Kandyce Aust, director of alumni relations, received this grant for a series of events to bring together women from the Hartford College for Women and the University of Hartford. The council promotes the exchange of ideas and experiences, provides networking opportunities, offers educational and cultural programs and enhances the growth of women as leaders and decision makers.

Karen Barrett, associate dean of undergraduate studies, AUC, and Karen Sullivan, assistant director of adult academic services, were awarded a grant that will provide scholarships to three female, adult returning students for the 2009-2010 academic year. The scholarships are intended to provide not only financial support, but also institutional recognition of the commitment and motivation exhibited by this population of students.

Kaeza Fern, composition graduate student, Hartt School, Akane Mori, assistant professor, music theory, Hartt, and Heater Seaton, a Hartt alumna, are presenting the Ninth Annual Women Composers Festival of Hartford. The festival is an educational, community outreach concert series established to foster a better understanding of women composers and their works. Festival organizers seek to discover and share a vast musical repertoire created by women from a variety of cultural backgrounds and time periods, with the goal of empowering women composers and encouraging the next generation of women to consider the field of composition. For more information visit the website: www.heatherhouseproductions.com.

DeLois Lindsey, assistant vice president for student development, has partnered with the Girl Scouts of Connecticut to create a program that will provide a series of workshops for girls in the greater Hartford area. All of the topics are specifically geared toward young women, and will expose participants to the college experience. To enhance this value of the program, Girl Scouts staff will train University of Hartford women students to deliver some of the scheduled leadership workshops. The program will take place twice, in the spring and fall of 2009.

Mala Matacin, associate professor of psychology, A&S, launched this new organization after teaching a spring honors seminar entitled "Women, Weight, and Worry." This group has been created for all women at the University as a venue for discussion, education and activism. Dr. Matacin is assisted by Laurie McBreen, her graduate assistant and Amanda Dillman, who is interning with her.

Katharine Owens, assistant professor of politics and government, A&S, is leading a group of women undergraduates who will provide a comprehensive assessment of how wetlands have changed in Connecticut since 2000 including wetlands filling, mitigation, and creation.  The students will work to disseminate their findings to relevant actors within the state of Connecticut.

Natacha Poggio, assistant professor of visual communications design, Hartford Art School, is leading a group of design students to create an education campaign that uses only visual messages to communicate values of cleanliness, respect, and sharing for the children of Abheypur, India. The village received a solar-powered well through a collaboration with the University’s Engineers Without Borders organization (a two-time WELFund grant recipient); the public arts campaign is the next phase of a five-year relationship between Abheypur and the University. Natacha and her students traveled to India this January to implement the program.

Clif Scorso, assistant dean, CETA, has been awarded a grant to create a summer day camp to introduce incoming high school first year, sophomore, and junior girls to engineering, technology and architecture at the University of Hartford. The camp will take place over two weeks during the summer of 2009; women students from CETA will work as counselors and student mentors for the campers. Faculty and administrators from the University Magnet High School of Science and Engineering are partners to this effort.

Alexandra Symmonds ’09, CETA, and Elizabeth Campbell, ’10 CETA and president of the University’s chapter of Society of Women Engineers, received a grant to organize and implement SWEET Day, a highly-successful student initiative to engage more young women in considering engineering as a possible career. Girls from local high schools are invited to visit the campus for a day and learn about the specific fields of engineering through hands-on projects and engaging speakers.

Donn Weinhotz, professor of educational leadership, ENHP, will be using this grant to bring internationally renowned  astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Ph.D. to the University to give a series of presentations to the University community as well as for the the University High School and Watkinson School.  In addition to topics of interest in astrophysics, Dame Jocelyn will address issues in the teaching of science and challenges confronting women scientists.

Rebecca McDonald ’09 and Ann Klicka ‘09, media arts majors, HAS, will be attending the  Annual Robert Flaherty Film Seminar at Colgate University in the summer of 2009. The seminar was initiated by Francis Flaherty, the wife of the filmmaker, to promote the study of documentary and experimental film. The week-long intensive seminar will introduce the students to peer scholars, emerging artists, and a variety of women media producers who might serve as role models to them in their thesis work and future careers.

