Faculty Notes, March 13, 2013

Please send submissions for Faculty Notes to pr@chapman.edu.

William Fitzpatrick, adjunct faculty, Conservatory of Music, College of Performing Arts, gave a master class in violin at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music on Feb. 23. The class featured performances of pieces by Bach, Barber and Tchaikovsky.  Professor Fitzpatrick also enjoyed visiting with former students from MusiShare and Chapman that are currently attending the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

David Frederick, Ph.D., assistant professor,  Crean School of Health and Life Sciences, Schmid College of Science and Technology, has been named a “Rising Star” by the Association for Psychological Science (APS) and will listed in a new section of its publication, The Observer.

The Rising Stars program is APS’s spotlight for recent Ph.D’s and junior faculty who are the movers and shakers of psychological science.  Schmid College faculty, Dr. David Frederick, was recently chosen to be a part of these young luminaries.  Frederick’s research examines how social transmission processes and our evolved psychology interact to influence our perceptions of what is attractive and our close relationships.

Jennifer Funk , Ph.D., assistant professor in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Schmid College of Science and Technology, recently published a paper titled “Physiological mechanisms drive differing foliar calcium content in ferns and angiosperms” in the journal Oecologia. A copy can be found here.  http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00442-013-2591-1.

Alicia Guy, associate professor, Department of Dance, and Don Guy, assistant professor, Department of Theatre, both in the College of Performing Arts, recently took the dance tour ensemble on a backstage tour of Cirque du Soleil’s O at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, Nev. The dance tour student participants, directed by Alicia Guy, were also invited by Cirque du Soleil to perform at their Las Vegas headquarters. Chapman dance majors Katy Talon ‘14, Caitlin Johnson ‘14, Gaby Longoria ‘14, Alexi Theodore ‘14, Natalie Iscovich ‘14, Molly Myers ‘14, Liz Holtz ‘14, Brit Rooney ‘14 and Taylor Greer ‘13 performed for Cirque du Soleil’s senior executives, dance and aerial casting directors, the company manager and the “Lads from Liverpool” dancers from the cast of The Beatles LOVE Cirque du Soleil show.

In addition, Alicia Guy, was hired to choreograph a new piece for Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo. Her residency included teaching master classes in contemporary jazz technique and creating an original contemporary dance. Her piece was set on the dance department’s highly selective dance ensemble which consisted of 21 male and female dancers. Her choreography will be showcased in the dance department’s spring dance concert in May at the J. Scheidegger Centre for the Performing Arts.

As the winner of the 2013 Athena Festival Chamber Competition, Vera Ivanova, Ph.D., assistant professor, Conservatory of Music, College of Performing Arts, was invited to be in residence at the 2013 Athena Festival, where she gave master classes to composition students and a performance of her “Four Drinking Songs” for voice and piano. The “Four Drinking Songs” were commissioned by and first performed at the 2011 Staunton Music Festival, were Dr. Ivanova was an emerging composer-in-residence.

Earlier this year, her composition “Aura” for clarinet solo was performed at the 34th Moscow Autumn International Festival and at the prestigious Moscow Philharmonic Chamber Hall, as well as at Chapman University and UC Berkley.  Her “Three Studies in Uneven Meters” for piano was selected for performance at the 16th Biennial Festival of New Music at Florida State University and soon will be released on an enhanced CD with PARMA recordings.

Suzanne Soohoo, Ph.D., professor, College of Educational Studies, collaborated with researchers from Arizona State University and University of Waikato, New Zealand, in the editing of a new book titled Culturally Responsive Methodologies.  Informed by the theories and scholarship of critical and indigenous researchers, culturally responsive research methodologies offer an alternative position from which to research that is characterized by relationships, subjectivity, co-construction, and mutual good.