This December, I ask you to join me in looking back over an incredible 2023. Just in the span of the Fall 2023 semester, we have recorded remarkable successes, such as our Driving Change Initiative being awarded a $2.5 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), in order to support underrepresented STEM undergraduate students and Lauren Grodstein’s, Professor of English, new book, We Must Not Think of Ourselves, being named the December pick for the Today show’s popular Read with Jenna club. Our students and alumni continue to thrive, as made clear the accomplishments of students such as Sophia Mora (CCAS ’27), who received a 2023-2024 New Jersey Space Grant Consortium Academic Year Internship; and by Shawn McGhee (GSC ’11), whose book No Longer Subjects of the British King: The Troubled Formation of the American Political Community, 1774-1776, was published by Westholme Press.
I am so proud of what has been achieved this semester and am truly excited for what’s to come in Spring 2024. I hope you are able to join us for exciting events like Research Week and Commencement.
First, though, I wish you a happy holiday season and the arrival of a safe and joyful new year.
John Griffin
Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences–Camden
Faculty Highlights
Awards
Through the leadership of Dr. Kwangwon Lee, Professor of Biology, the Driving Change Initiative at Rutgers–Camden received a $2.5 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). This grant supports cultural progress on campus so that underrepresented STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) undergraduate students can excel and graduate. https://stories.camden.rutgers.edu/driving-change-for-good/
Faculty, staff, and student members of the Rutgers University-Camden Driving Change Community received the university-wide Spirit Award at the Presidential Employee Excellence Recognition Program on Monday, December 11, 2023. The Spirit Award celebrates differences and recognizes significant contributions to cultivating a beloved community—one in which all members work together and are heard—at Rutgers University. The members of the Driving Change Community include:
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Aditya Birla |
Kwangwon Lee |
Department of Biology
- Dr. Kwangwon Lee, Professor of Biology, received the Torchbearer Award at the Rutgers Progress Summit in November 2023. To receive the Torchbearer Award, one must be a leader in promoting diversity, inclusion, equity, and access at Rutgers through their academic research, teaching, community engagement, and/or workplace engagement, program development, and leadership.
Department of Chemistry
- Dr. Catherine Grgicak, Associate Professor of Chemistry, was named a 2023 Edison Patent Awardee, which is the state’s highest recognition for inventors and innovators, by the Research and Development Council of New Jersey.
Department of Computer Science
- Dr. Desmond Lun, Professor of Computer Science, was named a 2023 Edison Patent Awardee, which is the state’s highest recognition for inventors and innovators, by the Research and Development Council of New Jersey.
Department of History
- In 2023, Dr. Evan Jewell, Assistant Professor of History, received the Andrew F. Mellon Foundation Rome Prize, which funded one year of study in Rome.
- Dr. Emily Marker, Associate Professor of History, received the George Louis Beer Prize in European International History since 1895 from the American Historical Association for her book Black France, White Europe: Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Post-War Era (Cornell, 2022). The book was also recognized with the David H. Pinkney Prize (honorable mention, Society for French Historical Studies) and the Alf Andrew Heggoy Prize (honorable mention, French Colonial History Society).
Department of Mathematical Sciences
- Dr. Benedetto Piccoli, the Joseph and Loretta Lopez Chair in Mathematics, was awarded membership at the Instituted for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey. Over the course of the academic year, Dr. Piccoli will work on adapting fluid dynamic methods to the control of multi-agent systems.
Department of Physics
- Dr. Julianne Griepenburg, Assistant Professor of Physics, received a Rutgers University Spirit Award for her contributions to the Rutgers–Camden Driving Change Community.
Department of Psychology
- Dr. Andrew Abeyta, Assistant Professor of Psychology, received the 2023 Chancellor’s Award for Academic Diversity and Inclusion for his Spring 2023 course “Cultural Psychology.”
Department of Public Policy and Administration
- Dr. Jovanna Rosen, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Administration, received the Jay A. Sigler Award, which is presented to the DPPA faculty member who best exhibits a commitment to students’ academic development and personal growth.
Department of Visual, Media, and Performing Arts
- Ms. Elizabeth Demaray, Professor of Art, received the Artist-in-Residence Award at the World Trade Center in New York. She is currently creating The Manhattan Tundra Project, an emergent eco-system and site-specific artwork slated to be installed at the top of World Trade Tower #7.
