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

Recent awards, books, honors, presentations, publications and service include the following:

Awards

Delphis Levia, chair of the Department of Geography, earned an editor’s choice award from the journal Biotropica for a collaborative paper titled “Surface Roughness Affects the Running Speed of Tropical Canopy Ants.” Co-authored with Steve Yanoviak, an associate professor of biology at the University of Louisville, the work aims to understand how physical characteristics of habitats affect the behavior of tropical canopy ants.

Doctoral student Xinhui Jiang in the Department of Political Science and International Relations has won the Carrie Chapman Catt Prize for Research on Women and Politics, given by the Carrie Chapman Catt Center at Iowa State University. Jiang’s winning proposal is titled "Where Is the Half Sky: Women's Representation in County People's Congresses in China." The prize, first awarded in 1995, is an annual competition designed to encourage and reward scholars embarking on significant research in the area of women and politics. This year, six projects were chosen for support from among 80 proposals submitted.

Jeff Forret, who earned his doctorate in history from UD in 2003, has been awarded the 2016 Frederick Douglass Book Prize for Slave Against Slave: Plantation Violence in the Old South, published by Louisiana State University Press. Forret, who is professor of history at Lamar University, received the award Jan. 31 at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City. The prize, created by the institute and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University, is given annually for the best book written in English on slavery or abolition. The award is named for Frederick Douglass, the slave who escaped bondage to emerge as one of the great American abolitionists, reformers, writers and orators of the 19th century.

Martin Wollaston, policy scientist with the Institute for Public Administration (IPA), was recently honored by the Delaware League of Local Governments (DLLG) for his years of public service to Delaware communities. Carl Luft, DLLG executive director, awarded a plaque to Wollaston. The inscription reads, “The Delaware League of Local Governments thanks and commends Martin Wollaston of the University of Delaware Institute for Public Administration for his commitment, service, and value to the League and its members on this date, Jan. 26, 2017.”

Upon receiving the award, Wollaston expressed his gratitude. "I've always enjoyed working with the league. Since the first meeting I attended in the early-1980s as a graduate student with IPA, through the many events I've participated in over the last two decades as professional staff – the town, city, and county leaders that make up the league are the people I most identify with and respect. Over the past 15 years I've worked with over two-thirds of the municipalities in Delaware, and I've enjoyed working with each and every one of you. Thank you for this recognition ... it’s very much appreciated."

Wollaston has led IPA's planning services group for more than a decade. As the planning services group manager, Wollaston worked with the Delaware Office of State Planning Coordination, state and local government leaders, IPA staff and students to provide technical assistance, training, and comprehensive planning services to Delaware local governments. Wollaston officially retired from UD on Jan. 31, and he plans to continue to co-coordinate IPA’s Excellence in Local Government Leadership Program and Delaware Planning Education Program with colleague and fellow policy scientist Julia O'Hanlon.

Books

Heinz-Uwe Haus, professor of theatre, co-edited, with David W. Lovell, professor of international and political studies at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Canberra, Australia, Goethe’s Faust I/The Making and Impact of a Contemporary Performance (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017). The book tracks the creative process of Haus’ adaptation of the play in his 2014 production with the University’s Resident Ensemble Players (REP) and his attempts to elicit responses from his international networks to his question: How is Goethe’s Faust relevant today? The book then explores the reactions among some of its audience.

Honors

Michael Strano, who earned his doctorate at the University of Delaware in 2001, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Currently the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Strano was recognized “for contributions to nanotechnology, including fluorescent sensors for human health and solar and thermal energy devices.” Strano is principal investigator of the MIT Energy Initiative, which was recently selected as a collaborator in the Rapid Advancement in Process Intensification Deployment (RAPID) Manufacturing Institute. Strano has won a number of awards and honors, including being named a top young innovator by MIT Technology Review in 2004, when he was an assistant professor at the University of Illinois. He was cited for arriving at a new understanding of carbon nanotube surface chemistry, a breakthrough that paved the way for the use of nanotubes use in devices. Strano joins 25 other UD alumni, as well as 10 current and former faculty, elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

The YChromes all-male a cappella group at UD finished third in the ICCA Mid-Atlantic quarterfinals held Feb. 4 at Rowan University in New Jersey. First place went to Superfood from Georgetown University and second to RoVo of Rowan University.

Presentations

Heinz-Uwe Haus, professor of theatre, was recently invited to conduct a workshop “The ‘Use Value’ of Complementary Perspective” for dramaturges, directors and actors at the National Theatre of Cyprus, Nicosia. Twenty participants worked on scenes from plays by Shakespeare, Goethe, Brecht and Bodin. On Feb. 4, theGreek-Cypriot newspaper Philelephteros wrote: “Haus, well known in Cyprus and Greece through his legendary Brecht productions. demonstrates for a new generation the liveliness of a thinking and technique, which lays bare society’s causal networks.”

Megan Gaffney, associate librarian and coordinator, Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery Services, University of Delaware Library, presented a section on "Borrowing" during the Reference and User Services Association(RUSA) Sharing and Transforming Access to Resource Section(STARS) “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about ILL" workshop, held at Emory University's Woodruff Library, Jan. 20. Gaffney also presented “Extending the Long Tail with a Kindle Paperwhite" at the RUSA STARS meeting of the Hot Topics Discussion Group at the American Library Association Midwinter Conference in Atlanta, Jan. 21.

Publications

Several faculty members in the Department of Accounting and MIS had papers either published or accepted for publication at ranked and highly ranked journals during 2016. The department’s 2016 publication tally includes six premier articles (five of which are in elite/premier plus category), two top-tier articles, three respected articles and another four in ranked publications.

Additionally, four of the department’s associate professors have been appointed to editorships/editorial boards in recognition of their leadership in the field, including:

• John D'Arcy, associate editor appointment, MIS Quarterly;

• Xiao Fang, associate editor appointment, MIS Quarterly;

• Nerissa Brown, editorial board member appointment, Journal of Business Finance and Accounting; and

• Asli Basoglu, editorial board member appointment, Bogazici Journal.

Fang also won the 2016 INFORMS Design Science Award in recognition of “excellence in research efforts centered on the design and realization of innovative information technology artifacts.”

Service

Rudi Matthee, John and Dorothy Munroe Distinguished Professor of History, has accepted an invitation to become a trustee of the American Institute of Iranian Studies (AIrS). AIrS is a non-profit consortium of U.S. universities and museums founded in 1967 for the purpose of promoting the interdisciplinary study of Iranian civilization and U.S.-Iran cultural dialogue. AIrS serves as the main conduit for academic and cultural exchange between the U.S. and Iran. Its trustees are scholars of Iranian studies representing member institutions. AIrS offers one-month fellowships for advanced Persian-language study in Tehran, support for pre-doctoral dissertation research, short-term senior fellowships for research in Iran, and senior fellowships for Iranian scholars. It also offers an annual literary translation prize.

The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment Graduate Student Association has been volunteering the fourth Thursday of every month at the Food Bank of Delaware facility in Milford. There they help sort and package donated food items.

To submit information for inclusion in For the Record, write to publicaffairs@udel.edu.