Wednesday, 17 November1999
READING MATTERS Vol V, No 13
(There will be no edition of Reading
Matters next week due to the Thanksgiving Break. Reading
Matters 5.14 will appear on or about December
1)
Congratulations to:
Ashley
Dawson, who has been awarded the
African Stanley Travel/Research Grant, a $3000 grant. The Stanley
Committee noted that it was impressed with the theoretical
framework and research plan Ashley had outlinedand concluded that
his research will enrich scholarship in general and South African
studies in particular.
Ashley will be using the grant to travel to
South Africa, where he is interested in researching the role of
media such as film,video, and television in constituting a
post-apartheid public sphere.He has also been invited to do a
presentation on this topic by Brooklyn College's English
department just after the Thanksgiving break.
And to . . .
Faith
Adiele
(current NonfictionWriting Program
student), who has just won 2nd prize in the Roy T. Ames Memorial
Essay Contest from the journal Literal Latte (NYC). Her
essay "Civilization" (also from her memoir) will be published in
their next issue. And her travel essay, "Pilgrims", will soon be
out in the next issue of Transition magazine
(Harvard).
And to . . .
Joelle
Fraser
(also a current NWP student), whose
memoir, The Territory of Men: One Woman's Trespass, has
just been selected for publication by Random House.
And to. . .
Dr. Katherine (Kay)
Hammer, an English and Linguistics
Department Alum who has just been named one of 6 College of
Liberal Arts Alumni Fellows for the year 2000 (details
below).
Meeting Matters
Departmental Consulting
Group (DCG) meeting to discuss tenure and promotion casesThursday,
Nov 18 at 3:45 in the Gerber Lounge.
If we do not conclude discussion and voting on Thursday, the DCG
will reconvene on Friday, Nov 19 at 3:45 in the Gerber Lounge.
Tenure Records are available for check-out in Gayle's
office.
Placement Matters
More Results from the PhD's--Ten Years
Later Study
This week I'm posting
answers to last week's quiz and offering a few stats from our
Graduate College. In the next Reading Matters (two weeks
from now), I'll start hazarding a few thoughts about what these
numbers may mean for us.
First,
the quiz--
Dr. Kay Hammer Named
CLA Alumni Fellow
Bill Davies in Linguistics and I jointly
nominated Dr. Hammer for this annual College of Liberal Arts Award
and we have just learned that she has been selected as one of six
Alumni Fellows for 2000, who will be brought to campus to receive
their awards and to tour their old departments. This visit will
take place during Liberal Arts Alumni Fellows week beginning April
10, 2000, with the award reception scheduled for April 10 from
4:00-6:00 pm in the Old Capitol Senate Chamber (all of us are
invited to the reception). Dr. Hammer's visit to the English
Department will include visiting classes, meeting informally with
faculty and students, and (if she'd like to) giving a
presentation.
Dr. Hammer holds an Iowa B.A. in English
(1967) an Iowa M.A. in linguistics (1969) and an Iowa Ph.D. in
English linguistics (1973), although her most impressive
accomplishments have been in areas not usually prepared for by
training in English and linguistics. Cofounder with Robin Curle,
president, and chief executive officer of Evolutiuonary
Technologies International (ETI), a cutting edge software company
based in Austin, Texas, Hammer pioneered software that could
automate the process of keeping related data consistent throughout
large organizations. Founded in 1991, ETI proved phenomenally
successful, achieving the rank of 15th on Inc. Magazine's 1997
list of America's 500 fastest growing private companies and a
listing on Computerworld's 100 Hot Emerging Companies list. A
further sign of ETI's importance in the world of high-tech is that
the company has formed partnerships with the industry's leading
technology firms including IBM, NCR, SAP, Oracle, EDS,
Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Andersen Consulting, Dun &Bradstreet,
Syntel, BDM Technologies,Inc., Pacific Rim Technology Group, and
Trans Data Systems, Inc (TSI).
In 1993 Hammer received Austin's High
Technology Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and in 1996 she twice
made the cover of Forbes Magazine, first as the subject of
a feature detailing the rise of ETI as Hammer traded the life of a
college professor for that of a highly successful high-tech
entrepeneur, and next as one of "Twenty who matter," twenty women
executives seen as the among the most influential in the
burgeoning hi-tech industry. Hammer was also featured in "The
Entrepreneurial Revolution," a 1997 PBS documentary devoted to
some of the most successful recent American entrepreneurs. Hammer
achieved her striking success while also a single mother raising
two children.
Dr. Hammer taught linguistics at Coe College
in Cedar Rapids and at Washington State University before leaving
the academy in 1980, moving to Austin, studying computer science,
and taking jobs first with Texas Instruments and then at
Microelectronics & Computer Technology Corporation (MCC), then
headed by former CIA deputy director Bobby Inman. At MCC, the
first industry-backed, for-profit computer research consortium in
the United States, Dr. Hammer architected and developed the
ETI-EXTRACT technology. Hammer's Evolutionary Technologies
International is the first and most successful spin-off to date
from MCC to produce and market software technology developed at
the research consortium. The ETI-EXTRACT technology is software
that "automates the writing of programs that retrieve the data
needed from any system, transform it and load it into any other
system while capturing a complete history of that process." ETI is
the "leading international provider of software productivity tools
for data migration, conversion, and consistency management," which
means--the author of the August 12, 1996 Forbes article on
Hammer explains--that ETI's software "consolidates otherwise
incompatible computer systems, enabling clients to modernize
computer code written in ancient computer languages." This allows
companies to salvage and reintegrate customized software that
otherwise would have grown obsolete and/or become incompatible
with newer software. As Hammer puts it, she took her background in
linguistics, a rule-based discipline, and applied it to building
software engines that were smart about rules. "Linguistics," she
says "helped me see programming in a different way."