Department of World Languages and Cultures
- Dr. Ana Laguna, Professor of Spanish, received multiple awards over the course of 2023:
- The Martin Stevens Award from the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society for “In the Name of Love: Cervantes’ Play on Captivity in La gran sultana;”
- The Luis Murillo Award for Best Article of the Year from the Cervantes Society of America; and
- The Teaching, Research, and Academic Excellence Award from Rutgers–Camden.
- Dr. Silvia Perez-Cortes, Associate Professor of Spanish, received the 2023 Chancellor’s Award for Academic Diversity and Inclusion.
Collaborations
Community Leadership Center (CLC)/Department of Public Policy and Administration
- Paraguay: This semester Dr. Gloria Bonilla-Santiago, Professor of Public Policy and Administration, and the CLC continued to lead the coordination and expansion of the collaboration with Universidad Nacional de Asuncion (UNA) in Paraguay. Chancellor Tillis committed to a five-year investment of $250,000.00 to transition to a new collaborative phase focused on continued exchange in areas of scholarship, research, and capacity building. Dr. Bonilla-Santiago’s class Sustainable Community Development Models and Practices traveled to Paraguay in Spring 2023 and participated in a student conference. Students in this class collaborated with students in Paraguay throughout the spring semester. This program was supported with a grant from Rutgers Global.
- Puerto Rico: The CLC provided support to the LEAP Social Enterprise in Puerto Rico that resulted in opening of a K-12 school in one of the poorest communities in San Juan. Plans to open additional schools are underway. In October 2023, ten master’s and 10 doctorate students visited Puerto Rico as part of Dr. Bonilla-Santiago’s Practicum in Community Development class. While in Puerto Rico, the students engaged in the Community Assets and Capitals Model, applying different research tools to develop a case study about Community Development in Sabana Llana, Puerto Rico, where the LEAP STEAM + E school is housed.
Department of World Languages and Cultures/Latin American and Latino Studies Program/Global Studies Program
- In Spring 2023, Dr. Carla Giaudrone, Associate Professor of Spanish, together with Eveling Hondros, Assistant Teaching Professor of Spanish, partnered to coordinate a four-week language and cultural exchange initiative between students from Rutgers–Camden and Universidad Nacional de Asunción (UNA) in Paraguay. A similar program was held in Fall 2023, with students from Dr. Giaudrone’s “American Culture and Civilization” class and students from Universidad Torcuato di Tela in Argentina.
Department of English and Communication/MARCH and Department of Philosophy and Religion
- On November 14, 2023, Dr. Jillian Sayre, Associate Professor of English, presented, “Encountering Death: Mourning in Philosophy and Cultural Practice” alongside Dr. Kipp Gilmore-Clough of the Department of Philosophy and Religion, as part of the Rutgers–Camden Center for the Arts’ exhibit “Death Under Glass.”
Compositions
Department of Visual, Media, and Performing Arts
- Dr. Mark Zaki, Professor of Music, composed the score for the Canadian docuseries Missing Kenley.
Department/Program Events and Updates
Department of Chemistry
- The Department of Chemistry opened the Mass Suite, which includes multiple mass spectrometers of MALDI-TOF, LC-MS and GC-MS. The Mass Suite will enhance the molecular characterization capability and benefit multi-disciplinary research and STEM education activities.
Department of Childhood Studies
- Dr. Destiny Crockett, the Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow, joined the Department of Childhood Studies in Fall 2023.
- The Department of Childhood Studies will host the multidisciplinary conference, “Visions of Racial Justice and Childhood,” in Spring 2024.
Digital Studies Center
- On September 9, 2023, in partnership with the IDEA Center, the Digital Studies Center hosted the third annual Arts and Music Festival, which featured local Camden artists, musicians, and vendors.
Rutgers–Camden Center for the Arts
- The Rutgers–Camden Center for the Arts (RCCA) exhibited “Death Under Glass,” over the Fall 2023 semester. This show, a collaboration between forensic pathologist Marianne Hamel, MD, PhD, and forensic photographer Nikki Johnson, MFA, featured photographs of human cells at high magnification. A number of faculty lectures accompanied the exhibition.
Department of Visual, Media, and Performing Arts
- Dr. Joseph Schiavo, Teaching Professor of Music, will continue to serve as the artistic director of the Mallery Concert Series. The Spring 2024 series kicks off on January 31 with a performance by pianist Mariah Trenk.
