October 10, 2005 The Lion's Eye Eye on Campus Page 3 Professors Awarded High Honors DeRosa receives Fulbright Scholarship By Amar Ganti Lion's Eye Staff writer aeg5014@psu.edu Dr. Michael De Rosa, a former teacher here at the Penn State Delaware County campus, won the Fulbright Scholar Award for the 2005-2006 year. He is one of eight hundred United States elected profession- als, teachers, and faculty who are partici- pating in the Fulbright Scholar Program. The Fulbright Scholar Award, a world- wide program, elects prestigious members: of the nation's community to travel the globe in order to study and teach at various universities for the purpose of increasing mutual understanding and generating ideas between countries. The award was first given in 1946 under the legislation introduced by an Arkansas elected Senator, J. William Fulbright. De Rosa will be part of a 50 year program which has selected over 255,000 worldwide participants in the course of its program. He will be teaching master level envi- ronmental organic chemistry at Matej Bel University in Banska Bystrica, Slovak Republic. He will also be teaching doctor- ate level courses for the faculty of ecology and environmental sciences at the Technical University of Zvolen, in Banska Stiavnica. : De Rosa obtained his doctorate from Brooklyn College, City College of New York and his bachelor's from City College of New York. This will not be the first time De Rosa will be traveling, nor will it be the first time teaching in another country. De Rosa and his wife Susan have trav- eled most of the United States and have set foot in eighty countries. De Rosa hopes to one day be able to reach his goal of travel- ing to Antarctica. In addition to traveling the globe, De Rosa has taught in other countries previ- ously as well. Before coming to teach at Penn State Delco, he taught at the Universidad Simon Bolivar in Caracas, Venezuela, for sixteen years. De Rosa came to Penn State in 1989, where he continued to teach Chemistry. He moved from Venezuela back to the United States because he felt the timing was right and he wanted his son to be raised in America. His love for teaching stems from the ability to tutor students and watch as they evolve into scientists. He even went as far as taking a student of his who went from Chem. 6 to graduate work in organic chemistry. De Rosa's love for chemistry dates back to before middle school. He found the subject to be the most interesting of all the sciences he came into contact with. During middle school, De Rosa began to order chemicals and equipment via the post office from a supply house stationed in New York City, New York. De Rosa first received wind of this goldmine from ads in Popular Science magazine which advertised supply ware- houses and catalogs, which he then ordered. He shares having done this with his Ph. D. advisor, Paul Haberfield, who also ordered chemicals from the same ware- houses when he was a teenager. De Rosa plans to be back in the United States mid-August after traveling to a few more places, and after fulfilling the terms of the Fulbright Scholar Award. De Rosa is still unsure where he will continue to travel, but he won't forget how he felt when he won the Fulbright Scholar Award. "I felt like jumping up and down" said De Rosa. Sorkin Honored with Poetry Award By M. Bruder Lions Eye Staff writer mab522@psu.edu Dr. Adam J. Sorkin, distinguished pro- fessor of English here at Penn State's Delaware County campus, has been award- ed the Corneliu M. Popescue Prize. The award is given biannually for poet- ry translation from a European language to English. Sorkin was awarded for his translation of Romanian poet Marin Sorescu's "The Bridge." Sorescu suffered from liver cancer and wrote "The Bridge" over the last two months of his life. The translation of the book has been dedicated to Sorescu and his wife who both died at a young age. Despite the prize being named after a Romanian translator, this is the first time in its 22 year history that it has been awarded to a translation from Romanian. Sorkin has translated 25 books and said, "all Romanian to English, I cannot go the other way, my Romanian is not good enough." This is not the first time Sorkin's "hobby" has earned him praise. He has been awarded grants from Fulbright, IREX, and the Rockefeller Foundation. He has also won the International Quarterly Crossing Boundaries Award, as well as the Keneth Rexroth Memorial Translation Prize. Sorkin was also previously nominated twice for the Weidenfield Prize, but was unable to attend because he said, "some- thing always came up." According to Sorkin, he had no expectations of winning the Corneliu M. Popescue Prize either. He said, "I went because I found a cheap tick- et.” Sorkin speaks of poetry translation with much passion. He does not agree with Robert Frost, who said, "Poetry is what is lost in translation." When it comes to trans- lation, poetry is much different than some- thing like a textbook or technical manual. Of poetry translation Sorkin said, " A trans- lator has to chose among many meanings and decide which one to convey on the main or surface of the text." Translation is not as simple as owning a Romanian to English dictionary, or as easy as tracing a cartoonist's drawings. Sorkin said, "It's co-creative or re-creative." Sorkin