JUNE 2018
Dan Chen, assistant professor of political science and Asian studies, had an article, titled “Political Context and Citizen Information: Propaganda Effects in China,” accepted by the International Journal of Public Opinion Research. It will be published later this year.
MAY 2018
Dan Chen, assistant professor of political science and Asian studies, was awarded a Sydney China Fellowship by the University of Sydney (Australia). She will be a visiting fellow at the China Studies Centre for six weeks this summer.
Oya Ozkanca, associate professor of political science and College Professor of International Studies; John Craig, adjunct faculty member in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Legal Studies, and Wayne Selcher, professor of international studies emeritus, served as referees during a Counterterrorism Simulation event held April 25 and 30 at Elizabethtown College. The event was attended by the students enrolled in PS 370A Terrorism and Counterterrorism co-taught by Ozkanca and Craig. The simulation is one of the first held in the United States at the undergraduate level. Students in the course each represented members of different teams, such as the federal government, local government and media, producing policy responses to an evolving terrorist scenario. In the course, made possible through a Mellon Grant, students learned about many facets of terrorism, its evolution and examined the effectiveness of counterterrorism measures. During the simulation, students had a chance to experience, firsthand, the difficult policy dilemmas associated with counterterrorism, such as the tension between states’ rights and human rights.
Ozkanca also presented her research, titled “Turkish Soft Balancing against the United States,” at the Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Nationalities held at Columbia University in May.
Mark Stuckey, professor of physics; Timothy McDevitt, professor of mathematics; Michael Silberstein, professor of philosophy, and Alex Sten ’17 wrote a paper that received honorable mention in the prestigious Gravity Research Foundation 2018 Awards for Essays on Gravitation. The paper, “Could GR Contextuality Resolve the Missing Mass Problem?,” will now be considered for publication in the International Journal of Modern Physics D.
APRIL 2018
Dan Chen, assistant professor of political science and Asian studies, presented a paper, titled “Local and Informal Media Control in China,” at the 2018 International Studies Association Annual Convention in San Francisco in April.
April Kelly-Woessner, professor of political science, delivered a talk on “Political Tolerance and iGen” at the UC Berkeley School of Law in March. She also participated in a panel on “Viewpoint Diversity on Campus” at NYU in October 2017. The panel was featured on CSPAN the next day.
Kelly-Woessner was a keynote speaker at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s faculty conference, in October 2017, at the University of North Texas College of Law. She also participated in a panel on academic freedom for the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University in February.
Kyle Kopko ’05, associate professor of political science and assistant dean for academic achievement and engagement, participated in a roundtable discussion and presented a paper at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, in April, in Chicago, Illinois. The roundtable discussion topic was “Working with the Print Media,” and the paper presentation was a co-authored manuscript with Christopher Devine, titled “Campaign Dynamics and Presidential Ticket Evaluations: A Time Series Analysis.”
Political science seniors presented their research at the annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Political Science Association last month at West Chester University. The students were: Maya Aphornsuvan ’18, Nathaniel Groff ’18, Kayla Gruber ’18, Nicole McGlyn ’18 and Matthew Pysher ’18.
Sara Allocco ’20, a political science and Spanish double major, presented a paper, titled “Disparities in Mental Health Treatment for Chinese Migrant Workers,” at the ASIANetwork Conference in Philadelphia in April. This paper discusses the key cultural, political and socioeconomic explanations for the current mishandling of mental health issues and treatment for the Chinese migrant workers.
MARCH 2018
Dan Chen, assistant professor of political science and Asian studies in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Legal Studies, published a book review in The China Quarterly, about “Media Politics in China: Improvising Power under Authoritarianism” by Maria Repnikova.
FEBRUARY 2018
Fletcher McClellan, professor of political science; Kyle Kopko, assistant dean for academic achievement and engagement and associate professor of political science, and Kayla Gruber ’18 presented at the 2018 American Political Science Association Teaching and Learning Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, in February. The research is titled, “The Effects of a High-Impact Practice Graduation Requirement on Student Learning, Engagement and Satisfaction at a Small, Private College: Implications for the Political Science Curriculum.”
JANUARY 2018
Oya Dursun-Ozkanca, associate professor of political science and director of International Studies minor in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Legal Studies, published an article titled, “The European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo: An Analysis from the Local Perspective,” in Ethnopolitics, Volume 17, Issue 1 (2018). Fifty free electronic copies may be retrieved on a first-come-first-served basis using the following link: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/UYp4wITE7uYJIeDjgZ4U/full.