- Upcoming theater performances include the play The Triumph of Love, written by Marivaux, adapted by Stephen Wadsworth, and directed by Damon Bonetti, from February 8-11; and the musical Urinetown, to be directed by Shamus McCarty and showing April 11-21.
Fellowships
Department of Psychology
- Dr. Andrew Abeyta, Assistant Professor of Psychology, received the Flourishing in Action Fellowship by the Human Flourishing Lab of the Archbridge Institute.
- Dr. Bill Whitlow, Professor of Psychology, was elected to be a Fellow of the Eastern Psychological Association in March 2023.
Department of Public Policy and Administration
- In September 2023, Dr. Erin Robinson, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Administration, was named an Early Career Faculty Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice.
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice
- Dr. Sarah Tosh, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, received the Early Career Fellowship from the Rutgers University Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice.
Exhibitions
Department of Visual, Media, and Performing Arts
- Stass Shpanin, Assistant Teaching Professor of Art, had the following exhibitions in 2023 and will have an exhibit beginning January 2024:
Grants
Africana Studies Program
- In May 2023, Dr. Keith Green, Associate Professor of English and Africana Studies, received a Rutgers University Academic Affairs’ Research Council Grant for his project “Saved but Enslaved: Briton Hammon, Hannah Hovey, and the Earliest Black and Indigenous Members of Plymouth’s First Church, 1708-1783.” This project will deliver the first history of indigenous and black participation in the church founded by the Mayflower pilgrims. The project reconstructs BIPOC participation via church archives, the records of white parishioners with whom they were affiliated, and the expanding literature on black and indigenous life in colonial New England. The grant is for two years and involves time-consuming transcriptions of 18th century probate documents, which is being performed by an intrepid band of undergraduate and graduate research assistants (Samira Lari CCAS ’24, Abby Mason CCAS ’24, and Dolly Marshall CCAS ’23 and current students in the graduate history program).
Department of Biology and Department of Computer Science
- Dr. Andrey Grigoriev, Professor of Biology, and Dr. Iman Dehzangi, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, received a Provost Grant from Rutgers University for their project “Using small RNA and machine learning to study complex RNA regulation in planarians.”
Center for Urban Research and Education (CURE)
- CURE received a grant from the Rutgers Equity Alliance for Community Health for the project “Understanding Equity through One Camden’s Universal School Enrollment.”
- CURE received a grant from the Urban Innovation Fund for the project “Equity for Parents: Universal Enrollment.”
Department of Chemistry
- Dr. Jinglin Fu, Associate Professor of Chemistry, received the 2023 Busch Biomedical Grant Program for “Enhancement of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Genome Editing with Targeted DNA Nanoparticles Delivery.”
- Dr. David Salas-de la Cruz, Associate Professor of Chemistry, received a collaborative subaward grant with Rowan University from the South Jersey Institute of Population Health (SJIPH) for the project “Camden Stormwater Heavy-Analysis and Mapping Project (CASH-MAP).”
Department of Childhood Studies
- The Department of Childhood Studies, with Dr. Susan Miller, Associate Professor of Childhood Studies serving as the PI, received an $800,000.00 grant from the Mellon Foundation to support DEI in the Humanities. With this grant, they have continued their series, Centering Black Childhoods, with “Engaging Voices and Collaborative Conversations” in October 2023. In Spring 2024, they will host Zul Manzi, creator of the animated comedy series, The Matumbilas.
Digital Studies Center
- For the 2023-2024 academic year, the Digital Studies Center received an IDEA grant from the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. This grant is being used toward funding Well Played sessions with Camden youth.
Department of History
- Dr. Evan Jewell, Assistant Professor of History, received a Getty Research Institute Library Grant for his project “Matteo Della Corte between Fascist and Roman Youth.” Through this grant, he conducted archival research at the Getty in Los Angeles during the summer.
Department of Philosophy and Religion
- Dr. Tesneem Alkiek, Lecturer of Philosophy and Religion, received a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend.
- Dr. John Wall, Professor of Religion, is a co-PI on a grant from the Academy of Finland, for the project, “Small Matters: An Intra-Generational Community Project about Death and Dying.”