compared poetry translation to the work of a pianist reciting Mozart or Beethoven. He said, "You are performing the original author's work, in English." Sorkin does not see himself as a mid- dle-aged college professor. Despite his gray hair, he said, "I am actually a twenty- five year-old translator." His interest in Romanian poetry transla- tion developed almost accidentally. In 1980, as a Fulbright lecturer at Universatea din Bucuresti, (the University of Bucharest) a colleague asked for his help with a translation. That is where his passion for the art developed. Sorkin said, "I want- ed to be a poet, not a scholar." After he was involved in a protest blocking the Presidents ROTC review in 1964, Sorkin graduated from Cornell on disciplinary probation. He said, "low and behold, there was a draft going on and a Vietnam War breathing down my neck." He went on to say "one could still get educa- tion deferments." Sorkin's ideals have not changed much in the last forty years he said, "I would be damned if I was going to go to Vietnam, I opposed it, I thought it was a mistake, I still think it was a mistake, just like the present war." As for his translation day, these are not over, he said, "I translate that's what I do, it keeps me off the streets." Preacher Moss’ Racially Charged Humor Strikes Campus Funnybone By Dan Delaney Lion's Eye Staff writer drd5002@psu.edu Preacher Moss, a former writer for Saturday Night Live, gave a lecture in the Classroom building two weeks ago. Moss has been traveling across the country on his "End of Racism" tour for a little over two months. In his performance, Moss isolates and identifies cases of racism through jokes and anecdotes. "I was in Iowa for five days. There are no people of color in Iowa! I got worried and started watching CNN, he said, “I thought maybe they all disappeared!" Moss' primary occupation is as a writer. He's worked with the likes of Darryl Hammond, Chris Farley, George Lopez, and Maya Angelou. The audience varied in race. As students approached the Classroom building, others already in attendance com- manded them to watch Preacher Moss. Using dimmed lights and a lone microphone stand to keep Moss compa- ny, the lounge took on a comedy club feel. His material reflected the atmosphere. The tour's central attitude is based around Moss’ "Critical Race Theory." He doesn't think that racism is caused by the color of a person's skin: it's directly related to the relationships that person has with other people. Associations between Christian and Muslim populations have been rough for most of this decade; Moss points out that most Muslims in the United States don't all wear tra- ditional religious dress, that it is used to stereotype those who practice Islam. The majority of Muslims in our nation are African American, said Moss. Such misconceptions have affected current events. When a sniper was terrorizing the D.C. area in 2002, Moss admitted that he was the first to think the culprit was a white male. That couldn't have been further from the truth. When the gunner was caught, the public found out what he looked like, and Moss said, "Not only was he black, he was a Muslim too! I couldn't have been more wrong!" Part of the lecture diverted everyone's attention to themselves. Going from person to person, Moss asked what their cultural origins were. Stemming from the term "African American, " he told a male student near the front: "You, you're not Irish. You're Irish American." The point of this cultural test was to prove the fact that no one per- son is simply an American. "The United States is a melt- ing pot," he said. a Moss is open minded when dealing with racist groups: "My favorite hate group is the Klu Klux Klan.” he said, “They just filed bankruptcy!" Moss noted that he was very impressed with the KKK's website and described his impersonation of a white supremacist in their chat rooms. According to Moss, the most interesting part of their site was an article he found titled "Fear of a Black Man." It profiled the black male as "socially irre- sponsible" and "sexually uncontrollable." Preacher Moss admitted, "that's pretty accurate." His focus isn't on race either. All aspects of a person can be subject to his theory. His tale about a run in with a - deaf mugger purveyed the fear and confusion he felt from the situation. The attacker distortedly said, "Give me all your money!" but because of his impairment, the sentence was blurred. The robbery had to be extended as Moss could only reply with "What?!" Another topic presented was the misrepresentation of the American jail system. It's Moss’ belief that life in prison is shown as easy and essentially a vacation for young misbehaving men. "Have these kids seen [the tele- vision show] 'Oz?' They should remake that show 'Scared Straight!" Except [Bill] Cosby should host it. Inmates Say the Darndest Things." Like any of the other events here on campus, students were able to write their names on tickets to enter in the “Wheel” raffle hosted by Student Life and Chris Coia. The prize for the lucky student who gets his or her ticket picked is an iPod Nano. The overall reception of Preacher Moss was extreme- ly positive. Immediately after his closing comments, the audience gave him a standing ovation.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers