“With continued support like this, we expect to learn even more about the negative impacts of alcohol on the human brain and how we can create more and better intervention and preventative strategies,” Binghamton University President Harvey Stenger says. “We thank Sen. Schumer and all of our federal representatives, as well as officials with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, for their acknowledgement of our work to date as well as their continued support.”

The T32 grant, titled “Training in Development and Neuroadaptations in Alcohol and Addictions,” will begin June 1 and provide nearly $325,000 per year. The grant will support four graduate students and two post-doctoral fellows, with each trainee funded for one to two years.

“The intent is to have a training program focused on the developmental antecedents of alcohol and addiction,” says Linda Spear, distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Developmental Exposure Alcohol Research Center (DEARC) at Binghamton. “If you look at adult alcoholics, virtually all of them started using alcohol when they were young. The evidence is clear that alcohol and addictions have their roots in development. Understanding these roots is critical for the development of effective prevention/intervention efforts.”

Spear said the University received the prestigious grant on its first application. Hiring drug and alcohol researchers such as J. David Jentsch, Marvin Diaz and Yao-Ying Ma during the past two years enabled Binghamton to have the “critical mass” of mentor-eligible faculty members that was necessary for development of the training program.

“I’m pleased and gratified that this was funded the first time out,” Spear says. “That is exciting.”

The pre- and post-doctoral trainees will work with faculty members across disciplinary areas that include behavioral neuroscience, clinical psychology and the doctoral program in the College of Community and Public Affairs.

“Part of the training grant involves monthly meetings where research ideas and findings are shared; coursework in neural development, alcohol and addictions; training in the ethnics of research; and the development of writing and presentation skills,” says Spear, who is designing a new course for the trainees. “All aspects of the training program are designed to help the students and postdoctoral scholars excel.”

Spear stressed that the training grant will complement DEARC, a multi-university collaborative research venture now in its eighth year of federal funding.

“This will help bring more students into the DEARC,” she says. “One of the expectations of the trainees is that they will participate in monthly DEARC meetings. I think the DEARC and the new T32 will enrich each other – one is research-related and the other is training-related. They will feed off of each other.”

Initially, trainees will work in labs with funded research projects in the area of development and alcohol/addictions, Spear says. Once on the training grant, trainees will be encouraged to develop and apply for their own federal research fellowships.

“The goal is for our trainees to emerge at the forefront of research in alcohol and addictions, with state-of-the-art knowledge and skills that they can apply to understanding the developmental roots of alcoholism and addictions,” she says. “When our students graduate, we expect them to engage in challenging research that supports the field and moves it forward.”

Having pre-doctoral trainees involved is a relatively unique feature of the program, Spear says. “A lot of training programs provide support only for post-docs,” she says. “But we’ve had a long history of training exceptional graduate students in the areas of addiction and alcohol. We’re fortunate to be able to have trainees at both levels in our training program.”

These are just some of the lessons that senior William Marsiglia learned from conducting research at Binghamton University. Those lessons helped the biochemistry and music double major receive a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for the 2011-12 and 2012-13 academic years.

“The benefits of performing research while taking classes are essential to a student’s academic development,” Marsiglia said. “We are lucky here at Binghamton University to have so many faculty members who are doing high-level research with students who gain experience.

“Although our university is already achieving outstanding research, it’s exciting to know that it’s only going to get better.”

Marsiglia, who has worked with chemistry professor Christof Grewer on the study of transport proteins in the brain and also won the Music Department’s Concerto Competition, delivered the student address at the Research Days celebration April 19.

Research Days, a series of events showcasing University research, scholarship and creative activity, took place April 17-19. The schedule included faculty panels, tours of research facilities and a keynote speech by NPR science correspondent Shankar Vedantam. The Friday celebration in Old Union Hall recognized Marsiglia and more than 30 other student researchers and their faculty mentors.

“We bring together the essential elements of a great university,” Provost Donald Nieman said. “We bring together bright, curious, hard-working students with faculty who are passionate about teaching and mentoring, and are engaged in cutting-edge research that is recognized by their peers and around the world.”

Student work takes center stage

More than 90 undergraduate and graduate students presented their work in two student poster sessions held April 19.

Phillip Emeritz, a senior majoring in history, English and classical civilization, displayed a project that examined Romanization in Ancient France and how currency was introduced to the Celtic society. “I focused on the social and cultural impacts, because the coins were basically used as propaganda with the images and inscriptions on them to implant Roman values into the minds of natives in France,” said Emeritz, whose project earned him one of the two initial Summer Scholar awards in 2012.

Emeritz’s project, titled “Changing Money, Changing Minds,” documents how the introduction of currency to France affected culture and class distinctions. The topic stems from Emeritz’s interest in classical studies.

“I am very passionate about classic studies, and Roman history has always been my favorite,” said Emeritz, whose faculty mentor is Andrew Scholtz, associate professor and chair of classical and Near Eastern studies. “And I am very interested in Celtic societies because, although they’ve been classified as primitive in the minds of Romans, their societies are a lot more complex than they’re given credit for.”

While Emeritz studied societal issues in a historical context, other students examined how technology can impact the future.

Zachary Birnbaum and Patricia Moat, both first-year doctoral students, conducted a project on computer security. Their faculty mentor is Victor Skormin, distinguished service professor in electrical and computer engineering. “You keep hearing in the news that there are various websites getting hacked and all these problems with new computer viruses,” Birnbaum said. “We’re trying to find new ways of detecting this type of attack.”

Titled “Intrusion Detection Systems: Object Access Graphs,” the project focused on tracking computer viruses. “What we do is take a picture of what your computer is doing, and then we compare a picture of your computer behaving normally to one of an infected computer. Then, we just look at the differences,” Birnbaum said. “From that, we can see if your computer has an infection, what type of infection, and from there you know you’re under attack and you can take action.”

Other student-presenters, including Jessica Huey, took a medical approach to their projects. “I’m a part of a larger lab that’s doing research in Lyme disease,” she said. “So what I did specifically was (study) Lyme disease in canines and other tick-borne diseases.”

Huey, a senior majoring in biology and anthropology, worked with Ralph Garruto, research professor of anthropology, on her project, “Prevalence of Tick-Borne Infection in a Canine Population Sample.”

While Huey hopes that her research raises awareness about Lyme disease, some students aimed to raise awareness of immigrant assimilation. Jillian Shotwell, Tara Perkins and Fédia Louis were among about a dozen students who got involved with the Binghamton community. They went to the American Civic Association in Binghamton, where they interviewed refugee students in ESL classes as well as their teachers to get their opinions on learning and teaching English.