Alexis Bravos, adjunct professor in cinema and media, A&S, has partnered with the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford to create a film documentary to chronicle the experience of Jewish women who lived in Hartford during World War II. The project is intended to preserve the legacy of the female members of the “Greatest Generation” through photos and stories collected through oral histories.

Melanie Benson, assistant professor of English, Hillyer, was awarded a grant to fund summer research to support her book project “A Beautiful Nothing: Globalization, Consumption, and Wasted Women in American Culture”.  According to Dr. Benson, the book will “seek to capture the multiple ways that women’s bodies, minds, and spirits suffer from their value as ‘givers’ in a corrupt Western, capitalist economy.” Completion of the manuscript is projected for September 2008 with publication sometime in 2009.

Joanna Borucinska, associate professor of biology, A&S, along with Eliana Cardeno ’09 and Michelle Tafur ’09 were awarded a grant to examine the reproductive health of sharks to determine the effects of environmental toxins from various forms of pollution.  The sharks are being collected during shark-fishing tournaments by sports fishermen along the coast of New England throughout the summer of 2008.  The team will be writing a paper on their findings for a peer-reviewed journal and for a presentation at a scientific meeting.

Eleta Jones, associate director, Center for Professional Development, has been awarded a grant that will fund an internship for each of two women students from the school of Communication and the Barney School of Business Department of Management and Marketing.  The students will work as a team to develop and implement a communications and marketing plan targeted at women in order to increase the female clientele of the Center for Professional Development.  In addition, the students will gain real-life experience in their respective fields of study.

Rachel LaDue, ’09, and David Pines, associate professor of civil engineering, CETA, have been awarded a grant to fund the design and implementation of a rooftop rainwater harvesting system at a village primary girls’ school located in Abheypur, India.  The system will provide a source of water during the monsoon systems when the solar pump (installed earlier by a similar program funded by WELFund) will not be effective. Female engineering students at the University of Hartford will be designing the system.

Maria Marques, Office of the Faculty Senate, has been awarded a grant to create a partnership between Our Lady of Fatima Church in Hartford and the University of Hartford’s College of Education, Nursing & Heath Professions. The partners will work together to create community-based activities which will educate Portuguese speaking women in the risks, treatments, and prevention of diseases that affect women. Forums will be held in Portuguese and printed material will also be available in that language.

Patricia McKenna-Grant, director of health education and the women and gender resource centers, and Carrie Speiser, ’08 have been awarded a grant to support their work updating, copyrighting and printing a curriculum on dating violence which will be used by various departments at the University of Hartford. The goal of the program is to educate college students about the dangers, realities, and warning signs of abusive relationships.

Ivana Milanovic, associate professor, mechanical engineering, and Tom Eppes, associate professor, ECE (both of CETA) are creating a proactive mentoring model for leadership in engineering.  The grantees will work intentionally with two new women assistant professors to cultivate their research and leadership potential. The resulting program will be a mentoring model within CETA which will better prepare incoming faculty to advance in their careers.  Results and findings from this pilot program will later be disseminated in published papers.

Erin Striff, associate professor of English, A&S, has been awarded a grant to research and write a paper focusing on women competing in triathlons.  The author will focus on the Danskin Women’s Triathlon and how the event focuses on the empowerment of women through athleticism as well as creating a mutually supportive atmosphere for athletes among their competitors. Erin will be looking at the feminist implications of this event through the lens of performance studies.

Michelle Vigeant, associate professor of mechanical engineering, CETA, has been awarded a grant to advance women in the field of acoustical engineering. The first portion of the grant will be used to fund two female acoustical engineering students in collaborative research with Dr. Vigeant in the area of concert hall acoustics. The grantee and her student collaborators will publish and present the results of their study.

