Faculty and staff achievements

Mary E. La Vine, assistant professor, Teacher Education, co-authored and published an article, titled “All for one and One for All: A case study of one district’s approach to success,” in the Journal of Physical Education and Sports Management, Summer 2016. She will present at the SHAPE America National Convention 2017 in Boston in March on the topic “Empowering Future Teachers’ Engagement 50 Million Strong in 2019” and made a series of presentations involving students as co-presenters at the Ohio Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance Convention in Huron, Ohio.

R.J. Thompson, assistant professor, Interactive and Graphic Design, was one of 12 local artists and photographers participating in an exhibit titled “Celebrate Youngstown” at The SOAP Gallery in downtown Youngstown. Thompson displayed three posters, entitled “City of You,” showcasing efforts to beautify the city. He created several interactive course applications for smart phones, titled YSU Design History, YSU Intermediate Interactive Design, YSU Advanced Interactive Design and YSU Motion for Interactive Design. Thompson also created interactive phone applications for the McDonough Museum of Art, the City of Youngstown and Youngstown Farmers Markets.

Robert Twomey, assistant professor, Digital Media, received a grant from Amazon to support his digital arts research. Funding is through the AWS Cloud Credits for Research program, a competitive international grant. He proposed a proof of concept study using the Elastic Compute Cloud as a platform for light field imaging, machine listening and deep learning for the arts. The grant funds will support a year’s worth of work employing Amazon cloud resources for new and ongoing projects.

James Umble, professor, Saxophone, will be a guest professor at the 2017 American Saxophone Academy this summer at the University of Iowa, joining colleagues from major universities around the country teaching advanced college saxophone students. Umble also will perform at the opening concert for the North American Saxophone Alliance Region V Conference, along with other colleagues from around the region at Indiana University-Purdue University in Ft. Wayne, Ind. March 3-5. Also, last spring, Umble served as a partial sabbatical replacement at Indiana University-Bloomington for one week as a guest professor of Saxophone.

Stephen L. Gage, professor, Conducting, and Director of Band and Orchestra, was inducted into the inaugural Auburn High School Music Hall of Fame in Auburn, N.Y. where he served his first assignment as a band director from 1980 to 1989. Gage is also conductor of the W.D. Packard Concert Band in Warren and serves as the Edward Zacharias Memorial Chair/Conductor of the Youngstown Symphony Youth Orchestra.

Xiangjia "Jack" Min, associate professor, Biological Sciences; Brian Powell, a recent MS graduate and now an instructor, Computer Science and Information Systems; Chet Cooper, professor, Biological Sciences; and Feng Yu, assistant professor, CSIS, published a paper titled "ProtSecKB: the protist secretome and subcellular proteome knowledgebase," in the journal Computational Molecular Biology Other co-authors include Vamshi Amerishetty and John Meinken, recent YSU MS graduates, and Geneva Knott, an undergraduate student. The work describes the first comprehensive online database hosting information of predicted subcellular locations for over 1.97 million proteins from organisms in the kingdom Protista.

Christine McCullough, professor, Art, Claudia Berlinski, assistant professor, Art, and Terre Brock Davis, adjunct faculty, Art, exhibited their work in a three-person show, titled “Drawing Attention,” that ran at the University of Mount Union in Alliance. McCullough exhibited paintings, Brock Davis displayed both paintings and drawings, and Berlinski showed photographic installations.


Diana Palardy, associate professor, Foreign Languages and Literature, published a chapter, titled “Into the Matrix of Contemporary Spanish Squatter Communities: Navigating Through Utopian Landscapes of Hospitality and Dystopian Landscapes of Hostility in Okupada by Care Santos,” in the book Alternative Communities in Hispanic Literature and Culture, published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. She also presented a paper, titled “The Architecture of Greed or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying about the Economic Crisis and Love the Sheep,” at the Society for Utopian Studies Conference in Fall 2016.

Tom Diggins, professor, Biological Sciences, recently co-authored two peer-reviewed articles. The first, titled “Barrier-spit geomorphology and inlet dynamics in absence of tides: The recent evolution of the North Pond system, eastern Lake Ontario, New York State,” was published in the Journal of Earth Surface Processes and Landforms. It was lead authored by former faculty member Robin Mattheus, and by recent graduates Josh Fowler, MS, and Derrick Allen, BS. Diggins also co-authored “Lacustrine hydrodynamic and sediment accommodation controls on headland-beach geomorphology evaluated by statistical methods, southern Lake Erie coast,” for the Journal of Great Lakes Research, also lead authored by Mattheus and co-authored by Fowler. Fowler, a recipient of a Cushwa Fellowship, co-authored these and one other paper based on work supported by the award.

Three YSU faculty members were among the 2017 honorees for 25 Under 35 Awards from the Mahoning Valley Young Professionals: Alicia Prieto Langarica, associate professor of Mathematics and Statistics; Tiffany Anderson, assisstant professor of English and director of the YSU Africana Studies Program; and Diana Awad Scrocco, assistant professor of English. In addition, Langarica was named as one of three MVPs of the group. The awards were presented at a ceremony at Stambaugh Auditorium. The awards are also supported by the Community Foundation of the Mahoning Valley. Last year, two YSU women were named MVPs: Monica Rebecca Curnalia, assistant professor of Communications, and Mollie Hartup, assistant director of Events Management.