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English

09/22/2009

Congratulations to Erin Herrmann for the acceptance of her paper “If You Can’t Join ‘Em, Beat ‘Em: Clare Kendry’s Race for Belonging in Nella Larsen’s Passing” for the Second Annual Graduate and Undergraduate Student Conference on Literature, Rhetoric, and Composition hosted by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.  <//span> 

Pharmacology

08/31/2009

Joju George, a graduate student in the Department of Pharmacology, received the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics 2009 Best Graduate Student Poster Award. The competition was held at the national Experimental Biology 2009 Meeting on April 18—22 in New Orleans. As a result of winning the 1st Prize, JoJu will also become a member of the Executive Committee of the Division for Neuropharmacology for this coming year. Joju works in Dr. Tom Murray’s laboratory in the Department of Pharmacology.

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International Relations

04/01/2009

Daniel Rueth, a 2008 graduate of the graduate program in international relations(INR), has been awarded an Olmstead Scholarship.  The Olmstead Scholarship "provides outstanding young military leaders an opportunity to achieve fluency in a foreign language, pursue further graduate study at an overseas university, and acquire an in depth understanding of foreign cultures, thereby further equipping them to serve in positions of great responsibility as senior leaders in the United States Armed Forces". 

Following his current deployment in Kabul, Afghanistan, Dan will be going to Russian language training at the Defense Language Institute, followed by two years of in-residence study at St. Petersburg State University, Russia for a (second) Masters in History. 

Another graduate of the INR program, Brian Kreitlow (2007), was a selected as an Olmstead Scholar in 2007. Brian is studying at the University of Montenegro. 

Click here to see the official announcement

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Congratulations go out to the following individuals for presenting papers at the recent conference of the International Studies Association, Midwest (ISAMW).

• Silvy Ahmad - "Israel and Palestine: The Struggle of Two Nations"
• Peter Colum Casey - "Fuzzy Preferences and Government Formation"
• Nino Krilova - "Political Effects of Remittances: A Cross-National Analysis"
• Stefanie N. Lierz - "Exploring the Causal Factors of Intrastate War"
• Steven G. Mahon - "The International Trade in Arms Regulations: An Impediment to    National Security" 

Peter Colum Casey and Steven G. Mahon served as discussants on panels other than their own, and Peter Colum Casey received the Lynne Rienner Award for best paper presented by a graduate student at the 2007 conference of the ISAMW.

Peter Casey has won the Lynne Rienner Award for best graduate student paper presented at the 2007 International Studies Association (ISA)-Midwest conference.  His paper was titled “Policy Stability in Turkey's Political Crises.”  Mr. Casey is a student in the graduate program in international relations (INR) and one of four INR participants at the 2007 ISA-Midwest conference.  He will receive the award, which comes with a small cash prize, at the 2008 ISA-Midwest conference.

Brian Kreitlow, a 2007 graduate of the graduate program in international relations (INR), has been selected as one of 9 Air Force Officers to participate in the Olmsted Scholar Program (http://www.olmstedfoundation.org/olmsted/web/index.cfm).  As an Olmsted scholar, he will attend language training at the Defense Language Institute in Monterrey, CA to learn Serbian.  After about a year of language training, he will attend the University of Montenegro.  where I will attend the University of Montenegro where he will earn a second Master’s degree, most likely in European Studies/Euro-Atlantic Integration.  

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12/15/2008
Jill Wittrock (INR 2003)  has successfully defended her dissertation and will receive the Ph.D. in political science at the University of Iowa this month.  Jill graduated with the MA in INR in 2003.

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As many of you are aware, the INR program has been increasingly emphasizing competence in both research design and quantitative (mathematical) technologies.  In spring semester, we are offering courses in game theory and spatial modeling.  In the next year or so we hope to roll out a new “track” for those who wish to place themselves in this emerging market.  So, stay tuned!

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12/01/2008
Former INR student April Hartman Clausen is living in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and has accepted a position as an analyst with National Security Innovations (NSI).  NSI is a privately-owned business that specializes in providing a range of services to national security decision makers who seek innovative socio-cultural solutions to their most challenging and complex problems.  The company is committed to providing fresh, new, cutting-edge solutions that are grounded in quantitative and computational methods coupled with principles from the social, information, and physical sciences.

