December 16, 2022

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

Awards & Honors

Assistant Professor of Psychology Aaron Kucyi, PhD, recently received NOA for an R21 titled “Investigating electroencephalographic predictors of default mode network anticorrelation for personalized neurofeedback.” 

Professor of Biodiversity, Earth and Environmental Science David Velinsky, PhD, was awarded the 2022 Outstanding Research Award by Lacawac Sanctuary.

Grants

The MFA in Creative Writing program received a $50,000 gift from writer and publisher Zibby Owens toward a scholarship fund to support tuition and fees for a student from a traditionally marginalized community. This is the second gift of this amount from Owens.  

Publications

Associate Teaching Professor of English Henry Israeli, MFA, published a poem, “Coattails,” in Plume.  

MFA student Eleanor Keisman published an essay, “Almost Matilda,” in the Bangalore Review.  

Assistant Professor of Global Studies and Sociology, Nada Matta, PhD, published “Middle-Class Employees in the Egyptian Uprising of 2011” in Critical Historical Studies. 

Two student essays from the 2021 edition of The 33rd (volume 14) have been selected by Norton for republication in the next edition of their popular composition textbook They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing. The essays, "Democracy: America’s Greatest Scam” by philosophy, politics and economics major Arthi Sivendra and "The Fast and the Fashionable" by biomedical engineering major Emma Barnes, were both written in Jonathan Hobratsch's first-year writing classes.

Presentations

Teaching Professor of Philosophy Stacey Ake, PhD, presented "Peirce and Percy: Community and the Many Voices of Fourthness” at the 94th Annual Southern Atlantic Modern Language Association Meeting on November 11. 

Professor of Biology Felice Elefant, PhD, presented her research as the “student choice” seminar speaker for the NIH-Research Training Initiative for Student Enhancement (RISE) Program seminar series at the University of Puerto Rico. The RISE program seeks to increase underrepresented students in the biomedical sciences to complete PhD degrees in these fields. 

Associate Professor of Spanish Maria de la luz Matus-Mendoza, PhD, gave multiple presentations on virtual collaborations and global classrooms at Pontificia Universidad Catolica’s Claves de la Docencia Collaborativa Global conference in Santiago, Chile, Nov. 28–Dec. 1.  

Associate Professor of Philosophy Flavia Padovani, PhD, delivered the 30th Vienna Circle lecture on December 15 at Universität Wien in Vienna, Austria. Her talk was entitled “Constitutive Principles in Science: Between Contingency and Constraints.” Padovani was also elected Vice President of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science (HOPOS) for a two-year term beginning in January 2023, after which she will serve a two-year term as President. 

Teaching Professor of English Fred Siegel, PhD, appeared as a guest expert on a recent episode of the Drexel Pennoni Honors College podcast “Pop, the Question.”