“We just wanted to get their perceptions. For the teachers, why they began teaching ESL and what the biggest challenges were. So that’s what this poster is about,” said Shotwell, a double major in environmental health and geography. “(A second poster) is about the students’ perspective and how they think that the classes could be improved. What did they like most about learning English? What were the challenges in learning English?”

Shotwell said that to conduct the quantitative study, she and her fellow group members recorded interviews with the students and the teachers. The initiative to do this project came from an Africana Studies course, Refugees and Immigrants Health, taught by Titilayo Okoror.

“I think just knowing how these experiences affect the students and the teachers alike is beneficial in approaching immigrants, because not everybody can speak English,” said Perkins, a sophomore majoring in bioengineering. “Many of them were actually PhD students and business owners in their own countries. Then they came here and they can’t speak English, so they’re kind of at a disadvantage.”

Productive partnerships

Sponsored by the Undergraduate Research Center, the Division of Research, the McNair Scholars Program and Academic Affairs, Research Days highlighted student and faculty successes, Vice President for Research Bahgat Sammakia said. Research success is necessary for Binghamton University to become the premier public university of the 21st century, he noted. “The great thing about research today is that it is starting to blur between departments, between schools, and even between graduate and undergraduate students,” he said. “It is wonderful to see. It is exciting.”

Nieman stressed the importance of students engaged in research with faculty mentors. “This creates a rich opportunity for our students to apply what they’ve learned in the classroom to original research,” he said. “By doing so, they are able to join in the process of creating new knowledge – something that is at the heart of what we stand for and do every day as a university.”

The presentations, which will take place at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Friday, April 19, are just one part of the three-day event scheduled for April 17-19. Research Days was first held last year, shortly after the opening of the Undergraduate Research Center.

“This year, we started earlier, went out with better information and we encouraged people to become involved,” Undergraduate Research Center Director Janice McDonald said. “This is an event for the entire community.”

This year’s Research Days will feature more events in more places, along with more student poster submissions from a greater variety of disciplines, McDonald said.

Events include tours of research facilities such as the Engineering and Science Building and the Analytical and Diagnostics Laboratory; student and faculty research panels; and tours for local eighth-graders. A complete list of events may be found at http://go.binghamton.edu/researchdays.

Another new feature is a keynote speaker: Shankar Vedantam, a science correspondent for National Public Radio. Vedantam, who spent 10 years at The Washington Post before joining NPR in 2011, is the author of “The Hidden Brain: How our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives.” He will speak at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 17, in the Mandela Room.

Vedantam’s talk, which is also being promoted by WSKG, brings more visibility to Research Days and could appeal to Greater Binghamton residents, said Donald Loewen, vice provost for undergraduate education.

“What can we do to present the impact of research on the community and the world more broadly?” he said. “This (talk) gives us an entry to the community and presents them with a chance to come in and see Binghamton University as a research institution.”

The student poster sessions will be linked by a Campus Research Celebration at 1 p.m. Friday, April 19, in Old Union Hall. President Harvey Stenger and other University leaders will discuss the importance of research, while award-winning student researchers will be recognized. Those being honored include two Goldwater Scholarship recipients and the 12 recipients of the 2013 Summer Scholar and Artists Program Fellowship. Faculty mentors will also be saluted.

Not all students get the chance to present research at national conferences, so the poster sessions will provide a great opportunity for many, McDonald said.

“The students who are presenting research love to talk about it and have people engage them,” she said. “They like to be questioned or challenged and go into more detail about their work. They are looking forward to the sessions.”

The sessions are also valuable for students who are considering their own research projects, McDonald added.

“We know undergraduates are very, very interested in doing research,” she said. “They want to see what other students are doing and what they are capable of doing. It’s an educational process for those who aren’t doing research yet. They can say: ‘This is what I can do and get involved in.’”

Faculty can benefit from attending the sessions, too, Loewen said.

“It’s amazing to find out what students from different disciplines are doing on campus,” said Loewen, who is urging faculty members to discuss their own research with students in classes over the three days. “I hope this will inspire faculty to think about ways that they can collaborate with students in their own discipline.”

Loewen and McDonald praised the support that Research Days has received from the University community. They singled out Rachel Coker, director of research advancement, for organizing many of the events, and Shanise Kent, associate director of the McNair Scholars Program, for leading the poster sessions.

“We’ve gotten tremendous cooperation from everybody in terms of participation,” Loewen said. “Everybody has been extraordinarily cooperative.”

Loewen and McDonald agree that Research Days is one important step in advancing undergraduate research on campus. “People are talking,” McDonald said. “More people are becoming aware of (research). It’s getting into people’s awareness. It’s an ongoing process that will take time.”

“One of our fundamental objectives with Research Days is to help all of our undergraduates — even those in big, 100-level classes — understand: ‘You are part of a research university. What does that mean?’” Loewen said. “If they stop in the Mandela Room (on Friday), they are going to see some amazing projects. They will see the kinds of research their peers are conducting. That’s a good educational experience for someone to have.”

“Even if students’ papers aren’t published by a major journal, the research is still worth showing to others and saying, ‘This is what the students do here,’”  he says.

Marsiglia, for example, has worked with Christof Grewer, associate professor of chemistry at Binghamton, on the study of transport proteins in the brain. The work could one day contribute to treatments for stroke and diseases such as ALS. Last spring, Marsiglia received the prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, which honors exceptional undergraduate researchers who intend to enter math, science or engineering.

High-level research at an early age is nothing new for Marsiglia. He won first place at the New York State Science and Engineering Fair as a high school student for a project that examined wound healing and regeneration rates in worms. The project later earned him a third-place award at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.

Marsiglia also received a fellowship as a high school student for research at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he studied how brain receptors are involved in inflammation response.

A double major in biochemistry and music, Marsiglia also plays trombone with the University Orchestra. He plans to pursue a doctorate in organic chemistry and pass on his knowledge of the subject as a university professor.

Pursuing his love of music while continuing his research and taking a variety of science classes is part of what Marsiglia calls a “holistic approach” to education.  “If you are going to do something, you might as well learn everything you can about it,” he says.  “Ten years down the road, I don’t want to say, ‘I wish I had taken that extra class and done the major.’”

“I looked out my window and could see all of the smoke,” he says, recalling the view from the eighth floor of his building on 22nd Street and Park Avenue. “But we weren’t sure what was going on. I remember e-mailing a friend: ‘There’s some crazy accident at the World Trade Center.’ But then we realized that something was seriously wrong.”

Community Service Society, one of the oldest nonprofit organizations in New York City, closed for the day. Campbell, then the group’s vice president for programs, made the slow trek home and watched the horror unfolding just miles away.

Two days later, Campbell returned to work and received an edict from David Jones, head of the Community Service Society: No New York organization will be relevant if it is not engaged in some way in meeting the community’s needs after 9/11.

