School of Arts and Sciences Review Winter 2014 | Page 38

News & Events

Peterson and guest artist
celebrate New York with
concert of American music
On Oct. 13, 2012, faculty member
Laura Peterson and guest artist Julia Tunstall presented a concert of American
music for flute and piano in the Rigas
Family Theater. To complement the Quick
Center’s season theme,
“Celebrate New
York!,” the duo chose
an interesting program
of works by New Yorkborn composers Aaron
Copland, John
Corigliano, George
Gershwin, Howard Hanson, Kent Kennan,
Charles Tomlinson and Michael Torke.
Formed in 2002, the Tunstall-Peterson
Duo has performed a number of recitals,
including the Music at Shepherd of the
Valley Concert series, funded by the New
York State Council on the Arts; a benefit
for the Survivors of the Japan Earthquake;
a recital for the Grace Dean Memorial
Concert series in East Aurora; and most recently, a lecture-performance at the National Flute Association Convention in Las
Vegas.
Peterson, a St. Bonaventure faculty
member since 1999, teaches piano, chamber music and music history. She received
her Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance from the State University of New
York at Fredonia and her Master of Music
degree in piano performance/collaborative
piano from the University of Cincinnati –
Conservatory of Music.
Tunstall is a professional flutist based
in Buffalo. She earned master’s and doctoral degrees in flute performance from
the Eastman School of Music in
Rochester, where she studied with Bonita
Boyd.

Walsh named University of
Virginia research fellow
Dr. Megan Walsh, assistant professor of
English, was named a Lillian Gary Taylor
Research Fellow at the Mary and David
Harrison Institute for American History, Literature, and Culture at the University of
Virginia. She was in residence there last
summer.

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School of Arts and Sciences Review

Researcher
discusses cell
biology, molecular
genetics
Dr. Zhongchi Liu from
the Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics at University of
Maryland, College Park,
gave a research talk on
campus on April 16, 2013.
The talk was titled “Genomic and Genetic Approaches to the
Understanding of Strawberry Fruit Development.”
Liu also had a roundtable
discussion with faculty
about her experience as a
program officer at NSF.
Her visit was made possible by the Visiting Scholars
Committee and the Dean’s
Office of the School of
Arts and Sciences.

Professor, student
team up on
happiness research
Dr. Charles Walker,
professor of psychology,
and Brandon Kowalski, a
computer science major,
had their research on the
assessment of happiness
accepted for presentation
at the International Positive Psychology Association conference, which
was held in Brno, Czech
Republic.
Kowalski and Walker
have developed one of the
first online systems in the
world for the natural observation of happiness.
The title of their talk
was “Early Results of an
Online System for Participant Observation of Hedonic and Eudaimonic
Happiness.”
Their research was partially funded by an SBU faculty research grant.

Political science majors
present capstone research
In April 2013, two political science
majors presented their senior capstone
research at the 67th Annual Conference
of the New York State Political Science
Association hosted by Syracuse University.
• Megan O’Donnell, ’13, a J/MC
and political science double major,
presented her paper on “Drinking
and Driving Kills, but Can Harsher
Penalties Save? An Analysis of Alcohol-Related Car Crash Fatality
Rates”
• Ashley Oliver, ’12, a political science major, presented her paper on
“Bipartisanship in Congressional
Decision-Making”
Both papers received positive responses from panel discussants and audiences.

University hosts series
on Meditation Traditions
The Olean Meditation Center and
the School of Arts & Sciences at St.
Bonaventure held a four-part Meditation Traditions series in April. The first
was held April 9, 2013, in the William F.
Walsh Science Center amphitheater on
campus.
Craig Bullock, founder and spiritual
director of the Assisi Institute in
Rochester, spoke on “Kriya [