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

Recent honors, presentations, media appearances, exhibitions, service, appointments and memorials include the following:

Honors

The University of Delaware Magazine has received a Gold Circle of Excellence Award from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) for its series on “Power of the Pen” in the October 2025 edition. Honored in the category Writing | News Feature, the five-part series — reported and written by Diane Stopyra, feature writer and associate editor of the Magazine — examines the state of journalism today and explores how Blue Hen reporters and educators are responding to collapsing local news, low public trust and rampant misinformation. Judges cited “the timely nature of the content and the variety of storytelling methods used throughout the submission, including interactive elements that further engaged readers,” adding that it “clearly identified an important issue and effectively demonstrated how the institution is addressing it, helping bring the story back to institutional impact and purpose.” The Magazine’s managing editor is Artika Casini; design is by Molly Chappell, director of publication design, and Bondé Angeline, graphic designer; photography is by Kathy Atkinson, senior photographer, and Evan Krape, photographer; and digital support is by Corin  Larraga, interim senior director of digital communications, and Kevin Knecht, digital marketing manager.

Three faculty members from the School of Nursing have been named to the American Academy of Nursing’s 2026 Class of Fellows, marking the profession’s highest honor. Jennifer Graber, professor and associate dean of academic affairs and practice initiatives; Jennifer Saylor, professor and associate dean of faculty and student affairs; and Lauren Covington, associate professor, are part of the new cohort of influential leaders recognized for their substantial contributions to improving health outcomes and for their work to transform healthcare. They join current fellows of the American Academy of Nursing (FAAN) from the School of Nursing (SON): Elizabeth Speakman, senior associate dean and chief nurse administrator; Kathleen Brewer-Smyth, professor; Ju Young Shin, professor; and Sharon Dudley-Brown, professor. “Induction into the American Academy of Nursing is a highly selective honor,” said Speakman. “With over 5 million registered nurses in the U.S. and roughly 3,400 active fellows in the Academy, less than 0.1% of nurses achieve this distinction, and UD SON is proud to have seven faculty members with this elite designation.” New fellows will be celebrated at an induction ceremony on Oct. 10, 2026, in Washington, D.C.

The Delaware Center for Civics Education, a public service unit within the Institute for Public Administration (IPA) in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration, received the inaugural Education Advocacy Award from the League of Women Voters for New Castle County at its annual awards luncheon on June 13, 2026, in recognition of its efforts to expand high-quality civics education across the state. In addition to this recognition, Sophie Douglas, a political science major with a concentration in global politics and minors in public policy and political communication, received the 2026 Scholarship Award from the League of Women Voters at its annual awards luncheon in June.

The University of Delaware Physical Therapy Clinic has been voted “Best of Delaware” by Delaware Today. This marks the first time the clinic has received the honor, earning recognition among more than 200 physical therapy clinics serving residents across the state. “This designation is especially meaningful given the outstanding physical therapy community across our state,” said Airelle Giordano, director of clinical services and residency training at the UDPT Clinic. “This recognition is a testament to the passion, expertise, teamwork and compassion that define our clinic.” Best of Delaware honorees will be celebrated on Aug. 6 at the Chase Center on the Riverfront in Wilmington.

An article by Andrew B. Jenks, educational assessment specialist in the Center for Teaching and Assessment of Learning, has been shortlisted for the Article of the Year Award published in Higher Education Research and Development. The award was established by the The Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) in collaboration with Taylor and Francis/Routledge, the publisher of Higher Education Research and Development (HERD), to recognise the outstanding contribution made by HERD authors. Jenks’ article is entitled “Emergent questions of access: disability and the integration of generative AI in teaching and learning.” All shortlisted papers were judged to provide significant critical and/or analytical insights to the field of higher education, were characterised by their thorough literature reviews, sound methodology, persuasive, succinct and coherent arguments and were, moreover, highly engaging.

Calaia Jackson Franco, a doctoral student in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration, graduated from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Scholars program. The four-year national leadership program supports doctoral students interested in advancing their research to build healthier, more equitable communities. Jackson Franco is, to date, the only finalist and scholar in the program’s history to represent the state of Delaware. 

