Noteworthy

Widener University President Julie E. Wollman discusses her presentation to the institution's President's Council, "The Changing Landscape of Higher Education."

The President's Council is the university's premier giving association, made up of alumni, parents friends, faculty, and staff. At a November gathering of the group, Dr. Wollman engaged members in a discussion regarding the challenges facing higher education, their impact on Widener, and the university's strategy for future success.

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Seven nursing faculty and two nursing PhD alumni are published in the October/December 2019 issue of Nursing Forum, a peer-reviewed journal that aims to explore, explicate or report issues, ideas, trends and innovations that shape the nursing profession. As the largest number of Widener faculty and alumni represented in a single journal at one time, the research topics range from high stakes testing, the role of nurses on governing boards, student veterans in nursing education, and the impact of table top exercises.

Angélique Gravely, a master of education student, was selected to be the 2019-2020 Frankel Adair Scholar by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania (ACLU-PA). The scholarship provides $1,500 in support of post-secondary education to an LGBQ&T student residing in the greater Philadelphia area.

Several students in adjunct English and writing professor Tamara Oakman’s ENGL 102 and 116 course had poems accepted in Moonstone Arts Center’s New Voices program for emerging poets under the age of 25. The program creates a platform for young poets by welcoming them into a larger Philadelphia poetry collaborative and giving them the opportunity to share their work with a wide audience. The published students include Alyssa Barlow, Richard Bearden III, Taylor Berkheimer, Emily Caruso, Emily DeLuca, Noah Gabay, Lazaros Gouvas, Kentz Gustave, Sara Khalil, Mitchell Mackesy, Aimee Schwartz and Jaime Zima. Caruso and Schwartz read their poetry at a related event on Nov. 17.

Annalisa Castaldo, an associate professor of English, participated in the Blackfriars Conference Staging Sessions at the American Shakespeare Center, where her pitch to have the company perform Thomas Kyd's "The Spanish Tragedy" was selected for future production.

Janine Utell, professor and chair of English, recently wrote a book "Literary Couples and 20th-Century Life Writing," which was published by Bloomsbury. Exposing how modernist and late-modernist writers tell the stories of their intimate relationships though life writing, the book engages with the process by which these authors become subjects to a significant other, a change that subsequently becomes narrative within their works. Looking specifically at partners in a couple, Utell focuses on such literary pairings as Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland, Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, and Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.

Four freshmen who wrote exceptional essays were among 100 people awarded $1,000 scholarships in a nationwide essay contest. The SAGE Scholars organization designed the awards to serve as “gap scholarships,” with the goal of helping to fill the gap between financial aid and what families contribute to a student’s education. Recipients included: Jacqueline McPeak, Olivia Swearingen, C. Robert Rice III, and Damoni Cooper. Their distinguished work stood apart from students all over the country, who wrote on topics like overcoming academic challenges, preparing for the college process, and what they plan to do after graduation.

Students and advisors from around the country came to Widener University for the eighth annual Forum for Undergraduate Student Editors Conference (FUSE) held Nov. 7-9. Highlights included a moving keynote performance and story slam workshop by Nimisha Ladva, an open mic hosted by senior English major Miranda Miller, and a journal showcase featuring Widener Ink, the university's in-house literary journal, and The Blue Route, the university's international online journal of undergraduate writing. Widener students were featured presenters for two sessions. Megan Corkery (English and creative writing), Kira Smith (creative writing and psychology), Mason Sontag (English and creative writing), and Ty Swinehart (English) led a collaborative workshop, and Widener Ink co-editors Sarah De Kok (English and creative writing) and Miller presented on their collaborations and work.

Stephanie Schechner, a professor of French, has translated to English the French novel "Camille in October." The novel by Mireille Best focuses on Camille as she struggles to figure out who she is and where she fits in the world of her coastal working-class neighborhood in 1950s France. The book was published by Seagull Books and was the first to make the publisher's Pride List, a series of books by LGBTQ authors. The book was distributed by University of Chicago Press.

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Itzick Vatnick, professor of biology, environmental science and sustainability, and biochemistry; Louise Liable-Sands, associate professor of chemistry; Meghan Klems, assistant professor of chemistry; and Amy Yarlett, director of exploratory studies, presented at the Association of American Colleges and Universities STEM Conference in Chicago, Illinois on Nov. 8. They presented "A Multidisciplinary Faculty and Professional Staff Learning Community to Support Retention."

Christine Woody, an assistant professor of English, gave a talk at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia. The lecture "A Prehistory of Oversharing: The Romantic Magazine as Social Media" explored the dynamics and authorial practices of pseudonymous magazine authors in late-Romantic Britain.

Project Pericles announced that Assistant Professor of History Jordan Smith was selected for the first cohort of faculty members for the Mellon Periclean Faculty Leadership Program in the Humanities. As a Periclean Faculty Leader, he joins a community of scholars, including Widener Associate Professors Marina Barnett and Bretton Alvaré, dedicated to incorporating civic engagement into the curriculum. This $4,000 grant will help with the development of the Fall 2020 course "HIST 388: Practices in Public History: History and Memory in Chester" that combines past experiences in the field of public history with more recent interests revolving around history and memory in Chester.

English Professor Mark Graybill published "Anxiety, Aestheticism, and Asceticism in the Fifties: Danger on the Postwar Home Front in Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood and Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter" in the Studies in American Culture's October 2019 issue.

Patricia Dyer, a professor and director of the Writing Center, Jayne Thompson, an assistant teaching professor of English, and Ruth Cary, an adjunct professor of English, presented at the annual conference of the Coalition for Community Writing in Philadelphia in October.

Yvonne Antonucci, a professor in the School of Business Administration, co-authored an article "Developing a Framework to Understand Student Engagement, Team Dynamics, and Learning Outcomes Using ERPsim" in the Spring 2019 issue of the Journal of Information Systems Education. This research developed and tested a model to examine the relationship between the use of ERPsim and learning outcomes, an area where little if any research previously existed. The study results indicated a positive association between student engagement, team dynamics, and learning outcomes.

Bob Wellmon, professor in the Institute for Physical Therapy Education, was recognized as a leader in the field with the Neurology Special Interest Group (SGI) Award from the Pennsylvania Physical Therapy Association (PPTA). Presented at the 2019 PPTA conference, Professor Wellmon earned this distinguished award for his significant and meaningful contributions to the field of physical therapy.

Assistant Professor Cathleen Evans, Professor Mary Baumberger-Henry, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Associate Professor Rose Schwartz published a study in the journal Nurse Educator that demonstrated the transfer of learning that takes place among nursing students during disaster scenario tabletop exercises.

Widener celebrated the opening of the Collaborative Learning Space (CLS) in the HAL lab at Academic Center North with a ribbon cutting ceremony. This fully collaborative classroom promotes technological integration for a student-focused environment. New accommodations include a mobile podium, flexible-use pods with group displays and rolling chairs, and multiple whiteboards and glass boards.

Nancy Laplante, director of the RN-to-BSN and RN-to-MSN program, served as chairperson on a task force to publish the American Holistic Nurses Association's (AHNA) newly revised "Holistic Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice 3rd Edition."

Stephanie Schechner, professor of French, has been elected to join the Board of Directors for the French American Chamber of Commerce - Philadelphia, an organization that fosters a thriving economic relationship between the U.S and France and welcomes and supports French businesses, entrepreneurs and professionals in the region. Directors are elected to serve a two-year term and represent all sectors of the business community.