IUP Central Calendar

November 2001

In This Issue
Fossil Seam to be Named for IUP Anthropology Student
December Commencement Details
IUP Researcher Receives Grant to Study Culturally Focused Batterer Counseling

A Special Holiday Invitation

In Every Issue
Newsmakers
It's My Turn
Announcements & Classifieds

Fossil Seam to be Named for IUP Anthropology Student
Indiana University of Pennsylvania student Emily Griffin knows about diligence rewarded.

After four weeks this summer as an intern with a Carnegie Museum Section of Vertebrate Paleontology searching for plesiadapiform fossils (archaic primates) in Southwest Wyoming, the 21-year-old anthropology major discovered a rich seam of fossils that will soon be officially catalogued as "Emily’s Bonanza" in her honor.
Griffin, originally from North East, PA, is a senior anthropology major at IUP.
Her adventure started in the Bitter Creek area of Wyoming, where fossils are collected because of the site’s reputation as the only one in North America where archaic primates can be found.

It’s a very arid site, hot and dusty in the summer months, that lead group member Dr. Christopher Beard, a curator of the Carnegie Museum, has been examining for nine years in an effort to compare these North American specimens with those found elsewhere in the world. One research goal is to understand whether the North American primates are here as a result of migration or convergent evolution.
Whatever fossils the team found, however, would be hard earned.

"It was hard to get used to living in close quarters at first," Griffin said. "We lived, ate and slept side-by-side. We bathed in a small, nearby stream, only to quickly become dusty again."

Griffin’s team woke to these conditions each morning at 7 a.m. and began searching the area around their Bitter Creek base camp by a technique known as prospecting: crawling on one’s hands and knees looking for bits of fossilized bone on the surface. Specifically, she was looking for teeth and jaws.

"We looked for green mud stone, which is easily eroded and easy to find," she said.

"We literally drove around the dirt roads looking for the places that would actually produce fossils. And once we started prospecting, I decided where I’d work by the bone density of the surface."

The green mud stone was easy to find, but fossils were not.

The team, consisting of up to nine people, began searching the Big Basin Site their third week in, June 25. They had better luck there than at the base camp. They also searched the Big Multi-Quarry, a site with a history of good finds. But their expectations there were unmet, Griffin explained.

"I was told that Big Multi-Quarry generally does well," she reported, "But not this time. We really hadn’t done extraordinarily well."

In addition to a less than less-than-ideal results, the team was experiencing less than ideal weather. Two tents were wrecked by storms.

With time eroding and finds relatively few in comparison with past visits to the site, the team began to search in shifts. One half worked the quarry while the other half continued prospecting through the green mudstone in an effort to maximize the time they had remaining.

Finally, on June 28, just two days before the team was scheduled to leave, Griffin made a small decision that proved perhaps the most important of the entire trip.

"I was prospecting. I’d spent the morning on my hands and knees finding only miscellaneous bone fragments. Then, out of curiosity, I turned out of my way to examine this new area of outcrop that was a little darker in color than the others," she said.

This darker ground was paydirt in the literal sense.

Griffin found an incisor, then a couple of jaws. When Dr. Beard joined her, he began finding more jaws. Soon the entire team was involved, and they were finding jaws and teeth everywhere they looked—more than they’d found in the entire trip.

"We couldn’t keep our hands out of our collection bags," she said.

The specimens were not only plentiful, but in excellent condition considering their designation on the geologic time scale as Paleocene: a branch of time 56 million years in the past that has proven inhospitable to good fossil development, she explained. Would-be fossil material usually just wasted away.

Dr. Beard is still documenting the specimens found in the site. Already, they are numerous. The archaic primates found will be used to solidify more closely the age of the locality.

The majority of specimens found were mammals. Ectocions, medium-sized herbivores, are so far the most common animal found. The team also found hedgehog-like animals, animals whose bodies were similar to those of modern-day weasels, a lemur that flew and glided, a herbivore whose name translates into "Sunday Beast" and which was the largest animal of its day, and one specimen of the carnivore Protictis.

Also found were lizard scutes, reptilian body armor, turtle fragments and other miscellaneous pieces of lizard. Still other fossils are documented or waiting to be documented.

"Not a lot of undergraduate students get to do this sort of thing," Griffin stated. "It was absolutely thrilling. You’d look down and see what might appear to be simply this black, shiny object. But you hold it in your hand, and you know that it’s 56 million years old and, by some standards, could hold a key to understanding human origin."

Dr. Beard agrees that such an experience is valuable for an undergraduate student and adds that the anthropological world, certainly in this case, reaps rewards as well.

"There were a surprisingly large number of specimens," Dr. Beard said. "The site is also valuable because you need a number of localities across time to understand those ecosystems within those times. This area is a little older than the others, and that gives us that needed time-depth."

To those unfamiliar with the field, Griffin’s find may seem like chance. Dr. Beard disagrees.