Presentations

On June 23, 2026, Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women’s Studies and professor of humanities, was the invited speaker at an event held at the University of Essex, U.K., that was sponsored by the university's Interdisciplinary Literary Research Centre (of which she is an appointed Advisory Board member). Her lecture, "Robots, Empathy and Asian 'Comfort Women' History in Plum Rains (2018)," focused on a work of speculative fiction set in Tokyo in 2029, where an AI-enabled robotic creation interacts with a survivor of Japan's WWII-era military sexual slavery, demonstrating a degree of compassionate understanding that humans are increasingly losing. This talk was part of a series organized by the centre around the subject of robots as features of both modern life and literary works. On June 30, 2026, Stetz was also an invited participant at a (hybrid) meeting regarding current and future projects of RILCH (the Research Institute for Literature and Cultural History) at Liverpool John Moores University, U.K. She is an appointed member of that Advisory Board, as well.

Mark Samuels Lasner, senior research fellow emeritus, University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press, gave an invited lecture on June 17, 2026, at Senate House, University of London. His illustrated talk, titled “Decadence Divided by a Common Language: Looking at the Collections of the University of Delaware and the University of London,” was sponsored and organized by the London 19th-Century Studies Seminar. It focused on important items related to the British Decadent Movement in the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, now at the University of Delaware, and the related (and little-known) holdings of the Senate House Library at the University of London, many of them the gift of Sir Louis Sterling. A small exhibition by Karen Attar, curator of Rare Books and University Art at Senate House Library, accompanied his presentation. This included perhaps the most “decadent” book in existence, the copy of Oscar Wilde’s play Salome given by Wilde to Aubrey Beardsley.

Rudi Matthee, John and Dorothy Munroe Distinguished Professor of History, presented a Zoom talk titled “Mehmandari: Hosting and Minding Foreign Visitors in Safavid and Qajar Iran,” for the British Institute of Persian Studies, on June 30, 2026. The talk is available on YouTube. 

Media appearances

Caleb Curtiss, adjunct professor in the Department of English, was recently featured on The Slowdown, a prominent daily poetry podcast and radio show. The July 1 episode featured Curtiss's "Thirst Trap," which originally appeared in the literary journal The Rumpus earlier this year. Produced in partnership with American Public Media, the Poetry Foundation and the Library of Congress, The Slowdown is hosted by acclaimed poet Maggie Smith and introduces contemporary poetry to a wide national audience. Curtiss is the author of the poetry collection Age of Forgiveness and received a 2022 Established Artist Fellowship from the Delaware Division of the Arts. His poetry appears in journals such as Beloit Poetry Journal, New England Review and The Southern Review. 

On July 6, 2026, Amit Kumar, assistant professor of marketing and psychological and brain sciences, discussed his research as a guest on the NPR show Forum with Alexis Madrigal, discussing “What’s a Voicemail You’ll Never Delete?” The program also featured Leah McKendrick, actor and director of the Netflix film Voicemails for Isabelle. 

Jody Greaney, associate professor of health behavior and nutrition sciences in the College of Health Sciences, was recently featured on The Measure of Everyday Life radio show and podcast, produced by public radio station WNCU and hosted by Brian Southwell, adjunct instructor in strategic communication in the College of Arts and Sciences and distinguished fellow and lead scientist for public understanding of science at RTI International, an independent research institute. The June 3, 2026, episode focused on Greaney’s research on assessing depression and its potential links to future heart health.

Carter Pape, technical reporter for the American Banker magazine, interviewed Farley Grubb, professor of economics, and extensively quoted him in the article "250 Years of Bank Tech, from Franklin to Digital Banking" in American Banker magazine, published online July 3, 2026, updated July 6, 2026.

Exhibitions

Natalija Mijatović, professor and chair of the Department of Art and Design, has a solo exhibition on display at the Gallery Hao in Belgrade, Serbia. Of Snow and Solace explores themes of memory, displacement, landscape and the persistence of affect. “My paintings emerge from places where the living and the remembered intertwine — bare woods, frozen fields, thickets of seed pods and snow-covered ground,” she said.