Kyle Kopko ’05, assistant dean for academic achievement and engagement, appeared on Blue Ridge Channel 11 on January 23 to discuss the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision in League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania v. Pennsylvania, in which the state supreme court struck down Pennsylvania’s congressional district plan as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The video is posted at:
He also was appointed to serve on the Advocacy Committee and Finance Committee of the National Collegiate Honors Council. His term began in January 2018 and ends in December 2020.
DECEMBER 2017
Kyle Kopko ’05, assistant dean for academic achievement and engagement and associate professor of political science, coauthored a book chapter, titled “#TeamGov: On the Political Experience, Campaign Messaging and Electoral Performance of Johnson-Weld 2016.” The chapter appears in “Studies of Communication in the 2016 Presidential Campaign,” edited by Robert E. Denton Jr. and available through Lexington Books.
NOVEMBER 2017
Fletcher McClellan, Political Science, presented a paper, “Outcomes Assessment in Higher Education as a Scientific/Intellectual Movement,” at the annual meeting of the Northeastern Political Science Association, Nov. 9-11, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
AUGUST 2017
Dan Chen, assistant professor of political science and Asian studies, has a forthcoming article, titled “State Capacity and Cadre Mobilization in China: the Elasticity of Policy Implementation,” to be published in the Journal of Contemporary China. Chen co-authored this article with John James Kennedy from the University of Kansas.
June 2017
Oya Dursun-Ozkanca, associate professor of political science and director of international studies minor, published a solo-authored article, “The European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo: An Analysis from the Local Perspective” in the leading Ethnopolitics journal.
Kyle C. Kopko ’05, assistant dean for academic achievement and engagement, was awarded a Fulbright grant to participate in the 2017 International Education Administrators Seminar, which takes place in Germany and Belgium. In addition, Kopko was interviewed in the June 6 edition of LNP’s “The Caucus,” regarding the 2018 gubernatorial election and the state of national politics.
May 2017
Kyle Kopko ’05, assistant dean for academic achievement and engagement, was the lead author for “Four Variations in Delivery and Design of Mock Trial for the Undergraduate Student,” an article published in the Journal of Experiential Learning.
Oya Dursun-Ozkanca, associate professor of political science and director of the international studies, received a Torch for Global Enlightenment Award for Educators on May 18, 2017, from the World Affairs Council of Harrisburg. http://www.wacharrisburg.org/spotlight-features/
Alexandria Poole, assistant professor of philosophy, was named, by the Center for Community and Civic Engagement, recipient of the 2017 Civic Engagement and Community Based Learning Award for faculty/staff for her “Philosophy of the City and Everyday Life” course. This course includes students from a range of disciplines and explored social and environmental justice as related to the structure of the city and its expression in everyday
April 2017
Dan Chen, assistant professor of political science and Asian studies, presented a paper on propaganda effects in China at the Midwest Political Science Association annual conference in Chicago on April 7.
Chen also received a research travel grant from the Association for Asian Studies. This grant will be used to conduct fieldwork in China this summer.
Alexandria Poole, assistant professor of philosophy, was selected as an NEH Summer Scholar from a national applicant pool to attend one of 17 institutes supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Endowment is a federal agency that, each summer, supports these enrichment opportunities at colleges, universities and cultural institutions, so that faculty members can work in collaboration and study with experts in humanities disciplines. Poole will participate in the three-week “City/Nature: Urban Environmental Humanities” at the University of Washington. This is Poole’s second NEH Summer Institute, as she was a 2016 recipient for the “Extending the Land Ethic: Current Humanities Voices and Sustainability” held at Arizona State University.
Poole also participated in a continuation of the dialogue on social justice and race initiated by Dr. Amanda Kemp during her visit to E-town campus this spring as she participated in a workshop, titled “Say the Wrong Thing” that focuses on developing skills and providing strategies for engaging difficult conversations around race, equity, diversity and inclusivity.
March 2017
Oya Dursun-Ozkanca, associate professor of political science, was interviewed by Metro International about the upcoming constitutional referendum in Turkey.
Dursun-Ozkanca’s PS 332/INT 332 Model United Nations class took part at the 2017 National Model United Nations (NMUN) Conference held from March 19 to 23, 2017, in New York City, with participation of about 2,500 student delegations from around the world. NMUN is one of the oldest and the most prestigious national Model UN conferences in the United States. This year marked the 90th anniversary of the conference.
