Towson - Fall 2010

“The backbone of the site is the self-teaching modules” that help improve writing skills by eliminating run-on sentences, pronoun problems and other challenges of written English, Benner says. But there is also a 24-hour hotline for those with burning questions on grammar and usage.

Benner fields those queries herself. “Most people ask about subject/verb agreement, especially when a prepositional phrase is in between,” she says, though sometimes an unusual item pops up. Once, she says, a lawyer sought her opinion, wanting to know whether

Benner launched an English as a Second Language component this summer to field questions from non-native English speakers.

a statement was absolutely clear, or ambiguous and open to interpretation.

If inquiries are especially difficult, Benner relies on a stack of tomes including Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Dictionary of Disagreeable English and The New York Times Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, Mispronounced Words.

Perhaps most notable,
the site was cited in a 2008

paper on computational linguistics in Nuremberg, Germany.

Visit www.towson.edu/ows/ Writing_Support_Hotline.htm

Green Saves Green

“The push is on for businesses to go green, and some Baltimore firms are already finding bottom line savings, generating new revenue streams and expanding opportunities by tapping into the green economy,” writes TU’s Tobin Porterfield, in last winter’s inaugural issue of Baltimore Business Review.

The assistant professor
in TU’s College of Business
and Economics says area
companies are “infusing
the infrastructure with new
practices and technologies
that reduce negative ef-
fects on the environment.”
They are finding these
practices save money.
He cites companies such
as McCormick, which is
looking at a 30 percent
savings in electricity costs
after installing solar panels;
Diversified Insurance Indus-
tries, which netted $10,000
by replacing paper copies of
insurance documents with
electronic versions; and KCI
whose new green head-
quarters in Sparks, Md.,
could yield tax benefits.

$1 million grant

The Bernard Osher Foundation has awarded a $1 million grant to sustain the Osher Reentry Scholarship program at TU.

Reentry students are non-traditional in age and are pursuing a first bachelor’s degree after having experienced an interruption of at least five years.

To date, Osher Reentry Scholarship grants have funded 92 Reentry Scholars at TU, with 18 having graduated.

Slick Studies

When oil hit the Gulf Coast Beaches, so did a group of TU biology students eager to learn about the impact of the BP oil spill on the marine ecosystem.

The group, led by Jay Nelson, professor of biology, witnessed science in action in three states that border the Gulf of Mexico. “This trip put our students on the front lines of ongoing research into an unprecedented disaster with severe environmental consequences. They will remember this experience long after they’ve forgotten most of their classroom material,” Nelson says.

The Dauphin Island Marine lab in Alabama was the first stop for students Sarah Buhlman, Kimberly Hackett Watkins, Karey Harris, Kevin Kelly, Genine Lipkey and Ryan McDonald.

Here they saw experimental oyster beds, a project headed by Bill Walton of Auburn University, that may become an indicator of how much damage the oil causes up and down the coast. Walton and other researchers will track survival rates, growth rates and levels of contamination in oyster beds extending from Mississippi to Florida.

Next the students visited the Louisiana bayous, where Fernando Galvez of Louisiana State University studies how fish adapt to environmental stresses and scientists at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium laboratory assess the impacts of the oil spill and dispersants on marsh fishes.

The group’s final visit was to the University of West Florida in Pensacola where professors Wade Jeffrey and Richard Snyder have a long history of studying the chemistry of water and sediment. “We visited sites along the beautiful, but oiled, Florida beaches where students were taught techniques about taking water and sand samples,” Nelson says.