Kudos: Bawardi, Fiore, Olive and Thomas-Brown

Hani Bawardi, assistant professor in social sciences, recently worked on the Library of Congress' symposium celebrating the first Arab American novel in English, The Book of Khalid. The series of events was held in the Library of Congress and celebrated the life of the author, Ameen Rihani. Beyond helping to frame the event, Hani also presented a paper titled "Reading The Book of Khalid, Writing Arab American History: Rihani as a Historian."

Thomas Fiore, assistant professor of mathematics at UM-Dearborn, and his co-authors Alissa Crans and Ramon Satyendra, will receive the 2011 Merten M. Hasse award from the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) for their paper, "Musical Actions of Dihedral Groups." The Merten M. Hasse Prize is awarded for a noteworthy expository paper appearing in an MAA publication, at least one of whose authors is a younger mathematician. Fiore and his colleagues will be recognized during an MAA ceremony this summer in Lexington, KY.

The paper connects the 12 musical tones to elements in the dihedral group of order 24 (the symmetries of a regular dodecagon). The translation from pitch classes to integers modulo 12 allows for the modeling of musical works using abstract algebra. The authors show how the dihedral group of order 24 acts on the set of major and minor triads. They also make connection between this group and chord progressions in Beethoven's 9th Symphony and Pachelbel's Canon in D.

Andrea Olive, assistant professor of political science, received notification that her manuscript, "Can Stewardship Work for Species at Risk: A Pelee Island Case Study" was accepted for publication by the Journal of Environmental Law and Practice.

Karen Thomas-Brown, assistant professor of social studies and multiculturalism, was selected by the Goethe-Institute to be a participant in its Transatlantic Opportunity Program (TOP) study tour in Germany this summer. The goal of TOP is to encourage cross-cultural dialogue and to provide social studies educators with global understanding from an international perspective using modern Germany as the basis for comparison and contrast. The study tour will involve three weeks of travel and meetings throughout Germany.