Karen Barrett, associate dean of undergraduate studies, AUC, and Karen Sullivan, assistant director of graduate and adult academic services, were awarded a grant that will provide scholarships to three female, adult returning students for the 2008-2009 academic year. The scholarships are intended to provide not only financial support, but also institutional recognition of the commitment and motivation exhibited by this population of students.

Lauren Cook, assistant professor of cinema, A&S, was awarded a grant to launch a feminist journal which will be designed and edited by University students and faculty. The first issue of OBJECT will be available online and in a limited “object-based” print version in the summer of 2008. Cook and her collaborators anticipate the journal will be created annually.

Clara Fang, assistant professor of civil/environmental/biomedical engineering, CETA, has been awarded a grant that will support two women undergraduates in completing an engineering research project in the summer of 2008. The students will have the opportunity to design and build two transportation applications in animated simulation environments, present research results in writing, and disseminate project information and findings via the web.

Mari Firkatian, associate professor of history, Hillyer, was awarded a grant to publicize her new book Diplomats and Dreamers, and to extend the reach of her research on the book’s principle character, Bulgarian diplomat Nadejda Stanciooff, to national and international audiences. Professor Firkatian is designing a course based primarily on the book that will use the individual life experiences of the books’ characters to increase students’ learning and retention about European and world history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Jessica (Parker) Hu ’09 and Brooke Duffy ‘09, media arts majors, HAS, and Gene Gort, associate professor of media arts, HAS, will be attending the 54th Annual Robert Flaherty Film Seminar at Colgate University in the summer of 2008. The seminar was initiated by Francis Flaherty, the wife of the filmmaker, to promote the study of documentary and experimental film. The week-long intensive seminar will introduce the students to peer scholars, emerging artists, and a variety of women media producers who might serve as role models to them in their thesis work and future careers.

Aime Levesque, assistant professor of biology, A&S, received a grant to investigate the sensitivities of various breast cancer cell lines to a specific chemotherapeutic strategy. This information will contribute to the development of improved therapies as well as identification of candidate patients who will be likely to respond to such therapies. Collaborating with Professor Levesque on this project will be a team of women graduate and undergraduate students.

Laura Pence, associate professor of chemistry, A&S, will be traveling with three women undergraduate science majors to present their research at the national meeting of the American Chemistry Society in New Orleans in April 2008. The students have all completed a minimum of two semesters of undergraduate research in inorganic chemistry, and will present their findings at the national undergraduate research symposium. Students will also attend research talks describing cutting edge research, and participate in programming depicting career opportunities for science majors.

Jessica Rudman, composition graduate student, the Hartt School, Dr. Robert Carl, professor of composition at Hartt, and Heater Seaton, a Hartt alumna, are presenting the Eighth Annual Women Composers Festival of Hartford. The festival is an educational, community outreach concert series established to foster a better understanding of women composers and their works. Festival organizers seek to discover and share a vast musical repertoire created by women from a variety of cultural backgrounds and time periods, with the goal of empowering women composers and encouraging the next generation of women to consider the field of composition. For more information visit the website: www.heatherhouseproductions.com.

Melanie Shackett and Kristen Kotran, graduate students in neuroscience, A&S, have been awarded a grant for paired studies about type II diabetes. Using mice as an animal model, the first part of the study will investigate the effects of different diet and exercise regimes on the oxidative stress in type II diabetic mice, while the second will look into the mechanism causing type II diabetes to be a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease.

Alexandra Symmonds ’09, CETA and president of the University’s chapter of Society of Women Engineers, received a grant to organize and implement SWEET Day, a highly-successful student initiative to engage more young women in considering engineering as a possible career. Girls from local high schools are invited to visit the campus for a day and learn about the specific fields of engineering through hands-on projects and engaging speakers.

