

Assistant Professor of Education Pei Pei Liu published an article in Science Scope titled "Hearing All Voices to Promote Learning Orientation and Effective Collaboration." This article was coauthored with two middle school science teachers as a practitioner-facing companion piece to a scholarly article by Liu published earlier this year in Cognition and Instruction on the relationship between mastery goal structures and student motivation in middle school science classrooms. In the Science Scope article, the teachers share practices they use early in the school year to cultivate a supportive classroom community that promotes motivation and collaborative learning.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Education Tatiana Geron published an article in the Harvard Educational Review titled "Ethical Decision-Making in the 'Crowded Classroom.'"  Geron used a case study to argue that "classroom 'crowdedness'—the spatial, temporal, and group dynamics of many students interacting in a shared space—shapes teachers’ every day ethical decision-making and should be essential to an ethical theory of teaching."

Robert A. Gastaldo, the Whipple-Coddington Professor of Geology, Emeritus, served as a scientific script advisor for the episode "Inferno" that is part of the Ancient Earth series recently produced by NOVA. In the episode's credits, he's listed as an academic advisor. The "Inferno" episode focuses on the end-Permian extinction crisis on land and its recovery in the Triassic, a topic Gastaldo has studied throughout his career.  The five-part series launched Oct. 4, 2023, and the "Inferno" episode airs October 25 on PBS.

Assistant Professor of History Danae Jacobson contributed to a recent exhibition at the New York Historical Society titled Acts of Faith: Religion and the American West. On Oct. 6, she was a panelist for the talk "Understanding Religious Liberty in a Diverse Nation" that  focused "on the fascinating 19th-century roots of America’s deep religious diversity," according to the society's website. Jacobson also wrote a chapter for the exhibition's catalogue, "Religion and Empire: Mythic Trails, Stolen Homelands, and Forced Migration in the Antebellum West (1840-1860)."