Recently, Dr. Hammer has been using her
linguistics background to address the problem of the best
representation of metadata, data that describe other data. In
addition to her work at ETI, Hammer is co-chair of the Meta Data
Coalition (MDC), a nonprofit consortium of close to 50 vendors and
end-users dedicated to solving the problem of metadata exchange,
an issue critical to the efficient maintenance, manipulation, and
merger of complex and sometimes heterogeneous databases for
information technology organizations. Hammer sees grammars of the
type used in formal linguistic analysis and computer science as a
promising means for representing the complex of information stored
in diverse databases. Such a "grammar" will be integral in
providing vendors with a common means of efficient metadata
interchange, crucial to allowing organizations to be
cost-effective in the coming century. MDC has recently joined
forces with the Object Management Group to formulate common
standards for the description of metadata and, as Hammer put it,
to more quickly "ensure wide coverage and help the market
converge".
Dr. Hammer, described as the "technical
visionary" at ETI, has put the education she received in English
and Linguistics at the University of Iowa to work in productive
and unforeseen ways. She has created innovative solutions to
information management problems that will continue to prove
important in the coming century as the domain of information
continues to expand.
Call for Nominations for Iowa Arts
Award
(We may be on a roll. . .)
The Iowa Arts Council is accepting
nominations for the Iowa Arts Award and the Arts Build Communities
Awards. Nominations will be accepted through December 1,
1999.
The Iowa Arts Award recognizes an
individual, organization, business or community for long-term
commitment to excellence in the arts. The Arts Build Communities
Awards honor those who have made outstanding contributions to the
arts in Iowa. Categories of the Arts Build Communities Awards
include:
(a) Artist/Performing
Group,
(b) Arts in
Education,
(c) Arts
Organization,
(d) Arts
Supporter,
|
(e)
Business/Corporation,
(f) Arts
Project/Program,
(g) Community,
and
(h) Traditional Folk
Arts.
|
The Iowa Arts Award recipient will be
selected from all Arts Build Communities nominees.
Nominators must provide the following
information for each candidate they nominate:
1) NOMINEE INFORMATION - Name, address,
daytime telephone, and e-mail address of the award candidate. If
the candidate is not an individual, include the name of the
primary person in charge (e.g., president, CEO, director, owner,
mayor, principal).
2) ARTS BUILD COMMUNITIES AWARD CATEGORY -
Nominators must nominate candidates for a specific Arts Build
Communities Award category. Submit separate nominations if you
wish the candidate to be considered for more than one Arts Build
Communities award category. All nominees will be considered for
the Iowa Arts Award.
3) QUALIFICATIONS - In 250 words or less,
summarize why you believe the nominee should receive the specific
Arts Build Communities Award. These statements will be utilized in
the award program brochure.
4) NOMINATOR INFORMATION - Name, address,
daytime telephone and e-mail address of the
nominator.
Awards will be presented to the award
recipients during the State Arts Conference, March 23-25, in Des
Moines.
Submit nominations by December 1, 1999 to:
Iowa Arts Awards, Iowa Arts Council, 600 E Locust, Des Moines, IA
50319-0290, or by e-mail to: jherman@max.state.ia.us. Complete
information can be obtained on the Iowa Arts Council's website
(www.culturalaffairs.org) or by contacting Jill at
jherman@max.state.ia.us
or 515-281-8352.
CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE IOWA ARTS COUNCIL
WEBSITE: www.culturalaffairs.org
Faculty Colloquia Matters
Please note a schedule
change
Sara
Levine's
presentation previously set for
Friday, November 19, will be rescheduled as the first Faculty
Colloquium for next semester due to a conflict with the DCG
meeting. I've apologized to Sara for having to ask her to
reschedule and have promised that everyone in the Western
Hemisphere will attend her presentation when we finally give her a
chance to make it.
READINGS, LECTURES, WORKSHOPS, AND
CONFERENCES
Nov 29 and 30 The Crossing Borders Project and the
African-American World Studies Program welcome Professor Ralph
Premdas of The University of the West Indies, Republic of Trinidad
and Tobago (Department of Behavioural Sciences), speaking on two
occasions: "Ethnic and Regional Conflict in the Caribbean" Monday
November 29th, 12 noon (lunch available), Room 230, International
Center and "Diasporas and the Internationalization of Ethnic
Conflict" Tuesday November 30th, 3:30-5:00 (refreshments served),
Room 304, Gerber Lounge EPB
DEADLINES TO KEEP YOU FROM ATTENDING
READINGS, LECTURES, & ETC.
Dec 1 Obermann Center Summer 2000 Interdisciplinary Research
Grants proposals due
Dec 6 Old Gold applications due in the Dean's office
Feb 1 Nominations for Nobel Prize for Literature due (see
Reading Matters 5.12 or check with Amy for specific details)