Hofstra Magazine

The Big Picture
A Look at Some of the Events That Made 2008 One of the Most Memorable Years in Hofstra History

Faculty Publications and Research

2008 was a stellar year for Hofstra faculty research and publications. Faculty received approximately 56 grants totaling more than $6.8 million. There were also a variety of noted publications by Hofstra professors. Both the grants and published works covered a wide variety of subject areas -- from autism to audiology, condensed matter to minorities in the media, from the Rolling Stones to Reading Orientalism.

Below is just a sampling of these studies and faculty publications. For more information on these and other faculty endeavors, please refer to the listing of Faculty News 2008 (page 24). There are many more activities and awards listed on the Hofstra Web site, and on faculty members' individual pages at hofstra.edu/faculty.

Groundbreaking Autism Study

Hofstra Assistant Professor of Psychology Keith Shafritz was the first author on a study that found individuals with autism who exhibit repetitive behavior show reduced activity in brain regions normally responsible for attention and executive function, the processes that help organize our actions and behaviors.

"During a test of cognitive flexibility in which participants were asked to alter behavioral responses and shift cognitive sets, individuals with autism showed impaired performance and decreased activation in several areas of the brain compared with typically developing individuals," said Dr. Shafritz. "This pattern of reduced brain activity appeared in all participants in our autism group."

Also participating in the study were researchers at Duke University and the University of North Carolina. Their findings were published in the May 15, 2008, issue of Biological Psychiatry and suggest that the repetitive behavior patterns observed in individuals with autism may be associated with dysfunction within the brain's attention and executive response circuitry.

New Center for Condensed Matter Research Created

Harold Hastings, professor and chair, Department of Physics and Astronomy, is project director on a congressionally directed $525,000 grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy in support of a new Hofstra University Center for Condensed Matter Research. Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy played a key role in obtaining funding for the center.

"The new center will add to Hofstra's growing academic research in the physical sciences," Hofstra President Stuart Rabinowitz said. It will support ongoing work at Hofstra on practical applications of physics such as photocells, more powerful computers, physics of the heart, and various types of networks, including ecosystems.

Congresswoman McCarthy said, "The work being done by Hofstra faculty and students through the center can have practical applications such as better photocells that will improve people's lives and help create new jobs."

Condensed matter physics deals with the macroscopic physical properties of matter, particularly the "condensed" phases that appear whenever the number of constituents in a system is extremely large and the interactions between the constituents are strong. This includes quantum systems, classical physical systems, chemical systems, biological systems, and even networks.

Dr. Hastings said, "The center will support nationally known visitors, Hofstra students, and Hofstra faculty. It will help strengthen physics research and research training of students at Hofstra, building upon a strong recent past toward an even stronger future."

Dr. Hastings, Professor of Physics and Astronomy Rohana Garuthara, Professor of Chemistry Sabrina Sobel, Professor of Physics Gregory Levine and Assistant Professor of Physics Maxim Marienko are currently working on research that will fall under the auspices of the center.

In addition, the Department of Energy grant will support research training for students who go on to become productive scientists and teachers, and will support for faculty, equipment and collaboration for the period 2008-2011.

Beware the "Kiss of Deaf"

Levi Reiter, head of the University's Audiology Program, received worldwide media attention for research he has been conducting on a condition he termed the "Kiss of Deaf." The research began with one of Dr. Reiter's patients, a young mother who experienced continuous hearing loss and severe pain after her young daughter kissed her emphatically on the ear a year and a half earlier.

After seeing different hearing specialists without getting any answers about her condition, the woman read about Dr. Reiter in a winter 2007 Newsday article and contacted him. Dr. Reiter found that the suction from the little girl's kiss did in fact cause a plethora of ear symptoms, including permanent hearing loss, facial twitching and tinnitus. Dr. Reiter's diagnosis was that "the suction caused by the kiss pulled her tympanic membrane outward. This pulled her ossicular chain until it detached the stapedial ligament, causing a series of explainable sequelae."

Dr. Reiter's diagnosis (named Reiter's Ear-Kiss Syndrome or REKS by the medical community in his honor) and subsequent research were a reminder to families of the delicate nature of ears, and any intense suction -- even that of a kiss -- has the potential to lead to permanent damage. Dr. Reiter has also received dozens of phone calls from people in situations similar to that of the young mother, encouraging Dr. Reiter to continue his research on this painful and debilitating condition.