“That idea always stayed with me,” Campbell says.  “At first, it was strange: We don’t do that kind of work. His point was that nonprofits have to respond when there is a crisis in the community. He was right.”

The Community Service Society helped new nonprofit organizations distribute millions of dollars during the years that followed. And this post-9/11 work continued to resonate with Campbell even after he became an assistant professor of public administration at Binghamton University in 2005. He is still lending a hand to future and current nonprofit organizations. Campbell has studied and written papers on the formation of disaster-response agencies, using one such organization — Windows of Hope Relief Fund — as a case study.

“I had the unique experience of being in New York on 9/11,” he says. “That experience changed my professional life in unexpected and dramatic ways.”

The collaboration

Shortly after deciding to help new nonprofit groups, Campbell and Community Service Society learned of hospitality-industry professionals who had already raised money for families of Windows on the World employees.

Windows on the World was a restaurant complex on the top floors of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. More than 160 employees and patrons were killed when the first plane hit the tower or during the ensuing collapse of the building.

Campbell and Jones met with Windows on the World owner David Emil and chef Waldy Malouf and learned how they and their co-founder, restaurant owner and chef Tom Valenti, hoped to use the Windows of Hope Family Relief Fund to provide financial aid, health insurance and educational help to the families of hospitality-industry workers killed in the World Trade Center attack. The founders of the fund were especially concerned that existing assistance systems would overlook or overwhelm the late workers’ relatives, many of whom were low-income immigrants.

Windows of Hope had already held an Oct. 11, 2001, fundraiser called “Dine Out” in which restaurant owners around the world donated 10 percent of that day’s income. That event, coupled with other donations, netted Windows of Hope more than $6 million. Emil and Malouf admitted needing help using those funds.

“They said, ‘We’re chefs. We have this money and these ideas about how to give it away. But we have no knowledge of social services. We need a partner. Will you work with us?’” Campbell says.  “We had to figure out a way to distribute millions of dollars to families fairly.”

Campbell spent four years working with Windows of Hope, providing guidance to an organization that has now raised more than $22 million.

“It was very satisfying work,” Campbell says.  “I liked the people I worked with. They were really committed.”

The research

In 2005, Campbell, who had previously taught as an adjunct at Columbia University, left the nonprofit world behind so he could teach full time, and he found what he was looking for upstate.

“Binghamton valued my experience as a practitioner and the importance of working in the community,” Campbell says.  “If I had the opportunity to pursue some ideas that interested me, maybe they could shape the world of practice in an important way.”

That opportunity arose when Campbell reflected on his 9/11 work and the formation of so many nonprofit organizations. He learned that more than 250 new nonprofit groups developed after the attacks and generated nearly $700 million in the first two years of operation.

“I didn’t understand it,” he says. “Why are all of these people giving to Windows of Hope? Why do people need to start new organizations? Here was my organization, which had been providing assistance to New Yorkers in need since 1843. Why didn’t David or Waldy come first to Community Service Society or to an existing organization that had a track record? That piqued my interest for the research agenda.”

Campbell’s examination, “Stand by Me: Organization Founding in the Aftermath of Disaster,” was published by The American Review of Public Administration.

In “Stand by Me,” Campbell studies the motivations of the people who created nonprofit organizations and the roles they played after 9/11.  He read tax-exemption applications the groups submitted to the IRS and identified the “defining characteristics” of each. For example, some groups may be geographically based, while others might be affiliated with a fire company or, like Windows of Hope, a 9/11 employer.

“All of the categories represent where people’s passions lie in making a difference in the community,” he says.

But some organizations lacked direction. Campbell pointed to an application from two people in the Midwest who planned to start a nonprofit that would provide foster care for orphans.

“They had no connection to New York City,” he says. “They had no funding source. I think people have a lot of positive energy and they are not sure where to direct it.”

Campbell found that most of the new post-9/11 organizations ceased operation within two years. Once the money was raised, the group disbanded. Those that continued likely had strong ties to the families of victims.

Campbell’s second research project, “Organic and Sustainable: The Emergence, Formalization and Performance of a September 11th Disaster Relief Organization,” examined one such group: Windows of Hope. The case study was published in Nonprofit Management and Leadership last year.

The study was a logical extension of the research; it also gave Campbell an opportunity to reflect on the factors that contributed to the group’s success.

“There was a shared sense of identity among this group of hospitality-industry workers,” he says. “We have to take care of our own: That’s what brought them together. But it wouldn’t have mattered if they hadn’t been able to bring in resources. If you look at the hospitality industry, it has resources and knows how to leverage them.”

Windows of Hope leaders also understood the need for collaboration and knew when to ask for help, Campbell says. “Their willingness to acknowledge what they did not know and to use Community Service Society allowed them to be responsive quickly,” he says.

The lessons

Campbell’s unique research has drawn praise from nonprofit leaders.

“He builds on his practical experience in the sector and his considerable knowledge of theoretical and managerial issues,” says Susan Chambré, a professor of sociology at Baruch College who has written about nonprofit groups formed in response to the AIDS epidemic. “His study of new organizations responding to 9/11 is the only study I know about that looked at the creation of a new set of nonprofits in response to that event.”

Both “Stand by Me” and “Organic and Sustainable” offer lessons to post-disaster organization founders and advisors, Campbell says. The projects, in particular, can help a new organization get off — or even stay on — the ground by providing some key questions to address.

“What is the life cycle of an organization founded in response to a disaster?” Campbell says. “Are you looking to go out of business after a year, which is fine but unusual? What is it you are trying to accomplish?”

Perhaps most important, Campbell would like to see closer coordination between new groups and the nonprofit infrastructure. The IRS can help make that happen when nonprofit applications are approved, Campbell says, and produce more success stories.

“These organizations need a connection to the existing service-delivery infrastructure,”  he says.  “I want to make sure these people talk to each other.”

The 40-foot-high, 15-foot-long, necktie-wearing, workaholic title character was inspired by her father-in-law, George Bosnick.

“My father-in-law was an incredibly tough guy,” said Rosenberg, a professor of English at Binghamton University. “He was a longshoreman. He was in special ops in World War II. He was 6’4, built like a truck, worked two or three jobs and would wear this Russian hat that added a foot to his height. The first time I met him he was an intimidating guy. In his later years, he got much gentler, as I think ferocious people often do.”

Rosenberg said the dinosaur dad also has characteristics of her own larger-than-life husband, David Bosnick, such as gentleness and protectiveness. The book, released in May by A Neal Porter Book/Roaring Brook Press, is dedicated to both men.