Department of Public Policy and Administration
- Dr. Michael Hayes, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Administration, received two grants from the New Jersey State Policy Lab, for the projects “Examining the 2018 Revision of New Jersey’s School Aid Formula and Its Implications for District Finances and Student Achievement” and “The Determinants and Impacts of Legalizing Cannabis Businesses: Evidence from New Jersey Municipalities.”
- Dr. Patrice Mareschal, Professor of Public Policy and Administration submitted a winning proposal to host the 2024 Public Administration Theory Network’s annual conference and also received a 2023-2024 Arts and Sciences Conference and Symposium Grant to support the conference.
- Dr. Nathaniel Wright, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Administration, received a grant from the Urban Innovation Fund for the project “Examining the Influence of Community-based development organizations (CBDO) on Perceived Community Well-Being in Camden Neighborhoods.”
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice
- Dr. Laura Napoliano, Associate Professor of Sociology; Dr. Jane Siegel, Professor of Criminal Justice; and Ms. Ann Adalist-Estrin, Director of the National Resources Center on Children and Families of the Incarcerated, received the Urban Innovation Fund Grant to support their project, “Supporting Incarcerated Parents: A collaboration between Rutgers and Camden County Correctional Facility.”
- Dr. Kayla Preito-Hodge, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, received the Chancellor’s Assistant Professor Research Development Grant to support her project “The Police Funding Debate: Do police expenditures impact police outcomes?”
Department of World Languages and Cultures
- Dr. Próspero García, Associate Professor of Spanish, was the Principal Investigator on a grant awarded by the William Penn Foundation, for the project “Starting the conversation: A new intervention model to stimulate language growth in underserved populations.”
Invitations
Department of World Languages and Cultures
- Dr. Ana Laguna, Professor of Spanish, was invited to join the National Fulbright Commission.
Media Shout-Outs
Department of Visual, Media, and Performing Arts
- Ms. Margery Amdur, Professor of Art, was interviewed by Susan Isaacs for Artblog regarding her work and her two Fall 2023 exhibitions: “The Unbearable Lightness of the Fantastical and Unwearable Art Show,” at the Drawing Room Gallery in Jersey City, NJ, and “Fiber Reimagined,” at the Gravers Lane Gallery in Philadelphia.
Presentations
Department of Computer Science
- Dr. Sheikh Islam, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, will present the following papers at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Conference in December 2023:
- “Predicting Potential School Shooters from Social Media Posts;” and
- “Aiming to Minimize Alcohol-Impaired Road Fatalities: Utilizing Fairness-Aware and Domain Knowledge-Infused Artificial Intelligence.”
Department of English and Communication/MARCH
- On December 6, 2023, Dr. Jillian Sayre gave a research talk on her recently published article “But for his dog: Companion Animals in American Frontier Narratives,” in partnership with the Office of Disability Services and the Paul Robeson Library’s “Woof Wednesday” therapy dog program.
Department of Health Sciences/Prevention Sciences Program
- Dr. Kristin August, Associate Professor of Psychology, and Dr. Charlotte Markey, Professor of Psychology, have presented at many conferences over the course of the year, many with co-presenters that include students. A selection of these presentations is as follows:
- “A Descriptive Examination of Medical and Nursing Students’ Intentions to Discuss Body Image, Weight, and Eating Disorders with their Patients,” at the Eating Disorders Research Society meeting in Boston, MA.
- “A Dyadic Analysis of Anti-Fat Attitudes as Predictors of a Partner’s Diet-Related Influence Among Gay Men,” at the Association for Psychological Science conference in Washington, DC.
Department of History
- Dr. Andrew Shankman, Professor of History, delivered the paper “Neither Prologue Nor Insurmountable Crisis: Federalism, Settler Colonialism, and Empire in the Stamp Act Crisis,” at the invited conference Empire and Its Discontents, Joint Conference of the American Philosophical Society and The Massachusetts Historical Society, in Boston, Massachusetts from December 1-2, 2023. He gave a longer version of this paper at the invitation of the Columbia Seminar for Early American History and Culture at Columbia University, on October 17, 2023.
Department of Mathematical Sciences
- Dr. Howard Jacobowitz, Distinguished Professor of Mathematics, gave the lecture “CR Geometry and Analysis” at the following conferences:
- The Mathematics Colloquium of Georgetown University on November 10, 2023;
- The Workshop in Analysis and Geometry in Several Variables, ESL, in Vienna, Austria, on November 23, 2023; and
- The Workshop in Global and Micro-Analysis, at the University of Bologna, on November 29, 2023.