NSF Awards Technology Education Project

M. David Burghardt, professor of engineering, and Michael Hacker, co-directors and founders of Hofstra's Center for Technological Literacy, received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) totaling more than $1.8 million in support of their project Simulation and Modeling in Technology Education (SMTE). This grant will be used to create a 3D gaming environment to help students learn about math and science.

The Center for Technological Literacy supports science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs in school districts, community colleges, and universities in New York state and nationally. Since its inception in 1993, the center has received $25 million in NSF funding.

SMTE is the latest center initiative. It is a five-year project that develops and researches the academic potential of a hybrid instructional model that infuses computer simulations, modeling, and educational gaming into middle school technology education programs. The $1.8 million from the NSF is an initial award for funding the first three years of the project. The total award is expected to be $3.2 million.

Prototypical materials use 3-D simulations and educational gaming to support students learning STEM content and skills through developing solutions to design challenges. The virtual environment allows students to analyze and improve their designs by changing variables and observing how their changes affect design performance. Once the designs are optimized on-screen, students construct physical models and compare their functionality and effectiveness to the simulated virtual models.

A unique feature of the project is the development of an innovative Web-based instructor design interface and a library of objects to enable instructors to modify the context of the design problems to fit different instructional and geographic settings. The research investigates the transferability of the model and its potential to improve STEM teaching and learning.

Content is driven by the concepts and skills identified in the K-12 Standards for Technological Literacy (STL). Partnering with Hofstra's Center for Technological Literacy in this project are the State University of New York at Buffalo, the NSF National Center for Telecommunications Technologies, Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania, and the City University of New York.

Promoting Literacy in the Community

Hofstra's Reading/Writing Learning Clinic received a grant on December 4 from the Verizon Foundation for a new literacy outreach project titled "Supporting Youth and Families in Developing Literacy for the 21st Century." This project will promote literacy to economically disadvantaged teens and parents from communities that neighbor Hofstra. Participants will have the opportunity to develop and strengthen their literacy skills and learn to implement new technologies necessary to participate in today's society.

The Verizon grant was applied for and will be implemented by Andrea Garcia, associate professor of literacy studies and director of the Reading/Writing Learning Clinic at the Joan and Arnold Saltzman Community Services Center, and Theresa McGinnis, assistant professor of literacy studies at Hofstra.

The grant will help fund two ambitious initiatives: a series of literacy workshops for parents and an after-school "Young Men's Writing Project" (YMWP). The YMWP will be modeled after the Reading/Writing Learning Clinic's Young Women's Writing Project, which has been running successfully for six years in the Roosevelt and Uniondale School Districts. These writing workshops for young people encourage middle school students to channel their creativity through poetry and other kinds of writing and reading. Both initiatives are scheduled to begin in spring 2009 with the recruitment of students and families.

Professor Analyzes Minority Composition of the News Media

The percentage of journalists of color and women working in local television and radio news rose in 2007, as did the percentage of both groups in newsroom leadership positions, according to a survey by the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) in conjunction with Bob Papper, Hofstra professor and chair of the Journalism, Media Studies, and Public Relations Department.

The 2008 RTNDA/Hofstra University Annual Survey shows that minorities comprised 23.6 percent of local television news staffs, up from the 21.5 percent result in 2006, and the second highest percentage since the peak in 2001. The number of Asian Americans, Native Americans and Hispanic journalists all increased, while the number of African Americans remained steady at 10.1 percent of the workforce.

"In 14 years of doing this research, these are probably the best results, overall, that I've seen for women and minorities in TV news," said Professor Papper. "In what appears to be an era of ‘doing more with less,' it's heartening that there still appears to be a commitment to diversity in TV news."

"I'm pleased we are still seeing progress in diversity in electronic newsrooms," said Barbara Cochran, RTNDA president. "There is still more to be done to help newsrooms keep pace with the growing diversity of the U.S. population, and RTNDA will continue to provide resources and share best practices to assist with those efforts."

The percentage of women news directors reached an all-time high of 28.3 percent in 2007. Furthermore, women are as likely to be found as news directors in the largest markets as in the smallest, something that has not been the case in the past.

RTNDA published Dr. Papper's survey in the July/August issue of Communicator, RTNDA's monthly magazine.

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