In the book, Tyrannosaurus Dad’s young human son Tobias is trying to get his hard-working father to pay attention to him and take part in Field Days at his school. T-Dad surprises Tobias by showing up for Field Days, umpiring a baseball game and even providing shelter during a rainstorm.

Featuring strong visual details from illustrator Matthew Myers, Rosenberg’s story resonates with both children and adults.

“I still read children’s books for pleasure myself,” Rosenberg said. “A great children’s book grows with the child. And I know that as a parent, if you have to read the same children’s book over and over to a child, you owe it to the parent to give them something that’s not going to make them crazy.”

She added: “Picture books are like poems because they are about the essentials: friendship, independence, family, loss, first love, things like that.”

Tyrannosaurus Dad is also resonating with booksellers and buyers. It is a Children’s Book of the Month Club bestseller, was featured as a top pick for Father’s Day by Barnes & Noble and landed in Amazon.com’s Top 10 for children’s books about dinosaurs, sports and family. After only a month, it’s in its second printing.

A key to the book’s success, Rosenberg said, is her editor’s discovery of Myers, a first-time illustrator. Rosenberg turned down several illustrators before seeing Myers’ work, which she said had a “great sense of humor, a clear vision and a wild energy.”

“When I saw his work, I thought ‘I trust this guy,’” she said. “He’s smart, funny and fantastically gifted. I feel unbelievably lucky to be working with him. … I’ve literally looked at the book’s pictures with a magnifying glass. That’s how much great stuff Matt has put in it.”

Myers, a Brooklyn resident, spent 20 years in advertising before turning his attention to painting. He got into picture books after galleries told him that his painting style would work well in the field.

“I was itching to have more people see my stuff,” he said. “The idea of a child seeing something I created that would make the imagination grow a little bit is really exciting to me.”

For Rosenberg, one of the biggest surprises came when she saw the cover Myers created: Tyrannosaurus Dad carrying Tobias on his shoulders while mowing the lawn.

“When we saw the cover (my husband) asked me: ‘Did you tell him about that?’ Our son rode on his father’s shoulders while he mowed the lawn. We looked at that cover and said, ‘Matt Myers really got it.’”

Rosenberg is preparing a third “relative” picture book and hopes Myers will illustrate that, too. She also is finishing a more somber adult novel about a medical legal case. Her first adult novel, Home Repair, was released in 2009 to critical acclaim.

“Where are the role models for women?” asks Gupta, an assistant professor of strategy at Binghamton University. “Pick up any book on entrepreneurship: It’s all about men. Switch on the TV, and when it comes to entrepreneurs, it is Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Where are the women entrepreneurs? They’re not being talked about.”

Of course, there have been many high-profile female entrepreneurs over the past half-century. The accomplishments of Oprah Winfrey, Estée Lauder, Mary Kay Ash and Debbi Fields are easily as impressive as those of Gates, Jobs, Richard Branson and Vidal Sassoon. But the failure to highlight the work of female entrepreneurs is exacerbated by societal stereotypes that often link entrepreneurship to masculine characteristics.

Gupta, who has devoted much of his research career to entrepreneurship, finds that gender stereotypes can discourage women from starting their own businesses, while gender-neutral messages prove most appealing to them.

“Some people say that the question of gender difference is timeless: It has always been there with us,” he says. “My research goes deeper into the question: Do men and women differ when it comes to entrepreneurship?”

Questions and answers

To help answer the question, Gupta and colleagues Daniel Turban at the University of Missouri and Nachiket Bhawe from the University of Minnesota distributed articles about attributes of entrepreneurs to more than 465 undergraduate business students who were divided into random groups.

“A lot of what we know about gender differences tends to be anecdotal or based on archival data, such as the Census,” Gupta says. “What we did was bring in the random-experiment approach, which is popular in fields like biology, medicine and agriculture.

“The nice thing about random experiments is that they take the guesswork from your analysis,” he says. “We said, ‘What if you gave a certain treatment to men and women who are randomly distributed in groups? What kinds of differences would you see based on the readings of the articles?’”

In the study, one group’s article simply said entrepreneurship could be best taught through business education. Another group was told that stereotypical male characteristics such as risk-taking and aggressiveness produce the best entrepreneurs. A third group received the female stereotype, reading that characteristics such as social skills and networking are key for entrepreneurship. Another group learned that the best entrepreneurs have characteristics of both men and women, such as creativity.

“You wouldn’t think there would be systematic entrepreneurial differences between men and women in these students,” Gupta says. “They were all business students exposed to the same knowledge and opportunities.”

Gupta and his colleagues determined that both men and women assimilated to the subtle reminders about social beliefs and entrepreneurship.

“When men and women were told that entrepreneurship is about male characteristics, men were more interested in becoming entrepreneurs,” he says. “Women were less interested in entrepreneurship. … It shows the power of the societal beliefs we have. When we are subconsciously exposed to them, it can affect the way we think.”

Women also showed little ambition for entrepreneurism after reading the female-stereotype article.

“When we presented the feminine information, nothing happened. Why? Because it is not consistent with what students are seeing and hearing in society about entrepreneurs,” Gupta says.
Women shared equal entrepreneurial aspirations with men only when the gender-neutral attributes were presented. The study, “The Effect of Gender Stereotype Activation on Entrepreneurial Intentions,” was published in 2008 in The Journal of Applied Psychology.

“We were surprised by how clear our results were about the effects of exposing people to those societal beliefs in subconscious ways,” he says.

An entrepreneurial upbringing

Entrepreneurship has had an impact on Gupta’s life since he was a young boy living in India.

“In many cases, entrepreneurship professors grew up around an entrepreneur who had a substantial influence in their life,” he says. “In my case, that someone was my father.”

Gupta’s father started as an entrepreneur at age 16, working in the machinery business in India.

“When the family got together for dinner or lunch, you heard entrepreneurial ideas and new ways to create value,” Gupta says. “That ends up having a lot of influence on your thinking.”

Gupta earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Punjab Technical University and was pursuing a master’s degree in industrial engineering in the United States when he met business professors at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business. “It gave me a new way of thinking about ideas,” he says. “That was the first important influence on me in the U.S.”

The business classes motivated Gupta to earn a doctorate in strategic management from the University of Missouri. Gupta began entrepreneurial research while pursuing his doctorate and soon became the driving force for incorporating gender issues, says Turban, chair of the Department of Management at the University of Missouri.

“He brings a lot of creativity, hard work and effort,” Turban says. “He is good at thinking about what to investigate and how to frame it. … Some of the attributes that are particularly important are that he has a lot of drive and motivation that are coupled with ability and curiosity.”

Gupta joined Binghamton University’s faculty in 2008. “When I first joined academia, my father said, ‘What are you doing? Do something useful with your life,’” Gupta says. “For him, academia wasn’t practical. Now he sees that I haven’t lost my practical orientation. He realizes that academia doesn’t take you away from being practical. You can do both.”

