Mentors' Circle

For the Record, Aug. 8, 2025

Article by UDaily staff Photo by Evan Krape August 08, 2025

University of Delaware community reports new presentations, grants, exhibitions, honors, publications

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

Recent presentations, grants, exhibitions, honors and publications include the following:

Presentations

Regina Donato, interim director, and Michael Fernbacher, assistant director, of Community Standards and Conflict Resolution, served as faculty members for the Donald D. Gehring Academy in Detroit July 13-17, 2025. Presented by the Association of Student Conduct Administration (ASCA), the Gehring Academy is an annual four-day, intensive training and professional development opportunity for student conduct and conduct-adjacent practitioners. Donato served on the Restorative Justice track and Fernbacher served on the Foundations of Professional Practice track. Fernbacher also presented a one-day virtual session on Academic Integrity.

Jennifer Graber, professor and associate dean of academic affairs and practice initiatives, and Jennifer Saylor, professor and associate dean of faculty and student affairs in the School of Nursing, presided over the opening and closing plenary sessions at the 36th International Nursing Research Congress in Seattle, Washington, in July. The Beta Xi at-Large chapter members led five podium presentations on: “Combating Bullying and Incivility in Nursing Education Amid Global Faculty Shortages”; “Advancing RN Preparedness: The Role of Clinical-Academic Partnerships in Building a Thriving Global Healthcare System”; “Examining Risk-Taking Behavior in Emerging Young Adult Men with Shared Minority Identifications”; “Building Inclusive Nursing Futures: Innovative Leadership for Success Among BIPOC and First-Generation Students”; and “The Role of Burnout in Shaping Nursing Department Performance in Academia.” Graber also presided over the Chapter Leader Breakfast, connecting with fellow nursing leaders from around the globe.

Grants

Alexandra Wynn, a postdoctoral researcher in the Epidemiology Department, received a Health Disparities Research Loan Repayment Program award from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Over two years, Wynn will investigate and address the intersectional and unique needs of Black college students, including their model of care choices, health engagement and practices, and social determinants of health-related gaps in Delaware's current health systems serving this population.

Exhibitions

Artworks by Blažo Kovačević were featured at Gradska Gallery in Kotor, Montenegro, in July.

Blažo Kovačević, associate professor of art and design, exhibited pieces from his series HIBR!DS at the Gradska Gallery in Kotor, Montenegro, in July. The series holds a significant place in Kovačević’s body of work. These large-format paintings were created in the late 1990s, at a time when the digital transformation was only beginning to emerge, yet they already anticipated today’s era where technology shapes everyday life. Through intense color expression, layered painting, and the use of contrasting visual codes, Kovačević constructs ambivalent forms that invite deep reflection on our increasingly hybrid nature. His visual collisions—between organic and mechanical, anatomical and technical, hand-painted texture and digital logic—result in paintings that feel like early reflections of the world we inhabit today. Hybrids are prophetic works: They foresee the emergence of artificial intelligence, image synthesis from fragments, digital identity construction and the blurred boundaries between the real and the simulated. Rather than offering answers, Kovačević’s art raises questions—about autonomy, control, the body, identity and the limits of the human in the posthuman age.

Honors

Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer has announced the 2025 inductees to the Delaware Women’s Hall of Fame, including two women with strong University of Delaware ties. The Office of Women’s Advancement and Advocacy, a division of the Delaware Department of Human Resources, and the Delaware Women’s Hall of Fame Committee received over 50 nominations this year. From this impressive pool, the committee selected four outstanding women whose remarkable contributions have made a lasting impact on the state of Delaware, including Valerie Biden Owens and Claire DeMatteis. Biden Owens, who, after leading her brother Joe Biden’s campaigns for decades, now serves as chair of the Biden Institute at the University and is a national advocate for women’s leadership and public service. Biden Owens received her bachelor's degree from UD in 1967. DeMatteis, a Delaware attorney who has served as senior adviser to three Delaware governors, served as senior counsel to then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, and has made impactful contributions in all three branches of state government. A 1987 UD graduate, DeMatteis is a member of UD's Board of Trustees.

Mikayla Jackson with Robert Oakes, , assistant professor of biomedical engineering

Mikayla Jackson, a doctoral student in the College of Engineering, has received the 2025 George W. Laird Merit Fellowship, created to honor the memory of George W. Laird to encourage recipients to engage in intellectual pursuits that may extend beyond their chosen fields of study. Jackson will continue her commitment to outreach through her work with the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), where she is developing a low-cost, 3D-printed microscope for its use in K-12 schools. This project leverages affordable fabrication materials to introduce students to advanced STEM concepts that are typically beyond the standard curriculum. She is a graduate research assistant in the Oakes Research Laboratory at UD.

Robert “Smitty” Oakes, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, was recently featured in an online interview by his alma mater, the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Utah, discussing his career path, graduate school, mentorship and team building.

Publications

Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and professor of humanities, continues to publish poetry connected to her research and teaching interests. Her poem titled "The Hours," an account of an imaginary conversation with Virginia Woolf, was published in Issue #21 of Last Stanza Poetry Journal, edited by Jenny Kalahar (North Haven, CT: Stackfeed Press, 2025), pp. 77–78, which is sold on Amazon. com. Another poem of hers, "French Kiss," is in the current issue (#117) of Hanging Loose Magazine (pp. 115-116) a poetry journal that has been publishing continuously for 59 years and is sold by Hanging Loose Press in Brooklyn, New York. Every issue of Hanging Loose has a distinctive feature--a small section devoted to work by high-school age poets. When Stetz was 16 years old, one of her very first publications was a poem in that magazine.

Heinz-Uwe Haus, professor emeritus of theatre and dance, published an essay, titled "European Community of Experience and National Cultural Identity – Facts" in the yearly magazine Symposium ( The Romanian Institute of Orthodox Theology and Spirituality, Vol. XXXII, Nr. 1, 2025, New York). Haus analyzes how in the process of globalization, two dynamics collide. One aims at leveling out cultural differences, the other emphasizes the need for diversity in cultural, social and economic developments in different regions of the world. Dealing with these dynamics is one of the great challenges of this century. In order to do justice to this, the author describes why it is important to examine the similarities and differences between cultures more intensively to undergo historical-anthropological research and reflection; building on this, education must be seen more than ever as an intercultural pan-European task.

In Memoriam

Kevin A. Brown, adjunct instructor in criminal justice in the Associate in Arts Program at Wilmington, passed away Aug. 1, 2025. He began teaching at UD in 2013.

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