Noteworthy

School of Business Administration Professor Yvonne Antonucci has been named a Distinguished University Professor. The honor recognizes faculty of distinction and demonstrates to the broader community that Widener is committed to recognizing excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service throughout a faculty member’s career. Distinguished professors serve for three years.
 
Antonucci has made many contributions to the School of Business Administration. As a scholar, she is internationally recognized in business process management (BPM) and student learning engagement with technologies. Antonucci has contributed to the School of Business and the university community through committee participation, coordinating academic programs, curriculum development, peer mentoring, and her role as student club advisor. In addition, she has been a leader in the international SAP University Alliance. Antonucci’s scholarship, teaching, and leadership in the school have elevated SBA’s programs considerably during her career at Widener. She is an outstanding teacher, scholar, and leader both within and outside of the Widener community.

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School of Engineering Professor Mark A. Nicosia has received the Faculty Institutional Leadership Award. It recognizes a record of leading initiatives that further the university’s vision, mission, and strategic objectives.

Nicosia has championed the university’s vision through his involvement on campus.   He has served on the Faculty Council Executive Committee for the past six years—the past four years as faculty chair and two years prior as chair of the Faculty Affairs Committee. Nicosia has been a remarkable leader during the COVID-19 pandemic. While serving on the Provost Council and the Crisis Management Team, and chairing the Executive Committee of Faculty Council, he worked closely with the faculty and administration on policies and procedures that directly impacted our students. Nicosia has an exceptional ability to listen and hear concerns expressed by faculty, staff, and administrators and is intentional and thoughtful in any decision-making process. Nicosia is the ideal scholar and campus leader to elevate Widener’s institutional agility and focus on strategy. 

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College of Arts & Sciences Associate Professor Jayne M. Thompson has received the Faculty Award for Civic Engagement, which recognizes sustained outstanding contributions to Widener’s civic engagement mission through her teaching and research.

Thompson began her community engagement in the City of Chester 25 years ago and has helped numerous Widener students deepen their understanding of social responsibility and advance their critical consciousness through civic engagement. Community is a central theme in Thompson’s teaching, service activities, professional development, political and civic engagement, volunteerism, and home life. From her work with the Chester School District; Chester Made; Chester Cultural Corridor; Widener University’s service-learning, Bonner Leaders, and Periclean Faculty Leadership programs; and multiple service sites, to her role on the Mayor’s Advisory Council at Chester City Hall, Thompson’s work supports vibrant, healthy communities. Widener students have been central to her collaborations on projects and workshops in schools, prisons, juvenile detention centers, senior centers, churches, the Chester Cultural Corridor, literacy centers, and homeless shelters. Thompson exemplifies and elevates Widener’s commitment to civic engagement, and she has changed the lives of many people in vulnerable groups.

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The Pennsylvania Counseling Association (PCA), one of the largest and most active branches of the American Counseling Association, will honor Susan P. Schaming, LPC, associate professor and director of Graduate Counselor Education and Home School Visitor Programs, with its David W. Hall Advocacy Award. The honor recognizes an individual or individuals who have promoted the profession of counseling through advocacy and leadership. Schaming was appointed to a PCA anti-racism task force in 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and Black Lives Matter.  It is that work she will be recognized for when she receives the award and makes remarks at the PCA 2021 annual conference in King of Prussia on November 13. 

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Associate Professor Justin Sitron in the Center for Human Sexuality Studies was elected president-elect of the Society of Scientific Study of Sexuality. The Society of Scientific Study of Sexuality is dedicated to advancing knowledge of sexuality and communicating scientifically based sexuality research. They value human welfare and hope to reduce the ignorance and prejudice around sexuality.

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Catherine Safran, assistant professor of biology, co-authored an article in the journal Advances in Physiology Education that highlights the challenges and the successes of teaching physiology labs online during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article, Physiology labs during a pandemic: What did we learn?, proved that online networks fostered safe spaces for trust and provide support for instructors. Additionally, it showed how much of a drastic change it was for both students and faculty to adjust to learning online instead of in-person, especially for those who have to either teach or learn in a laboratory setting.