Medical Microbiology and Immunology

Creighton Student Earns Coveted Fellowship

OMAHA, Neb.  – Amber Schmidtke, a Creighton University School of Medicine postdoctoral fellow from Papillion, Neb., has been selected as an Association of Public Health Laboratories Emerging Infectious Disease Postdoctoral Fellow with the National Center for Infectious Disease. The association is headquartered at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

She is one of only nine postdoctoral fellows in the United States to receive the coveted two-year fellowship in 2008. The program’s goal is to attract the nation’s best laboratory scientists for careers in public health.

Schmidtke will begin her fellowship in January, investigating the potential reasons behind a global upsurge in pertussis infections, also known as whooping cough, in recent years.

At Creighton, Schmidtke completed her doctoral dissertation on the molecular mechanisms of antibiotic resistance in the pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an organism that can cause suffering and even death due to complications from pneumonia among cystic fibrosis patients. Nancy Hanson, associate professor with the Creighton School of Medicine’s Center for Research in Anti-Infectives and Biotechnology, served as Schmidtke’s mentor. Hanson is a leading expert on the growing problem of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains.

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Jacob Ayers, Graduate Student in the Medical Microbiology and Immunology program, attended an international Prion  meeting in Edinburgh last year. His poster, entitled “Strain targeting without strain-specific axonal transport or neuronal tropism,” was so well received that he has been asked to give a lecture at the opening Plenery session in Madrid in October. More information can be found here.

English

Theodore Wheeler, a 2008 MA English graduate has had his story “Your Raisins are Just Dead Grapes” published in the 2009 Best New American Voices anthology edited by John Kulka (of Yale UP) and novelist Natalie Danford and published by Harcourt/Harvest Books.  The story was selected by guest editor Mary Gaitskill.  The anthology will be on shelves around Oct. 31, 2008. -The short story, "Your Raisins Are Just Dead Grapes," is about a young soldier from Nebraska who refuses to fire his weapon during battle in order to return home to his wife unmarred by war.  The story deals with the notion that no citizen of a nation can avoid the tincture of war waged on his behalf.

The story was nominated by Anne Greene, director of the Wesleyan Writers Conference at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.  Wheeler attended the WWC in June 2007 on a Joan Jakobson Scholarship awarded by the conference.  Stories must be nominated in order to have a chance at being selected.  Best New American Voices publishes "the best young writers on the cusp of their careers [...] culled from hundreds of writing programs such as the Iowa Writers' Workshop and Johns Hopkins and from summer conferences such as Sewanee and Bread Loaf."  Here is a link to the publisher's listing of the 2008 edition, http://www.harcourtbooks.com/bookcatalogs/bookpages/9780156031493.asp

Wheeler completed a short story collection for his Masters thesis. He has also begun work on a novel. 

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Barbara Ball, Graduate Student in the English Department, was awarded a full fellowship for the 2008-2009 academic year.

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We also want to point out that the English Department has moved into newly remodeled rooms in Creighton Hall, on the first floor, towards the rear of the building. Come and check out their new digs! 

Biomedical Sciences Department

Alicia Bryan, Graduate Student in the Biomedical Sciences Department, presented her poster, entitled "hPTHrP 1-36 Stimulates PKA-Dependent Phosphorylation and Nuclear Translocation of ?-Catenin In Neonatal Mouse Calvarial Bone Cells," at the annual ASBMR meeting in Montreal in September. Her poster was displayed at both the Welcome Reception/Plenary Poster Session and for the Poster Session 1, where she stood by and explained and answered questions. Links of interest: asmbr website: http://www.asbmr.org/meeting/CME.cfm#credit and ORC website: http://osteoporosis.creighton.edu/

Alumni Merit Award

Beth Balkus Fink, MS'02, received the 2008 Graduate School Alumni Merit award at the Evening Honors: Alumni Awards Ceremony on Saturday, 09/27/08, at the theatre in the Mike and Josie Harper Center for Student Life and Learning.