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

Recent honors, media and presentations include the following:

Honors

Leonard Schwartz, professor of mechanical engineering, has won the 2016 John A. Tallmadge Award for Contributions to Coating Technology. Conferred by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the award recognizes significant contributions to the understanding or improvement of the technology of the coating of continuous webs. The award was presented at the 18th International Coating Science and Technology Symposium, held in Pittsburgh from Sept. 18-21.

Brock Jobe, a renowned scholar, curator and longtime educator in UD’s Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, is one of two recipients of the Eric M. Wunsch Award for Excellence in the American Arts, created in 2012 by the Wunsch Americana Foundation. Jobe, who earned his master’s degree from the Winterthur program in 1976, has taught graduate courses in historic interiors, decorative arts and 20th-century design. He was appointed professor of American decorative arts in the program in 2000 after a 28-year career as a museum curator and administrator. 

Media

President Dennis Assanis wrote a guest editorial concerning free speech in the Oct. 18 issue of The Review student newspaper. “A great university is an open marketplace of ideas, where students can — and should — encounter the often-conflicting opinions and perspectives of peers, professors and diverse thinkers from all ages and cultures. This is how we learn, grow and gain a clear understanding of the world and our place in it,” Assanis wrote. For the full editorial, see the opinion pages of The Review. 

Presentations

Richard Davison, professor emeritus of English, will present “A Visit With John Updike and Anonymous” at 10:30 a.m., Monday, Oct. 24, at the Newark Senior Center, 200 White Chapel Drive. Davison returns to the center to discuss and read from selected writing of Updike and works of Anonymous, the most prolific of all writers. The presentation is free; those who attend are asked to register at the reception desk.

Amy Cowperthwait, CEO of SimUCare and a clinical nursing specialist in the School of Nursing’s Resource Simulation Center, and Amy Bucha, SimUCare CSO and liaison between the College of Health Sciences and the College of Engineering, visited Tianjin, China, to speak at the Human Patient Simulation Network (HPSN) China Conference, Oct. 15-18. They spoke among other educators, researchers, simulation directors and health care executives. The two were invited guests of Tellyes Scientific, a manufacturer of medical manikins and the host of HPSN China. Cowperthwait held a workshop, “Making the Most of Standardized Patient Education,” in which she explored non-traditional approaches to simulation education using standardized patients. At UD, Cowperthwait and Allan Carlsen of the Department of Theatre co-founded the Healthcare Theatre program, which teaches students to become effective standardized patients. Through Cowperthwait’s experiences coordinating the program, she has collected best practices for realistic feedback to maximize educational outcome. SimUCare is a manufacturer of wearable simulators for health care education and offers guidance in starting a budget friendly simulation and standardized patient program. The Human Patient Simulation Network is an international community of nursing and health care educators.

Alice Ba, professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations and UD’s Asian Studies Program, delivered the keynote presentation at the ASEAN Forum 2016 in Sydney, Australia, on Oct. 7. Hosted annually by the University of Sydney’s Southeast Asia Centre, this year’s forum focused on the subject of China in Southeast Asia and received additional support from the University of Sydney’s China Studies Centre. Titled “Where China Meets Southeast Asia: Regional Reconfigurations Along the Belt and Road?”, Ba’s talk began the day’s events with a discussion on China’s “Silk Road Economic Belt” and “Maritime Silk Road” initiatives, as well as the China-initiated and China-led Asia Infrastructure Bank (AIIB). The talk considered the security, economic and political dimensions of China’s ambitious infrastructure initiatives, as well as their regional order implications for Southeast Asia and existing regional cooperative frameworks. Ba’s talk was also referenced in an Oct. 10 article in the Australian Financial Review.

Douglass F. Taber, professor emeritus of chemistry, presented an invited lecture at the 23rd Conference on Isoprenoids in Minsk, Belarus, Sept. 5, on "Organocatalysis for the 21st Century.”

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