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Susan P. Schaming, associate professor and director of Graduate Counselor Education and Home School Visitor Programs, presented at the American Association of Counselor Educators and Supervisor's biennial Conference in Atlanta, GA. Her presentation titled "A multicultural course responds to racism and discrimination: An imperative for academicians and clinicians," offered a comprehensive course development plan for multiculturalism in counselor education. In addition, the tools for exploring bias and values that potentially lead to behaviors that marginalize groups, and strategies to analyze any institutional program practices that are influenced by cultural norms was discussed.

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Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor Babal Eslami, Associate Professor Kamran Fouladi, and engineering alumnus Thomas May published an article titled, “Optimization of 3D printer enclosure environment” in The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology. The article explains their study of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and experimental testing that was used to optimize 3D printing.

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A faculty-student research team published findings on the limits of microscopic research. Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor Babak Eslami and student-researcher Dylan Caputo published an article in a special issue of Advances in Surface Modification of the Materials explaining how Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) is used to measure different types of material properties, including mechanical, electrical, and chemical properties. The findings may provide an alternative way to understand how the material’s elasticity without having to physically test the theory with a hands-on experiment. As the article demonstrates, this technique used with AFM is beneficial as the technology gives scientists a way to understand the material’s properties without increasing the risk of losing important measurements to either humidity or artificial dissipations.

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Professor Lori Simons, practicum and internship coordinator of the psychology department, will give the keynote presentation at the International Conference on Education and Educational Psychology. The conference will be held remotely Oct. 6-8. 

Simon’s presentation is titled “A Developmental Approach for Infusing Career-Related Issues in an Undergraduate Psychology Curriculum: COVID-19 Impacts on Student Learning.” 

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An interdisciplinary team of faculty and alumni published a study on the properties of phenylboronic acid in water. Professor Ismail Kul, Associate Professor Krishna Bhat, Associate Professor Shirley Fischer-Drowos, chair of the chemistry department, and Alyssa Knox, a chemical engineering alumna, co-published the article in the Journal of Solution Chemistry. The study aimed to determine if acid-water solutions have directions after being exposed to different temperatures.

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Associate Dean of the College of Health and Human Services Justin Sitron and alum Li Lock '19 recently published an article, titled Sexological Worldview Development Explained by the Development Model of Intercultural Sensitivity, in the American Journal of Sexuality Education.

Sexological worldview is the lens through which someone sees and makes meaning of the sexual world around them. Their research explored whether the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) explains the stages of someone’s sexological worldview development across a continuum of dualist to relativist perspectives and ways of interacting with others who are similar or different.

Sitron, an associate professor, interviewed 30 sexuality professionals and students in the US and found that the participants’ sexological worldview development could be explained using the DMIS framework.

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The Journal of Black Studies published an article co-authored by Janelle L. West, associate dean of graduate and continuing studies, on the impact of the racial climate on Black students’ choice to attend Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The study was designed to understand to what extent, if any, did the racial climate under Donald Trump’s presidency influence Black students' choice to enroll in HBCUs. The study findings, which provided data from interviews with 80 Black students who were engaged in the college search process in 2016 to 2018, offers empirical evidence that indicate that the racial climate under President Trump played a salient role in participants’ selection of HBCUs.

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Nursing Professor Barbara Patterson, director of the nursing science PhD program, and Alumna Brenda Elliott (center and right) were among the recipients of the 2021 International Awards for Nursing Excellence from the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing (Sigma). Patterson and Elliott, along with Katie Chargualaf, received the Capstone International Nursing Book Award for their co-authored book Veteran-centered Care in Education and Practice: An Essential Guide for Nursing Faculty. The award recognizes Patterson and Elliott's collaborative research to provide nurse educators with the resources to understand the veteran experience and their  transferable skills that can contribute to the classroom, the clinical setting and within higher education. Sigma’s International Awards for Nursing Excellence are based on the society’s dedication to fostering high professional nursing standards, recognizing superior achievement, developing leadership, and encouraging creative work.

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Associate Professor of Biology Janice Krumm has been awarded nearly $500,000 from the National Science Foundation to lead and expand a national network that increases access to undergraduate research opportunities in ecology and evolution. 

