FallMagazine2014_FB96

st. lawrence university magazine | fall 2014

on campus

Citing security

concerns in

Kenya, St. Lawrence has

suspended its study

program there for the

fall 2014 semester.

The University is just one

of several colleges to take

this step, based in part on

U.S. State Department travel

warnings. Arrangements have

been made for the students

who were enrolled, with eight

of the 14 opting to under-

take a Council on Interna-

tional Educational Exchange

(CIEE) program in neighbor-

ing Tanzania.

“Over the next several

months, we will assess all the

possibilities of resuming our

program in January 2015,

making student safety our un-

equivocal first principle,” said

President William L. Fox ’75 in

a campus announcement. “Our

facilities and staff in Nairobi

will be fully supported during

this period of evaluation.”

Michael Farley,

professor of music,

has been appointed the

Birdsong Professor of

the Arts.

This professorship is funded

by Terry Burns ’69 and Lynn

Birdsong ’68 to recognize and

support the work of a distin-

guished, tenured professor in

the arts who demonstrates love

of learning in scholarship and

performance or exhibition, but

even more, in inspiring and

motivating students to explore

and achieve.

Three different

arboretum tours

are now available to

those visiting campus,

thanks to an Innovation

Grant, one biology professor

and three of his students. The

point of origin for all three is

Payson Hall, home to

St. Lawrence’s Office of

Admissions, where tour-takers

can pick up colorful maps

with descriptions and stories

of more than a dozen trees and

other points of interest along

each route. Karl McKnight,

professor of biology, who

teaches ecology and botany,

led the project beginning in

2011, with significant input

from his students Margaret

Harrington ’14, Brett Ford ’14

and Korey Devins ’13.

Robin Lock,

Burry Professor

of Statistics, has won

the American Statistical

Association’s National

Waller Distinguished

Career Award

which

honors lifetime achievement

in teaching statistics. He is

the first-ever recipient of the

award. “Everyone who has

been involved in statistics edu-

cation in the last three decades

has interacted with, and been

influenced by, Lock,” said the

ASA announcement.

www.stlawu.edu/news

Know

All.

A roundup of news from campus.

Want more? Find us online:

control issue for the semiconductor

industry. The measurements allow him

to characterize how a specific shape and

the placement of electrodes on a micro-

chip affect how much of the specimen

is sampled by the measurement, how

much error will result from misaligning

the electrodes, and how much heating

can skew results.

“These results could have very impor-

tant implications in the microelectron-

ics industry, where smaller and smaller

devices drive the need for ever more com-

pact resistance probes,” Koon said. “By

making precise calculations for a variety

aniel W. Koon, profes-

sor of physics, has been

awarded a Fulbright

U.S. Scholar Grant to

travel and research for

six months in Prague,

Czech Republic. This is Koon’s second

Fulbright scholarship; he received one

in 1981 to travel and research in what

was then West Berlin. He is taking a

sabbatical leave in 2014-15 to conduct

his research.

For 20 years, Koon has been measuring

and mapping the resistance of silicon

wafers, which is an important quality-

Professor Koon

Wins a Fulbright

of cross- and cloverleaf-shaped specimen

geometries, based on theory developed

by myself and colleagues (at universi-

ties in Denmark and Prague), I hope to

provide a wide overview of which geo-

metrical shapes and electrode placements

provide the most accurate, most tightly

focused diagnostic, as well as reducing

unwanted effects.”

In anticipation of being awarded

the grant, Koon spent the last year

teaching himself Czech. Cultural

exchange, he said, is also central to

the Fulbright program.

See more at

www.stlawu.edu/news.

Tied with the entering Class of 2016 for highest percentage ever.

Historically, more than 50% of entering St. Lawrence

students came from New York State, but that has not been the case since the Class of 2004 (entering in fall 2000).

by the numb#rs

The physicist's research could have important

implications in the microelectronics industry.

aint Lawrence keeps turning up all over the world.

Usually he’s associated with churches, but sharp-

eyed readers have found him on street signs, pubs

and apparently abandoned buses in India, among

other places. Last spring, on a visit to New Orleans,

Director of Employee Recruitment, Training & Affirmative Action

Macreena Doyle discovered this stoic, tonsured representation

gracing a side-street restaurant and promising “divine food until

2 a.m.” Doyle says her server had no idea where either the St.

Lawrence River or St. Lawrence University is, but delighted in

telling the tale of how Saint Lawrence was martyred on a gridiron.

Another Saint Lawrence Sighting