E-town’s delegation represented the Kingdom of Lesotho and, at the closing ceremony at the UN General Assembly Hall, it was recognized for outstanding participation via a certificate of Honorable Mention. Participation at the NMUN was made possible through the financial support of the Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking.
In preparation for the conference, the students study the history and the organizational structure of the UN as well as the functions of all its principal organs. They delve into a detailed study of the history, government, economics and the foreign policy of the assigned country. This experiential learning opportunity provides all participants with a simulation of the negotiations that takes place in the leading committees and principal organs of the UN, and allows them to gain first-hand insight into UN’s decision-making procedures on a variety of topics ranging from minority rights to disarmament.
Members of the Elizabethtown College delegation were Jovanni Diaz, Taylor Flamand, Kayla Furman, Kayla Gruber, Adam Leydig Dixon, Afsara Mirza, Kyle Oberle, Ramon Rios III, Kyle Robinson, Amanda Slaughter, James Spearman, Braden Stinar and Emily West. Each represented a diplomat from Lesotho on a different committee. West served as the Head Delegate. All members sponsored draft resolutions that got adopted by their respective committees. They all represented the College with enthusiasm and dedication to negotiation, diplomacy and peacemaking.
Kyle C. Kopko ’05, assistant dean for academic achievement and engagement, co-authored an article, titled “Bridge Over the River Qua: Using Simulations to Span the Divide Between Prelaw and Political Science Students,” in the Journal of Political Science Education. The article was co-authored with Matthew Woessner of Penn State Harrisburg and Kathleen Winters of the University of St. Thomas.
Students of Fletcher McClellan, professor of political science, presented papers at the annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Political Science Association, Pittsburgh, that took place March 31 and April 1, 2017. Participating were Brendan Rawa ’17, Matt Rucci ’17 and Emily West ’17.
Alexandria K. Poole, assistant professor of philosophy, and Peter Licona, assistant professor of PK-12 STEM education, presented on Scientific and Ethical Literacy at the 2017 Lancaster Learns Conference.
February 2017
Oya Dursun-Ozkanca, associate professor of political science and director of the international studies minor, published the article, “Pitfalls of Police Reform in Costa Rica: Insights into Security Sector Reform in Non-Military Countries in Peacebuilding.” The first 50 copies are free. This research was supported by a Faculty International Studies Seminar Grant, which Dursun-Ozkanca received from Elizabethtown College. The manuscript was finalized during her yearlong sabbatical leave, made possible through a Sabbatical Research Grant from the Institute of Turkish Studies at Georgetown University.
Kyle Kopko ’05, assistant dean for academic achievement and engagement and professor of politics, gave a presentation to the Lancaster Rotary on Jan. 25, 2017, titled “President Trump and the Case of Law v. Politics: Understanding the Supreme Court.” Kopko also was interviewed regarding Supreme Court nominations by several news outlets including the Toronto (Canada) Globe and Mail and Newsday.
January 2017
Kyle C. Kopko ’05, assistant dean for academic achievement and Engagement, was interviewed about his research on the Presidential Medal of Freedom with E. Fletcher McClellan and Jillian Casey ’13 and Julia Ward ’13 U.S. News & World Report.
Kyle Kopko, assistant dean for academic achievement and engagement and director of the pre-law program, was interviewed by Metro World News in December 2016 about the possible Russian influence on the U.S. election.
Oya Ozkanca, associate professor of political science and director of the International Studies Minor, gave an invited talk on Turkey at the U.S. Army War College in January 2017
December 2016
Oya Dursun-Ozkanca, associate professor of political science and director of international studies minor, published a solo-authored article “The Peacebuilding Assembly-Line Model: Towards a Theory of International Collaboration in Multidimensional Peacebuilding Operations” in International Journal of Peace Studies, Volume 21, Number 2. Dursun-Ozkanca also was invited to serve as a discussant at South East Europe Security Conference organized by the German Institute for International Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik), December 15 and 16, 2016, in Berlin.
November 2016
Dan Chen, assistant professor of politics, has a forthcoming article, titled “Local Distrust and Regime Support: Sources and Effects of Political Trust in China,” to be published in Political Research Quarterly.
Oya Dursun-Ozkanca, associate professor of political science and director of the international studies minor, took her PS 350/BA 350 European Union Simulation class to a three-day long Mid-Atlantic EU Simulation exercise in Washington, D.C., in November 2016.
