The College of Arts & Sciences welcomed new full-time faculty members this semester: Assistant Professor of Mass Communication Glenn Østen Anderson, M.St., M.F.A.; Film Studies Lecturer Paul DiFranco; English Lecturer Kathryn “Katie” Enders, M.A.,; Assistant Professor of Exercise Science Christopher Harnish, Ph.D.; Assistant Professor of Biology Danny LeBert, Ph.D.; Biology Lecturer Laurel Nida, M.S.; Biology Lecturer Kimberlee Riordan, M.S.; and Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics Kevin Sinclair (Ph.D. in progress).
Professor of Environmental Studies and Biology Woodward S. Bousquet, Ph.D., saw his article, “Floristics of the Abrams Creek Wetlands, a Calcareous Fen Complex in Winchester City and Frederick County, Virginia,” appear in the September 2017 issue of Castanea, the Journal of the Southern Appalachian Botanical Society. Co-authored with Gary Fleming, vegetation ecologist for the Virginia Natural Heritage Program, the article represents two decades of research in collaboration with undergraduates in Shenandoah University’s biology and environmental studies programs. In July, Dr. Bousquet and two recent Shenandoah graduates deposited more than 300 plant specimens from the study in George Mason University’s Ted R. Bradley Herbarium to document their findings. Undergraduate junior Madison Mackintosh ’19, an environmental studies junior from Berryville, Virginia, assisted Bousquet in labeling the specimens.
The natural sciences at Shenandoah University were well-represented at the May 2017 Annual Meeting of the Virginia Academy of Science (VAS) held in Richmond. Presenting their research to the VAS Botany Section were Bousquet and Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Geography Joshua Kincaid, Ph.D. Dr. Kincaid discussed the Shenandoah Valley’s northern white cedar forests, while Bousquet described the Environmental Studies Program’s 20 years of research into the Abrams Creek Wetlands in Winchester City and Frederick County. Kincaid was elected vice-chair of the Botany Section. Bousquet completed his term as Botany Section chair and was elected President-elect of the VAS.
Accompanying Kincaid and Bousquet were two May 2016 environmental studies graduates, who each earned Best Student Presentation Awards (graduate or undergraduate) in Environmental Science. Courtney Bridges described studies of water quality in streams that cross Shenandoah University’s River Campus at Cool Spring Battlefield. That research was undertaken last year by eight students in the university’s Environmental Sampling and Analysis (ES 421) class. Stephen Storrs summarized several investigations of water quality in Cedar Creek, a tributary to the North Fork of the Shenandoah River. Cedar Creek provides much of the northern valley’s drinking water.
Film Studies Lecturer Paul DiFranco brought a co-production deal with veteran film producers Capital Arts Entertainment to Shenandoah. Production began this fall on the collaborative effort’s first feature film, “Santa Girl,” a charming Christmas story about Santa’s daughter attending university. The Blayne Weaver-directed film stars Barry Bostwick (“Spin City,” “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” original Broadway cast of “Grease”), Jennifer Stone (“Wizards of Waverly Place”) and Devon Werkheiser (“Ned’s Declassified”). Students in DiFranco’s film classes and students from Shenandoah Conservatory’s acting and stage management programs are working as the film’s crew and cast, gaining valuable real-world film production experience. The film is currently shooting on campus and in Winchester, is set to go into post production in spring 2018 and move into distribution in fall 2018. Read more about “Santa Girl” on Shenandoah website at su.edu/santagirl.
Assistant Professor of Mass Communication Glenn Østen Anderson, M.St., M.F.A., has been selected as a fellow for CUNY’s Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism Fellowship for Disruptive Educators. As part of the fellowship, Glenn attended the Online News Association conference in Washington, D.C., in October and is preparing a project looking at the power and potential of observational video in news reporting.
Associate Professor of Biology Laurel Rodgers, Ph.D., attended the NE-1333 American Chestnut Research Conference in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, in September. She presented her current research exploring the microbiomes within the American chestnut.
