Inside CSULB

Eric Besnard, Adelien Schmitz and Hamid Hefazi, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, presented a paper titled "Automated Hydrodynamic Shape Optimization Using Neural Networks” to the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME) 2004 Maritime Technology Conference in Washington, D.C., Sept. 29-Oct. 1.

Martin Fiebert, Psychology, published an annotated bibliography titled "References examining assaults by women on their spouses or male partners" in Sexuality and Culture, Vol. 8, Nos. 3-4.

Hamid Hefazi, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, was the invited speaker at Boeing Phantom Works' "Boeing Distinguished Researcher and Scholar Seminar Series (B-DRASS)" on Nov. 14. His presentation was titled "Automated Shape Optimization."

Michael LaCourse, Kinesiology and Physical Education, had a manuscript titled "Cerebral and cerebellar sensorimotor plasticity following motor imagery-based mental practice of a sequential movement" published in the July/August issue of the Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development.

Joanne Tortorici Luna, Educational Psychology, Administration and Counseling, published a juried article with co-author Kendall Johnson titled "Adapting critical incident stress management to the schools: A multi-agency approach" in the Journal of School Violence, Vol. 3, No. 4.

Vincent Novack, director, Institutional Research, co-authored an article with Laura Rendon, Educational Psychology, Administration and Counseling, and David Dowell, vice provost and director of Strategic Planning, titled “Testing Race-Neutral Admissions Models: Lessons from California State University, Long Beach” in the Review of Higher Education, Vol. 28, No. 2. The publication was devoted to the issue of universal access to higher education. The article discussed the history of access in California beginning with the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education through to the current day including the ramifications of the Bakke decision, Prop. 209, and the Supreme Court's 2003 University of Michigan decision. The core of the piece is a discussion of CSULB necessarily limiting access via impaction and what outcomes and lessons have resulted from that experience.

Ramses Toma, Family and Consumer Sciences, was elected for a second two-year term as vice president of the Association of Egyptian American Scholars in the United States.

Book Review

Measurement Theory in Action: Case Studies and Exercises

The Paris Commune: French Politics, Culture and Society at the Crossroads of the Revolutionary Tradition and Revolutionary Socialism

History's David Shafer

Due out from Palgrave MacMillan in the UK and Europe in April and in the U.S. in May, Paris Commune tells the story of the 1871 urban uprising, the largest of its kind in Western history, and the savage repression that claimed between 20,000 and 35,000 Communards. Shafer engages in the debate surrounding the Commune and social class by reconceptualizing class in cultural, rather than strictly economic, terms. Shafer also applies "brutalization theory" to explain the grisly wave of executions during the "Bloody Week" of 14-21 May 1871. Normally employed to explain why societies that maintain the death penalty tend to be more violent, according to Shafer's application of "brutalization theory" to the Commune, the French state in the 19th century routinely normalized its employment of violence to establish its colonial authority abroad and to impose bourgeois values at home. Shafer points to the refusal by French generals to see the Communards as fully human, and their characterization of the Communards as savages, to explain the atrocities carried out against hostages, perceived enemy combatants, and unarmed individuals, including young children. The Paris Commune has its roots in Shafer's doctoral thesis for the Ph.D. which he received at the University of London in 1994.