Jane Barstow, professor of English, A&S, is organizing an educational symposium on Title IX. The symposium is scheduled to commemorate the 35th anniversary of Title IX, and will be a complementary event to the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame’s gala celebration of Connecticut women in athletics. Since its passage in 1972, Title IX has had a profound impact on helping to change attitudes, assumptions and behavior and, consequently, our understanding about how sexual stereotypes can limit educational opportunities. The symposium, featuring President Walter Harrison, Athletic Director Pat Meiser, Coach Jennifer Rizotti, their counterparts at Southern Connecticut State University, and historian Susan Ware, aims to inspire high school and university female athletes to become leaders in on-going efforts to achieve full educational equity for young men and women in all aspects of their education. The educational symposium will take place at the University of Hartford campus on October 25, 2007.

Sandra Cahill, associate director of The Entrepreneurial Center, and Cathy McCloud, career counselor with The Center for Professional Development, will oversee "HerStories," the research, writing, photography and publishing of 12 inspiring stories of women and their journeys into careers. Undergraduate students will be selected by professors from the art school and communications department to serve as freelance writers and photographers. Women profiled will be selected based on their entrepreneurship or relationships to industries where women have been under-represented. The articles will be posted in rotations monthly on the Center for Professional Development, The Entrepreneurial Center, and University of Hartford’s Career Services websites over the period of one year, and will be available in poster form for display.

Lynn Galvin, assistant to the dean, A&S, Marge Arnold, assistant to the dean, Hillyer, and Elaine Cooley, assistant to the dean, ENHP, will facilitate the presentation of three programs to empower their colleges’ frontline staff members with a goal of improving their quality of customer service and boosting staff morale. Quality customer service at the University is dependent on these frontline staff members, a majority of whom are women. Participants will explore cultural diversity, customer service and conflict/stress management in training sessions, and will participate in follow-up focus groups designed to measure the impact of the training and participants’ increased leadership in these areas.

Wick Griswold, assistant professor of sociology, Hillyer, will lead a partnership of University of Hartford faculty and students (including Educational Main Street), Harriet Beecher Stowe Center staff, Fox middle school girls and their grandmothers in creating a video/oral history of Hartford women’s social activism in the last half of the 20th century. University students will collaborate with faculty to train 25 middle school girls in how to conduct oral histories with their grandmothers. From these histories, ten will be selected for videotaping at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House. Video segments from the life and work of Harriet Beecher Stowe will be interspersed with the grandmothers’ oral histories, demonstrating the ongoing, living legacy to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s commitment to Hartford and social activism. The culmination will be a website and a video history DVD to be distributed to University of Hartford classrooms, Hartford public schools, libraries and community organizations.

Carrie Koffman, professor of instrumental studies, The Hartt School, will record a CD that will serve as the first recording entirely devoted to music for saxophone composed by women, including new music and music that has not yet been recorded. At present, both saxophone performance and composition are fields in which women have been significantly underrepresented internationally. There are few women who teach saxophone at the collegiate level in this country, and those who do tend to be at institutions without a great deal of visibility. This project is a step forward in increasing the awareness of women’s contributions in both the areas of saxophone performance and composition, and aims to make a sizable impact on the younger women in this field.

Rachel LaDue ‘09, president of Engineers Without Borders (EWB), and Dave Pines, assistant professor of Civil Engineering and EWB faculty advisor, will direct "Water for Abheypur," the implementation stage of a collaborative project between the University, Engineers Without Borders, and the Indian village of Abheypur. The team participated in an assessment trip to India in January, and converted the question of how to best provide water to the village into an Engineering Design class project. With a design selected, the team will now travel to India to install the solar powered ground water pump and tanks, providing a sustainable solution to the problem of how to more easily access water for the villagers. In addition to the learning experienced by University students and faculty, women and girls of the village will receive substantial benefit. The well will be installed next to the girls’ school in the village, allowing them to gather water as necessary while also prioritizing their own education.

Patricia McKenna-Grant, director of Health Education and the Women’s Center, collaborated with instructors and students of the Rape Aggression Defense (R.A.D.) course offered at the University to request and secure from WELFund support for much-needed equipment. The basic physical defense course offered currently to women students provides both education and awareness, culminating in a simulation exercise in which participants exercise their learned strategies to remove themselves from danger. R.A.D. equips participants for physical safety, while also empowering them in other areas of their lives.

