Catawba College faculty recognized for professional achievements

Published 12:00 am Thursday, January 10, 2019

Over the fall semester, Catawba College faculty members had papers published or accepted for publication, attended professional conferences and made presentations, and accomplished other achievements outside the college.

Alison Atwater, assistant professor of nursing and simulation lab coordinator, and Valerie Rakes, chairwoman and associate professor of nursing

Atwater and Rakes made a presentation titled “Redesigning Simulation Debriefing Practices of a Pre-licensure Baccalaureate Nursing Program” at the North Carolina Doctorate of Nursing Practice Symposium on Nov. 15. The presentation detailed how nursing faculty, through simulation with debriefing, have the opportunity to positively influence graduate nurses’ clinical reasoning.

Debriefing following simulation is a time that the student can reflect on the simulated event, deciding what went well, what can be different, what was overseen, their personal performance and other aspects that are applicable to the scenario.

Amanda Bosch, assistant professor of education and digital pedagogy and scholarship librarian

Bosch and students from Introduction to Teaching and Educational Technology presented Makerspace activities using Little Bits Electrical circuit kits at the Rowan Public Library on Nov. 19. Participants created art spinners and used electrical circuits to create working fans, alarms and lights.

Bosch also visited Salisbury High School on Nov. 5 to help students produce an augmented reality interactive poster to use to pitch their original idea for a video game. The final posters will be showcased in January at a project-based learning community showcase and will also be displayed in the Catawba College library for parents and students to view.

Sheila Brownlow, chairwoman and professor of psychology

Brownlow was named to the editorial board of the journal “Social Behavior Research and Practice.”

Aaron Butler, assistant professor of English

From Sept. 2930, Butler and students Julia Peach, Vanna Christian, Tyler Grant and Collin Weatherman from Shakespeare and Tudor Drama traveled to the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia. They attended productions at Blackfriars Playhouse, a re-creation of a Shakespeare-era indoor theater. Performances included Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” and “King Richard III,” as well as an adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel “Emma.”

Erin Dougherty, associate professor of theater arts

Last fall, Dougherty presented and had students participate in a stage makeup workshop with high school students at Northwest Cabarrus High School in Cabarrus County.

Gary Freeze, professor of history and American cultural studies

At the invitation of the Davidson College classics department, Freeze presented “Hoplites of Above-Ground Tombs: Confederate Monuments in the Piedmont Region” during a meeting of the Charlotte chapter of the Archaeological Institute of America. The presentation reviewed the motives, methods and measures taken to erect the sentinel statues on courthouse lawns and church cemeteries, from the perspective of these being future objects of archaeological research.

At the invitation of the Friends of the Alamance Battlefield, Freeze spoke at Elon University on religion and the Regulators. His “Regulators, Covenanters, and the Path to the Hornet’s Nest” talk summarized recent work on the idea of the long-term effects of the Regulator movement, a taxpayer revolt in the late Colonial period in North Carolina.

Finally, he presented “When Claremont Was Like Mayberry” at a sesquicentennial program for the town of Claremont in Catawba County. This covered the general history of the urban development of the small towns of Catawba County in the postwar period and was connected to a book signing for the third volume of his “The Catawbans” trilogy.

• Jamie Henthorn, assistant professor of English and director of the Writing Center

Henthorn contributed a chapter titled “Bioshock’s Little Sisters and a Legacy of Posthuman Agency” to a book called “Beyond the Sea: Navigating Bioshock” that was published Nov. 1.

The chapter uses the video game Bioshock to map the use of female bodies for promoting and producing new technology. The game relies on and references historical uses of women’s and girls’ bodies for experimentation, often without consent. This chapter concludes with an examination of the issues of creating a game critical of capitalism that is also a AAA game.

Erin Howard, assistant professor of biology

Howard’s article “MicroRNA Regulation in Estrogen Receptor-Positive Breast Cancer and Endocrine Therapy” was published Sept. 11 in “Biological Procedures Online.”

The article highlighted major microRNA-estrogen receptor regulatory mechanisms in context with estrogen receptor-positive breast carcinogenesis, as well as the critical microRNAs that contribute to endocrine therapy resistance or sensitivity. It also evaluated the clinical applications and challenges associated with microRNA regulatory mechanisms and novel microRNA targets that may have translational value as potential therapeutics for the treatment of estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer.

Sarah Jackson, visiting assistant professor of communication

Jackson attended the National Communication Association Annual Conference and, on Nov. 7, chaired a panel discussing “Violent Plays: Performing Ethics, Rights and Freedoms.” The panel aimed to draw connections among aesthetic, cultural and political performance of violence.

She also attended the annual midyear legislative assembly meeting for the Southern States Communication Association at the National Communication Association conference. She serves as chairwoman of the Performance Studies Division of the Southern States Communication Association and represented her division at this meeting.

