October 07, 2021

We are pleased to recognize the recent grants, publications, presentations, awards and honors of the members of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Awards and Honors

Jeannine Cook, a creative writing MFA student, was named one of Philadelphia's Most Influential African Americans of 2021 by The Philadelphia Tribune.

David DeMatteo, JD, PhD, was recently selected as president-elect of the American Board of Forensic Psychology, part of the American Board of Professional Psychology.

Calvin Keeys, an environmental science major, was awarded the Black and Latinx Birders Scholarship from Amplify the Future, a Black and Latinx-led organization for conservation.

Grants and Contracts

Evan Forman, PhD, professor of psychology and director of the WELL Center, was awarded a $3.5M grant from the National Institute of Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Diseases for his project "Engaging men in weight loss with a game-based mHealth and neurotraining program."

Nancy Raitano Lee, PhD, associate professor of psychology, was awarded a $419,385 grant from the National Institutes of Health to support her project “Executive dysfunction as a treatment target for DS clinical trials: An evaluation of its real-world and neural correlates.”

Publications

Ron Bishop, PhD, professor of communication, and Maggie Fedorosko ’20, published their paper “Those were the days? Dimensions of nostalgia in media coverage of the Norman Lear reboots” in The Communication Review.

Octavio Borges-Delgado, PhD, assistant teaching professor of Spanish, had the manuscript “The Gender Poetics of Latin Urban Music: Conventional Pleasures, Masculinities, and Women’s Vocalities in Reguetón and Trap” accepted for publication in an edited collection of Revista de Alces XXI: Journal of Contemporary Spanish Literature and Film.

Kathryn Dettmer, adjunct instructor of French, and Brenda Dyer, associate teaching professor of French, published a chapter, “A Classroom for Everyone: Creating French Courses that Embrace Learning Differences,” in Rethinking the French Classroom: Innovative Approaches to Teaching Diversity and Inclusion – Ed. Nicole Meyer and Eilene Hoft (Routledge 2021).

Marisa Felsher, PhD, MPH; Emmanuel Koku, PhD, associate professor of sociology; Stephen Lankenau, PhD, professor of community health and prevention in Dornsife School of Public Health; Kathleen Brady, MD, acting director of the City of Philadelphia Department of Public Health; Scarlett Bellamy, ScD, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Dornsife; and Alexis M. Roth, PhD, MPH, associate professor of community health and prevention at Dornsife, authored "Motivations for PrEP-related interpersonal communication among women who inject drugs: a qualitative egocentric network study," published in Qualitative Health Research.

Steve G. Hoffman, PhD; Kelly Joyce, PhD, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of sociology; Sharla Alegria, PhD; Susan Bell, PhD, professor of sociology; Taylor M. Cruz, PhD; Safiya Noble, PhD; Benjamin Shestakofsky, PhD; and Laurel Smith-Doerr, PhD, had their paper "Five Big Ideas for a Sociology of Artificial Intelligence" accepted for publication in Contexts: Sociology for the Public.

Sonali Jain, PhD, associate teaching professor of sociology, authored “The Salience of Gender, Race, and Ethnicity for High-skilled Indian Immigrant Women in the Workplace,” published in the Journal of Intercultural Studies.

Graduate students Tia Jones, Pragati Marks and James Cowan; undergraduate student Devneet Kainth; and Associate Professor of Biology Ryan Petrie, PhD, published “Cytoplasmic pressure maintains epithelial integrity and inhibits cell motility” in Physical Biology.

Emmanuel Koku, PhD, associate professor of sociology, had “Correlates of Risky Sex among Persons Aware of their HIV Status: Evidence from the Ghana Demographic and Health Surveys” accepted for publication in Sub-Saharan Africa: Culture, History and People.

Miriam Kotzin, PhD, professor of English, published a microfiction piece titled “Wisdom” at 50 Give or Take.

Amanda McMillan Lequieu, PhD’s chapter “The everyday sociological imagination; Co-creating new knowledge through story and radio” was published in the Routledge International Handbook of Public Sociology.

Donald Riggs, PhD, teaching professor of English, published a review of Simon Lowe’s The World Is at War, Again at The Future Fire.

Kelly Underman, PhD, assistant professor of sociology, co-authored “The Resurgence of Medical Education in Sociology: A Return to Our Roots and an Agenda for the Future,” which was published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

Presentations

Octavio Borges-Delgado, PhD, assistant teaching professor of Spanish, was invited to present and moderated a roundtable discussion entitled “Identity Challenges for the Hispanic and Latinx Community” organized by the Hispanic Organization of Latinx Alumni ¡Hola! Drexel!

Carol Collier, senior advisor for watershed management and policy at the Academy of Natural Sciences, and Alexis Schulman, PhD, assistant research professor of biodiversity, earth and environmental science and director of the environmental studies and sustainability program, were featured speakers at the 9th Annual Delaware River Watershed Forum.

Travis Curtice, PhD, assistant professor of politics, co-presented “UN Statebuilding in Authoritarian States: Governance and Bureaucratic Innovation” at a panel on Global Governance and Development at the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting.

Kathryn Dettmer, adjunct instructor of French, delivered a presentation titled “Picard, his eyes open: Getting students to lose the Universal Translator and embrace the realia” at the Northeast Association for Language Learning Technology.

Kathryn Dettmer also presented “Dès le début: Enseigner avec des chansons au niveau débutant du FLE" at the Congrès 2021 des Sciences Humaines, University of Alberta, Canada.

Amanda McMillan Lequieu, PhD, assistant professor of sociology, presented at ASA 2021 in a special session called "Landscapes of Inequality: Developing a Sociology of Infrastructural Change," and at an environmental sociology roundtable on her paper “Birdwatchers on the brownfields: The environmental justice of park development on active sacrifice zones."

Amanda McMillan Lequieu, PhD, also gave an invited talk, “Imagining un‐maintenance through industrial transportation infrastructure decline,” at the Histories of Maintenance and Repair workshop, Esch‐Belval, Luxembourg.

Kelly Underman, PhD, assistant professor of sociology, spoke on a panel about Stef Shuster's new book, Trans Medicine.

In the Media

The National Science Foundation featured an animated illustration of a catfish skeleton by Kyle R. Luckenbill, research assistant and imaging specialist at the Academy of Natural Sciences, which was scanned into a digital specimen database funded by NSF.

To view additional media mentions, visit In the Media.

Do you have a recent accomplishment that you would like to see listed in our next update? Email Gina Myers, content coordinator, at gmm94@drexel.edu.