Vol. IV, Issue 2: Summer 2007
Catching Up
Updates on and accomplishments of Core students, alumni, staff, and faculty. Compiled by DI editors.

A healthy proportion of the Class Day award recipients at Commencement 2007 were graduates of the Core. Recipients included Michael Zisser, for the CAS/GRS Alumni Association Award for Writing Excellence in Humanities in Memory of Robert E. Charm; Rachel Weiner, the John Oddy Memorial Scholarship; Matthew LaGro, the Robert E. Bruce Memorial Prize in Mathematics; Stephanie Frana, the Ken Hale Linguistics Award; Tiela Rose Black-Law, the College Prize for Excellence in Philosophy; and Daniel Ryan, the Peter A. Bertocci Award for Philosophical Excellence. Jane Losaw was recognized as a Trustee Scholar. Joshua Addison was the recipient of the 2007 College Prize for History. (Read his speech given at the Department degree ceremony on the De Ideis website.) Shanna Slank (Core ‘06, CAS ‘08) received the Nelson Award for Excellence in Philosophy by a Junior and the Alice M. Brennan Humanities Award. Even our staff got in on the action; Core writing tutor Julie Ann Ackerman (CAS/GRS’07) was honored with the John N. Findlay Award in Philosophy.

Professor Steve Esposito and his wife Madeline McNeely would like to tell you about the birth of their first child:

Rhiannon Ryan DuPre was born on April 10, 2007 at the Cambridge Hospital, ten days after her due date. She tipped the scales at 8.3 lbs and measured 21 inches. Rhiannon, so named after the glorious Fleetwood Mac song, also carries the middle name of Ryan after the maiden name of her paternal grandmother whom she had the good fortune of meeting despite all odds. Rhiannon's grandma, whom doctors said in early January had only two months to live, was determined to meet her granddaughter despite her terminal cancer. And so she did. For Rhiannon met her grandma in Groton, CT on April 21st, and enjoyed 30 splendid minutes being held by her namesake before her grandma slipped into a coma-like sleep from which she did not recover; soon thereafter her 81-year-old grandmother passed away. But Rhiannon now has joyous photographs to commemorate that poignant occasion, as well an amazing model of quiet but fierce courage to emulate as she grows older.

Proud parents of newborn Rhiannon.

Former Core tutor and Polytropos Rebecca Bourke (CAS ‘05, SED’07) has accepted a position teaching English Literature and Ancient Civilizations at Chenery Middle School in Belmont, MA.

Giancarlo Tursi (Core ‘06, CAS ‘09) was co-editor with Nicole Norman and Ted Stinson of the first issue of Arché, an undergraduate journal of philosophy.

Professor Daniel Hudon is writing The Bluffer’s Guide to the Cosmos for publisher Oval Books.

Professor Brad Herling will see his book The German Gita: Hermeneutics and Discipline in the German Reception of Indian Thought, 1778–1831 published by Routledge this year. He has accepted a tenure-track position on the faculty of Marymount Manhattan College; he and his wife Maria Smilios will be moving to Queens in August.

Abe Friedman and Rebecca Krasner (both Core ‘01, CAS ‘03) have married and are living in LA. He’s in rabbinical school and she has completed her MA and is working in museum education.

Johanna (Jojo) Gruenhut (Core ‘01, COM’03) got married in summer 2006 and has just relocated to London with her husband, a scientist and adjunct faculty at Yale.

Following Petrarch’s cue, Professor Sassan Tabatabai was married this June on Mt. Ventoux in Provence

Ashley Bowes (Core ‘01, COM’03) works for the Office of Career and Professional Development at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis. This fall, she begins a graduate program to obtain a Masters in Leadership in Student Affairs. She reports that “I only hope that I’ll end up working for a program that engages and impacts students as much as Core has impacted me.”

BU Today featured Core persons and programs four times this semester, in: “For the Love of Shakespeare: Jennifer Formichelli brings the Bard to spoken life;” “A New Leader for Learning: CAS Prof M. David Eckel to head BU’s Core Curriculum;” “Refining the Wasteland: BU's Christopher Ricks to edit first complete edition of T. S. Eliot;” and “Ancient Greece in Modern Drag: Classics students and profs take the stage in Lysistrata," a play led by Prof. Stephanie Nelson.

Alex Acuna (Core ‘02, UNI’04) is living in Berkeley, CA and working as a legal assistant in the litigation department of a large law firm in downtown San Francisco. He says, “Although I've been here for about 10 months now and am still somewhat in the ‘honeymoon phase’ of paralegalism, I must say that I miss the academic environment—and especially that of Core.” Contact Alex at xander.acuna@gmail.com.

Elizabeth Churchill (Core ‘02, CAS ‘04) has been admitted to the Ph.D. program at UPenn, where she will be studying medieval Christianity in the Department of Religious Studies. Old friends and faculty who want to buy her a congratulatory pint may visit her office at the Department of Religion on Bay State Road, or email her at epc@bu.edu.

Core Writing Tutor and Polytropos Amy Chmielewski (Core ‘03, CAS ‘05) will be teaching WR150: Writing on Art” in the Writing Program in Fall 2007.

Seth Allen (Core ‘03, CAS ‘05) has given up his position as project manager for Hanaford's, Inc., after a year of studying all those aspects of nutrition relevant to supermarketing. He is now at home in Hingham, MA, gathering his energies and sending out applications for his next great challenge: law school. Friends and creditors can contact him at smallen1983@gmail.com.

The research of Professor Karen Warkentin was featured in "It's a Frog's Life" (National Geographic, Vol. 210 No.5, November 2006). Author Jennifer Holland writes that Prof. Warkentin, working at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, assaulted tree frog eggs with various forces to study their reactions. Warkentin on her research: "We had a window on the embryos' minds and could ask them questions: Is this scary? Can you discriminate between this and that?" Fantastically, they could. It turns out that when a snake bites into a gooey mass, all the embryos try to wiggle free. A wasp's more focused attack prompts only the neighboring eggs to hatch. And a rainstorm triggers nothing at all." Warkentin on the mating parties of red-eyed tree frogs: "It's a scramble competition." DI

E-mail the editors if you would like to share news of a recent event with our readers in the Core community.