At Brown

Dunbar, Wakeford to receive Sheridan Center teaching awards

The Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning will present the Harriet W. Sheridan Award to Associate Provost Nancy R. Dunbar and Lecturer Lawrence F. Wakeford during an award ceremony to be held Wednesday, April 28, at 5 p.m. in Andrews Dining Hall.

The award recognizes Brown faculty and staff "who support their colleagues, including graduate students, across the University in a commitment to ongoing professional development which integrates reflective teaching and research."

Dunbar, a senior lecturer in the Department of Theatre, Speech and Dance, was cited for a wide variety of contributions over the past 20 years. According to the Sheridan Center, Dunbar's "colleagues across the University use words like 'selfless' and 'extraordinarily effective' in describing her capacity to help colleagues define and communicate goals and objectives which support the educational mission of the University."

Wakeford, a lecturer in the Department of Education, was nominated for the award "for his advancement of the teaching profession both at Brown and across the state of Rhode Island," according to the Sheridan Center, which added: "One student observed that 'he models reflective teaching practice: he demystifies the thought process behind his teaching choices.'"

Awards and Honors

Assistant Professor Maud Mandel of Judaic studies and history, and Professor Mary Louise Gill of Classics have been offered National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Stipend Awards for this summer.

The stipends provide individuals with an opportunity to pursue research in the humanities that contributes to scholarly knowledge or to the public's understanding of the humanities. According to the NEH, projects should be completed during the tenure of an award or represent part of a long-term endeavor. Recipients might eventually produce scholarly articles, a monograph on a specialized subject, a book on a broad topic, an archaeological site report, a translation, an edition, a database, or other scholarly tools.

Keith Brown, an assistant professor (research) at the Watson Institute for International Studies, has been named to present the Evans-Pritchard Lectures in 2004-2005 at All Soul's College, Oxford University, United Kingdom. The prestigious lectureship, awarded annually, honors Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard (1902-73), former University Professor of Social Anthropology at Oxford and a fellow at All Soul's. Brown will present six lectures drawing on his research into early 20th-century national liberation movements in the Balkans, under the series title "The Structure of Loyalty in Revolutionary Macedonia."

Don B. Wilmeth, the Asa Messer Professor Emeritus of Theatre and English, will receive the Distinguished Service Award from the Theatre Library Association - the association's highest award - this spring in New York.

Editor of "Cambridge Studies in American Theatre & Drama" and "The Cambridge Guide to American Theatre" (2nd edition), Wilmeth was also recently appointed a contributing editor for New Theatre Quarterly, an international journal published by Cambridge University Press.

Announcement

Brown offers a Spring Break Soccer Camp from April 12-16, 9 a.m. until noon. This fun week of recreational and competitive soccer activities for boys and girls ages 5 through 15 costs $125. Proceeds benefit the Brown Men's Soccer Program. Contact Ken Murphy or telephone 863-2910 for more information.

On the Road

Paul Buhle, senior lecturer in the Department of American Civilization, is leading a six-part film-viewing / reading / discussion series called "The Sixties: America's Decade of Crisis and Change," at the Rochambeau branch of Providence Public Library.

The series aims to increase the public's understanding of this period of extraordinary change and social conflict in American history. It runs through June 1.

The program is organized by National Video Resources in partnership with the American Library Association and is supported by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and locally by Providence Public Library.

Research Note

More to Milankovitch Theory than meets the eye: Recent research by paleoceanographers in Brown's geological sciences department points to a new wrinkle in an 80-year-old astronomical theory of climate variation.

The findings, reported in a recent issue of Nature, provide the first direct evidence that annual solar radiation received at the Earth's high latitudes and primarily controlled by the tilt of the Earth also affects sea surface temperatures at low latitudes. The study offers the clearest view yet of the effect of this angle of rotation and solar radiation on climate change during an important epoch in the EarthÕs climactic history.

In the 1920s, Serbian mathematician Milutin Milankovitch presented a detailed theory of the influence on the Earth's climate of changes in the angle of its rotational axis as it revolves around the sun. According to Milankovitch, the cooling and warming of the Earth's climate is controlled by seasonal (summertime) solar radiation variations occurring at northern middle and high latitudes.

Milankovitch's view that the Earth's high latitudes encounter more solar radiation, or insolation, in 41,000 cycles and that low latitudes encounter more insolation in 23,000 year cycles is traditionally accepted.

The new study was done by geological sciences doctoral student Zhonghui Liu and primary investigator Tim Herbert, associate professor of geological sciences.

"For the past 500,000 to 1 million years, scientists have found the 23,000 warming cycle in the tropics, as well as a very strong 100,000-year cycle," says Liu. "People believed that this was from seasonal insolation that occurred locally in the tropics, and were unsure of the warming cycles that happened prior to 1 million years ago," he says.

The researchers utilized proxy data - implied by changes in the biochemistry of certain aquatic organisms - to compare eastern equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature variations to global climate change during the past 1.8 million years.

"The common sense view is that in the tropics if you have higher solar radiation you should have higher sea surface temperatures," says Liu. "What we found is the opposite. When you have higher insolation, the sea surface temperature is cooler."

Finding a 41,000-year warming and cooling cycle in sea surface temperatures at the tropics the researchers theorized that a connection existed between these climate change cycles at the equator and high latitude annual solar radiation controlled by tilt.

Regarding ice melting and freezing, although ice freezing timed to the cycle of high latitude insolation may contribute to the sea surface cooling, declining sea surface temperatures actually precede the increase in ice by about 3,000 years. This points to an external factor, the tilt of Earth during rotation compelling these climate change cycles, says Liu.

"These interesting results are a starting point that identifies that the connection between high latitude annual solar radiation and equatorial sea surface temperatures is important," says Liu. "Our community may have underestimated its importance, until now." - Ricardo Howell