Faculty Scholarship

Dr. Catherine (Kay) G. Valentine, Sociology Professor

Catherine (Kay) G. Valentine is professor of sociology at Nazareth College in Rochester, New York. She received herPh.D. from Syracuse University and her B.A. from the State University of New York at Albany. Kay is the author of journal articles and  book chapters  on  teaching sociology of sexuality, women’s bodies and emotions, gender and qualitative research, and the sociology of art museums.  Her firstjournal article, a co-authored piece entitled “The Making of a Female Researcher:  Role Problems in Fieldwork” (Urban Life:1977) contributed to the development of feminist ethnography and has been reprinted and cited in major feminist and sociological texts onresearch methods. 

Her most recent work, co-authored with Joan Z. Spade, is a text/reader, The Kaleidoscope of Gender:  Prisms, Patterns, and Possibilities. Well reviewed in thejournal Teaching Sociology, the second edition of The Kaleidoscope of Gender will be available from Sage Publications in October 2007.

Kay Valentine (pictured at right in front of Victoria Falls) is the founding director of women’s studies at Nazareth.

She is an active member of the American Sociological Association, the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, Sociologists for Women in Society, and the Eastern Sociological Society.
She has served as president of the New York State Sociological Association.

 

Dr. A. Daniel Birmajer, Mathematics Professor

Daniel Birmajer graduated with honors from the University of Buenos Aires with the title of Licenciado en Matematicas in 1991. He worked as a high school teacher of mathematics and computer science in BuenosAires, Argentina until 1998 when he and his family moved to the U.S.He received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 2003 from Temple University under the supervision of Professor E.S. Letzter and wasnominated Project NExT fellow (2003).

Since then he has been teaching at Nazareth College. Daniel’s research area is broadly defined as Computational Algebra with an emphasis toward Polynomial Identities. He has published several papers, one of which, co-authored with Juan Gil, has been accepted for publication in the American Mathematical Monthly.

Daniel is the secretary of the Seaway Section of the MAA and is actively involved in promoting undergraduate research in mathematics at Nazareth College. He is proud to serve in the Math, Engineering and Science for Hispanics initiative (MESH Program), which is held at Nazareth College each summer. He loves mathematics, soccer, swimming and, more than anything, his wife Susi and his children Julieta and Milton.

Photos, clockwise from top left: Daniel at Pismo Beach, San Luis Obispo, CA - Summer 2007; Daniel with son, Milton and Yoda at  Dagobah, Outer Rim Territories in a galaxy far, far away; Daniel with daughter, Julieta at Libby Park, Ojai, CA - August 2007.

 

Mr. Mitch Messina, Art Department

Born in San Jose, California in 1961, he began his journey with clay as a High School Student in Beaverton, Oregon. After receiving a football scholarship, he enrolled at Portland State University in Oregon and pursued a degree in ceramic arts. Mitch received his B.S. degree from PSU in 1984 and moved to Philadelphia to start his Masters in Fine Arts degree at Tyler School of Art. That same year, while in Philadelphia, he developed an interest in the pre-industrial tools collected and preserved by Henry Mercer, an early 1900s artisan and archeologist in Doylestown, PA.

The concept that tools have marked stages in human development from primitive existence to current levels of technology continues to drive the force behind his edgy ceramic and mixed media sculpture. After graduating in 1986, he taught at numerous colleges before moving to Rochester in 1990. Currently, Mitch is in his eighteenth year as the head of the Ceramics and Sculpture areas and he teaches on both the Graduate and Undergraduate levels. Teaching has allowed him to share his love of ceramics and build a life centered around the creative process.

Mitch's artwork has been exhibited in many group and one-person shows, including solo exhibitions at the Clay Studio and the Snyderman galleries in Philadelphia, PA area art galleries at the University of Rochester, Roberts Wesleyan and Monroe Community College.

Recent group shows include The Clay National in Louisville Kentucky, Craftforms 2007 at the Wayne Art Center in Wayne, PA. and Extraordinary Forms at the Kenan Center in Lockport. Locally his work can be seen in a permanent installation of three sculptures at the Village Gate Complex in downtown Rochester. Mitch's sculpture has been reviewed in Sculpture Magazine, and featured in Ceramics Monthly and American Craft magazine. His work appers in publications including Making Ceramic Sculpture, by Raul Acero and Hand Formed Ceramics by Richard Zakin.

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