Karen Avino of the School of Nursing helped write and edit "Holistic Nursing: A Handbook for Practice." See BOOKS

For the Record, Oct. 9, 2015

For the Record, Oct. 9, 2015

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9:08 a.m., Oct. 9, 2015--For the Record provides information about recent professional activities of University of Delaware faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Recent appointments, books, funding, honors, media, presentations, publications and service include the following:

People Stories

'Resilience Engineering'

The University of Delaware's Nii Attoh-Okine recently published a new book with Cambridge University Press, "Resilience Engineering: Models and Analysis."

Reviresco June run

UD ROTC cadets will run from New York City to Miami this month to raise awareness about veterans' affairs.

Appointments

Jackie Wilson, interim director for the Professional Development Center for Educators (PDCE) and assistant professor of education, has been asked to participate as a member of the national committee responsible for revising the 2008 ISLLC Standards for school leaders. The committee met in Reston, Virginia, Sept. 24-25 to finalize their work. The national standards are the foundation for state policy related to principal preparation, performance evaluation, licensure and certification, and professional development. Dr. Wilson served as co-chair of the 2014 ISLLC refresh committee and was invited by the Council for Chief State School Officers to participate as a member of the new committee who will finalize the work and make recommendations regarding the new standards to the National Policy Board.

Jon Manon, an associate director for mathematics in the Professional Development Center for Educators and assistant professor of education, has agreed to serve a second two-year term as treasurer of the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics (NCSM). Manon was also nominated to serve as the president of the Delaware Foundation for Science and Mathematics Education (DFSME).

Rosalie Rolan-Dow, associate professor of education, has been appointed associate director of the Center for the Study of Diversity (CSD). In this role, she will be collaborating with academic and administrative units across campus to advance scholarship that facilitates dialogue about the social and academic impact of diversity.

Books

Karen Avino, assistant professor in the School of Nursing is an author and editor of Holistic Nursing: A Handbook for Practice, which recently received the Seal of Distinction Award from the American Holistic Nurses Association. With recent Delaware legislation enabling nurses to operate at the top of their licenses, the timeliness and relevance of the book is evident. “The nursing profession has a unique opportunity to take the lead in redesigning new healthcare approaches,” said Avino, who teaches courses on holistic nursing and integrative health. “Nurses can directly impact patients’ self-responsibility for health promotion and disease prevention through compassionate, relationship-centered care.”

Another commendation for Holistic Nursing came from Doody’s Review Service, which gave the textbook a five-star review (out of five). Doody’s was impressed with the blending of theory and praxis, emphasis on nurse’s self-development and interactive web resources. 

Jan Blits, professor emeritus of education, has published Rome and the Spirit of Caesar: Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (Lexington Books).

Funding

Joshua Wilson, assistant professor of education, finalized and begun work on a delegated authority contract for $30,000 from Measurement Inc. to continue his research on the use of PEG Writing, an automated essay evaluation software program, in local elementary and middle schools. The citation is: Wilson, J. (2015). Using PEG Writing in middle and elementary schools to support theteaching and learning of writing. Delegated Authority Contract with Measurement Incorporated. Funded (1yr, $30,043). Reference No. EDUC43291416001.

Amy Trauth-Nare, an associate director for science in the Professional Development Center for Educators, received a Delaware Department of Education Title II grant to fund STEM-related professional development to 40 teachers working in high needs schools during the 2015-16 academic year.

Chrystalla Mouza, associate professor and principal investigator, and Amy Trauth-Naure, associate director for science in the Professional Development Center for Educators and assistant professor of education, received a $125,000 Teacher Quality grant from the Delaware Department of Education to provide job-embedded professional development in high need Delaware schools.

Mouza (principal investigator) and Lori Pollock, professor of computer science, also received an $87,000 matching grant from the Delaware Economic Development Office to support their Partner4CS project. Partner4CS has originally been funded by the National Science Foundation to improve the development of computational thinking skills among middle and high school students and provide effective teacher professional development on computer science principles.

Honors

Joshua Barton, a senior Honors Program student with majors in biological sciences and neuroscience who conducted undergraduate research last summer related to the eye and the formation of congenital cataracts, has received a Delaware Governor’s Bioscience Fellowship.

The fellowships are given annually to provide financial support for students majoring in the life sciences at the University of Delaware, Delaware State University and Delaware Technical Community College. This year’s recipients were honored at a luncheon on Thursday, Oct. 8, in Wilmington. Barton also has been selected for early acceptance in the MD/Ph.D. program at Jefferson Medical College, where he plans to pursue his plans to become a medical doctor.

