Date: 08/14/2006

History Professor Larry Engelmann has spent the summer at his home in Baan Chai Lei on the west coast of the island of Phuket, Thailand. Engelmann has taken short side trips to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Mandalay, Myanmar, to conduct research. Since publication of his Tears Before the Rain, an oral history of the fall of Saigon, Engelmann has been collecting personal accounts of Vietnamese boat people who came to southern Thailand, principally to Song Khla, to Malayasia and even to Burma. He'd earlier interviewed boat people in Hong Kong and Pulau Bidong in Malaysia. Some of the stories had been printed as single articles. Engelmann expects to ultimately publish a collection in book form.

Mary Warner, assistant professor of English, and Anthony Bernier, assistant professor of library and information science, are making presentations today at "Links to Literacy: Libraries Building Bridges to the Community," a conference being held at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library. Approximately 160 librarians, teachers and students are at the all-day event on encouraging people to read. Read more.

Chemistry professors Joseph Pesek and Maria Maytska traveled to Melbourne, Australia, last month to work at the Center for Green Chemistry to continue their research on the separation of synthetic peptides. The pair has collaborated with two professors at the center since 2000. While there, Pesek gave three seminars on "One Column with Three Modes of Separation" at Queensland University of Technology, the University of Queensland, and Sigmapharm Corporation in Brisbane.

Peter Chua, assistant professor of sociology, presented his work on comparative immigration policy at the International Sociological Association World Congress of Sociology in Durban, South Africa. Chua had received a highly-competitive National Science Foundation travel grant from the American Sociological Association to present his research.

This week, three professors from organization and management in the College of Business are in Atlanta, Ga., participating in the annual meeting of the 2006 Academy of Management. Joyce Osland, Lucas Endowed Professor of Global Leadership, is presenting two papers on international management and global leadership development, and one on the repatriate characteristics on knowledge transfer. Assistant Professor Meghna Virick is presenting "From Employment to Underemployment: The Lesser of Two Evils," and Assistant Professor Simon Rodan will present a workshop on simulation in organization theory.