Selected Faculty Notes
B U T T O N : N I CO L E S L AT I N S K Y
Oberlin College is among a handful of campuses to receive the Voter Friendly Campus designation for a third consecutive year. Oberlin was an original program designee in 2018, and the program has grown to over 200 campuses in 37 states and the District of Columbia. The initiative, led by national nonpartisan organizations Fair Elections Center’s Campus Vote Project and NASPA–Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, held participating institutions accountable for planning and implementing practices that encouraged their students to register and vote in 2020 elections and in the coming years. OBERLIN ALUMNI MAGAZINE 2021 SPRING
NICE PLANTS The research of Professor of Biology Mike Moore and his collaborators (including several Oberlin students) on rare Hawaiian plants is the subject of the latest episode of the Plants Are Cool, Too! YouTube video series. The episode documents the many biologists involved in preventing the extinction of ultra-rare plants that grow only on the island of Kaua’i. Moore was also featured in a recent In Defense of Plants podcast, in which he discussed his lab’s ongoing collaborative research into understanding plant life on unusual soils. n ORIGIN STORY An article from the research group of Aaron Goldman, associate professor of biology, won the 2020 Zuckerkandl Prize, presented to the top research article published in the Journal of Molecular Evolution. The awards committee praised the article, “The Coevolution of Cellularity and Metabolism Following the Origin of Life,” as “an important contribution to origins of life research.” The two lead authors are Yuta Takagi ’16 and Diep Nguyen ’19, who worked on the project as part of their honors theses. Tom Wexler, a former assistant professor of computer science, also collaborated on the project. n KEEPING THE FAITH Shari Rabin, assistant professor of Jewish studies and religion, received a fellowship from the National Endowment for Humanities to pursue research and writing a book narrating the history of Jewish people in the American South from 1669 to the present day. The project builds on Rabin’s first book, Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in
Nineteenth-Century America, which traced the development of American Judaism in the period of westward expansion, focusing on how ordinary Jews created religious lives in new places. With the fellowship, Rabin will undertake research trips to the National Archives, the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, and various archives throughout the South. n KEY FINDINGS Associate Professor of Music Theory Megan Kaes Long published the article “What do Signatures Signify? The Curious Case of Seventeenth-Century English Key” in the October 2020 issue of the Journal for Music Theory. The article traces how key signatures transformed from a feature of notation to an aspect of music theory in 17th-century England. n COLLECTIVE MINDS Andrea McAlister, associate professor of piano pedagogy in the conservatory, was named a Yamaha Master Educator by Yamaha Music U.S.A. The Yamaha Master Educator Collective consists of 30 teachers— representing K-12 as well as post-secondary education—who offer mentorship, advice, and other guidance to music education teachers everywhere. The program includes specialists in band and orchestra, keyboard pedagogy, and music business and entrepreneurship. Master Educators interact with music teachers in their classrooms, in activities coordinated by state music education associations, and in clinics for educators and students, among other settings. McAlister is one of only five teachers selected to represent keyboard pedagogy.
To learn more about these stories and read more about campus news and faculty accomplishments, visit oberlin.edu/news. To keep up to date with Oberlin news, sign up for the Oberlin Alumni Association’s email newsletter, Around the Square, at oberlin.edu/alumni-relations/connect-with-obies. 7