"Only some have this ability. I noticed early on that Emily was good at finding specimens. And this was her first experience," said Dr. Beard. "What separates her from other young archaeologists is her persistence and dedication and a natural ability to see specimens that are mostly quite small. She’s enthusiastic about the entire science and also good with practical collection techniques."

Emily’s Bonanza will soon take its place in the recorded sites of the Anthropological world. Griffin herself plans to eventually pursue graduate work in Paleoanthropology, in combination with Human Anatomy, following her undergraduate work at IUP.
written by Joseph Lacko, student writer, media relations

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December Commencement Details
IUP will hold its ninth annual December commencement on Sunday, Dec. 16. More than six hundred August and December graduates are expected to attend.

This year, due to the growing number of people attending the December Commencement, there will be two ceremonies—one for graduate students in Fisher Auditorium at 10:30 a.m. and one for undergraduates in Memorial Field House at 1:30 p.m.

Undergraduates will need to report to Zink Hall, Gym B, at 12:30 p.m. for line-up instructions. Faculty members participating in the event are to line up in Gym A.

Live video coverage of the ceremony will be shown in the Eberly College of Business Alumni Auditorium and Beard Auditorium in Stouffer Hall for guests who do not have tickets for the Field House.

As graduates proceed up to the platform, their names will be read and they will be congratulated by their college dean, by the chairperson of the Council of Trustees, Susan Delaney and by IUP President Lawrence K. Pettit.

Professional photographers will be available to take pictures of graduates during this special moment in their lives.

Graduate students and faculty members attending will need to report to Waller Hall (beside Fisher Auditorium) no later than 9:45 a.m. where they will be directed to the robing and line-up areas in Waller Hall. Doctoral student guests will be seated in a reserved area in the auditorium. Tickets are necessary for admission to this area and may be picked up at the Graduate School and Research Office in Stright Hall by graduating doctoral students. Other guests may sit elsewhere in the auditorium and will not require tickets. Since this is a ceremony for graduate students only, no further ticket distribution is necessary.

Immediately after the ceremony, President Lawrence K. Pettit will host a reception honoring all students, families, and guests in the Folger Dining Hall Reception Area. 
A shuttle bus service from Fisher Auditorium to Folger Hall will be available for those requiring this service.

If anyone has questions about the ceremony, please contact commencement co-chairpersons, Dr. Ruth Riesenman (2232), or Mr. Richard DiStanislao (2217).

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IUP Researcher Receives Grant to Study Culturally Focused Batterer Counseling
The National Institute of Justice has awarded Dr. Edward Gondolf of Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Mid-Atlantic Training Institute $356,321 for his project "Culturally-Focused Batterer Counseling for African-American Men."

Through this program, Dr. Gondolf plans to test the effectiveness of culturally focused batterer counseling for African American men as compared to conventional batterer counseling.

Program evaluations show that African-American men are more likely to dropout of conventional batterer counseling and re-assault their partners, Gondolf said. As a result, recent recommendations are for cultural focus in order to improve the effectiveness of counseling within this population.

Dr. Gondolf hypothesizes that the new form of counseling may result in lower re-assault rates and lower dropout from the counseling program.

The research will focus on African-American men arrested for domestic violence in Pittsburgh. Its design is that of a clinical trial comparing the dropouts, re-assaults and re-arrests of 600 participants randomly assigned to either a culturally-focused group of only African-American, an African-American-only conventional batterer group or a racially mixed conventional batterer group.

The men's’ female partners will be interviewed at three, six and 12 months. These interviews, paired with police records, will be used to assess the effectiveness of the culturally-based program in relation to others that are non-culturally based, Gondolf said.

A counselor creates cultural focus by recognizing and then responding to cultural issues that emerge in group sessions. The curriculum of the program itself various from that of traditional counseling in that it includes the major cultural issues facing a particular group of participants, he explained.

The study, planned to take place from September 2001 through February 2005, follows six previous studies by Dr. Gondolf in the area of domestic battering. These previous studies focused, among other things, on the long-term effectiveness of batterer programs, the effects of specialized education in reducing child abuse and the results of court review of arrested batterers who are sentenced to mandatory counseling.

Depending on the conclusions drawn from this newest study, culturally-based counseling may prove a more effective way to deal with the problem of battering.
written by Joseph Lacko, student writer, media relations

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A Special Holiday Invitation
President Lawrence K. Pettit invites you to join him on Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2001 for the annual lighting of the IUP Holiday Trees at 5:30 p.m. on the East Porch, Sutton Hall. Familiar carols will be sung to the musical accompaniment of the Brass Players and the University Chorus, SignIn, a performing group of the IUP Sign Language Club, and the University School Chorus.

Afterwards, join Santa Claus and his elves for hot chocolate, hot wassail and doughnuts in Folger Dining Hall. All members of the student body, faculty and staff, along with their families, are encouraged to participate in this traditional ceremony, which marks the beginning of the holiday season.

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