McCormick Civil War Institute Director Jonathan Noyalas ’01, M.A., had an essay, “They Come Not with Fire and Sword”: Sheridan’s New England Veterans and the Opening Campaign of Remembrance and Reconciliation in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, appear in The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife’s special journal Beyond the Battlefield: New England and the Civil War.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Casey Eriksen, Ph.D., is serving as a Faculty Technology Fellow and recently collaborated with other faculty members to develop technology-enhanced cultural platforms. Eriksen’s ongoing project, “Place, Travel, and Cultural Studies in the Contemporary Spanish Language Classroom,” has allowed him to incorporate virtual reality technologies (3D cityscapes, landscapes, and points of cultural interest) into his fall courses. Dr. Eriksen’s article, “Boscán, Ana Girón, and Early Authorial Interventions surrounding the Poetry of Garcilaso de la Vega,” is appearing in “Material Poetry,” a monograph published by Calíope: The Journal of the Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry. Eriksen has also completed archival research and writing in Madrid and Barcelona at the Biblioteca Nacional de España and Biblioteca de Catalunya and worked toward the completion of a book-length monograph on visual cultures and cosmopolitanism in early modern Europe.
Assistant Professor of Political Science Michael Romano, Ph.D., attended the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco and presented a paper, “Maintaining Collegiality and Accommodating for Dissent on State Supreme Courts.” The paper develops a theory of the cognitive impact that dissensus has on the crafting of majority opinions in state supreme courts. Dr. Romano finds that dissents have a unique impact on the writing of the majority opinion, and often cause the majority opinion to accommodate for a differences in opinion, while still attempting to strongly reject the dissents’ arguments. Romano also had work accepted for publication by Social Science Quarterly. The work, “Legislators Off Their Leash: Cognitive Shirking and Impending Retirement in the U.S. House” examines the influence of impending retirement on congressional rhetoric. Romano published a piece about the topic as a Washington Post blog in November.
Assistant Professor of Exercise Science Chris Harnish, Ph.D., recently published “The Effects of Two Weeks of Arm Crank Sprint Interval Training in Men with Chronic Spinal Cord Injury” in the International Journal of Sports and Exercise Medicine. The paper examines whether sprint interval training using just the upper extremities can be an effective means for improving health and fitness indices among paralyzed individuals. While Dr. Harnish and colleagues failed to show improvement in health indices, they did show significant improvements in key fitness markers. Harnish also attended the American College of Sports Medicine’s annual meeting where he co-authored three conference papers, two of which were presented by his students.
Assistant Professor of Religion Kevin Minister, Ph.D., was awarded a fellowship grant for his project on “Teaching Religious Studies to Pre-Professional Students,” for the 2017-2018 academic year from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. This fellowship grant will fund Dr. Minister’s research, course design, and implementation of best practices for teaching religious studies to pre-professional students in his context at Shenandoah University with implication for a broader understanding of the practice of teaching religious studies in a professionalized academy. He was also selected as a participant in the Teaching Workshop for Early Career Religion Faculty at Colleges and Universities that met at the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion during the third week of June. He helped facilitate workshops on “Embodied Learning” and “Subversive Pedagogy.”
Professor of Art History and Art Geraldine Wojno Kiefer, Ph.D., had a work accepted into the Bower Center for the Arts 5th Annual National Juried Exhibition, in Bedford, Virginia, in July and August. Concurrently her traveling exhibition, “Iceland/Islandia: Mapping and Writing the Far North (Icelandic and Archipelagic Encounters),” was shown at the St. John’s Episcopal Church Gallery in Lynchburg, Virginia. She was one of four artists invited to exhibit in “Cartography,” the August exhibition at the Gray Gallery in Winchester.
Professor of Hispanic Studies Bryan Pearce-Gonzales, Ph.D., was recently promoted to the rank of full professor in the Department of Languages and Cultural Studies. Dr. Pearce-Gonzales has also recently accepted invitations to be a reviewer for two prestigious academic journals in the field of Hispanic Studies – the Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference Review and Label Me Latina/o.
Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Adela Borrallo-Solís, Ph.D., attended the XX Congreso Internacional de literatura y estudios hispánicos that took place in Santiago de Compostela (Spain) in June. At the conference, she gave a presentation titled, “Observaciones sobre la conexión entre la risa y figura femenina en Mesonero Romanos: ‘El caso de La mujer risueña.’”
Visiting Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Arnaldo Robles Reyes, Ph.D., completed his certification in postsecondary literacy instruction and his paper, “Bilinguals’ Incomplete Acquisition and its Effects on Literacy Skills Today,” was accepted for presentation at the 67th Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference in October. He also received the Fund for Excellence in Teaching Grant given by the College of Arts & Sciences.
Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies Andrea Meador Smith, Ph.D., had two articles accepted during her sabbatical in Spring 2017. “Savages and Saviors in Icíar Bollaín’s También la lluvia” is being published in the prestigious Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas, and “Monstrously Barren: The Horror of the Childless Mother in Peruvian Thriller ‘El vientre’” appears in Mise-en-scène: The Journal of Film & Visual Narration. Thanks to funding from the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges Mednick Memorial Fellowship, Smith recently traveled to Lima, Peru, where she conducted research and attended the Lima Film Festival.
Associate Professor of Mathematics Jessica OShaughnessy, Ph.D., co-presented a four hour mini-course at the Mathematical Association of America’s Mathfest in July. The mini-course, “Beyond Traditional Grading Schemes: Mastery Grading” taught other mathematics faculty from around the country how to implement mastery grading in their own courses.
Professor of Religion Barry Penn Hollar, Ph.D., presented “Teaching Biomedical Ethics in a Hybrid Format” at the Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference at Bryn Mawr College in May. His presentation described the differences between his hybrid and traditional biomedical ethics courses, shared insights about the production of online lecture presentations, and compared student learning data between hybrid and traditional sections.
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Sociology Teresa May, Ph.D., went to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in May to work with teachers there on a unique Lakota Language Immersion Program for children and their parents, directed by the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation. There are very few Lakota language speakers left and most are over the age of 70. So, an assertive attempt is being made to preserve this native language. May and the others taught the ‘Orton-Gillingham’ method of language acquisition, and the teachers converted the principles into the teaching of the Lakota language.
Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Mathematics Cindia Stewart, Ph.D., saw her review of “Visual-spatial Ability in STEM Education: Transforming Research into Practice,” published by the Mathematical Association of America. The majority of standardized tests administered at the K-12 level, as well as SAT and ACT, do not include a spatial measure. The result is spatially adept students go unidentified and their talent is unlikely to be fully developed.
Professor of History Warren Hofstra, Ph.D., participated in the Mount Vernon Teacher Institute in July, with a presentation on “George Washington and the West.” He argued that Washington’s youthful experiences as a surveyor and military commander in and around the Shenandoah Valley and among people—Native Americans, Germans, Scots-Irish—very different from himself, but whose welfare was his responsibility, taught him political lessons that would serve him well during the Revolution and presidency. Educators can make good use of his example today.
Professor of History Julie A. Hofmann, Ph.D., organized a panel and presented a paper for the Academic Track at the 75th World Science Fiction Convention in Helsinki, Finland. Following the track’s theme of “100 Years of Estrangement,” Dr. Hofmann brought together scholars from Australia, the United Kingdom and the USA to discuss “‘Medieval’ Religion in Speculative Fiction.” The participants addressed the ways that speculative fiction authors use and interpret the Middle Ages, often strengthening popular misconceptions that play a significant role in current political culture. Hofmann’s contribution to the panel, “Through a Past Darkly: Modern Views of ‘Medieval’ Religion in Science Fiction and Fantasy,” pointed out the ways speculative fiction authors often rely on the Renaissance invention of the “Dark Ages”, which was popularized in the Long Nineteenth Century, and has contributed to nationalist ideologies up to the present. Additionally, Hofmann reviewed a monograph for the Royal Studies Society, and chaired a panel on “Online Databases and Prosopographical Research,” sponsored by the journal Medieval Prosopography, at the International Medieval Congress at Leeds (UK) in July.