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

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

Presentations

Arline Wilson, senior assistant librarian and digital humanities and Africana scholar at the Library, Museums and Press, presented a talk during “Papers Worthy of Patronage: Black Feminist Research Methods and the Digital Humanities,” at the Delaware History Museum on Dec. 1, 2022. Wilson spoke about an upcoming digital exhibition she is co-creating with Kelli Barnes, UD doctoral candidate. The exhibition, Becoming Mary Ann Shadd Cary: A Life in the Pursuit of Justice, will be used by college and high school instructors and students to learn more about the Shadd family and Black life in Wilmington in the 1830s-40s. 

Kimberly Hopkins and Caren Coffy-McCormick, instructor and assistant professor, respectively, in the School of Nursing, presented at the Sigma Theta Tau Lambda Eta Fall 2022 Substance Use Disorders Conference held in Salisbury, Maryand. The purpose of the conference is to educate other health professionals on substance abuse faced by healthcare workers. Their presentation emphasized spreading awareness about the Delaware Professionals’ Health Monitoring Program, which offers a variety of resources and services to assist nurses and other professionals in their recovery process without fear of losing their jobs. This program operates as an agreement to check in twice a month with a contact, provide coaching, structure reinforcement, coordinate care and engage community support to aid and ensure a successful and lasting recovery. To best serve individual needs and engagement, there are three methods of enrollment: self-voluntarily, referral by a third party or mandate through board order. The program also offers toxicology testing, case monitoring, a website for licensees and evaluations to determine the best treatment plan. “We want nurses and other health professionals to know that it’s not over if they’re facing these challenges,” Hopkins said. “There are programs that can help with recovery by allowing people to continue working, maintain sobriety and prevent relapses. No one wakes up in the morning and chooses to have a drug addiction. It’s important that we care for each other as nurses – to destigmatize these issues in our field and strive to turn inward our profession and help everyone who is struggling.” 

On Oct. 10, 2022, David Wunsch, director of the Delaware Geological Survey and past-president of the American Geoscience Institute (AGI), co-convened a full-day session celebrating AGI’s 75th Anniversary as part of the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting, held Oct. 9-12, 2022 in Denver, Colorado. The session was filled with outstanding presentations from national geoscience leaders, as well as a panel of experts at the session’s conclusion. The session was led off by remarks by U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, who is a geologist and the only scientist in the U.S. Senate, and David Applegate, director of the U.S. Geological Survey. Other invited speakers highlighted the motivations that led to emergence of the Institute, its impacts on the geosciences and society over the past 75 years and provided insights into the future role of the geosciences in meeting the world’s climate and sustainability challenges. Wunsch gave a presentation during the session titled “The AGI Fisher Congressional Fellows Program: A Sustained and Successful Intersection of Geoscience and Congress.” Wunsch was selected AGI’s first Congressional Science Fellow when the program began in 1998. 

The Philosophical Society of Cyprus invited Heinz-Uwe Haus, professor of theatre, to give a lecture "Brecht Then and Now - Challengess of a Dramaturgy", in Nicosia on Nov. 24, 2022. The presentation "led to a new understanding of (not only) Brecht's dramaturgy and aesthetics, but theatre in general," commented Klitos Ioannides, president of the society, at a press conference following the lecture and Haus' dialogue with the participants. The discussion focused on the "use-value" (Gebrauchswert) of Brecht's dialectical method for the present theatre and its remonstrances through global and ideological pressures.

With a theme of “Living Together; Being Together,” the Graduate College recently presented its fall 2022 Spark! Symposium at the Audion of the Tower at STAR. Introduced in April, the initiative creates opportunities to develop cross-disciplinary communication skills and interactions. By sharing their research with the UD community and beyond, six graduate students and postdocs celebrated the discoveries they have made and showed how they are tackling the biggest societal challenges and advancing understanding of the most complex problems via TED-style talks:

• Amanda Crandall, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, wildlife ecology
• Muhammad Ishfaq, College of Engineering, civil engineering
• Idowu Kunlere, Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration, energy and environmental policy
• Annette Pic, College of Education and Human Development, human development and family sciences
• Brittany Powers, College of Health Sciences, health behavior science and promotion
• Rachel Zobel, College of Engineering, water science and policy

Crandall received both the Ignite Award (judges’ choice) and the Glow Award (people’s choice) for her presentation, “Weather Radar: A tool for conserving migratory birds in a changing world.” Louis Rossi, dean of the Graduate College and vice provost for graduate and professional education, praised all of the participants. “The presenters have gone the extra mile,” said Rossi. “They know that this is not a seminar for specialists. They have taken up the challenge of sharing their work with us, a general audience of educated people.” The spring Spark! Symposium is scheduled for April 27.

Publications

Robert Hampel, professor in the College of Education and Human Development’s School of Education, initiated and co-edited History of Education Nuggets, a less-is-more compilation of concise primary sources related to the history of education. Working with eight historians, Hampel and his colleagues assembled 40 short entries for five eras and eight topics, including curriculum, gender, special education and teacher education, among others. The 250-page anthology was distributed at the annual History of Education Society conference in November and is available as a free PDF.

Earl Smith, professor of women and gender studies and the Center for the Study and Prevention of Gender-Based Violence, had an opinion piece on concussions and intimate partner violence, entitled “Victims of domestic abuse should get the same top-notch concussion care as athletes,” published by STAT, which delivers trusted and authoritative journalism about health, medicine and the life sciences.

Service

In October, Monica A. Coleman, John and Patricia Cochran Scholar for Inclusive Excellence Professor of Africana Studies, was elected co-director of the Board of Directors for CreatureKind, a nonprofit with international reach that encourages Christians to recognize faith-based reasons for caring about the wellbeing of fellow animal creatures used for food and to take practical action in response.

Honors