•Dr. Sylvia Bulgar and Dr. Peter Hester, associate professor and assistant professor in the department of teacher education, respectively, presented "The Design of a Middle School Program at Rider University" at the joint conference of The New Jersey Middle School Association and The New Jersey Consortium for Middle Schools, titled “Coming Together Is A Beginning…” in Somerset on March 27. Their presentation focused on the rationale for the program and its alignment with the qualifications needed by middle school teachers as described by New Jersey middle school principals.
•Dr. Stephen Arthur Allen, assistant professor of fine arts, has just published his article 'Billy Budd: Temporary Salvation and the Faustian Pact' in the Journal of Musicological Research, Vol. 25, No. 1 (January-March 2006):43-74. The article investigates the dilemmas of power and the exercise of law and authority versus conscience in Benjamin Britten's celebrated opera.
• Rebecca Basham, assistant professor of English, presented a reading of her work, “Lot’s Daughters,” as an American college theater festival winner 2004, at The Drama Book Shop in New York City on April 10. Back Stage Books conducted the event for the Kennedy Center affair.
• Dr. Yun Xia, assistant professor of the department of communication, has published a research article, “Construct Chinese culture from the classroom speaking: An ethnography of Chinese graduate assistants’ instructor-centered speaking in the US classrooms,” in Human Communication, 8, 62-81. The study in the article examines intercultural resources pertaining to communication that Chinese graduate assistants use in their English speaking activities when they teach the U.S. students in classrooms. As one of the vice co-chairs of the Human Communication and Technology Division of the National Communication Association (NCA), Dr. Xia is also planning programs for this year’s NCA Convention in November at San Antonio.