YC Professors Active Over the Summer

The early weeks of the semester give us a chance to look back and reflect with friends on how our summer went. Was it fun and exciting? Did I accomplish anything? Was it at least interesting? It seems that most students spend their summer either working in a career-related field or in a camp or Kollel, relaxing and learning. As for teachers, who usually ask, "How did you spend your summer vacation?," it is interesting to see what they've done.

The Commentator asked the Yeshiva College faculty to "keep in touch" over the summer, cluing us in on what they were up to. We got a number of responses; some teachers spent their summer writing, others traveling, and for some, the more mundane task of preparing for new classes being offered this fall occupied them. Here's what they told us:

Dr. Ross Zucker, an Assistant Professor of Political Science spent the greater part of his summer working on a new manuscript. His text on "Democratic Distributive Justice" was completed by mid-summer and sent out for publication. Dr. Zucker extended his work to the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, where he presented a paper on the same topics represented in his latest work.

While Dr. Zucker shared his work with colleagues, Dr. Gabriel Cwilich, a physics professor, took his work to a global audience. He traveled to Florence, Italy to meet with researchers at the European Spectroscopy Laboratory, and attended STATPHYS XX, a triennial statistical physics conference at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he spoke before over 2000 fellow physicists. Additionally, Dr. Cwilich traveled to France where he visited the University of Nice, setting up international research collaborations and arranging for a possible American visit of his colleagues, perhaps even as guest lecturers at YU.

Beyond his travels, Dr. Cwilich spent time preparing exciting new programs for the coming year. He continued gathering materials for a book on last year's Galileo Project, and worked with Dr. Thomas Otway on a new honors course in frontier areas of physics. Perhaps most interesting, though, was his work with Drs. Otway and Raji Viswanathan of the Chemistry Department, in developing the Center for Undergraduate Advanced Computation.

Together, the group received substantial grant money from the National Science Foundation for the center, which will be housed on the 16^th floor of Belfer Hall. They spent the summer organizing materials, ordering new computers and equipment, and devising suitable projects for student use. The computational center, which will develop more fully over the next two years, will enable the performance of "advanced mathematical and theoretical manipulations in an undergraduate setting." Such an option was formerly unavailable at YU.

Similar to the developments in the science departments, Professors Ellen Schrecker and Hadassa Kosak of the History Department were busy bulking up their own courses. Together they attended a week-long series of seminars, entitled "The New Media Classroom," at CUNY, sponsored by National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Social History Project. There they were exposed to a wide variety of technological resources that can be exploited for classroom use. The seminars have special relevance to Dr. Schrecker, whose American Cultural History class this semester will be expected to use web-based resources to "make electronic presentations, hold discussions by means of a class list-serve, and, perhaps, create [their] own web site."

Dr. Schrecker explained her motivation for introducing electronic media to the classroom setting. "It's clear that we all have to become more techno-literate than most of us are. This is a way to help students gain that skill." Additionally, "they may find that doing part of their course work in electronic form will be more exciting than the traditional format." For her class, "the rich documentary and visual materials" available on the web are valuable for "we will be able to gain access to many more resources than we could otherwise find."

Complementing the academic pursuits of many faculty was the basic science research of many of the science faculty. Dr. Cwilich continued his work on wave propagation in disordered systems, and even supervised student work on numerical simulations in random systems. Dr. Carl Feit, a biology professor, continued his work on cell surface antigens, tiny sugars that dot the outside of cancerous cells. By characterizing these molecules he hopes to differentiate between highly malignant and more benign sarcomas, a type of tumor. His research is funded through both government and private foundation grant money.

Outside of his hardcore scientific work, Dr. Feit also continued his research into the interplay between science and religion. He investigated the role of scientific investigation from a Jewish perspective, culling scientific fundamentals ranging from modern physics to human genetics. Included in his deliberations come ethico-halakhic perspectives on modern issues such as pollution, human cloning and the definition of life and death. He has previously written on these issues, including a notation in a recent Newsweek article. Additionally, his work will come together in a new course to be offered in the Spring on "Science and Religion."

Dr. Barry Potvin, a strong proponent of research among faculty, continued his work in a cell biology lab at Einstein. He continued his ongoing investigation in the area of "Glycobiology," an area that investigates the structural role of sugars in bodily reactions. It is currently being reported in scientific journals that many of these sugars play a role in the spreading of cancerous cells and in the normal functioning of the body's immune system. In particular, Dr. Potvin's research focuses on the genes that allow these sugars to develop into their three dimensional shapes.

Dr. Potvin has been working at Einstein for the past 11 years, full-time in the summers and part-time during the academic year. For him, the need to work at Einstein comes from two directions. "First, I enjoy it. Otherwise, I wouldn't do it. More importantly, being in an academic environment is very important for a teacher." Working in a lab, he explained, exposes him to new technologies and prevents his classes from stagnating. While most read journals to keep current, "it's more exciting and revealing to be there, using these new techniques, instead of just reading about them."

Aside from his research, Dr. Potvin found time to meet with students doing their own research at Einstein. "It's important to keep a pulse on what the students are doing," he explained. "This way, I can see what they're learning about and what's missing." He also noted that seeing students in a lab environment allowed him to work with them to generate new results in their experiments.