Noteworthy

Julie Heydeman was among the young local leaders named to Main Line Today’s 30 Under 30 list for her role as program coordinator of Widener’s inclusive higher education program. The first-of-its-kind program at Widener is designed for students with intellectual disabilities to take classes, interact socially and build on resume skills to advance their careers. Heydeman, a two-time Widener graduate, spearheaded and secured funding to launch the program in 2018 while finishing her undergraduate degree.

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Project Pericles announced that Assistant Teaching Professor of English Jayne Thompson was selected for the second cohort of faculty members for the Mellon Periclean Faculty Leadership Program in the Humanities. As a Periclean Faculty Leader, she joins a community of scholars, including Associate Professors Marina Barnett and Bretton Alvaré and Assistant Professor Jordan Smith, dedicated to incorporating civic engagement into the curriculum while empowering students to use their academic knowledge to tackle real-world problems.

The $4,000 grant will help with the development of the Fall 2021 Community Literacy and Social Justice course focused on putting writing center theory and pedagogy to work in establishing sustainable writing centers across the community, the first at State Correctional Institution at Chester, and each with the signature feature of collaborative student leadership of writing workshops and the editing and publishing of writing emerging from those workshops.

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Associate Professor Sabitha Pillai-Friedman has received the 2020 Distinguished Service Award, and Tanya Bass, a doctoral student in the Center for Human Sexuality Studies, has received the 2020 Sexuality Educator Award from the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT) Award.

Pillai-Friedman's award is presented to an AASECT member who has worked to promote the mission of AASECT, advocating for sexual health through the development and advancement of sexuality education, counseling or therapy. Bass' award recognizes an individual who have made long-standing contributions, outstanding achievements, or otherwise had a major impact in one or more areas of sexuality education. They will receive the awards during the AASECT Virtual Summit on June 5.

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Loraine Hopkins Pepe, a graduate of the nurse science doctoral program, was named a Fellow in The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the oldest medical institution of its kind in the United States, for her scholarship in quality and safety education in nursing. Hopkins Pepe currently works as network director for Nursing Education and Professional Development at Einstein Healthcare Network.

Widener University President Julie E. Wollman presented the William David Eckard Jr. Award for Distinguished Service to Mary Ellen Ferkler, an academic secretary in the School of Human Service Profession’s Center of Social Work Education, and Martin “Marty” Schultz, a support scientist in the Science Division of the College of Arts & Sciences. This annual award was established by William David Eckard III, former long-time vice president of administration and finance at Widener and a 1966 graduate of Pennsylvania Military College, in memory of his father.

Ferkler has provided outstanding service to Widener students and employees since she arrived on campus in 2008. Schultz, who has worked full time at Widener since 1987, is known for being a large part of why Widener’s science programs offer a rich educational experience to students.

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Assistant Professor Danielle Durant co-authored an article, titled "Adoption of electronic hand hygiene monitoring systems in New York state hospitals and the associated impact on hospital-acquired C. difficile infection rates," with the Healthcare Association of New York State's Quality, Advocacy and Research Initiatives division. The piece, published in the American Journal of Infection Control, found that the proliferation of electronic hand hygiene monitoring systems is low in New York State acute care hospitals and its impact on hand hygiene compliance and infection rates is questionable. Putting technology aside, strong hand hygiene culture seems essential for high compliance.

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Darrell Spurlock, Jr., professor and director of the Leadership Center for Nursing Education Research, published an article in the Journal of Nursing Education. The article outlined the looming challenges caused by COVID-19 in how nurse researchers, who rely significantly on physical interaction to reach findings, continue to generate knowledge in the midst of temporary yet extended circumstances of social distancing.

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Associate Professor of Biology Katherine Goodrich, who is also the Cynthia H. Sarnoski Science Faculty Fellow, presented a lecture at the Harvard University Herbaria Seminar Series on March 10. The invited lecture, "Flowers, flies, and fermentation: floral mimicry and pollination ecology of pawpaw," focused on Goodrich's research on the pollination of the pawpaw, a tree native to United States and Canada that smells of fermenting fruit to attract fruit-loving flies for pollination.

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Dawn Gulick, professor of graduate physical therapy, was awarded $50,000 in equity investment from Ben Franklin Technology Partners to advance the development of her invention, The Mobil-Aider. FDA-approved and patent-pending, The Mobil-Aider was developed by Professor Gulick to quantify joint mobility in musculoskeletal injuries. This most recent investment is in addition to two grants, Phase I and Phase II, awarded to Professor Gulick from the National Science Foundation. 