Making the changes

Changing the way entrepreneurship is discussed starts not only with reaching young people, but also by always presenting it as an option for men and women.

“We never explicitly say that (entrepreneurship) is for men and not women,” Gupta says. “But implicitly, that’s what we are signaling. How? By emphasizing masculine characteristics.”

Gupta points to arguably the most popular television show with an entrepreneurial focus, Donald Trump’s The Apprentice.

“What that show is doing is turning women away from being entrepreneurs because they’re looking at it and thinking, ‘That’s not me,’” Gupta says. “It so blatantly emphasizes those stereotypical masculine characteristics. “When I watch TV, I have to work really hard to find role models for my female students, especially business role models.”

Even when there is a successful female entrepreneur, the media can still present her in a negative light, Gupta says. One such example is a movie about Martha Stewart called Martha, Inc.
“If you saw that movie, you would not want your daughter to be an entrepreneur,” Gupta says. “They show Martha Stewart as selfish and only looking out for herself at an early age. That’s a big problem. You have to emphasize that entrepreneurs are people who contribute positively to the economy and society.”

Gupta also would like to see the stories of female entrepreneurs “front and center” in textbooks with an emphasis on success “while retaining their feminine identity.” One place where that can be seen is in Gupta’s home country of India, where 14 percent of women are entrepreneurs, compared to 8 percent in the United States.

Gupta and his colleagues conducted a similar gender-entrepreneurship study in India in 2009. Unlike in the United States, emphasizing female characteristics had a positive influence on Indian women’s views of entrepreneurship. While India has greater perceived gender differences and barriers to women in business, it has had female heads of state and the female characteristics are consistent with successful business leaders in the Indian culture.

But Gupta worries that the expanding popularity of Western television shows could eventually affect Indian women’s attitudes toward entrepreneurship. “Maybe as our TV shows diffuse through their society, they will end up in the same position as us,” he says. “The power of TV shows such as Friends is such that Indian kids would rather watch the show than actually be with their friends. It’s unfortunate that the media can have so much power over how we think and act.”

Gupta plans to further analyze Hollywood’s role in entrepreneurship. He has identified movies that deal with the subject and hopes to answer the question: Can movies with female entrepreneurs reduce some of the differences in men’s and women’s interest in becoming entrepreneurs? Educators, scholars and activists can all learn lessons from the gender-entrepreneurship research, Gupta says, ranging from the need to promote role models to the power of random experiments in examining the challenges that lie ahead.

“Social beliefs, especially about gender roles and professions, are very entrenched in society,” he says. “They can change, but they take a long time to change. If we want to change the gender image of entrepreneurship, it won’t be an easy job.”

“We have a fantastic group of fellows,” said Bat-Ami Bar On, IASH director and professor of philosophy and women’s studies. “It’s diverse in terms of projects.”

IASH was formed last year to advance original work in the humanities while offering faculty and students opportunities for research. The fellows will present a lecture on their research topic during the upcoming academic year and also will be expected to participate in the discussion of the work of others. “It will be interesting how we learn about each other and how we can help each other intellectually,” Bar On said. “There is value added to being with others and chatting about the work.”

Bar On said she is pleased that student fellows will be able to share their work with faculty fellows.

“Research goes all the way through the University — all the way to the undergraduate ranks,” she said. “The undergrads are not just absorbing knowledge, but they are producers of knowledge.”

The 2010-11 IASH fellows and their topics are:

Faculty members:

• Gisela Brinker-Gabler, Comparative Literature, fall 2010, “Figurations of the Modern: Gender, Politics, and Aesthetics.”
• Randy Friedman, Philosophy and Judaic Studies, fall 2010, “Transcendence, Dialogue, and Philosophical Eschatology in 20th Century Jewish Thought.”
• Leslie Gates, Sociology, spring 2011, “The Politics of Neoliberalism in Mexico and Venezuela.”
• Praseeda Gopinath, English, fall 2010, “Scarecrows of Chivalry: The Literature of British Masculinities after Empire, 1935-1965.”
• Scott Henkel, English, spring 2011, “Leaves of Grassroots Politics: Democracy, the Swarm, and the Literatures of the Americas.”
• Kelly Kinney, English, fall 2010, “Rhetorics, Politics, and the Teaching of Writing.”
• Wendy Martinek, Political Science, spring 2011, “Judging as Human Behavior: The Social Psychology of Decision Making on Appellate.”
• Luiza Moreira, Comparative Literature, fall 2010, “Gender and the Career of a Public Intellectual: The Journalism of Cecília Meireles (1941-1945).”
• Michael Pettid, Asian and Asian American Studies, fall 2010, “Women in Rural Chosŏn Korea: An Exploration of Women’s Autonomy in a Patriarchal Society.”
• Ana Ros, Romance Languages and Literatures, fall 2010 and spring 2011, “Inheritance: Living Memory, Leaving Countries. Uruguayan and Argentinean Fictionalization at the Turn of the Millennium.”
• Benita Roth, Sociology, fall 2010 and spring 2011, “Anti-AIDS Activism in Los Angeles from the 1980s to the 2000s: The Life and Death of ACT UP/LA.”
• Paul Schleuse, Music, fall 2010, “Patronage, Print Culture, and the Music of Orazio Vecchi in Late Sixteenth Century Italy.”
• Thomas Wilson, Anthropology, spring 2010, “The Europeanization of the Irish Countryside.”

Graduate students:

• David Gutman, History, fall 2010 and spring 2011, “Rethinking the ‘Global Village:’ The Social, Political, and Economic Impact of Overseas Migration on Eastern Anatolia, 1880-1915.”
• Lewis Trelawny-Cassity, Philosophy, fall 2010 and spring 2011, “Plato’s Demiurgic Politics: The Role of the Chōra in the “Timaeus” and “Law.”

Undergraduates:

• Jan DeWitt, Classical and Near Eastern Studies, spring 2011, “(Un)common Blood: The Romanization and Alienation of Italian Allies (200-87BCE.)”
• Jieun Jang, Music, fall 2010, “Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 9 and Musical Freedom”

For more information about the institute, go to www2.binghamton.edu/iash.

“I was amazed at how naïve I was: I thought everyone was basically the same as me,” said Laats, now an assistant professor in the School of Education at Binghamton University. “But parents were hawks, as they should be, about what was being taught in the classroom. Things I thought we agreed on, such as evolution, still raised their ire.”

During graduate school, Laats turned his attention to Protestant fundamentalism in the 1920s. He found that the movement has had a major effect on the American school system and also helped lay the foundation for today’s culture wars.

