Faculty Research Interests

I identify as an educator, a sexologist, and an interculturalist. As such, my research agenda is focused on combining these professional identities. As an educator, my interest lies in the development of curricula, interventions, and in the evaluation of sexuality education in communities, schools, and professional settings. 

As a sexologist, I am incredibly interested in the implications of sexual diversity on professionals' practice, whether they are working as educators, counselors/therapists, or researchers. As an interculturalist, I am interested in exploring the role that intersecting cultures play in the provision of service to individuals and groups that are culturally different from that of the provider. Each of these interests combines with the others throughout my research agenda. The focus of my scholarship is the measurement of the guided development of dispositions and skills in sexologists that reflect culturally sensitive practice that is responsive to sexological diversity. Sexological diversity is a term that references all aspects of human sexuality and their many iterations and facets, the variety of sexual expression, identities, and the many ways they manifest in individuals, societies, and cultures or subcultures. Historically, scholars have struggled to measure professional training designed to develop sensitivity to this diversity. I am working to define, develop, and understand sexological worldview, a construct that explains people's varied perspectives on human sexuality that is informed by their life experience, socialization, and cultural background. 

In addition, I am moving toward publishing and presenting further on the construct's use in approaches to education and training. Until now, the Intercultural Development Continuum (Hammer et al., 2003) and the related Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) have been used to inform and evaluate training that is done with human service professionals to develop intercultural skills and dispositions. I have developed several learning activities, assignments, and other ways to engage students in the development of a sexological worldview that is interculturally sensitive.

Broadly speaking, I am interested in researching the topics of psychodynamic psychotherapy, culture, and relationships. For the last few years my work has focused primarily on the study of an applied psychology of religion and spirituality. I am interested in the integration of religion and spirituality into psychoanalytic theory, psychotherapy, and professional training. I also enjoy partnering with students to better understand the psychological experiences of marginalized groups, such as gay black men, individuals diagnosed with stigmatizing mental illness, and transgender clients seeking gender confirmation surgery.

• Aging
• Equity
• Nursing health services research
• Home and community-based care
• Social Determinants of Health

I am primarily interested in how people from Africa, the Americas, and Europe created a new world for all in the centuries following Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. 

My first book, The Invention of Rum: Creating the Quintessential Atlantic Commodity, will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in September 2025. I am now studying how familial, financial, and political considerations intersected in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. By studying the lives of several generations of the influential Martin family, “Antigua at the Center of the World: The Martin Family and a Violent Atlantic,” will offer new insights into the very personal decisions that shaped the culture and politics of Britain’s empire.

Since coming to Widener, I have also engaged in conversations with Chester community members regarding the city’s history. I research and present on topics ranging from William Penn’s landing to civil rights protests that engulfed the city (and Widener campus) in the early 1960s. 

• Under-resourced populations
• Access to care
• Disaster preparedness at a community and person level
• Nursing education
• Interprofessional education
• nursing history

Dr. Song’s research interests include pattern recognition and machine learning, spanning fundamental modeling challenges to multidisciplinary applications, including robotic vision, artificial intelligence, brain-machine interface, biomedical imaging, multi-sensor fusion, and signal and image processing.

My research interests include organizational context issues, trauma, field supervision, and issues of deviance and stigma in mental health.

Can we predict to what extent consumers sanction brands for their transgressions? There are many factors that mediate the consumer-brand relationship before, during, and after a brand's transgression. A brand transgression is defined as a violation of consumer-brand relationship norms. This breach of trust can have serious implications for a brand.

In my research, I examine the effect of variables such as brand personality, product category, ethnocentrism, and brand-country associations on consumer response to a brand transgression. I also conduct research on automatic consumer behavior. I use implicit and indirect consumer attitude instruments to measure attitudes outside of conscious awareness. In this secondary research area, I examine the automatic components of brand relationship, brand identification, cultural identity, and consumer decision making.

• Juvenile justice
• Gangs
• Youth violence
• Gender & crime
• Technology-facilitated violence & victimization

My research interests are in radio-frequency (RF) systems for communications and sensing.  I'm also interested in the physical principles underlying the design of these systems.

I primarily research and write about retirement and pension planning topics. I have over 100 published articles. An article I authored on calculating retirement needs helped to change how people determine the amount they need to retire.

• Sustainable infrastructure materials
• Beneficial reuse of industrial byproducts and wastes
• Geotechnical engineering
• Pavement design and analysis
• Instrumentation and monitoring of infrastructure

• Building confidence in struggling math students 
• Confidence supports learning in underserved populations

My research interests include fiction writing and narrative theory. In addition, I hear the cases of juvenile offenders in Chester, and I taught one class a day at Chester High School for the school year. I am concerned about the school-to-prison pipeline, juvenile sentencing practices, and mass incarceration.

My overarching research interest concerns the nature of comprehension in general, which underlies my interests in reading comprehension and developmental psycholinguistics. My teaching duties continually push me to study current literature in educational psychology, research methods, and statistics. Misunderstanding and misuse of brain research in educational settings has led me to study brain research that is enhancing our understanding of language and reading difficulties so that my students will develop a higher level of sophistication with that literature.

My research interests include control, nonlinear systems, state estimation, system modeling, electric power systems, and microgrid power systems. I am particularly interested in the control applications in microgrid power systems, including power system modeling, power quality control, fault analysis, power data analysis, and power consumption evaluation and prediction.

My main research interests include bioheat transfer, biofluid mechanics and thermal energy storage systems.

My research interests focus on decolonial and indigenous knowledges and practices, and sexualities through languages.  

I am trained in comparative literature and specialize in Argentine cinema produced since the late 1990s. I am particularly interested in representations of social justice, gender issues, sustainability, and environmental humanities. I have also published pieces related to global education. 

My area of expertise is in environmental analysis and instrumentation used for chemical analysis. As a result, my research projects cover a wide range of applications. Most recently I have focused on applications of mass spectrometry and NMR spectroscopy - two techniques for detecting and identifying chemicals. I am also actively engaged in the scholarship of teaching - focusing on new teaching strategies and the development of more effective ways to engage students in learning.