About 150 students from 15 colleges and universities from the Mid-Atlantic area participate in The EU Simulation. This year, the E-town class represented two EU member states – Denmark and Cyprus. Each class members represented a member of the Danish and Cypriot Cabinet or a member of the European Parliament. The topics of debate were the immigration/refugee crisis and Brexit. The E-town delegation attended briefing sessions at the Embassy of the Kingdom of Denmark and the Embassy of the Republic of Cyprus in Washington, where they asked questions of Danish and Cypriot diplomats about the Simulation topic.
Two of the College’s delegation members were elected into leadership positions at the European Parliament. Taylor Flamand, a Class of 2017 legal studies major, was elected to the position of President of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in Europe, and Joey Kobus ’19, a political science and Japanese major, was elected as the President of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left in European Parliament. The E-town team experienced, first-hand, the EU decision-making processes in this signature learning opportunity.
Kyle Kopko ’05, assistant dean for academic achievement and engagement; E. Fletcher McClellan, professor of political science; Jillian Casey ’13, and Julia Ward ’13, along with Christopher Devine co-authored a piece in the Washington Post on President Obama’s final Presidential Medal of Freedom award ceremony. The authors are the first to establish an original database of Medal of Freedom recipients since the Medal’s inception in 1963. Their new analysis finds that President Obama has awarded more Medals of Freedom than any other president. Their previous work on this topic earned national media attention in The New York Times and C-SPAN.
Also, Kopko and Christopher Devine wrote a piece for the Washington Post discussing the failure of third party presidential candidates to secure more than five percent of the vote in 2016. Their analysis disputes claims that third-party candidates cost Hillary Clinton the election, and it also provides insights for the future of third parties in the 2020 presidential election and beyond.
Fletcher McClellan, professor of politics, presented a paper, “It Can Happen Here: Lindbergh (as conceived by Philip Roth), Trump, and Right-Wing Social Movements,” at the annual meeting of the Northeastern Political Science Association that took place Nov. 10 through 12, 2016, in Boston, Massachusetts.
October 2016
Kyle Kopko ’05, assistant dean for academic achievement and engagement, coauthored an article with Christopher Devine for FiveThirtyEight, titled “How Clinton And Trump Are Using Their Running Mates On The Campaign Trail.”
Oya Dursun-Ozkanca, associate professor of political science and director of International Studies minor, published an article, titled “Turkey and the European Union: Strategic Partners or Competitors in the Western Balkans?”, in the Journal of Regional Security. This article draws on the author’s fieldworks in 2011 and 2013, financially supported by two faculty research grants from Elizabethtown College, and submitted during the author’s yearlong sabbatical made possible through the Sabbatical Research Grant the author received from the Institute of Turkish Studies at Georgetown University. The second fieldwork was executed during the author’s LSEE Visiting Fellowship at the Research of South Eastern Europe at the London School of Economics.
Dan Chen, assistant professor of political science and Asian studies presented a paper, titled “Propaganda Themes, Political Context, and Citizen Reception: Evidence on Propaganda Effects from a Survey Experiment in China,” at the Oct. 11, 2016, Annual Meeting and International Symposium of the Association of Chinese Political Studies in Monterey, California.
Michael Silberstein, professor of philosophy; Mark Stuckey, professor of physics; and Timothy McDevitt, professor of mathematics and department received a contract with Oxford University Press for their book, “End of the Mechanical Universe.” This book will argue for a revolution in fundamental physics, moving from dynamical explanation in the mechanical universe to adynamical explanation in the block universe.
Oya Dursun-Ozkanca, associate professor of political science and director of the International Studies Minor, published an article, titled “Turkish Soft Balancing Against the EU? An Analysis of the Prospects for Improved Transatlantic Security Relations,” in a leading peer-reviewed journal, Foreign Policy Analysis. The field research for this article was financially supported by a research grant from Elizabethtown College and finalized throughout Dursun-Ozkanca’s Visiting Fellowship at the Research of South Eastern Europe at the London School of Economics. The manuscript was finalized during her yearlong sabbatical leave in 2015-2016, made possible through the Sabbatical Research Grant received from the Institute of Turkish Studies at Georgetown University.
September 2016
Dan Chen, assistant professor of political science and Asian Studies, presented a paper titled “Local Distrust and Regime Support: Sources and Effects of Political Trust in China” at a conference at the University of Zürich.