“The trenches were dug in the ’20s for the fights that still go on today,” he said. “The positions and even the names — including ‘fundamentalist’ — began in the ’20s.”

Laats was one of 20 scholars to receive the prestigious National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2009. A book based on his research, Fundamentalism and Education in the Scopes Era: God, Darwin and the Roots of America’s Culture Wars, will soon be published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Unlike other movements of the period, fundamentalism did not arise in the 1920s because of new ideas. Instead, Laats said, it was a reaction to new ideas in schools, religion and culture, such as Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

“The fundamentalist movement came about in part because people felt their basic beliefs had been dismissed by educators,” said Laats, who considers himself secular. “Fundamentalists worried that students were being taught dangerous ideas. In the 1920s, two ideas of what schools should be doing came into conflict. All of a sudden, schools seemed to be teaching ideas that were turning students away from their faith.”

The confrontation came to a head in a courthouse in tiny Dayton, Tenn.

In 1925, Tennessee passed the Butler Act, prohibiting the teaching of evolution in place of the Bible’s account. Teacher John Scopes agreed to challenge the law by violating it in the classroom. The so-called “monkey trial” drew a firestorm of publicity and featured two leading orators — William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow — on opposite sides.

Scopes was convicted and the anti-evolution movement sought similar laws in other states. But fundamentalists lost the battle for public opinion. Darrow’s questioning of Bryan’s biblical views on the witness stand helped the media and evolutionists portray fundamentalists in stereotypical terms, such as barbarians, bigots and ignoramuses, that resonated across the nation.

The trial and its aftermath proved to be “a shock to the fundamentalist system,” Laats said. Fundamentalists were especially stunned that they were not seen as having the moral high ground of the debate.

In the wake of the trial, the fundamentalist movement became a smaller group that cared little about what mainstream America said. In fact, Laats said, fundamentalists embraced the fact that they would not win over the opposition.

“If they wanted to have control over education, they had to start their own subcultural institutions,” he said.

Fundamentalists did just that by founding Bob Jones University, becoming active at schools such as Wheaton College in Illinois and forming Bible schools and radio stations across the country.

“It’s that environment,” Laats said, “that nurtured people like Billy Graham, who re-emerged in the 1940s and 1950s and said, ‘We hold our beliefs, but we need to re-engage with mainstream America.’”

Bob Jones University became instrumental in the rise of Christian day schools and home schooling when it started a series of textbooks in 1973 written from a Bible-based perspective.

These influential books brought the work of 1920s-era fundamentalists into the latter part of the 20th century, Laats said, energizing a new generation.

“If you had not had this turning inward of fundamentalists and the building of educational infrastructure, you couldn’t have had the explosion of home schooling and Christian day schools in the 1970s and 1980s,” he said. “You can’t have schools without books; you can’t have Christian schools without Christian books.”

The dissension and debates that exploded in the 1920s are still a part of today’s public schools and society, whether focused on evolution, sex education or saying the Lord’s Prayer in the classroom, Laats said.

“Some of the venom of today’s culture wars comes from this divide in basic beliefs about who humans are and how humans fit into the universe,” he said. “If you think what’s being taught in schools is hurting children, it’s difficult to say, ‘It’s more important that we all get along’ than to do something about it.’”

Whether it is in schools or society, Laats believes the impact of fundamentalism in the 1920s cannot be overestimated.

“I sensed this was a story that hadn’t been fully explored,” he said. “Most of the literature that looks at the roots goes back to Billy Graham in the 1950s instead of the 1920s, where a lot of the direct beginnings come from. I thought the topic would be interesting, provocative and important not just for historians, but for all kinds of Americans.”

The University will serve as the editorial host of the Journal of Women’s History, a quarterly publication founded in 1989, beginning in the spring of 2010. Jean Quataert, professor of history, and Leigh Ann Wheeler, associate professor of history, will co-edit the journal. The editorial team also includes Elisa Camiscioli, associate professor of history, as book review editor; Benita Roth, associate professor of sociology, as associate editor; and two graduate assistants.

“What’s exciting about this is that it gives us an opportunity to shape the field and nurture new scholars,” Wheeler said. “It’s an incredibly important tool that will bring a lot of visibility to the program.”

The University, which kicked off the partnership in October with a lecture on the terrorizing of women in the Bangladesh war of 1971, has a long commitment to women’s history. It has one of the oldest PhD programs in women’s history, founded in 1974, and features a women’s studies program with more than 30 faculty members. Quataert is a pioneer in the field, bringing German women’s history into focus during the 1970s.

“It’s an extraordinary opportunity,” Quataert said. “I began in history when there was no women’s history. The idea that I can end my career now editing the journal that comes out of the field that I was a pioneer in is really appealing. It’s very exciting.”

The University will be the journal’s editorial home from 2010-2015. The collaboration among members of the editorial team was key to Binghamton’s successful proposal, Wheeler said.

“Our group worked so well together,” she said. “Everyone did their work. You knew you were investing in a project that you weren’t doing alone. … It was hard, hard work, but it was fun.”

“I think what helped us was the quality of the scholarship, the quality of the colleagues and the quality of the vision,” Quataert said.

One vision the editorial team is emphasizing is online content, something missing from the current Journal of Women’s History. Wheeler and Quataert see the Internet as a way for the journal to reach a wider audience via submissions, forums and feedback. Binghamton University’s Global Academic Publishing is designing the site, which Wheeler and Quataert also see as a way to increase communication among the 50 members of the journal’s international board of scholars.

“We want to create opportunities for interaction between authors and audience and also raise the visibility of the journal,” Wheeler said.

The journal, which has its own operating budget, is published by Johns Hopkins University Press, which sells publication rights to an academic database called Project MUSE. A sizable portion of those proceeds support production of the journal at Binghamton, Wheeler said.

On the print side, Quataert and Wheeler hope to stress broader thinking and highlight the work of younger scholars. “We want to encourage authors to think about the international context of their work,” Wheeler said. “We want people whose scholarship is on the other side of the world to read the piece and suggest ways for the author to connect what they are doing to other areas of the world.”

The University is an associate director of the Northeastern Chemical Energy Storage Center (NECESC), an energy frontier research center that received designation and funding from the Department of Energy during the summer.

Whittingham, professor and director of the University’s Materials Science and Engineering program, wrote the proposal to the Department of Energy with Clare Grey of Stony Brook University and Glenn Amatucci of Rutgers University. The five-year, $17 million NECESC was one of 46 research centers established by the DOE and will operate out of Stony Brook.

“(The centers) are basic energy projects to understand the real barriers that one has to overcome to solve our energy problems,” Whittingham said. The role of the NECESC is “to overcome scientific hurdles to making lithium-ion batteries better. How do we store more energy? How do we get the chemistry of the reactions to go better?”