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A group of nine staff members provided a home cooked meal to families at the Ronald McDonald House of Delaware on Feb. 14. The Ronald McDonald House provides a "home-away-from-home" for families of children seeking medical treatment at local hospitals. The volunteers included Mary Aruffo (Registrar's Office), Maureen McKellar (Financial Aid), Stefanie Shepherd (Financial Aid), Colleen (Financial Aid), Trudy Depew (Social Science), Carol Smith (Bursar's Office), RoseAnne Kalodner (Purchasing), Aimee Guzowski (Center for Education), and Michelle Keller (Mechanical Engineering).

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Professor Barbara Patterson has been named editor of the National League for Nursing’s peer-reviewed journal Nursing Education Perspectives. This accomplishment comes after years of experience with the publication in various capacities, including most recently as editor of the Research Briefs section. As editor, Dr. Patterson will lead the journal toward its mission of advancing nursing education through meaningful scholarship that informs the next generation of nursing professionals, educators, and leaders.

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Widener University's Center for Human Sexuality Studies and Delta State University co-hosted the 'Delta Focus Conference 2020: A Spotlight on Sexual Health' from Feb. 6 - 8 in Cleveland, Mississippi. The grassroots conference was supported by ViiV Healthcare's Accelerate Initiative and gave the community an opportunity to consider and gain insight on topics affecting the sexual health of people in the Mississippi Delta and surrounding areas. The conference sought to expand the skills and awareness of community health professionals through interactive workshops, thematic plenaries, and community listening sessions. Conference presenters from Widener included Javontae Lee Williams, who was conference co-chair and is an applied research scientist at Widener's Interdisciplinary Sexuality Research Collaborative.

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Kayla Van Osten, affiliate librarian and assistant archivist, published an article in the Pennsylvania Library Association's College and Research Division blog. In the post, Van Osten explored her role as an instruction librarian and examined "How does an instruction librarian without any instruction training teach an engaging information literacy lesson?" The article explains the inspiration behind the Mystery at the Library freshmen orientation event from August 2019 and how she used this to create a digital scavenger hunt in Canvas that will hopefully be used in future instructional classes.  

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Assistant Librarian Susan Tsiouris led a presentation on "Mindfulness at Your Library: How to De-stress During Finals" at Healthy Habits, a national online conference designed to cultivate a culture of health and wellness in libraries and communities. The presentation detailed Tsiouris's work to organize mindfulness sessions for students as well as other de-stressing events during finals. The project's mission was to teach students about mindfulness, how to engage during stressful periods, and ways to reduce stress.

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Dr. Catherine Kirn-Safran, an assistant teaching professor of biology, has recently co-authored two peer-reviewed research articles. One article, titled "Perlecan/Hspg2 deficiency impairs bone's calcium signaling and associated transcriptome in response to mechanical loading," was published in the February 2020 issue of Bone. The other article, titled "Trabecular Bone Deficit and Enhanced Anabolic Response to Re-Ambulation after Disuse in Perlecan-Deficient Skeleton," was published in Biomolecules in January 2020.

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Dr. Jordan Smith, assistant professor of history, has been awarded a prestigious $20,000 National Endowment for the Humanities Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Library Company of Philadelphia. The nationally competitive, semester-long fellowship will support him as he writes the final chapter of his book “The Invention of Rum” based on his research into the invention and production of rum in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British Atlantic world.

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Widener awarded Professor of English Janine Utell and Librarian Molly Wolf a Faculty Development Grant for a Human Sexuality Archives project entitled “Early 20th-Century Sexuality and Culture: A Guide to the Archive.” A continuation of a Summer Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity (SURCA) project led by an undergraduate student research assistant, the goal is to create a digital resource to be housed on the library website page for the Human Sexuality Archives and available to researchers interested in early 20th-century cultures and texts of sexuality and sexology. As there is a wealth of material in this area available in the Human Sexuality Archives the aim is to make this material discoverable and usable to other researchers through an annotated guide focusing on early 20th-century memoirs, marriage and hygiene manuals, and other sexological texts.

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Assistant Professor Claudia Guerrazzi was recently published in the Journal of Biomedical Informatics. Her work is entitled "Health information exchange: What matters at the organizational level?"

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Research by Dr. Anita Singh, associate professor and interim chair of biomedical engineering, was chosen as an Editors' Choice for the 2019 American Society of Mechanical Engineers' Journal of Biomechanical Engineering (JBME). The paper, “Efficacy of Clinical Simulation Based Training in Biomedical Engineering Education,” was one of only 10 papers chosen out of over 100 that appeared in the journal. Selected by the journal's editorial board, Dr. Singh's work exemplifies the high quality and significance of work that is featured in the JBME. 

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Assistant Professor of Marketing Dan Li was featured in a video for the SAGE Research Methods Video Collection on Market Research Methods. The video focuses on her research on consumer happiness using experimental design and was filmed at the Winter American Marketing Association conference.

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