Sharon Toffey Shepela, professor of psychology, Hillyer, Donn Weinholtz, professor of educational leadership, ENHP, and Mary Lee Morrison, president and founding director of Hartford-based Pax Educare, will offer a major regional conference on November 10, 2007 to address the question, "Do women make peace better?" The goals of the conference will be to:

• Highlight the roles women are playing in leading peace and conflict resolution at the local, regional, national and international levels.
• Build collaborative, working relationships among conference participants.
• Illustrate that peacemaking is a real option for average people, as well as for the exceptionally talented.
• Develop participants’ peacemaking skills for individual action and successful group initiatives through interactive workshops.

This conference will bring together academics, educators, students, community activists and interested citizens to listen, learn, dialogue and share on this important topic.

Jilda M. Aliotta, associate professor of politics and government, A&S, will conduct research for a book-length biography of Judge Jennie Loitman Barron (1891-1969), the first woman to serve as a full-time judge in Massachusetts. This project, which will focus on Judge Barron’s leadership style as a judge, school board member, political activist, mother, and community volunteer, will contribute to the emerging literature on whether there are distinctly feminine leadership styles.

Kandyce Aust, director of alumni relations, will develop the Alumnae Council for Women to bring together alumnae from Hartford College for Women and the University of Hartford of diverse ethnic, cultural, professional and educational backgrounds. The Council, led by representatives of both institutions, will promote the exchange of ideas and experiences, provide networking opportunities, offer educational and cultural programs, and enhance the growth of women as leaders and decision-makers. Programming will be offered to alumnae, women staff and faculty, women students and women of the greater community.

Dr. Karen Barrett, associate dean of undergraduate studies, AUC, and Karen Sullivan, assistant director of graduate and adult academic services, have been awarded funds to provide scholarship support to adult women who are struggling to complete their academic degrees. These scholarships are intended to provide not only financial support but also institutional recognition of the commitment and motivation exhibited by this population of students.

Dr. Yvette Blanchard, associate professor of physical therapy, ENHP, and Dr. Susan Diehl, associate professor of nursing, ENHP, will study the effectiveness of the Newborn Behavioral Observation (NBO) system as an intervention tool with adolescent first time mothers with infants from birth to two months of life. The NBO system is designed to help the parent observe her infant’s behavioral capacities and identify the kind of support the infant needs for his successful growth and development. This study will examine the effects of the NBO on the mothers’ understanding of their babies, ability to ready their babies’ cues, feelings towards their babies, and confidence in themselves as mothers.

Dr. Joanna Borucinska, associate professor of biology, A&S, will engage in collaborative research with two women graduate students, Melanie Shackett and Kristen Kotran. The three will examine the reproductive health of vertebrate animals in the wider context of environmental health. The proposed research will investigate the effects of endocrine disrupting environmental toxins on the reproductive health using large free-ranging sharks as a model animal. Research will be conducted at shark-fishing tournaments in the summer of 2007, and will be disseminated in a peer-reviewed journal, in a presentation during a scientific meetings, and in interactions with the general public during the summer’s fieldwork.

Dr. Susan Coleman, professor of economics, finance and insurance, Barney, will explore women undergraduates’ confidence in their financial knowledge and skills in comparison to their male peers. Coleman will survey both male and female undergraduates to assess basic financial literacy and attitudes toward finance, and then conduct focus groups with Barney undergraduate women who have been successful in finance courses, and recent female undergraduates who have chosen careers in the field of finance. Having determined what factors have contributed to the success of these two groups of women, Coleman will provide recommendations that can be used to improve the learning environment for women undergraduates in economics and finance courses.

Lauren Cook, visiting assistant professor of cinema, A&S, will organize a three day symposium bringing students, staff, faculty, community members, visiting scholars and filmmakers together to discuss the role of women in film. In addition to scholarly paper presentations and roundtable discussions, a student committee will select a program of films to screen along with those of the invited speakers. The Women in Cinema Symposium and Film Festival is scheduled for April 20-22, 2007.