- Dr. Yuchung Wang, Professor of Mathematics, gave the following lectures:
- “Iterative conditional replacement algorithm for conditionally specified models,” at the Brain Research Group at the Institute of Statistical Sciences at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan on June 1, 2023 and at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences at Xiamen University in Xiamen, China, on April 4, 2023.
- “Global likelihood sampler for multimodalities,” at the Brain Research Group at the Institute of Statistical Sciences at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan on June 8, 2023 and at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences at Xiamen University in Xiamen, China, on April 3, 2023.
Department of Philosophy and Religion
- Dr. John Wall, Professor of Religion, presented “Adultism and Its Discontents” at the PARS Playwork Annual Conference in Norfolk, England, in October 2023.
Department of Physics
- Dr. Julianne Griepenburg, Assistant Professor of Physics, presented “Plasmonic Activation of Macromolecular Assemblies” at the Department of Chemistry at Seton Hall University and also the Department of Material Science and Engineering at Rutgers–New Brunswick.
Department of Psychology
- Dr. Courtenay Cavanaugh, Associate Professor of Psychology, along with undergraduate students Sarah Mireles and Reese Mabolis, presented “Examining whether gender moderates the impact of adverse childhood experiences, intimate partner violence, and discrimination on mental disorders among Hispanic adults,” at the 2023 Annual Conference for the Society of Prevention Research in Washington, D.C.
- Dr. Lauren Daniel, Associate Professor of Psychology, presented “Extended vitals in patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplant: Impact on patient-reported sleep disturbances,” at the Society of International Pediatric Oncology Annual Meeting in Ottawa, Canada.
- Dr. Robrecht van der Wel, Associate Professor of Psychology, presented “When the mailbox starts staring you down: Face processing effects for pareidolia faces,” at the 64th Meeting of the Psychonomic Society.
Department of Public Policy and Administration
- Dr. Patrice Mareschal, Professor of Public Policy and Administration; Dr. Angie McGuire, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Administration; Dr. Erin Robinson, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Administration; and Dr. Nathaniel Wright, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Administration, presented “Growing public service education: A small program approach through community building” at the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in October 2023.
- Dr. Lorraine Minnite, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Administration, presented “Community Development as Collective Reparations” at the Urban History Association conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in October 2023.
- In October 2023, Dr. Jovanna Rosen, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Administration, presented “How do renters survive affordability? Household-level impacts of rent burden in Los Angeles” at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning Annual Conference in Chicago, Illinois.
- Dr. Nathaniel Wright, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Administration, presented “Collaborative Governance Approach to Sustainable Development in Local Communities: Insights from the Managers of US-based Arts and Culture Nonprofits” at the 52nd Annual Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) Conference in Orlando, Florida, in November 2023.
Department of World Languages and Cultures/Latin American and Latino Studies Program/Global Studies Program
- Dr. James Boucher, Assistant Professor of French, made the following presentation:
- “Rewriting Conquest: Representations of the Amerindian in Contemporary French Fiction,” at the 76th Annual Kentucky Foreign Language Conference in Lexington, Kentucky, in April 2023; and
- “Desert Spaces and Faces: The Myth of Going Native in LeClézio and Tournier,” at the 20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium in Tucson, Arizona, in April 2023.
- Dr. Próspero García, Associate Professor of Spanish, was the plenary speaker at the 34th Japanese Confederation of Latinamerican and Spanish Studies Conference on Toyama, Japan. He presented “Teoría sociocultural y español LE/L2, nuevas perspectivas (Sociocultural Theory and Spanish FL/L2, New Perspectives).”
- Dr. Carla Giaudrone, Associate Professor of Spanish, participated in the following conferences:
- May 2023 – Latin American Studies Association International Conference in Vancouver, Canada – “Geography and the Rights of Nature in Children’s Literature of Juan José Morosoli (1940-1950)”
- August 2023 – Afro-Latin/American Research Association Conference in Camden, NJ – Served as moderator for a panel discussion on the theme of the African Diaspora Through Film and Television
- November 2023 – New England Council of Latin American Studies Conference in Worcester, MA – “‘Con cada yuyo venía un pedazo de geografía viva’: Medicinal Plants in Literary Texts from the Southern Cone (1920-1940)”
Publications
Center for Urban Research and Education (CURE) and Department of Public Policy and Administration
- Dr. Stephen Danley, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Administration, was a co-author on the paper “What is the Community Going to Get from It? Abolitionist Ethics and the Praxis of Responding to Reciprocal Community Requests,” which was published in the journal Public Integrity.