The team also features experts from schools such as MIT, Michigan and University of California-San Diego. Rutgers is the second associate director and Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California are involved, as well. But Whittingham’s experience is unsurpassed on the team, as he is credited with developing the lithium-ion battery while working with Exxon in the 1970s. The lithium-ion battery is now used on devices such as cell phones, laptops and iPods.

The fact that the team members have worked together before was crucial for receiving the funding, Whittingham said.

“I think one of the reasons we were successful was that lots of people with this project have collaborated and have gotten publications out together,” he said. “We’ve shown by example that we can collaborate.”

The NECESC had its kickoff meeting last month at Stony Brook. Whittingham, who is one of four team leaders, and others will soon meet again in France and Austria during international science conferences to discuss their progress.

The idea for the energy frontier research centers came out of a Department of Energy conference held in 2007 in Washington, D.C., about electrical energy storage. Whittingham chaired part of the workshop.

“There was a basic recognition on the federal level that there were hurdles we needed to overcome in a wide range of areas,” he said. “You’ve got to fund basic science at a high level to overcome these hurdles. The other side to come out of (the workshop) is that there’s no technology in the United States. It’s all in Asia. So you also have to fund manufacturing capabilities in the U.S.”

Two years after the workshop, the government recognized the importance of alternative energy by naming the 46 centers. Whittingham attributed the quick turnaround to President Obama.

The next generation of lithium-ion batteries will be used on plug-in hybrid electrical vehicles (PHEV), Whittingham said. But the batteries will be much larger and have to last longer.

“They will allow you to drive 40 miles on the battery itself,” he said. “So most of us will commute to and from work without using any gas. You’d go home in the evening and plug it in a socket. You wouldn’t use gas except for a long trip.”

Whittingham predicted that PHEVs will be seen late in 2010, maybe a little later. The work of the NECESC over the next three to five years will be key, he said.

“The two big issues now are is it safe enough and the lifetime cost,” he said. “We’re going to remove all of the costly elements from the present system and replace them with lower-cost materials. Equally critical is that we find low-cost manufacturing methods for making these materials.”

Whittingham, who discussed electrical energy storage at the Financial Times international energy conference in London earlier this year, is pleased to see battery research at the center of energy discussions after it was de-emphasized at the beginning of the decade.

“We’re riding a hot wave at the moment,” he said. “My students are clearly happy, because there are tons of jobs out there. This is a good field to be in right now.

“It’s exciting. The country has finally realized that we’ve got to do something. We’ve been in the doldrums too long.”

“It’s crazy: There’s nothing normal about any of this,” said Rosenberg, a longtime poet and children’s book author and also professor of English. “Poets are used to being ignored. Children’s book writers, slightly less ignored.

“I’ve always been in the backwaters of publishing and it’s very comfortable there. The pace is comfortable and I think I needed to be there for a long time to just become whatever kind of writer I was going to become.”

You can now file Rosenberg under “adult fiction.” Her first book in the genre, Home Repair, was released April 28 by Avon/Harper Collins. Home Repair, a paperback also released in large print and Kindle, is already generating national attention for Rosenberg. Besides the promotional tour that will take Rosenberg from Vestal and Owego to Roanoke, Va., Home Repair has been designated as a Target “Breakout Book” for June. This means the novel will receive prominent display at Target stores across the country.

“I actually walked into Target the other day because I wanted to see what (a breakout book) looks like,” she said. “I didn’t know what it meant. I saw what one looked liked and I honestly started crying. I said, ‘I can’t believe it.’”

Home Repair is a year in the life of 40-something Eve, who sees her husband, Chuck, walk out on the family during a garage sale. Eve has to deal with the heartbreak while balancing a career as an administrative assistant with taking care of her elderly mother and two children. But along the way, Eve finds healing and comfort in people and places she never expected, becoming a stronger person in the process.

Of particular interest to local readers is that Eve is an administrative assistant in the Art Department at Binghamton University and she and her family live in Binghamton. The community plays a major role in Home Repair. For example, Recreation Park, Jack Sherman Toyota and even the Vestal Parkway all pop up in the book.

“It was always a Binghamton book,” Rosenberg said. “I say it’s my hymn to Binghamton. I’ve lived here now 30 years. I really wanted to pay homage to the place.

“You make something regional, but the universals are always there,” she said. “Anybody who lives in a small city is dealing with at least some of the things that Eve is.”

Rosenberg started the book in 2006 after her husband went inside to look for something during a family garage sale.

“In those few minutes he was gone, I found myself thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if somebody was doing this and the husband just disappeared and didn’t come back?’ There was something in the germ of the idea that appealed to me. One day I sat down and started writing.”

Rosenberg spends much of the early chapters describing Eve’s reaction to life without a husband at home, from the fears of cars driving by the house to significant weight loss caused by a “heartbreak diet.” Rosenberg said she felt like she was on the right track when a friend whose husband had left read the first chapter.

“She came up to me and said, ‘Liz, you nailed it. That’s what it really feels like,’” Rosenberg said. “I’ve never been in this situation. I feel like I should have a disclaimer on the front of the book: My husband is nothing like Chuck!”

Rosenberg also produces strong, interesting supporting characters such as Eve’s mother, Charlotte (Rosenberg’s favorite character), a woman not afraid to speak her mind; Jonah, an African-American who works at Rec Park and befriends Eve after an awkward introduction; Mia, a young Korean woman who Eve helps with English; and Lev, a seemingly reserved colleague (“a rare creature around campus, an unattached  male”) from the Music Department.

“I think the darlings for every author are the secondary characters,” Rosenberg said. “These are my favorite characters when I read novels. There are a million secondary characters in Dickens and you can tell they are the ones he really loves.”

Next up for Rosenberg is another novel, this one dealing with three women who exchange houses and end up exchanging lives in a certain way. Rosenberg, who normally teaches at the University in the fall, will be on leave this fall and will teach next spring in London as part of the English Department’s study-abroad program.

She hopes Home Repair readers will feel “consoled for some of the sorrows of life and happy for some of the blessings” after finishing the novel.

“I’ve loved books all my life,” she said. “It’s no exaggeration to say books saved my life. I’d like my book to be one of those life-saving books — one of those books somebody can read in a hospital waiting room and get through.”

AAHRPP is a nonprofit, peer-driven educational model of accreditation for organizations engaged in research involving human participants. The association works with organizations that conduct human research to raise the level of protection for research participants and to promote ethically sound research.

“Binghamton University has built a reputation as an outstanding institution with state-of-the-art research activities and facilities carried out by excellent faculty, students and staff,” said Gerald Sonnenfeld, vice president for research. “AAHRPP accreditation assures our excellence in human research studies and reflects our commitment to responsible, high-quality research.”

