Faculty/staff achievements
Missy McCormick, associate professor of Art at YSU, collaborated with two faculty members at Carnegie Mellon University to create a sculpture called “Solar Screen,” right. The artwork outside The Vindicator building in downtown Youngstown is one of five community art projects funded by a grant awarded YSU by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Mari Alschuler, associate professor, Social Work, authored a short story that was included in a new fiction anthology titled Lock n Load: Armed Fiction and published by University of New Mexico Press. Her story is titled “Revealed.” She plans to do a reading at the YSU Barnes & Nobles bookstore during spring semester.
Nicole Mullins, professor, Kinesiology and Sport Science, presented a tutorial lecture at the 2017 Fall Meeting of the New England Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine in Providence, R.I. Her presentation, titled "A ball, a bat, a bike for Bobby; A Barbie, a bracelet, an Easy Bake Oven for Bonnie: Who will be more physically active? Place your bets," sought to address the conference mission, “Bridging the Gap: Translation to Application,” to engage attendees in a variety of topics with applications to individual, career, and educational goals.
Frank Akpadock, senior research economist and regional scientist, Center for Urban and Regional Studies, conducted a study, titled “The Effect of population cohort aged 25 years and older without high school diplomas on the Socio-economic regeneration efforts of legacy cities: The case of Youngstown, OH.” The study found that, compared to Youngstown, peer cities with lower percentages of residents aged 25 years and older without high school diplomas had higher median household income and income per capita; lower unemployment rates; lower percentage rates of households on government assistance; lower percentage rates of residents living below the poverty threshold; and lower robbery and burglary rates. The study concludes that these socio-economic attributes were reversed in Youngstown because it has a higher percentage of residents aged 25 years and older without high school diplomas.
Ron Shaklee, professor and chair, Geography, had an article titled “Route Recalculation: Navigating Where We Are, Where We're Going, And What We've Missed Along the Way,” published in Phi Kappa Phi Forum, the quarterly magazine of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. Shaklee is president of Chapter 143 of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi at YSU.
William Binning, professor emeritus, Politics and International Relations, co-authored two essays: "Ohio Senate Race: A Summer Campaign" and “Pennsylvania Senate Race: Calculated Campaigns in a Toss-Up State.” The articles were published in The Roads to Congress 2016, a biennial series on congressional elections published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Michael Jerryson, associate professor, Religious Studies, was quoted as an expert source recently in an article published by US News and World Report and titled “Buddist Nationalism Reaches Behond Myanmar.” The article is the latest in a series of media exposures related to Jerryson’s expertise on Buddist violence. He was interviewed for a two-part article, titled “Buddhist nationalists and ethnic cleansing in Myanmar,” published in October in Oxford University Press’s Academic Insights for the Thinking World. He also authored a piece, titled “Religion and the Persecution of Rohingya Muslims,” and published in October in, The Berkley Forum. Jerryson has lived and worked in Buddhist-Muslim conflict zones throughout Southeast Asia.
Paul Sracic, professor and chair of Politics and International Relations, was is in Ireland and Belgium in October for a series of lectures. The trip included a presentation at the “Creative Minds: Exploring Conservatism America” event at the residence of U.S. Ambassador Reece Smyth in Dublin. Sracic also spoke at Maynooth University and Trinity College in Dublin, the Institute of International and European Affairs in Dublin, and at the National University of Ireland in Galway.
Three Art faculty members – Lillian Lewis, assistant professor, Art Education; Michelle Nelson, professor, Art; and RJ Thompson, assistant professor, Art – will present at the National Art Educator’s Association conference in Seattle. Their presentation, titled "Transforming Teaching Toward Transforming Community,” will discuss their work on a grant they were awarded by the Puffin Foundation. The YSU faculty presentation was chosen from among more than 1,700 proposals the NAEA received this year in a highly competitive peer review and selection process.
Kristine L. Blair, dean, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, recently received an award from the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition. Blair was honored with the Lisa Ede Mentoring Award, which is presented every two years at the biannual Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference, held in October this year at the University of Dayton. One of 18 nominees, she was nominated by 17 former students, each of whom wrote an individual letter describing Blair’s role as a feminist mentor.