Department of Computer Science
- Dr. Iman Dehzangi, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, has published many co-authored journal articles, including but not limited to:
- “PepCNN deep learning tool for predicting peptide binding residues in proteins using sequence, structural, and language model features” in Sci Rep;
- “Accurately predicting anticancer peptide using an ensemble of heterogeneously trained classifiers,” in Informatics in Medicine Unlocked; and
- “CNN-Pred: Prediction of single-stranded and double-stranded DNA-binding protein using convolutional neural networks,” in Gene.
Department of English and Communication
- Lauren Grodstein, Professor of Creative Writing, published a novel We Must Not Think of Ourselves, in November 2023. Two local book parties – one at Haddonfield’s Inkwood Books and one at the Abandoned Luncheonette in Moorestown – celebrated the release. Jenna Bush Hager of the Today show named the novel her December 2023 book pick.
- In November 2023, Dr. Ellen Malenas Ledoux, Associate Professor of English, published Laboring Mothers: Reproducing Women and Work in the Eighteenth Century. The book was published by the University of Virginia Press.
- Dr. Jillian Sayre, Associate Professor of English and Director of MARCH, published the article “But for his dog: Companion Animals in American Frontier Narratives,” in Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment Volume 30, Issue 3. In connection with the article, Dr. Sayre will give a lecture co-sponsored by the Office of Disability Services and the Paul Robeson Library on Wednesday, December 6, 2023.
Department of Health Sciences/Prevention Sciences Program
- Dr. Kristin August, Associate Professor of Psychology, and Dr. Charlotte Markey, Professor of Psychology, have published numerous articles over the course of the year, many with co-authors that include students. A selection of these articles is as follows:
- “Examining health experiences and body dissatisfaction in two unique samples of patients with type 2 diabetes” in Journal of Health Psychology;
- “Motives for spousal involvement in a partner’s diabetes management: Considering the role of gender and links to diet-related involvement,” in Health Psychology Open;
- “Understanding eating disorder symptoms in same-gender couples: Social environmental factors,” in Journal of Eating Disorder.
Department of History
- Dr. Evan Jewell, Assistant Professor of History, published a co-edited volume with Elena Isayev, Displacement and the Humanities: Manifestos from the Ancient to the Present (special issues of Humanities).
- Dr. Emily Marker, Associate Professor of History, has an upcoming review essay, “The Ideological Scramble for Africa: How the Pursuit of Anticolonial Modernity Shaped a Postcolonial Order, 1945-1966,” to be published in H-Diplo/Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum.
- Dr. Andrew Shankman, Professor of History, published the essays “Daniel Raymond, Mathew Carey, the Missouri Crisis, and the Global 1820s,” in John Craig Hammond and Jeffrey L. Pasley eds., A Fire-Bell in the Past: The Missouri Crisis at 200 Western Slavery, National Impasse and “Ocean, Continent, and Competency: The Material Origins of Early U.S. Federalism,” Early American Literature.
Department of Philosophy and Religion
- Dr. Tesneem Alkiek, Lecturer of Philosophy and Religion, has a forthcoming article, “Spousal harm in the Mālikī madhhab: evidence and procedure,” to be published in Islamic Law and Society.
- Dr. Margaret Betz, Assistant Teaching Professor, published the book Modes of Protest and Resistance: Strange Change in Morals Political (Palgrave Macmillan Press) in December 2023.
- Dr. Nicole Karapanagiotis, Associate Professor of Religion, published the article “Preparing for the Past, Packaged for the Present: The Brahma Kumaris, Meditation, and a Self-(Help) Styled Monasticism,” in the International Journal of Hindu Studies.
- Dr. John Wall, Professor of Religion, has published multiple journal articles, including:
- “Children’s Rights and Voting Age Discrimination,” Harvard Human Rights Journal;
- “Childism and Philosophy: A Conceptual Co-Exploration,” Policy Futures in Education.
Department of Political Science
- Dr. Beth Rabinowitz, Associate Professor of Political Science, published the book Defensive Nationalism: Explaining the Rise of Populism and Fascism in the 21stCentury (Oxford University Press), in April 2023.