DeLois Traynum Lindsey, assistant vice president for student development, Student Affairs, will collaborate with Denice Garrett ’07, president of Brothers and Sisters United, and Elizabeth Rodriguez ’07, Hartford Scholar, to develop a Student Leadership and Career Development Conference. The conference, scheduled for March 30-April 1, 2007, will provide to an estimated 300 student participants (from the University of Hartford and area colleges) workshops and presentations exploring social/diversity issues, potential career paths, and personal/professional development. In addition to sessions on women-owned businesses, women’s issues from the perspective of a Middle Eastern woman and an African-American woman, and women in transition, the keynote speaker will be Judge Curtissa Coffield of Hartford. She will address the experience of being a woman of color on the bench.

Dr. Eric Mahan, associate professor of chemistry, A&S, will develop "WISH (Women in Science at Hartford)." In this initial pilot program, three female students will be supported in summer research opportunities in the chemistry department. Under the direction of a faculty mentor, each student will perform an independent research project and gain valuable skills in planning and conducting research. It is anticipated the program will provide a model for other academic areas seeking to increase the engagement of women students.

Margaret Mair, archivist for the University of Hartford and the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford (JHSGH), will collaborate with the JHSGH to create an exhibit entitled "Sophie Tucker: Hartford’s Hot Mama." Known as "The Last of the Red Hot Mamas" at the height of her career, Sophie Tucker was a Hartford native, and defied the stereotypes of her day in her achievements as an entertainer. Using artifacts, photographs, music and her own words, Sophie will be brought to life and displayed as a talented performer, independent woman and lifelong philanthropist.

Patricia McKenna-Grant, director of the Connections Wellness Center and the Women’s Center, Student Affairs, will work with students and staff of the Women’s Center and staff of Alumni Relations to offer the Women’s Alumnae Lunch Series. Women students will have an opportunity to meet and dine with accomplished female alumnae from the University and Hartford College for Women, discussing topics like women in the workforce, women’s health, women in politics, and women business owners. The series will provide a relaxed environment that will encourage critical thinking and dialogue about these and other issues.

Dr. Melinda Miceli, associate professor of sociology, Hillyer, and Dr. Stephen Misovich, associate professor of psychology, Hillyer, will study the extent to which online discussion boards serve as an outlet for class participation that is comparatively free of some of the social demands such as stereotype threat and gender bias that may inhibit students in face-to-face interactions in the classroom. Drs. Miceli and Misovich will investigate through survey research the extent to which women (and men) are making use of online discussion boards, and their experiences associated with participating in that context. A parallel survey will be developed for faculty, and actual discussion board postings will be analyzed through content analysis to compare women and men in their postings.

Natalie Segal, manager of outreach activities, CETA, and Dr. Clara Fang, assistant professor of civil/environmental/biomedical engineering, CETA, will collaborate with CETA faculty members to develop modules introducing various engineering specialties to high school women in their freshman, sophomore, and junior years. The focus of the modules will be on the capacity of engineers to help others and affect lives positively, a focus shown to be effective in engaging young women in the field. Once developed, the modules will be used to secure funding for a summer camp experience inviting 30 to 40 area young women to participate. It is projected that at least half of the group participating in the program will pursue studies in engineering or technology, whether at the University of Hartford or another institution.

Alexandra Symmonds ’10, president of Society of Women Engineers, and Dr. Clara Fang, faculty advisor to SWE and assistant professor of civil/environmental/biomedical engineering, CETA, will create "SWEET Day (Society of Women Engineers Educating for Tomorrow)." Scheduled for March 24, 2007, SWEET Day will engage 100 area high school women and their parents in a day of hands-on engineering, with activities offered by all of the CETA clubs. Workshops, informative guest speakers, and a tour of the CETA facilities will advance the SWE goals of stimulating women to achieve full potential in careers as engineers and leaders, expanding the image of the engineering profession as a positive force in improving quality of life, and demonstrating the value of diversity to the field.