For the Record provides information about recent professional activities and honors of University of Delaware faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Recent presentations, awards and publications include the following:

Presentations

On April 27, Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and professor of humanities, delivered (via Zoom) the keynote address for a conference on "Victorian Nature and Artifice." The conference was organized by the Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada and took place in Canmore, Alberta. Her lecture, titled "Artifice and Arty Fizz: Exhibiting Some 'Unnatural' Late Victorians," focused on the issue of "authenticity" involved in staging four exhibitions concerned with print culture and the visual arts that she and Mark Samuels Lasner, senior research fellow, University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press, curated over the past 10 years: on Oscar Wilde and Philadelphia (at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, 2015); on Richard Le Gallienne (at Liverpool Central Library, UK, in 2016); on Aubrey Beardsley (at the Grolier Club, New York City, in 2022); and on Max Beerbohm (at the New York Public Library, in 2023-2024). She also set this question of "authenticity" in exhibitions within a larger framework of discussion, one that has spilled over from the museum world into popular discourse, now turning up in such unexpected places as the May 2024 issue of Vogue magazine.

Duygu Phillips, assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, presented her study on family firms’ exit strategies at the 18th Theories of Family Enterprise Conference at Rowan University in April 2024. This limited-attendance conference brings together leading family business scholars to discuss and advance family business research. This study, co-authored with Jim Ruetz, Matt Rutherford, Curt Moore and Bryan Edwards from Oklahoma State University, titled “Succession versus Harvest: The Roles of Family Involvement and Passion in Family Firms’ Exit Strategy” sets up a paradox between the family business managers’ intentions to transfer the business to the next generation and the private equity investors’ intentions to acquire family businesses. The findings of this research suggest that leadership passion in family businesses drives both family business leaders’ desire for a succession path, as well as private equity managers desire to acquire the family business.

Awards 

Three students in the Department of Health Behavior and Nutrition Sciences were recognized at the Delaware Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (DAND) annual conference on April 26 in Millsboro. Erica Paisley, who’s enrolled in the 4+1 Nutrition and Dietetics BS and Human Nutrition MS program, received the DAND Outstanding Dietetics Student Award. This award is given to a student of an Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics ACEND-accredited program in Delaware who has applied for admission to an Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics accredited dietetic internship or a graduate degree program in a nutrition-related field. Elena Cogan, who’s also enrolled in the 4+1 Nutrition and Dietetics BS and Human Nutrition MS program, received the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Award for Outstanding Dietetics Student in a Didactic Program in Dietetics. Zoe Harper, a 2024 graduate of the Dietetic Internship program, was honored with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Outstanding Dietetics Student in a Dietetic Internship Award. This recognition is a testament to her emerging leadership and the remarkable achievements she has made in her ACEND-accredited dietetics education program. Winners will be recognized in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. 

Mengying (Sara) Yang, a College of Engineering Ph.D. candidate working in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering under the supervision of Thomas H. Epps III, Allan and Myra Ferguson Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, won second place in the American Physical Society (APS) Division of Polymer Physics (DPOLY) poster competition. Yang’s Ph.D. research focuses on designing new, liquid-free polymer-based electrolytes to address the safety and energy efficiency challenges associated with current batteries that use flammable liquid electrolytes. Her second-place poster, titled “Enhanced Ion Conduction by Decoupling Ion Transport from Polymer Segmental Relaxation in Single-Ion-Conducting, Polymer-Blend Electrolytes,” was presented during the APS DPOLY 2024 March Meeting in Minneapolis. APS is a nonprofit membership organization that works to advance the knowledge of physics; it currently has over 50,000 members. DPOLY is a division of APS that focuses on the physics of natural and synthetic macromolecular materials. 

Abhyudai Singh, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was selected for a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award. In spring 2025, he will be a visiting professor at the University of Copenhagen. From February to July, he will work on the mathematical modeling of biochemical mechanisms that lead to antibiotic tolerance and resistance in the pathogen bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, which causes infections such as pneumonia. He will also investigate and characterize different bacterial viruses known as phages that target Staphylococcus. This research will be done in collaboration with University of Copenhagen professor Hanne Ingmer’s lab. Along with his research, Singh will also teach a Modeling of Biological Networks course and use his time abroad to deliver seminars at other Danish universities. 

Publications

Maria Paula Mendoza, a sociology doctoral student and graduate researcher for the Center for the Study and Prevention of Gender-Based Violence, recently published her research, “Working Within and Outside the System: Why and When Survivors Seek Help After Experiencing Intimate Partner Violence,” in the journal Feminist Criminology. The article explores the help-seeking experiences of 22 victims/survivors of intimate partner violence who have interacted with the criminal legal system at some point in their narratives. The article explores the four distinct pathways that arise from seeking help and finds that criminal legal interventions fall short for survivors and often result in an exacerbation of harm. 

Heinz-Uwe Haus, professor of theatre, reviewed the newest publication of Gabriele Eckart, Schrappel: Geschichten und Gedichte. Under the title "Not all pains are curable," he draws a comparison between Eckart's work and that of the legendary writer Ricarda Huch.

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