For the Record
June 23, 2017
University community reports recent honors and presentations
For the Record provides information about recent professional activities of University of Delaware faculty, staff and alumni.
Recent presentations and honors include the following:
Presentations
Matthew Robinson, professor of sport management, spoke and led a panel discussion at the third Americas Best Practices Symposium on National Olympic Committee Management and Sport Performance, a collaboration of the Pan American Sports Organization (PASO), the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) and Olympic Solidarity, held June 13-14 in Miami. More than 80 delegates including National Olympic committee presidents and secretary generals from the 42 national Olympic committees of the Americas attended the event, along with USOC leaders and representatives of Olympic Solidarity. Robinson presented on the use of online platforms to enhance the delivery of the USOC and Olympic Solidarity funded International Coaching Enrichment Certificate Program (ICECP) and International Coaching Apprenticeship in Basketball (ICAB), as well as the Master Coach and Soccer Leader Certificate Program that UD offers in partnership with the National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA). Robinson said, “By utilizing an online platform the past three years, we are able to offer lectures and discussions with participants from over 30 different countries and across multiple time zones. Along with this, the utilization of the online platform for the Master Coach Program, after attending a one-week residency requirements, professionals are able to stay in their professional settings and attend the 13 online sessions that are offered.”
At the symposium, Robinson also led a panel discussion on best practices in online resources to promote education, and he served on a panel sharing the findings from the implementation of Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) Projects by ICECP graduates as part of their final project. Thirty percent of the 261 projects implemented over the nine-year history of the program have been related to Long Term Athlete Development. “Projects related to Long Term Athlete Development by ICECP graduates have created participation opportunities for thousands of youth in 65 countries while also impacting elite performance and creating healthy lifestyles for youth,” Robinson said. “It is always an honor and privilege to contribute to the Olympic Movement. Of the 42 countries who were in attendance, we have had ICECP participants from 27 of those countries. I am proud of the contributions ICECP participants have made in the Caribbean and Central and South America as well as the world.”
Rudi Matthee, John A. Munroe and Dorothy L. Munroe Chair of History, spent two-an-a-half weeks in Iran from May 20 until June 8 participating in workshops, giving lectures and interviews, and meeting colleagues and friends. All of his presentations were in Persian. In Tehran, he spoke at the Khaneh-ye Ketab, “Book House,” the center of the country’s publishing industry, on the state of Iranian studies in the United States. At the Research Institute of Human Sciences and Cultural Studies of the Ministry of Science and Culture, he presented a paper on "Nader Shah in Iranian Historiography: Warlord or National Hero?” He presented the same paper at a workshop on Iranian history held at the University of Isfahan, and at the same forum he spoke on “Historiographical Reflections on the Eighteenth Century in Iranian History: Decline and Insularity, Imperial Dreams, or Regional Specificity?” In Mashhad, the shrine city in the country’s northeast, he was invited by Ferdawsi University to present “Infidel Aggression: The Russian Assault on the Shrine of Imam Reza on 30 March 1912.” Pardis Books, the main bookstore of Mashhad, organized a book reading of the just-published Persian translation of his co-written The Monetary History of Iran: From the Safavids to the Qajars. He finally gave interviews to three Iranian newspapers, Donya-ye Eqtesad, Hamshahri and Iran.
Honors
The Institute for Leadership at Western University's Ivey Business School in Ontario, Canada, awarded its annual "best paper" award to Wendy Smith, associate professor of management, for her paper, "Dynamic decision making: A model of senior leaders managing strategic paradoxes." Smith said, “This award recognizes work I did with senior teams at IBM that was foundational to much of my current work on strategic paradoxes. I was tremendously honored to have this work recognized." Each year Ivey’s Institute awards a paper that has been published three years prior so as to include its scholarly and practitioner impact in their assessment. Smith will make a presentation at the school later this year or in early 2018.
Regina Sims Wright, associate professor in the School of Nursing, has been awarded Gerontological Society of America (GSA) fellow status through its Behavioral and Social Sciences Section. GSA is the world’s oldest and largest interdisciplinary organization devoted to research, education and practice in the field of aging. Her fellowship was unanimously approved by GSA’s council. GSA fellowship is the highest class of membership and an acknowledgment of outstanding work in the field of gerontology.
Alumni honors
Barbara S. Larsen, a DuPont chemist who earned her doctorate at UD in 1984, working with adviser Douglas Ridge, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, has been named a 2017 fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS). In announcing the newest class of fellows, the ACS noted that Larsen developed a novel process to produce safer fluorinated polymer products and an analytical method to confirm consumer safety. Use of the Larsen Method is now required by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
John Ryan Barwick, who graduated in May with a double major in American history and English and a minor in journalism, has been named the new James R. Soles Fellow at the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) in Washington, D.C. The yearlong fellowship is awarded annually to a UD graduating senior to support a postgraduate internship at CPI, which produces original investigative journalism about significant public issues. UD political science alumnus Charles Lewis, AS75, founded the center in 1989 and established the Soles Fellowship at CPI in 1998 in honor of his professor and mentor, the late Jim Soles.
New assignments
Havidán Rodríguez, a former UD faculty member and administrator, has been named president of the University of Albany, effective this September. Rodríguez came to UD in 2003 as director of the Disaster Research Center, and he served as vice provost for academic affairs and international programs from 2006-09 and as deputy provost from 2009-10.
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