Krumm secured the grant in collaboration with Associate Professor Carly Jordan at The George Washington University and curators Jean Woods and Elizabeth Shea at the Delaware Museum of Natural History.

The grant supports the expansion of the Biological Collections in Ecology and Evolution Network (BCEENET), a community of undergraduate educators, pedagogy experts, and natural history collections professionals who collaborate to support the development and implementation of Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences, or CUREs, using digitized natural history collections data.

CUREs engage undergraduates in authentic research experiences and are known to increase engagement, retention, and long-term success in undergraduates, particularly in students from underrepresented populations in STEM fields.

The courses provide educators and students opportunities to collaborate on research projects using the millions of specimen records on publicly available data portals, resulting in unique and innovative opportunities for research in ecology and evolution.

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School of Business Administration Dean and Professor of Management Anthony Wheeler co-authored a newly published book, titled "HR Without People? Industrial Evolution in the Age of Automation, AI, and Machine Learning (Future of Work)". 

Wheeler co-authored the book with M. Ronald Buckley, the JC Penney Company Chair of Business Leadership and a Professor of Management and Psychology at the University of Oklahoma.

The book traces provocative and challenging timelines for future developments in ten, thirty and fifty years' time, to interrogate how modern human resources practices need to respond to far reaching technological and industrial change. As artificial intelligence and machine learning practices grow, entire industries and jobs could become more automated or cease to exist altogether. 

Focusing on the role these technologies are playing in changing the human resources profession and how they could and should develop industry practices in the future, Wheeler and Buckley explored how this profession has a vital role in responding to these changes and how it can adapt to meet the new challenges faced by both employers and employees.

The book is available on Amazon.

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The Journal of Solution Chemistry recently published an article, titled "Volumetric and Acoustic Properties of Phenylboronic Acid in Water at Selected Temperatures", by Professor Ismail Kul, Associate Professors Krishna Bhat and Shirley G. Fischer-Drowos, and alum Alyssa Knox. 

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The Journal of Solution Chemistry recently published an article, titled "Volumetric and Acoustic Properties of Trans-Resveratrol in Ethanol", by Professors Ismail Kul and Alexis Nagengast, Associate Professor Krishna Bhat, and alumna Julianne Azarewicz '13.

The article states that several thermodynamic parameters for trans-resveratrol have been experimentally determined or calculated at different temperatures. The capability of trans-resveratrol to have strong solute–solvent interactions and weak solute–solute interactions in ethanol solution has been demonstrated using density and speed of sound data. Furthermore, its ability to have structure breaking tendencies and the absence of caging effects are shown. The results of this investigation are consistent with molecular model images generated using Spartan 04 modeling.

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Widener University professors in the Center for Education’s Community Engaged Teacher Education (CETE) program collaborated to write Chapter 4 Shared Power in Teacher Preparation: University, School, and Community in a recently published book, titled The Power of Community-Engaged Teacher Preparation. 
 
The chapter was written by Professor Nadine McHenry, who coordinates the CETE program, as well as Director of the Widener Child Development Center Essence Allen-Presley, Associate Professor Bretton Alvaré, retired Stetser Elementary Principal Janet Baldwin, alumna Rev. Hilda Campbell, and alumna Taylor Borgstrom.
 
The book focuses on how and why community-engaged teacher preparation is a vital approach to address an educational system that his historically deficient, discriminatory, and inequitable.

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The National Science Foundation (NSF) has renewed its support of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) with a $17 million grant over 5 years to operate the NANOGrav Physics Frontiers Center. Dr. Paul Baker, an assistant professor of physics at Widener University, is partially funded by this award as a member of NANOGrav.

The NANOGrav Physics Frontiers Center will address a transformational challenge in astrophysics: the detection and characterization of low-frequency gravitational waves. The most promising sources of low-frequency gravitational waves are supermassive binary black holes that form via the mergers of massive galaxies. 

NANOGrav was founded in 2007 and is now a highly-distributed collaboration with around 200 students and scientists at about 40 institutions around the world. Dr. Baker has been a member of NANOGrav since 2016.

For more information, visit NANOGrav’s website at: https://nanograv.org/

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