The accreditation process took more than two years, said Raymond Romanczyk, chairman of the Human Subjects Research Review Committee, and featured “extreme detail” to documentation of policies and procedures.

Three AAHRPP officials visited the University and conducted a review that included interviews with committee members and researchers and examinations of meeting minutes and how research proposals are evaluated, Romanczyk said.

The accreditation took effect in March and lasts for three years.

“It’s equivalent to the Good Housekeeping seal of approval,” said Romanczyk, who is also director of the Institute for Child Development and a professor of psychology. “What it means to the campus community, the local community and those who participate in and conduct research is that we have met the standards of the highest accrediting body in the country. It is beneficial to researchers on campus because this level is acknowledged by granting agencies.”

The Human Subjects Research Review Committee meets once a month and includes volunteer representatives from the campus and community. Researchers are asked to write non-technical descriptions of their work and what will be asked of human subjects. Everything from medical research to student surveys must be reviewed if they involve humans, Romanczyk said, adding that the committee’s final decision cannot be overturned.

“The most important thing about the committee is that it’s not peer review,” he said. “It’s not researchers evaluating the research of someone submitting a grant. This is designed to say: Does the research provide undue risk or harm for human subjects who will participate?”

Romanczyk emphasized that the University received a note of distinction from
AAHRPP for the cooperation and interaction between campus researchers and the committee.

Romanczyk also praised the work of the committee members during the accreditation process. He pointed to Anne Casella, administrator of the Human Subjects Research Review Office, as the person who took the process from initial discussion to final submission.

“One needs virtually an encyclopedic memory and cross-referencing of this constant barrage of regulations,” he said.

To date, 175 organizations representing more than 830 entities have earned AAHRPP accreditation. Forty-two percent of the nation’s research-intensive universities and 36 percent of U.S. medical schools are now accredited.

“The accreditation of Binghamton University, Utah State University and the University of California-Riverside, as well as Pfizer, attests to the importance of protecting research participants at all universities and in industry, as well,” AAHRPP President and CEO Marjorie A. Speers said in announcing the accreditations.

Binghamton earned its accreditation on the first attempt, Romanczyk said, adding that it is a result of the University’s research growth.

“It’s a tough club to belong to,” he said of AAHRPP. “It’s a pat on the back to get it on the first try. It reflects the tremendous work that went into making sure all of our policies and procedures were in place and working before we attempted this. We really wanted to get it right the first time.”

Vernon’s historical novel Lucky Billy, released in November by Houghton Mifflin, has been featured as the lead review in the Nov. 30 New York Times Book Review and was an “Editor’s Choice” a week later. It was recently named by the Seattle Times as one of top 10 fiction books of 2008.

“I want the readers to have a ground-floor experience of history, like they are there with the characters,” Vernon said. “I want the readers to feel like they’ve been in that landscape. And I want the readers to be moved by Billy the Kid, but disturbed at the same time.”

In the book, Vernon humanizes a figure often regarded as a ruthless renegade by placing him against the backdrop of the Lincoln County War of the late 1870s in New Mexico. Readers are able to have mixed emotions for the outlaw: they see a tragic figure caught up in a conflict that spirals out of control; find sympathy for a shattered family life; and have disgust for Billy’s revenge killings.

Billy the Kid’s “luck” is also subject to interpretation. Characters in the book consider Billy lucky to be able to take matters into his own hands. Readers see Billy get out of gun battles, jail breaks and house fires unscathed — and not necessarily because of his legendary outlaw skills.

“In the most superficial sense, he is lucky because he escapes from death,” Vernon said. “And many times it did happen by luck.”

Billy’s luck ends in 1881 at the hands of Sheriff Pat Garrett. Vernon tells the story of Billy’s death in Garrett’s voice. It’s one of several times in the book that Vernon shifts the point of view. He also uses a “scrambled chronology,” as the book jumps back and forth from Billy’s escape from jail in 1881 to the origins of his involvement in the Lincoln County War. Vernon said he used these methods to “break up a known story so some of the suspense comes from the reader putting it together.”

Vernon said he first had the idea for the novel after reading an essay in The New Yorker by Fintan O’Toole in 1998 about separating Billy the Kid’s legend from the facts.

In the fall of 2004, Vernon spent a week researching some of the Old West places in New Mexico, such as Lincoln. A Newman Travel Grant from the English Department helped Vernon get a feel for the area.

“I love stories embedded in the Western landscape,” he said. “New Mexico hasn’t changed much since the 1870s and 1880s. Lincoln is still very much the same. Many places in the West have become ‘condo-ized’ to death. But that place is so magical. It’s still cattle country with ranchers and small towns.”

The Binghamton faculty member’s third book is called Children’s Folklore: A Handbook and examines traditional knowledge shared by children, usually without adult involvement.

Children’s folklore was Tucker’s original area of research: She did her dissertation at Indiana University on the storytelling of pre-adolescent girls.

Children’s Folklore: A Handbook is the first American survey of children’s songs, games, jokes, rhymes and other things children teach each other, since 1995.
“So much has happened in children’s folklore since 1995,” Tucker said. “The world has changed so much. So many rules about protection of children have changed. Children play in more structured circumstances. There have been many changes in cultural patterns, so I welcomed the chance to write this book.”

The book, released last month and available from Greenwood Press at the campus bookstore and through Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, is meant primarily for college students, but also can be appreciated by parents.

“There’s so much that children do in their peer group that parents and other adults don’t see,” Tucker said. “It’s the childhood underground. Among children, there’s a certain kind of culture that tends to be transmitted especially when few adults are with them.”

Some things in children’s folklore have not changed. A child learning how to play “ring around the rosie” from parents would be an example of “nursery lore,” but “folklore” occurs when a child learns a similar game from peers with rhymes that do not come from adults. This still happens today, as it has for many years.

But as she started her new research, Tucker wondered if technological advances, such as video games, the Internet and more television, had affected the amount of active children’s folklore.

“I found that children’s folklore was as lively as ever,” she said. “It’s just morphed into different patterns.”

Tucker points to Japanese children using video cameras to play stone-paper-scissors and the “slam books” of the 1960s that featured girls writing about girls they did not like now giving way to interactive websites where the rankings of friends change.

“The same sorts of things happen, but technology alters their mode of expression,” she said. “Children are very adaptable. They roll with the times. Their traditions change and develop according to their interests and circumstances. But the need to share traditional culture with others does not change.”

Tucker, an associate professor of English, is also the editor of Children’s Folklore Review, an annual publication that is the only journal in the world devoted to the subject. Her other books are Campus Legends and Haunted Halls: Ghostlore of American College Campuses.