y in Action Faculty in Action Faculty in Action Faculty in Act Dr. Cassandra Copeland, associate professor of economics, co-authored “The History and Potential of Trade between Cuba and the U.S.,” Journal of Business and Economics, in 2011. An article by Dr. John Cramer, professor of physics, called “Adler’s Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God,” was included in the Center for the Study of Great Ideas’ book celebrating the work of Mortimer J. Adler. How to Prove There is a God is a collection of 10 essays on Adler’s proofs for the existence of God. Dr. Cramer’s is described as an “eloquent argument that the trend of modern cosmology supports Adler’s position.”
Dr. Bruce Hetherington, professor of economics, and Dr. Peter Kower, associate professor of economics, authored the paper, “Technological Diffusion and the Union Blockade,” which was published in Explorations in Economic History and nominated for the annual award of “best paper.”
Dr. Joseph Knippenberg, professor of politics, has a new three-year appointment to the Council of Scholars, American Academy for Liberal
Education. He is also a member of the Board of Scholars, Georgia Family Council and was a judge for “We the People” Finals, sponsored by the Georgia Humanities Council in Atlanta. He’s presented at conferences, including “Staging the Thirty Years War: Jesuit Drama and the Politics of the Catholic League 1610-1640” at Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS), Tempe, Ariz., in February 2011 (accepted for publication in the conference proceedings). Dr. Knippenberg also has authored numerous papers and publications, including “Tocquevillian Reflections on Liberal Education and Civic Engagement,” in Robert Anderson, et al, eds. Who Are We? Old, New, and Timeless Answers from Core Texts (University Press of America, 2011); Review of Bryan T. McGraw, “Faith in Politics,” in Journal of Markets and Morality XIV (Spring, 2011); and, “Liberal Arts and the Tocquevillian Counterculture,” Conference on Alexis de Tocqueville, Mercer University, Macon, Ga., April 7, 2011. Associate Professor of Art Alan Loehle’s work has been selected for inclusion in the forthcoming book 100 Southern Artists from Schiffer Publishing. The book will feature his paintings
ReCalculating History: Two OU Economists Challenge Seminal Studies By Chloey Mayo ’10
At the beginning of the blockade, most boats were sailboats made of wood. By the end of the blockade, investors had realized that purpose-built iron steamers were quieter, stealthier, and less likely to have been captured, hence the quick diffusion of these ships.
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completed during and in response to his Guggenheim Fellowship and will be distributed in 2012 through Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
Dr. John Orme, professor of politics, was selected for and participated in a fellowship program by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy during summer 2011. Participants flew to Israel to hear lectures and presentations on Israel’s struggle against terrorism and to observe Israel’s security personnel training for and performing their jobs. (See article on page 8.) He also was profiled in an August 2011 edition of Atlanta’s Creative Loafing article spotlighting 10 professors at local colleges. Dr. Michael Rulison, professor of physics, was recently named by the College Board as the Chair of the Advanced Placement Test Development Committee.
Dr. William Bradford Smith, professor of history, took four students to present papers at the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies fall conference. Two of these students later presented at a Medieval and Renaissance conference at UT Knoxville.
Dr. Brad Stone published a book chapter, “Robert Nisbet and the Conservative Intellectual Tradition” in The Dilemmas of American Conservatism, and an article, “The Current Evidence for Hayek’s Cultural Group Selection Theory,” in Libertarian Papers.
oral, head and neck cancer screening for reducing tobacco consumption,” (Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery); “A randomizedcontrol study of instructional approaches for struggling adult readers,” (Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness); “Differences in temporal variables between voice therapy completers and dropouts,” (Journal of Voice); and, “The relationships between phonological processing skills and word and nonword reading skills by children with mild intellectual disabilities” (Research in Developmental Disabilities).
Assistant Professor of Accounting Tory Vornholt earned a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Duke University (June 2011) and received grants from the Georgia Society of CPAs for Professional Awareness (2010, 2011).
Dr. Justin Wise, assistant professor of psycholDr. Seema Shrikhande, associate professor of communication and rhetoric studies, served as a judge again for the Short Story Competition conducted by the Writing Center at Grady High School in Atlanta.
ogy, co-authored several published articles, including: “Exploring the syntactic skills of struggling adult readers,” (Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal); “Language Development,” (Encyclopedia of Human Behavior [2nd Edition]); “The Impact of a community-based
For nearly a decade, Oglethorpe economics professors Dr. Bruce Hetherington and Dr. Peter Kower have investigated the profitability of blockade running during the Civil War—the smuggling of cotton and contraband through Union barriers at Confederate ports. Last April, after publishing their paper, “Technological Diffusion and the Union Blockade,” the economics duo celebrated their nomination for Outstanding Paper, which was printed in Explorations in Economic History, one of the top economic history journals. In this second paper in a series of three, Hetherington and Kower overturn a nearly 20-year-old notion that British firms were largely unsuccessful in turning a significant profit in the blockade-running business, especially as the blockade intensified. A Civil War enthusiast who keeps an original Abraham Lincoln campaign button in his office, Hetherington says he’s always had an interest in the Civil War and originally began exploring the economics of the Union blockade back in 1991. He found that the common belief among economic historians was that blockade runners were not nearly as profitable
as wartime seamen once reported. By revisiting historical sources found in seminal works, Hetherington discovered that the opposite was true and the high number of private firms who invested in technologically advanced steamboats spoke to the immense profitability of blockade running. “As I conducted my research, I realized that a lot of the published findings were inconsistent with historical evidence available to us,” said Hetherington. “Empirically, we’ve shown the strong link between new ideas and profit,” agreed Kower, whose main interest was the speed with which investors adopted the new, purpose-built ships. “Statistics show that innovation [like those used to build purpose-built steamships] provides incentive— in this case, profit.” Dr. Kower’s macroeconomics classes aided in the research, re-examining the historical record accounting for the profitability of blockade running and recalculating the returns of some of the war’s most well-known runners.
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