T he B oston C ollege
Chronicle october 27, 2016
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BOSTON COLLEGE IN THE MEDIA An introduction to new faculty members at Boston College
Leonard Evenchik
Assistant Professor of the Practice, Information Systems Carroll School of Management DEGREES: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (BS, MSEE); MIT Sloan School of Management (BS) WHAT HE STUDIES: Digital innovation and transformation within higher education and health care. WHAT HE’S TEACHING: Information Technology Management, Cybersecurity (MBA) Give us an overview of your current research. “My primary research interests are digital innovation and transformation within higher education and health care. This involves understanding not only the technical issues, but also the organizational and cultural factors involved in successfully moving innovations from the lab into the real world. I’m currently studying strategic applications for the nascent Internet of Things (IoT) within specific markets, such as higher education, health care, and assistive technology.”
Timothy Mangin
Assistant Professor of Music Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences DEGREES: Bowdoin College (BS); Columbia University (PhD) WHAT HE STUDIES: Intersection of popular music, race, ethnicity, religion, and cosmopolitanism in West Africa and the African Diaspora. WHAT HE’S TEACHING: History of Popular Music You’re working on a book that explores a type of dance music from Senegal called mbalax. Give us an idea what this music is like, and why it interests you. “Mbalax is a funky, percussive, afro-pop groove drawing on American urban dance musics. Mbalax features both griots (heredity musicians, dancers and praise singers) and non-griots musicians experienced in jazz, African salsa, and afro-pop. My first experience with it was when I saw Youssou N’Dour perform in New York City. I was struck by how interactive the band and the audience were with each other. Throughout the night, Senegalese sang along with N’Dour and abandoned the usual sit-and-listen approach to concerts. Audience members jumped on stage and showered the musicians in money and engaged in dancer-drummer dialogues. Moments such as this inspired me to research the deeper meanings of these events. Years later when I conducted research in Senegal I frequented many clubs, sat in on gigs, and also danced. I came to realize how much Senegalese knew about other places, about American and African diaspora cultures, and how little Americans knew about Senegal. This discrepancy led me to research the similarities and differences between African and African diaspora musics and cultures.”
Boston College faculty continued to lend their expertise on Election 2016: •Interviewed by the Boston Globe, Prof. James Bretzke, SJ (STM), commented on the complexities facing voters in this presidential election. •In the wake of Donald Trump’s refusal to pledge to accept the result of the US presidential election, and Hillary Clinton’s boost in the polls, Prof. Jonathan Laurence (Political Science) assessed the presidential campaign for Agence France Presse. •Prof. Patrick Maney (History), author of the Bill Clinton biography A New Gilded Age, comments to CNN.com on the role of the former president in the current campaign. Carroll School of Management Drucker Professor Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research, wrote a piece for the Washington Post on ways to address the deficit faced by Social Security, including the cost burden associated with its “legacy debt.”
It’s easy to focus on the metrics, but analytics’ bigger picture benefits managers more, Assoc. Prof. Sam Ransbotham (CSOM) wrote in Sloan Management Review. Are young girls “more severely punished” than boys? Juvenile justice experts, including Assoc. Clinical Prof. Fran Sherman (Law), lead author of a report on
Jeremy Wilkins
Associate Professor of Theology Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences DEGREES: Washington University in St. Louis (BA); Regis College/University of Toronto (MDiv.); Regis College (STB); St. Mary’s Seminary and University (STL); Boston College (PhD) WHAT HE STUDIES: Bernard Lonergan; Thomas Aquinas; Christology WHAT HE’S TEACHING: Perspectives on Western Culture; Christology
–Sean Hennessey, Kathleen Sullivan, Sean Smith Photos by Lee Pellegerini
Bloomberg News reported on a study co-authored by Prof. Claudia Olivetti (Economics) that found that the later a woman divorces, the more likely she is to be working full time late in life.
EXPERT OPINION Research Professor of Psychology Peter Gray, interviewed by New York Times Magazine for a piece on “anti-helicopter parents”: “All mammals engage in dangerous play. Dangerous play is how kids learn how to titrate fear. Not everyone has to learn quadratic equations, but at some point in our lives, we will all be in stressful situations and we need to be able to keep our cool. Sometimes there are accidents – kid goats fall off cliffs while playing, or whatever – but they’re rare. If the instinct wasn’t of evolutionary benefit, the behavior would have been rooted out.”
Caitlin Cunningham
See more BC faculty opinion at www.bc.edu/bcnews
JOBS Gary Gilbert
Sheila Tucker
Clinical Instructor Connell School of Nursing DEGREES: Framingham State University (BS, MA) WHAT SHE STUDIES: The role of the nurse in providing nutrition care as part of medical nutrition therapy and across the lifespan; sports nutrition. WHAT SHE’S TEACHING: Pharmacology and Nutrition Therapies; Nutrition for Life Prior to becoming a full-time faculty member, you were the executive dietitian and nutritionist for Dining Services and the Office of Health Promotion, and performance nutritionist for Athletics. What are some of the biggest nutrition challenges or misconceptions you’ve encountered in your clinical practice? “A huge challenge is the easy availability of not-so-accurate nutrition information on both the web and through social media. Where else in the field of health can you find so many selfdescribed experts? Not many people pretend to know a lot about being a pharmacist, nurse or physician without the necessary education and training, but somehow nutrition is different. Bloggers, top 10 superfood lists, and ‘Dr. Google’ searches offer jazzy, quick-fix ideas on nutrition that often are not evidence-based from folks with little to no formal nutrition education. The challenge in clinical practice and in the classroom is to teach students how to improve their health literacy when filtering through this information and to spot the evidence-based recommendations. It’s important that we stop chasing nutrition headlines, stop putting all foods and nutrients under a microscope and labeling them ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘clean,’ and instead pull back the lens and look at overall dietary patterns that promote health or fuel a sport or treat a medical condition.”
gender injustice, weighed in for a story published by The Crime Report, a website maintained by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
The following are among the most recent positions posted by the Department of Human Resources. For more information on employment opportunities at Boston College, see www.bc.edu/offices/hr: Assistant Construction Project Manager, Facilities/Trades Assistant Director, Marketing and Programming, President’s Office Senior Human Resources Officer, Human Resources Director of Program Innovation, Academic Affairs/Provost
Internationally recognized scholar and author John W. Padberg, SJ, was presented with the George E. Ganss, SJ, Award, which recognizes significant scholarly contributions to the field of Jesuit Studies, in conjunction with his presentation of the Feore Family Lecture on Jesuit Studies on campus Oct. 4. Fr. Padberg was presented with the award by Casey Beaumier, SJ, director of the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College. The award is named in honor of the founder of the Institute of Jesuit Sources, a publishing house — now known as Jesuit
Sources — that specializes in preserving, translating, and making available to scholars around the world important texts in Jesuit history, spirituality, and pedagogy. Since 2015, Jesuit Sources has Jesuit Sources has since 2015 been housed at the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, which recognizes its historical significance by presenting the Ganss Award to speakers in its Feore Family Lecture Series. Fr. Padberg had served as editor and director of the Institute of Jesuit Sources from 1986 until 2014. Read more at http://bit.ly/2dDVpyo.
Executive Director, Advancement Communications and Marketing Compensation Specialist, Human Resources Interactive Media Producer, Athletics Assistant Dean, Connell School, Academic Affairs/Provost Technology Consultant, Information Techonology Web Interface Designer, Information Technology Student Services Associate, Academic Affairs/Provost Collection Development Librarian, Academic Affairs/Provost Web Design, Communications and Events Specialist, Academic Affairs/Provost