Department of Psychology
- Dr. Andrew Abeyta, Assistant Professor of Psychology, published “Finding meaning in education bolsters academic self-efficacy,” in the International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology. Undergraduate student Ethan Trieu is a co-author.
- Dr. Courtenay Cavanaugh, Associate Professor of Psychology, published the following peer-reviewed journal articles with students:
- “The impact of posttraumatic stress disorder, ethnic discrimination, and nativity on nicotine dependence among female Hispanic survivors of intimate partner violence,” Substance Use and Misuse.
- “Examining whether the impact of different types of interpersonal violence and mental disorders on attempted suicide is greater for bisexual women,” Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy.
- “Sex/gender differences in the associations between adverse childhood experiences and intimate partner violence with mental disorders,” Psychiatry Research.
- Dr. Lauren Daniel, Associate Professor of Psychology, co-authored “Maternal Perceptions of Evidence-Based Early Childhood Sleep Health Promotion Recommendations: An Explanatory Sequential Study” in Behavioral Sleep Medicine.
- Dr. Robrecht van der Wel, Associate Professor of Psychology, published “Rich behavior, parsimony, and parameters: Comment on ‘Beyond simple laboratory studies: Developing sophisticated models to study rich behavior’” by Maselli, Gordon, Eluchans, Lancia, Thiery, Moretti, Cizek, and Pezzulo in Physics of Life Reviews.
Department of Public Policy and Administration
- In 2022-2023, Dr. Michael Hayes, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Administration, had four peer-reviewed journal articles published or accepted in journals such as Municipal Finance Journal, Journal of Urban Affairs, Economics of Education Review, and Journal of Urban Economics.
- Dr. Erin Robinson, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Administration, is a co-author on the forthcoming article “’To Ask Difficult Questions’: A Social Equity Capstone Model for MPAs” in Teaching Social Equity in Public Administration: A Cross-Curricular Guide for Faculty and Programs.
- Dr. Jovanna Rosen, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Administration, published a sole-authored book, Community benefits: Developers, negotiations, and accountability, with the University of Pennsylvania Press, and published three co-authored journal articles.
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice
- Dr. Julio Alicea, Assistant Professor of Sociology, authored the opinion piece “We need targeted funding for racial equity in our public schools. California may have some lessons for all of us,” for The Hechinger Report.
- Dr. Joan Maya Mazelis, Associate Professor of Sociology, co-authored the chapter “Student Loans, Families, and the Unequal Transition to Adulthood,” in the book Families as They Really Are, third edition.
- Dr. Christopher Thomas, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, co-authored with Kevin T. Wolff the article “Weird winter weather in the Anthropocene: How volatile temperatures shape violent crime,” in the Journal of Criminal Justice.
- Dr. Sarah Tosh, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, published the book The Immigration Law Death Penalty: Aggravated Felonies, Deportation, and Legal Resistance (NYU Press) in October 2023.
Department of Visual, Media, and Performing Arts
- Mr. Paul Bernstein, Associate Professor of Theater, completed the book None of the Above, containing five new full-length plays, seven one act plays, four short film scripts, and 50 performance texts.
- Dr. Kenneth Elliott, Associate Professor of Theater, published Beyond Ridiculous: Making Gay Theatre with Charles Busch in 1980s New York (University of Iowa Press) in November 2023.
- Dr. Elizabeth Pilliod, Assistant Professor of Art History, published the book Pontormo at San Lorenzo: The Making and Meaning of a Lost Renaissance Masterpiece (Harvey Miller/Brepols).
- Dr. Chinghsin Wu, Associate Teaching of Art History, published two books in 2023, one on a Japanese avant-garde artist, Koga Harue, and the other on a Taiwanese modern artist, Tsai Yun-yan.
Department of World Languages and Cultures
- Dr. Prospero Garcia, Associate Professor of Spanish, co-authored the book Teoría Sociocultural y Español (Routledge).
- Dr. Silvia Perez-Cortes, Associate Professor of Spanish, published the following articles:
- “Re-examining the role of type of mood selection in Spanish High Schools’ subjunctive production,” in Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism; and
- “Feasibility and Acceptability of a Cross-Sector Health-Education Online Family Literacy Program in an Under-Resourced Community during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.
Rankings
- Dr. Noha Emara, Associate Professor of Economics, was ranked in the top 25% of economist authors in the state of New Jersey by IDEAS, an economics bibliographic database.
