Four UI faculty members have been selected by the Office of International
Programs and Studies to participate in an exchange between the university
and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL), Belgium's largest university.
The exchange is designed to support research collaboration among faculty
from the two universities and to enable faculty to work abroad on international
projects.
The UI professors will receive financial support (airfare and a per diem
allowance) to visit KUL for one to three months.
The faculty members participating in the exchange and their program proposals:
-- Jane Block, Ricker Library of Architecture and Art, to finalize research
on Belgian artist and Sinologist Gisbert Combaz
-- Brian Gaines, political science, to collaborate on a formal model and
empirical analysis of Duverger's law, the alleged connection between electoral
law and party systems
-- Schuyler S. Korban, natural resources and environmental sciences, to
evaluate disease-resistant apple selections at KUL for current and future
performance efforts
-- Mark W. Spong, general engineering, to investigate adaptive force control
problem for constrained robots using the virtual manipulator contact concept
developed at KUL with passivity methods developed at the UI
In addition, the office has awarded two grants to support international
conferences to be held on the UI campus in 1997. The conferences will engage
some of the leading experts on international topics of current scholarly
interest.
The conference topics and organizers:
"The Transformation of International Politics, 1763-1848: Episode or
Model," to be organized by Paul Schroeder, professor of history.
"Gender Citizenship, and the Work of Caring in Contemporary Societies,"
to be organized by Madonna Harrington Meyer, professor of sociology, and
Sonya Michel, professor of history and director of the Women's Studies Program.
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