LehighNow Volume 03, Issue 13

              LEHIGHNOW
April 16, 2003
Volume 3, Issue 13
IN BRIEF
CAMPUS NEWS
Engineering,
education
rank high
Lehigh continues to rank
among the nation's top
research universities. U.S.
News & World Report
released its 2004 Best
Graduate School rankings
on April 4, and both the
P.C. Rossin College of
Engineering and Applied
Science and the College of
Education ranked 4 lsl in
their respective categories.
Graduate programs at
185 engineering schools
and 188 colleges of
education that granted
doctoral degrees were
surveyed and ranked
according to factors such
as reputation among
deans, student selectivity,
and faculty research
activity.
"This ranking is an
outcome of the hard work
of the engineering faculty
and an integrated
approach to enhance the
visibility of our educational programs and
faculty activities and
their graduate students,"
says Mohamed El-
Aasser, dean of the
engineering college.
Sally A. White, dean of
the College of Education,
notes that the college
continues to be one of the
most selective and has
one of the most productive education faculties in
the nation, with funded
research per faculty
member at $507,600.
Author Lauren i
: Linderman.
Author: 'Research is best
part of writing'
Lauren Belfer, a featured
writer in the series of events
celebrating Linderman
Library's 125th anniversary,
can pinpoint the exact
moment when she knew her
first novel would progress
from a long-held dream to a
reality.
The Buffalo, N.Y, native
was visiting her parents
when she happened to
wander into a deserted
exhibit at the Historical
Museum that focused on
the city at the turn of the
last century.
"What I discovered was
like a revelation: A hundred
years ago, Buffalo was one
of the centers of America,
the commercial gateway
between East and West, a
place of incredible wealth,
sophistication and innovation, the Silicon Valley of its
day," Belfer recalled.
Oddly shaken by the
realization that her lifelong
impression of Buffalo as
something of a laughing
stock was at odds with the
city's glorious past, Belfer
went for a walk in nearby
Delaware Park. And there,
gazing at the rippling
surface of the water on a
late summer afternoon,
Belfer was struck by the idea
of setting her first novel in
the city she thought she
knew, and revisiting its
fleeting moment of glory.
In City of Light, Belfer
presents Buffalo as a
glittering jewel, a progressive
city that moves gracefully
through the turn-of-the-
century industrialization.
The novel features a host of
characters who reflect the
socio-economic layers of that
era.
The novel, which is
narrated by a fictional
headmistress who schools
the children of Buffalo's
elite, debuted to critical
acclaim in 1999. It also
earned new appreciation by
a Lehigh audience when it
was selected for the first
"On the Same Page, Lehigh"
reading program, a key part
of the library's 125,h
anniversary celebration.
On Tuesday, April 1,
readers of Belter's book, who
had met at locations on
campus over the past few
weeks to discuss it, had the
chance to meet the author,
when she delivered a talk at
Linderman.
An estimated 60 people
Please See AUTHOR, Page 2
Grad student
wins national
research award
For the second time in three
years, a member of the
College of Education
community has won the most
prestigious national award
for graduate research in
special education.
Yan Ping (Emily) Xin will
receive the Special Education
Research Special Interest
Group Outstanding Student
Research Award from the
American Educational
Research Association (AERA)
at the association's annual
meeting in Chicago later this
month.
AERA is the most prominent international professional organization with the
primary goal of advancing
educational research and its
practical application.
Lana Edwards, assistant
professor of special education in the College of
Education, received the same
award from AERA in 2001.
Xin won for her dissertation
study "A Comparison of
Two Instructional Approaches
on Mathematical Word
Problem Solving by Students
with Learning Problems." The
dissertation compares and
evaluates the effects of a
traditional word problem
strategy instruction and a
strategy instruction that is
grounded in schema theories
of cognitive psychology.
Her research extends
previous work in the field to
address teaching a range of
multiplication and division
arithmetic word problems.
The study was conceived and
conducted when Xin was
enrolled as a student in the
special education doctoral
program in the College of
Education. She is currently
assistant professor at Purdue
Please See GRAD, Page 3