For the Record, Friday, March 8, 2024

Article by UDaily Staff March 08, 2024

University of Delaware community reports new presentations, awards and publications

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

Trevor A. Dawes, the vice provost for libraries and museums and May Morris University Librarian, was a presenter at the CULCON Information Access and Sharing in the Digital Age meeting in Tsukuba, Japan, on Feb. 29. Dawes’ presentation, “Strengthening Databases and Resource Sharing,” focused on the need for increased public-private partnerships to advance digitization and digital access initiatives. Dawes was also moderator of two panels: “Addressing Information Access Challenges and Digitization,” and “Leveraging Digital Technology for Innovative Research Methodologies.” Dawes’ participation was supported by the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission (JUSFC), where he serves as a commissioner.

Monica A. Coleman, professor of Africana Studies, presented on Black religions as a detriment and salve to mental health concerns at the recent Black Religion and Mental Health Symposium at Harvard Divinity School on March 1.

Joining the University of Delaware Police Department are Nadine Cordivano, Brandan Jordan and Andrew Matthews

New appointments

The University of Delaware Police Department has three new police officers who graduated from the 101st Delaware State Police and 97th Municipal Police Academy classes. Joining the department are Nadine Cordivano, Brandan Jordan and Andrew Matthews. UDPD Chief Patrick Ogden presented Cordivano with the Delaware Association of Chiefs of Police Outstanding Recruit Award for demonstrating the highest qualities of leadership. She is a graduate of West Chester University, where she studied exercise science. Jordan, who comes from a large law enforcement family, worked as a security officer for UD Police to begin his transition into the policing profession. Matthews served nearly six years in the Delaware National Guard, with which he held two military occupational specialties, before getting into policing.

Tywanda L. Cuffy, director of external Relations, communications and development initiatives, has been appointed to the editorial board of the Journal of Advancement, Communication, and Development in Academic Libraries, a newly established scholarly, open-access journal, that will publish articles that offer strategies and case studies for the practical application of strategic fundraising and communication in academic libraries. The journal seeks to represent the significant variances in advancement operations from small, single-staffed offices to more expansive and complex library advancement environments.

Honors

Chrissi Rawak, director of athletics, community and campus recreation, has been selected to the Delaware Online/The News Journal Hall of Fame Class of 2024. Serving in her current role since June of 2016, Rawak has been named one of the state's most influential people in all four years since Delaware Online/The News Journal started the annual recognition. In November of 2023, Rawak led the University's efforts to embark on its newest era with the announcement of joining Conference USA and moving to the football subdivision in 2025. At the same time, UD announced the addition of women's ice hockey as its 22nd varsity program, also coming in 2025. Academically, Blue Hen student-athletes have excelled in the classroom. They've posted 20-straight semesters of a 3.0 GPA or higher, with the most recent semester at 3.3.

Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and professor of humanities, has been asked to serve as one of three judges (and the only one from the U.S.) on the Sally Mitchell Dissertation Prize Award Committee for 2024, which is sponsored by RSVP (the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals), an international scholarly organization. The prize will be awarded to the best Ph.D. dissertation, defended in the previous calendar year, that focuses on the British periodical press in the long nineteenth century (including magazines, newspapers and serial publications of all kinds). In 2023, Stetz was also appointed as a Submissions Editor for Victorian Periodicals Review — a peer-reviewed journal published by Johns Hopkins University Press and sponsored by RSVP — and she continues in that role, too.

Publications

Kate Derr, academic program coordinator for the Department of Women and Gender Studies, published an article, "Help or Harm? Criminalizing Intimate Partner Violence and Feminist Abolitionist Frames," in Violence Against Women.

In a recent paper, “From modesty to market: shareholder reactions to humility rhetoric in family and nonfamily firms under media scrutiny,” published in the special issue on the Economic Theories of the Family Business in the Small Business Economics journal, Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship Duygu Phillips and co-authors theorize about and empirically test how family firms, compared to nonfamily firms, generate more positive shareholder reactions by utilizing humility rhetoric. The findings further suggest that media coverage creates an interesting boundary condition for this relationship. Specifically when media coverage is negative, family firms that use humility rhetoric experience greater stock returns than nonfamily firms. This study contributes to the economic theory of family firms and offers a novel dictionary measure of humility rhetoric to be used in the future computer-aided text analysis studies.

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