Carnegie Mellon University

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May 08, 2014

Personal Mention

Three recent pieces by award-winning English Professor Hilary Masters have been included on three of the past four Best American Essays' Notable lists. The list annually features a selection of the year's outstanding essays of "literary achievement that show an awareness of craft and forcefulness of thought." The 2013 Notable List contained Masters' "Amelia Earhardt's Last Landing," which was originally published in the Sewanee Review. 2011's list included "Looking Back," published in Provincetown Arts, and the 2010 edition listed "In the Cards," which first appeared in the Prairie Schooner. "Best American never tells you when you are nominated," said Masters, who has written 10 novels. "A former student saw the 2013 list and told me. I looked it up, and discovered two more — a pleasant surprise." Learn more.


Stephen Broomell
, assistant professor of social and decision sciences, teamed up with researchers in 24 countries to measure how well policymakers and the public understand statements that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses to describe scientists' research findings. Broomell and the research team found that scientists describing phenomena such as global warming would be better served by using both numbers and verbal terms to communicate their findings. "Supplementing standard language with numeric values clarifies the amount of uncertainty a scientist is dealing with for most individuals around the world," Broomell said. "This is precisely the type of communication strategies required to effectively convey information about climate science as well as many other uncertain global issues." Learn more.


Jim Daniels'
"Birth Marks," the poetry collection that captures the gritty culture of working-class urban life, has won two prestigious awards: the 2014 Independent Publisher Book (IPPY) Awards’ Poetry Gold Medal and the 2014 Binghamton University Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award. The IPPY Awards, considered the "world’s largest book awards contest," attracted more than 5,000 entries from 35 countries. The Poetry Gold Medal is the top poetry prize awarded. Binghamton’s Kessler Poetry Book Award is annually given to a book of poems selected by the judges as the strongest poetry collection published in the previous year. "Birth Marks" is Daniels' 14th collection of poetry. Detroit born and raised, he uses the 39 poems to take readers on a tour of post-industrial Detroit and Pittsburgh to tell the tales of cities and their residents who came out swinging when the economy collapsed around them. Daniels is the Thomas Stockham Baker University Professor of English. Learn more.


The Athletics Department is hosting a reception in honor of Rich Erdelyi who is retiring on June 30 after 29 years on the football coaching staff. Erdelyi, who also has served the Tartans as their head golf coach, will be honored from 2 - 4 p.m., Monday, May 19 in the Cohon University Center's Rangos 1. Erdelyi has helped lead the Tartans to much success on the football field, including  eight University Athletic Association championships, two Presidents' Athletic Conference titles and three trips to the NCAA Division III Playoffs.  As golf coach, Erdelyi led the team to its first-ever NCAA appearance in 2009. Read more about Erdelyi.


Russell Golman
, director of the Dietrich College’s Quantitative Social Science Scholars (QSSS) Program, and academic adviser Kathleen Conway have joined QSSS students Colleen Hamilton, Stanley Krasner, Richa Mohan, Steven Wang and Hannah Worrall to create a new video promoting the QSSS program and to help explain the program to prospective students. The QSSS program is a unique opportunity to help outstanding undergraduates acquire advanced quantitative technical skills they can use to impact society as entrepreneurs, policymakers or social scientists. Watch the video at http://youtu.be/pCXhFXLD2G4.