Kyle C. Kopko ’05, assistant dean for academic achievement and engagement, was elected president of the Northeast Association of Pre-Law Advisors (NAPLA) for the 2016-2017 academic year. NAPLA is the country’s oldest and largest pre-law advising association. In this capacity, Dr. Kopko will also serve on the Board of Directors for the Pre-Law Advisor National Council.
June 2016
Kyle C. Kopko ’05, assistant dean for academic achievement and engagement, co-authored an article for The Washington Post on the Libertarian Party’s presidential ticket.
Alexandria K. Poole, assistant professor of philosophy, was selected as an NEH Summer Scholar from a national applicant pool to attend one of 23 seminars and institutes supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Poole participated in the NEH Summer Institute “Extending the Land Ethic: Current Humanities Voices and Sustainability” at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. She will develop three experimental courses: “Philosophy of the City and Everyday Life,” “Comparative Environmental Philosophy: Perspectives from the Americas,” and “Perspectives in Sustainability.” Each of 25 educators selected to participate in the program receive a travel, study and living expenses stipend. The 521 NEH Summer Scholars who participate in these programs will teach more than 91,175 American students the following year.
Michael Silberstein, professor of philosophy; Mark Stuckey, professor of physics; Timothy McDevitt, professor of mathematics and department chair; and A.K. Sten ’17 co-authored “End of a Dark Age?,” which was accepted for publication in the International Journal of Modern Physics.
May 2016
Kyle C. Kopko ’05, associate professor of political science and director of the Honors Program, co-authored a piece with Christopher Devine for Oxford University Press’s online blog, titled “Veepstakes 2016: A Reality Check.”
Kyle C. Kopko ’05, associate professor of political science and director of the Honors Program, gave a presentation at the Elizabethtown Church of the Brethren May 22, titled “Making America Great Again? Frustration, Division, and Conflicting Visions in the 2016 Presidential Primaries.”
Kyle C. Kopko ’05, associate professor of political science and director of the Honors Program, co-authored two pieces for Time Magazine’s online website: “The 4 Advantages a Vice President Pick Could Offer a Candidate” and “How Clinton and Trump Should Choose Their Vice Presidents.”
Michael Silberstein, professor of philosophy; Mark Stuckey, professor of physics; and Timothy McDevitt, professor of mathematics and department chair won honorable mention in the prestigious Gravity Research Foundation Awards for Essays on Gravitation for their essay “End of a Dark Age?” The essay contains and explains their fits of the Union2 Compilation supernova data, THINGS galactic rotation data, and ROSAT/ASCA data on the mass profiles of X-ray clusters without need of dark energy or dark matter. These results contradict the concordance model of cosmology wherein dark energy and dark matter are believed to comprise 96 percent of the mass-energy in the observable universe. The fits are achieved by modifying Regge calculus, the graphical form of Einstein’s general relativity, based on their proposed new approach to fundamental physics called the Relational Blockworld.
April 2016
Kyle Kopko, assistant professor of political science and director of the Pre-Law Program, had his book the “VP Advantage: How Running Mates Influence Home State Voting in Presidential Elections,” written with Christopher J. Devine positively reviewed in “The London School of Economics and Political Science.”
Erin Krause ’16, Jonathan Hahn ’16, Colleen Taylor ’16 and Nicole McGlyn ’18, presented papers at the annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Political Science Association, Shippensburg University, April 1-2.
Fletcher McClellan, dean of faculty and professor of political science, presented a paper, “Man in the Mirror: An Accounting of Explanations for the Trump Phenomenon,” at the annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Political Science Association that took place in Shippensburg April 1 and 2.
March 2016
Dan Chen, assistant professor of political science and Asian studies, gave a talk on media criticism and authoritarianism at the Frank Church Symposium at Idaho State University on March 3, 2016.
April Kelly-Woessner, professor of political science and Department Chair, wrote a chapter, “The New Left and Political Intolerance” that was published in an edited volume, “In The End of the Experiment: The Rise of Cultural Elites and the Decline of Americas Civic Culture,” by Stanley Rothman. The April 2016 Transaction Press publication was edited by Althea Nagai, Robert Maranto, David J. Rothman and Matthew Woessner.
Oya Dursun-Ozkanca, professor of political science, served as chair of Complex Peace(s) in the Balkans panel at the International Studies Association annual conference in Atlanta, Georgia. At the conference, she also presented her original research, “Turkey and the European Union in Western Balkans: Strategic Partners or Competitors in Building Peace?”