Renee Just, assistant professor of business and director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Experiential Development

Between June and November, Just made three presentations. The first two were at the Idea Center of Rowan County. The first in June was titled “Why Do Brands Matter? Let’s Explore a Marketing Plan,” and the second on Sept. 11 was titled “What Is an Entrepreneur?” The second explored the concept, history, traits and behaviors of an entrepreneur as well as the concept of an “intrepreneur.”

Just next presented “Entrepreneurship Integration: Finding the Nooks and Crannies” Nov. 2 at the North Carolina Entrepreneurship Educators Conference. The presentation focused on the need for finding ways to collaborate and integrate the mindset that is entrepreneurship into communities and campuses.

Jennifer Klebaur, assistant professor of psychology

Klebaur was the guest speaker for a Nov. 5 lunch-and-learn seminar at J.T. Williams Secondary Montessori School in Charlotte. She spoke to middle and high school students about what it is like to be a psychology professor, the education requirements needed for a field and how psychology might fit in with career plans.

She also participated in a Nov. 15 Commuter Connect held on the Catawba campus. It focused on campus resources available to commuter students.

Scott Morton, assistant professor of communication

On Oct. 6, Morton presented his paper “The Siren of Radio Pyongyang: An Examination of American Print Coverage of the Korean War’s Seoul City Sue” at the American Journalism Historians Association conference.

Seoul City Sue was an American-born radio propagandist for the North Koreans during the Korean War. Morton’s paper examined American print media coverage of this mysterious woman, who broadcast during the summer of 1950 and then vanished without a trace.

Salvatore Musumeci, chairman and associate professor of history and classics

Musumeci attended the National Collegiate Honors Council annual conference in Boston from Nov. 3-11. There, he co-facilitated a City As Text master class “Uncovering Boston.” He was one of 15 faculty to help facilitate the City As Text signature event; facilitated a student session on “Students in Honors: Talking Effectively about You, Your Major, and Honors”; moderated a panel that discussed “City As Text/Place As Text Faculty Institutes: What They Are, What They Do, and How They Benefit You, Your Students and Your Institutions?”; participated on a panel titled “Enabling Honors: Efficiently and Effectively Scaling High-Impact Practices”; and judged student posters in arts and humanities.

He also served in the consultant center, mentored a first-time conference participant from Chattanooga State Community College and attended two committee meetings.

Victor Romano, assistant professor of sport and health sciences and director of exercise science bachelor’s degree program

In September, Romano’s feasibility study “Using Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Self-Assessment in Collegiate Swimmers in Determining Overtraining” was accepted for publication in the “International Journal of Sport & Society.” A Catawba exercise science student co-wrote the study. The study examined the balance between rest and training and its relation to peak athletic performance.

Kerstin Rudolph, assistant professor of English

Rudolph presented a paper titled “Baby Africa: Nursing and Activism in Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches and Subsequent Writings” at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference on Nov. 2. The paper explored the ways in which Alcott’s experiences as a war nurse shaped her outlook on race activism.

Buster Smith, chairman and associate professor of sociology

Smith attended the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and organized a panel discussion on teaching the sociology of religion. In addition, he convened a section on divine perceptions. These gatherings included speakers from Clemson University, East Tennessee State, Louisiana State, Arizona State, Pennsylvania State, UC-Berkley and the College of Idaho.

Pamela Thompson, associate professor of information systems

Thompson was one of nine people out of 55 who applied invited to make a presentation Sept. 27 at the SAS Deep Learning Symposium held at SAS World Headquarters in Cary. Her presentation, titled “Developing a Recommender System for Shark Presence Along East Coast Beaches,” was made during the multiday symposium that focused on deep learning, machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies that are transforming a diverse set of scientific, engineering and business domains.

J. Michael Wilson, chairman and professor of modern foreign languages

Wilson presented “While You Were Sleeping, the Real Academic Changed the Rule” on Oct. 20 at the fall conference of the Foreign Language Association of North Carolina. The presentation concerned a recent change in Spanish grammar “rules” pertaining to the use of “hubiese” forms in the result clause of contrary-to-fact conditional sentences.

Sandra Yamane, assistant professor of nursing

Yamane will have an article titled “Uncovering Cyberincivility Among Nurses and Nursing Students on Twitter: A Data Mining Study” published in the Jan. 15 edition of “International Journal of Nursing Studies.” The article studied the characteristics of tweets posted by nurses and nursing students, finding that nurses and nursing students share uncivil tweets that could tarnish the image of the profession and violate codes of ethics.

She also had an article titled “Microlearning in Health Professions Education: A Scoping Review Protocol” published Nov. 27 in “Joanna Briggs Institute Database of Systematic Reviews and Implementation Reports.” The article examined how microlearning is defined and designed as an educational strategy in health professions education and what outcomes associated with microlearning have been measured in health professions students.