Media

W. Ellen Erbe, library assistant III, Reference and Instructional Services Department, and her husband, Chuck Erbe were recognized in the Washington Post [https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/meet-the-ordinary-people-who-rescue-distressed-whales-dolphins-and-sea-turtles-from-crowded-beaches/2015/07/03/3140519e-1f70-11e5-84d5-eb37ee8eaa61_story.html] for their efforts working with distressed sea animals with the National Aquarium.

Presentations

Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and professor of humanities, gave an invited lecture Oct. 6 at Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library in Wilmington, Delaware. Her lecture, "Bookfest at Tiffany's," surveyed the many ways in which the Tiffany brand and Tiffany objects have inspired writers and filmmakers from the mid-twentieth century onwards. Among the works she discussed were Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958), Susan Vreeland's Clara and Mr. Tiffany (2011), and Deanne Gist's Tiffany Girl. This lecture was held in conjunction with Winterthur's two current exhibitions: "Tiffany Glass: Painting with Color and Light" and "Tiffany: The Color of Luxury" (Sept. 5, 2015-Jan. 3, 2016).

Fran O’Malley, an associate director for history in the Professional Development Center for Educators, is one of three individuals nationwide –of 1,000 grant principal investigators nationwide -- invited by the U.S. Department of Education to present on the Teaching American History grant legacy. This work was presented in September.

Publications

Kathleen Minke, professor of education, with collaborators A.K. Skalski, E. Rossen, K.C. Cowan, J. Kelly, R. Armistead and A. Smith, published the NASP Practice Model Implementation Guide (Bethesda, Maryland: National Association of School Psychologists). This guide became available in hard copy and will soon go live on the NASP website as an interactive tool. The Implementation Guide is NASP’S primary resource for assisting school psychologists at the individual, district, and state levels to align their work with the NASP Model for Comprehensive and Integrated School Psychological Services.

Elizabeth Soslau, assistant professor of education, published “Student-Teachers’ Emotional Needs and Dichotomous Problem-Solving: Non-Cognitive Root Causes of Teaching and Learning Problems” in Educational Action Research, 2, 1-24.

Service

Dawn Elliott, professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Delaware, has been elected treasurer of the Biomedical Engineering Society. She assumed the duties of the office at the society’s 2015 annual meeting in Tampa, Oct. 7-10. BMES is the largest professional society for biomedical engineering, representing more than 7,000 members. Elliott previously served as a member of the BMES Board of Directors.

The Delaware Academy for School Leadership kicked off the new UD Principal Preparation Program. The program is a Department of Education-approved alternative route to certification program that provides a professional development experience to qualified applicants who already have a master’s degree and are seeking certification as an assistant principal/principal. Twenty individuals applied and 15 were selected for DASL’s inaugural cohort. The program is managed by DASL associate Alison Dubinski. The first course is being co-taught by Marion Proffitt, retired assistant superintendent from Appoquinimink School District, and Joan Buttram, director of UD’s Research and Development Center and assistant professor of education, and a faculty member in the Ed.D. program for school leadership.

DASL associates John Kreitzer and Deb Denson conducted a boot camp on behalf of the Delaware Department of Education to provide training to all new administrators who are required to take and pass an assessment to demonstrate knowledge of content and processes for conducting teacher and specialist performance evaluations using DPAS II. Forty-four administrators from Delaware schools were prepared and passed the assessment.

William Lewis, associate professor of literacy education, led a professional development day for Sussex Academy on Aug. 26, titled “Using the CSET Strategy for Discipline Specific Argumentative Writing.” The CSET strategy is an argumentative writing strategy that Lewis developed as a classroom teacher and refined during his time at UD. It has been adopted by a number of Delaware school districts to teach the basics of argumentative discourse and text-based argumentative writing. The Common Core Standards require that schools focus on argumentative discourse and that students develop the ability to support valid claims about texts by using “relevant and sufficient evidence drawn from a text.”

Lewis also began leading a literacy initiative for secondary content teachers in Smyrna School District. This initiative began with a professional development session titled “Connected Reading and Writing in Content Area Classrooms: Building Students’ Ability to Read and Write Complex Texts.” This professional development was developed for teacher leaders and the literacy team at Smyrna School District and was focused on connected reading and writing activities that improve student ability to comprehend complex texts and write clearly about those texts. Lewis’ literacy initiative at Smyrna will continue into the fall and winter.

Chrystalla Mouza, associate professor of education, served on the technical committee for the refresh of the National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS) under the auspices of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Other committee members included faculty from higher education, K-12 practitioners and administrators, and the Director of the U.S. Office of Educational Technology.

To submit information to be included in For the Record, write to publicaffairs@udel.edu.

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