FACULTY & STAFF Holly Bendorf, Ph.D., associate professor of chemistry, presented her research, “Remote stereocontrol through nucleophilic ring opening of selectively quaternized N,N-acetals: Synthesis of trans-2,5-disubstituted tetrahydro-1-benzazepines,” at the Middle Atlantic Region of the American Chemical Society. This annual conference draws chemists from academic, industrial, and governmental laboratories, and this year’s meeting was held at Seton Hall University on May 28-31. The Petroleum Research Fund of the American Chemical Society awarded Bendorf a $25,000 grant as part of its pilot program aimed at helping students develop research and professional skills, and supports the purchase of laboratory instrumentation for use by students in their laboratory courses and in their independent research. Cullen Chandler, Ph.D., Frank and Helen Lowry Professor of History, presented his research, “Delicious History: Roman Recipes in Carolingian Culture,” at the 2025 International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom. This research explores the cultural significance of preserving ancient Roman knowledge about food in ninth-century western Europe and will culminate in his next book. Sascha Feinstein, Ph.D., Robert L. & Charlene Shangraw Professor of English, published his thirteenth book, “Writing Jazz: Conversations with Critics and Biographers.” The esteemed critic John Gennari writes, “If I had to choose the one book that best captures what Whitney Balliett called ‘the secret emotional center in jazz,’ it would be ‘Writing Jazz.’” Matthew Kaunert, Ph.D., director of the Clean Water Institute, published an article with colleagues in Scientific Reports titled “Assessing the effects of conductivity on egg development and survival of Eastern Hellbenders (Cryptobranchus a. alleganiensis).” Elevated conductivity has been linked to widespread hellbender population declines across North America, and this experimental work is the first study to evaluate effects of conductivity on the survival of hellbender early life history stages. Jessica Munson, Ph.D., associate professor of anthropology and archaeology and chair of the department, presented the keynote lecture at the Epigraphy.info IX Workshop held in Aarhus, Denmark, on April 2, 2025. The title of her talk was “Royal Titles, Ritual Traditions, and Monumental Inscriptions: Synthetic and Relational Perspectives on Classic Maya Governance.” Munson is co-lead and corresponding author on the paper “Assessing neighborhoods, wealth differentials, and perceived inequality in preindustrial societies,” and is a contributing author on six other articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science Special Feature. In “The Global Dynamics of Economic Inequality Over the Long Term,” she analyzes inequality using a global database of archaeological and ethnographic records capturing measurements of house size. By examining house-size differences as a key measure of wealth, this research tracks patterns of inequality across diverse societies over the past 10,000 years. Amelia Thompson ’25, archaeology and Spanish dual major, helped to digitize several sites included in the Global Dynamics of Inequality database, a project funded by the National Science Foundation and supported by the Coalition for Archaeological Synthesis and the Center for Collaborative Synthesis in Archaeology. Christopher Kulp, Ph.D., John P. Graham Teaching Professor of Physics, published his newest science-fiction novel, “Lost Origins” (Book One of The Majestic Chronicles), an enthralling space odyssey set in a distant future where Earth is a lost legend. Kulp was interviewed on From the Lighthouse, a literary podcast published out of the department of English at Macquarie University in Australia, where he discussed his new book. Listen at https://fromthelighthouse. podbean.com/e/lost-originsan-interview-with-chris-kulp/. Angela Kurtz, Ph.D., lecturer of sociology, was selected as director of Community-Based Learning. Her passion for community engagement and commitment to studentcentered learning will be a tremendous asset as the College continues to grow its initiatives. Lycoming looks forward to the vision and leadership she will bring to this important work. Emily Wilson, Ph.D., assistant professor of astrophysics, coauthored “Second-generation planet formation after tidal disruption from common envelope evolution” that appears in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia in early 2025. 20 LYCOMING COLLEGE 2025 FALL MAGAZINE
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