Faculty Focus-February 10, 2026
Faculty members put their knowledge into action so students and others are able to benefit from it. Recently, faculty published in prestigious journals and were cited in international media.
Ed Harcourt and Alan Lockard
Charles A. Dana Professor of Computer Science Ed Harcourt and Instructor of Practice in Economics Alan Lockard published a paper together in the current issue of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics.
The paper, titled “A Note on Modeling Prejudice,” discusses a computer simulation they ran where agents of one of two groups with defined strategies are randomly matched against each other, where the agents either cooperate with or defect against the agent they are matched with.
The study found that even though agents are initially inclined to give members of another group the benefit of the doubt when interacting with them, the introduction of very minor levels of defection, real or perceived, can lead to universal defection against members of the other group.
Ivan Ramler
Jack and Sylvia Burry Associate Professor of Statistics Ivan Ramler was recently featured again in The New York Times Learning Network’s “What’s Going On in This Graph?”
Ramler wrote a “Reveal & Reflect” for an article about insurance companies that are dropping more homeowners each year as climate-related risks rise. Launched in 2017 as a collaboration between The New York Times Learning Network and the American Statistical Association, “What’s Going On in This Graph?” has become a widely used classroom resource for teaching data literacy. Aimed at high school students, each week the feature presents a real data visualization from the Times and asks students to notice, wonder, and discuss what story the graph tells.
To date, the project has generated more than 50,000 student responses on its public forum and continues to attract participation from educators and students across disciplines and around the world.
Ramler’s other current interests and projects involve building statistics and data science educational materials using sports data, applications to the environment and ecology, as well as in esports analytics—the statistical analyses of competitive video games.
Howard Eissenstat
Laurentian Associate Professor of History Howard Eissenstat was quoted in an article in the Spanish paper el Diario on Turkish-Kurdish negotiations in the wake of defeats of Kurdish forces in northern Syria.
Eissenstat was also interviewed for an article on US-Turkish relations for the Viennese newspaper Die Presse.
Eissenstat's research focuses on the intersection of nationalism, religious identity, and policy in the Turkish Republic. His recent work has focused increasingly on contemporary Turkish domestic and foreign policy, especially on issues of rule-of-law, minority rights, and the reshaping of political culture under the AKP.
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St. Lawrence’s Faculty Focus is a regular roundup of noteworthy faculty news.
