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

Farley Grubb, professor of economics, presented his research paper “Chronic Specie Scarcity and Efficient Barter: The Problem of Maintaining an Outside Money Supply in British Colonial America” at the conference on “Money in Vast Early America,” sponsored by the University of Southern California, the Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, and the William and Mary Quarterly, and held at the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California, on Saturday, Dec. 9. 

Alison Parker, Chair and Richards Professor of History, gave a talk, “Exploring Epistolary Relationships: Black Women’s Letters to Mary Church Terrell,” at the University of Vienna, Austria, in November at the Department of Contemporary History’s conference on “Supportive Practices? Letters to Social Movement Activists.” She also gave a talk on the "Politics of Resistance: Reconsidering the Legacies of Oscar DePriest,” at the annual conference of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) earlier this fall.

Awards

In November, Wendy Smith, Dana J. Johnson Professor of Management at UD’s Lerner College, and her co-author Marianne Lewis, dean of the Linder College of Business at the University of Cincinnati, received the Breakthrough Idea Award from Thinkers50, a global ranking group that highlights new and important ideas in management, for their 2022 book, Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems. For this award, Thinkers50 says it looks for an idea that’s a “Eureka moment in management,” a radical idea that has the potential to permanently change the way we think about business. In June, Thinkers50 also added Smith and Lewis’ book to its list of the best new management books of 2023. Smith, who is co-founder of the Women’s Leadership Initiative, has focused her research on how business leaders and managers can more effectively navigate paradoxes. Read more on the Lerner website.

The 2023 Siegfried Award for Entrepreneurial Leadership Workshop and Dinner was held on Oct. 3 at the Wilmington Country Club. The event, organized and held by The Siegfried Group and Horn Entrepreneurship, provided a platform for participants to engage in meaningful discussions, gain valuable insights, and to recognize individuals for outstanding contributions to the entrepreneurial leadership ecosystem. The workshop was led by Johann Ducharme, assistant professor of entrepreneurship and faculty director of the Siegfried Fellows at University of Delaware Horn Entrepreneurship, Robert Siegfried, Jr. CPA, CEO and founder of The Siegfried Group, and Lee Brower, founder and chief empowerment officer, Empowered Wealth, LC. Siegfried, Class of 1981, earned a bachelor of science in economics and accounting from UD’s Lerner College. Brower was also the recipient of the Siegfried Award for Entrepreneurial Leadership, who was recognized “for his unique perspectives as an international advocate for gratitude.” UD Honors student Sakhee Desai, Class of 2025 and a major in finance with a minor in entrepreneurship, from the Lerner College and a major in computer science with a focus in artificial intelligence and robotics from the College of Engineering, received the 2023 Student Award for Entrepreneurial Leadership.

The Delaware Center for Cognitive Aging Research (DECCAR) has received a $575,000 award from the Paul H. Boerger Fund of the Delaware Community Foundation to advance Alzheimer’s research in the state. With more than 600,000 people living with Alzheimer’s in the region, this funding will support a one-year initiative to identify essential mechanisms linking modifiable lifestyle factors to accelerated dementia risk.

"We are thrilled to receive this funding from the Paul H. Boerger Fund of the Delaware Community Foundation,” said Christopher Martens, director of DECCAR and associate professor of kinesiology and applied physiology. “This grant will support an innovative, interdisciplinary team of researchers in physiology, biomedical engineering, neuropsychology, machine learning, and biostatistics whose work will help identify new candidate targets for interventions aimed at slowing, stopping, or reversing Alzheimer’s disease.”

Martens will co-lead this project with Curtis Johnson, associate professor of biomedical engineering and member of the DECCAR executive committee. The team also includes an interdisciplinary group of co-investigators from the College of Health Sciences and the College of Engineering, including Austin Brockmeier, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, Ryan Pohlig, associate professor of epidemiology, and Matthew Cohen, associate professor of communication sciences and disorders.

DECCAR, a first-of-its-kind initiative in the region, was founded at UD in 2022 in response to a dire community need. The center was established with $150,000 in seed funding from the College of Health Sciences and has since generated over $850,000 in external support.

Dave Edwards, professor and chair of the Department of Kinesiology and Applied Physiology (KAAP) in the College of Health Sciences, has received the American Heart Association Institutional Award for Undergraduate Student Training.

The $165,000 award, over three years, will fund summer undergraduate research opportunities for rising juniors and seniors, with a focus on prioritizing underrepresented minorities. Each summer, five students will have the opportunity to conduct innovative cardiovascular health-related research, working alongside faculty mentors, including Edwards, Christopher Martens, associate professor in KAAP; Shannon Lennon, professor in KAAP; Megan Wenner, associate professor in KAAP; Melissa Witman, associate professor in KAAP; and Shannon Robson, associate professor of health behavior and nutrition sciences.

“As a tier one research institution, the University of Delaware is uniquely positioned to expose students to meaningful and impactful research that centers around the American Heart Association’s mission to support all aspects of cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and brain health research with a focus on overall health and well-being across the lifespan,” Edwards said. “This is a wonderful opportunity for undergraduate students to get hands-on research experience working in our labs.”

Publications

A working paper by Francisco Costa, assistant professor of economics at the Lerner College, was mentioned in a Washington Post opinion piece, “Here’s a realistic path to protecting the Amazon rainforest.” With fellow economists Robin Burgess, London School of Economics, and Benjamin A. Olken, MIT, Costa’s collaborators explore how Brazil’s political swings have affected deforestation of the Amazon.

Research by Manaswani Rao, assistant professor of economics, was published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. Her article “Got (Clean) Milk?: Organization, Incentives, and Management in Indian Dairy Cooperatives” with Ashish Shenoy, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, was published in Aug. 2023.

Heinz-Uwe Haus, professor of theatre, published in the latest issue of Gracious Light - Review of Romanian Spirituality and Culture an essay titled "Does Wisdom Accompany Suffering? - Theatre in Jetztzeit." The text focuses on the unique 20th century intersections of rationality and genocide, of advanced technology and nuclear destruction, of an ideology of progress and praxis of barbarism as constitutive paradigms for the postmodern mind.

The fifth novel by Michael Aronovitz, writing specialist and instructor of English at the UD Associate in Arts Program’s Wilmington campus, will be published by Cemetery Dance Publications in January 2024. The Winslow Sisters tells the story of English professor Brad Winslow, who is forced to play a gruesome series of games with a notorious serial killer who is targeting Winslow’s three daughters. Michael Aronovitz is also an adjunct professor of English at Immaculata University. 

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