Kira Maddox named new Ithacan editor-in-chief 

Junior journalism major and current managing editor Kira Maddox will be The Ithacan’s 2015­–16 editor-in-chief.

The Ithaca College Board of Publications interviewed Maddox and junior integrated marketing communications major Sabrina Knight on March 30.

The Board of Publications then recommended to Diane Gayeski, the dean of the Roy H. Park School of Communications, that Maddox be selected as The Ithacan’s next editor-in-chief. Gayeski accepted the board’s recommendation.

Maddox began her time at The Ithacan during her freshman year, where she began working on the staff as a copy editor. She joined the editorial board as the proofreader her sophomore year, and spent her junior year as the managing editor.

Outside of the college, Maddox has continued to pursue journalism by working with the Utica Observer-Dispatch in Summer 2014 as a news intern, covering all manners of community events and leaders. She will be taking an intern position with the Syracuse Media Group in Summer 2015 before returning to the college for her senior year, where she will begin her role as editor-in-chief of The Ithacan.

Dance-a-thon to benefit Ithaca Advocacy Center 

Ithaca College’s IC Women in Communications will host a dance-a-thon event at 7:00 p.m. April 3 in Emerson Suites. All proceeds for the event will go to the Ithaca Advocacy Center, which provides support and education for women and children survivors of domestic violence, child sexual abuse and sexual assault.

The event will include dancing and raffles for several prizes. Teams can purchase raffle tickets to win a Taste of Ithaca gift package, which includes gift cards from local businesses in town such as Wings Over Ithaca Panera, Yogurtland, The Nines, Satori and others. There will also be performances by Premium Blend, Pulse, IC Unbound, On the Floor, a salsa dance lesson and music by DJ Latimer.

Fulbright scholar to host chemistry presentation

Fulbright scholar Mayil Ramasamy will give a talk on the development of biocompatible, iron-based, paramagnetic chemical exchange saturation transfer MRI-contrast agents in a presentation hosted by the chemistry department at 4:15 p.m. April 2 in the Center for Natural Sciences, Room 333.

The talk will focus on using glutamine and glucose as sources of energy for rapidly dividing cells and cellular proliferation, growth and survival. Scientists have found that glutamine and glucose are transported across cell membranes at a faster rate than their normal counterparts. If this biochemical process were to be combined with the function of iron-based MRI PARACEST agents, they would assist in the early stage detection of cancer cells, Ramasamy said. His presentation will also discuss exploiting the amino acid and glucose transporting system to deliver larger amounts of iron-2 PARACEST agents to the targeted tumor cells.

Carol McAmis to present at Faculty Colloquium

Carol McAmis, a performance studies professor in the School of  Music, will present at the Faculty Colloquium at 5 p.m. April 2 in the Clark Lounge of the Campus Center. The first half-hour will be a social time with wine and appetizers, followed by the presentation and a Q&A session.

The colloquium, which began in 2012, is an event developed to offer a forum for faculty to share with one another their scholarly and creative work. It is an opportunity for people across department and school lines to learn more about their colleagues’ pursuits.

McAmis’ talk is titled “Building an Invisible Instrument: Just What Does a Voice Teacher Do?” and will offer a look inside the voice studio and challenges of learning and teaching singing. The presentation will include live singing and moving to demonstrate different singing techniques.

McAmis has been a member of the Ithaca College voice faculty since 1979. She has taught singers interested in a number of musical styles, including opera, musical theater, jazz, world music and pop. She also teaches vocal pedagogy and Awareness Through Movement, which is an exercise based on the somatic education method developed by Israeli physicist Moshe Feldenkrais.

Student-journalists to talk about Selma experience

The Society of Professional Journalists will host a double-feature community screening event at 5 p.m. April 4 at Cinemapolis. The event will begin with a screening of “Meet me at Equality: The People’s March on Washington,” a documentary by Ithaca College journalism associate professor James Rada. The film originally aired on PBS in August 2013 and explores the march for civil rights through the eyes of those who were a part of it 50 years ago.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion detailing the experiences of the college’s team that covered the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama. The six student-journalists who assisted NBC Nightly News with its coverage of this event will speak.