At Brown

Faculty, staff invited to personal safety workshop

Personal safety instructor Donna Kirby-Reynolds will demonstrate self-defense techniques at a workshop for faculty and staff May 6.

Kirby-Reynolds will discuss how to avoid and deter violence at 6 p.m. in the Piano Lounge of the Graduate Student Center. The four-hour session will provide instruction about personal protection of non-martial arts nature.

Participants will leave with “enhanced justifiable self-confidence,” said Kirby-Reynolds, whose seminar is sponsored by Police and Security Services. “A fearful employee is a non-productive employee” because fear “is what their mind is on.”

A 17-year law enforcement veteran, Kirby-Reynolds was a police lieutenant with the Department of Defense. She performed special assignments such as undercover narcotics and was the only female on the special forces S.W.A.T. team.

After retiring from government service in 1988, Kirby-Reynolds became a personal safety specialist. Her clients now include Bayer, Pfizer, Bristol Myers-Squibb, American Express, and the United Nations in New York City. She also is the author of “Refuse to be a Victim” and she produced a video with the same title.

In her faculty-staff session, Kirby-Reynolds will share one-step moves – “what you can do to get away if somebody is going to attack you” – to remove an assailant.

The session is free but registration is required. Anyone who is interested should contact Michelle Nuey, assistant manager of special services in the Police and Security Department, 863-1150. Participants are asked to come dressed in their usual attire.

This is one of several self-defense workshops scheduled for members of the Brown community. A session was previously held for undergraduate students, and a session for graduate students is planned for the summer. The graduate student session is sponsored by the Graduate Student Council.

Awards and Honors

Andrea Megela Simmons, professor of psychology and neuroscience, has been elected a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America.  Simmons was cited for her “contributions to the field of bioacoustics.”  The certificate of fellowship will be presented during the June 2002 meetings of the society in Pittsburgh.

Faiza Fawaz Estrup, M.D., a clinical associate professor of biology and medicine and dean of medicine for clinical voluntary faculty, will receive the Woman Physician of the Year Award from the Rhode Island Medical Women’s Association.

The award will be presented during the association’s annual meeting May 13

Estrup is being honored for serving the medical community “tirelessly for over two decades as a rheumatologist, teacher, researcher and administrator.”

On the Road

Anthropology Professor Richard Gould presented a session titled “Underwater Crime Scene Recording” at the University of Rhode Island on May 2. His lecture was part of the Forensic Partnership Seminar Series co-sponsored by URI and the Rhode Island State Crime Lab. On May 4, Gould will lead an dive session in Jamestown during which divers, including students from Brown University, and divers affiliated with several police departments will be practice underwater crime scene recording.