College of Arts & Sciences News: Summer/Early Fall 2020 MCWI Receives Donations, Faculty Publish, and Student Wins Debate Competition

Shenandoah’s McCormick Civil War Institute (MCWI) has received a substantial collection of letters from Civil War soldiers in the 9th New York Heavy Artillery. Over the course of the next several months, students in a Civil War course taught by MCWI Director Jonathan Noyalas ’01, M.A., will work on transcribing these letters, which are now permanently housed in the Al MacLeod 9th New York Heavy Artillery Collection at MCWI. 

Students in Noyalas’ spring Interpreting Civil War Sites course scripted an orientation film about the history of the Shenandoah River Campus at Cool Spring Battlefield. The narration for this eight-minute film was completed over the summer. The film covers discussions of the Retreat, Judge Richard Parker, the reactions of enslaved people at the Retreat to John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, the importance of Snickers Gap, and the Battle of Cool Spring. 

Noyalas’ book, “Slavery and Freedom in the Shenandoah Valley During the Civil War Era,” will be published in April 2021, by the University Press of Florida. 

Graduate education students gave over 1,500 books to students at Garland R. Quarles Elementary in Winchester, Virginia, in July. They held a book giveaway and drive-by book pickup, sponsored by the Claude Moore Charitable Foundation and the Nora Roberts Foundation. 

On Oct. 3, the Shenandoah University Debate Team competed in the University of Dayton’s virtual Fall Flyer Debate Tournament. In a field of 20, Shenandoah junior Rebecca Sims (double majoring in media and communication and political science) fought her way to the finals with a 4-0 record, and earned the tournament’s top speaker award. 

“Intergenerational and Impactful: Integrating Service-Learning in Aging-Related Undergraduate Psychology Courses,” an article co-written by Professor of Psychology Scott King, Ph.D., has been published in “High Impact Educational Practices: A Review of Best Practices with Illustrative Examples,” produced by the Society for the Teaching of Psychology. If you’re interested in purchasing the e-book or learning more, visit http://teachpsych.org/ebooks/highimpacted.

Assistant Dean for Student Success in the College of Arts & Sciences and Associate Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science Jessica OShaughnessy, Ph.D., served as guest editor for a special issue of the journal PRIMUS (Problems, Resources, and Issues in Mathematics Undergraduate Studies)  and co-wrote the issue’s introduction, “Implementing Mastery Grading in the Undergraduate Mathematics Classroom.” Check it out at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10511970.2020.1778824.