Service
Forensic Science Program/Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice
- Innocence Projects
- Kevin Murphy of the Department of SACJ teaches “Criminal Justice Practicum,” which trains students to be investigators on innocence project cases; eventually, they work with the PA Innocence Project.
- Kevin Murphy and Kimberlee Sue Moran, Associate Teaching Professor and Director of Forensics, recently helped exonerate Armond McCloud Jr. through the NJ Innocence Project.
- Current MSFS students Alexis Romeo and Juliet Mendoza-Castillo are involved with the NJ Innocence Project for the case of Rodney Derrickson. Together with Kimberlee Sue Moran, the students have traveled to the science of the crime and filmed a reconstruction of the events to show what that the witness could not see what he claimed to have saw.
Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH)
- MARCH launched the MARCH Book Club on October 22, with the selection Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer. The MARCH Book Club meets at Inkwood Books in Haddonfield, New Jersey, and engages the community with books related to environmental issues and writing about nature. The second meeting is on December 10. The group will discuss Mary Oliver’s Upstream.
Department of Mathematical Sciences
- On October 20, 2023, Camden City High School hosted the Department of Mathematical Sciences for a panel discussion about mathematics education in high schools. Dr. Sara Leshen, Mr. Randy Mershon, Dr. Sunil Shende, and Dr. Haydee Herrera participated.
- The Department of Mathematical Sciences partnered with the Voorhees School District for a program encouraging middle school students to learn about mathematics beyond the curriculum. Topics of discussion include music and mathematics; hyperbolic geometry; mathematical biology; and more.
Department of Public Policy and Administration
- Dr. Patrice Mareschal, Professor of Public Policy and Administration, was named the General Vice President of the Southern New Jersey AFL-CIO Central Labor Council.
- Dr. Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Administration, published four articles in 2022-2023, in journals such as Cities and Applied Research in Quality of Life.
Student Highlights
Department of Chemistry
- Sophia Mora (CCAS ’27) received a 2023-2024 New Jersey Space Grant Consortium Academic Year Internship.
Computational and Integrative Biology Program
- Computational and integrative biology graduate students Regina Salzer and Sebastian Zmijewski, students in the Griepenburg Research Lab, received awards for their exceptional poster presentations at the Center for Computational and Integrative Biology Poster Session in September 2023.
Department of History
- Ysabela Golden (GSC) received the Chancellor’s Grant for Independent Research and the Swann Fellowship to support her archival research at the State Archives of Michigan, the Keith Widder Library at the Petersen Center in Mackinaw City, and the Heritage Center on Mackinac Island, both also in Michigan. This research is for her essay “The Disappearance of the Middle Ground in the Great Lakes.”
- Camille Miller (GSC) is working as a research assistant for Dr. Susan Mokhberi and Dr. Mayte Green-Mercado (RU-Newark) for their upcoming podcast Genealogies of Race, a signature project of the Rutgers Institute of Global Racial Justice. It is driven by an interdisciplinary approach and investigates race in the early modern period. Camille researches potential scholars and assists with the shaping of episodes.
Alumni Highlights
Forensic Science Program
- Alumni Career Success:
- Qhawe Bhembe (GSC ’20) – CCIB PhD student in the LFTDI Lab
- Jennifer Currier (GSC ’20) – Latent Print Examiner, Philadelphia Office of Forensic Science
- Shavari Fagan (GSC ’20) – R&D Chemist, Actega North America
- Amanda Gonzalez (GSC ’19) – Field Application Specialist, Qiagen (the top DNA company)
- Alycia Paulson (GSC ’21) – Special Agent, US Air Force
- Alexis Quinter (GSC ’20) – Researcher, Center for Forensic Science Research and Education in Willow Grove, PA
- Ariel Smart (GSC ’19) – Research Scientist, Analytical Development Department at Incyte Corporation
- Kristen Smith (GSC ’20) – Detective, Camden County Prosecutor’s Office; also has a fingerprint powder patent that she developed while at Rutgers–Camden
- Kyra Miller (GSC) and Liliana Berrios (GSC) presented their research at both the Eastern Analytical Symposium and also the Northeastern Association of Forensic Scientists Conference.
Department of History
- Westholme Press will publish No Longer Subjects of the British King: The Troubled Formation of the American Political Community, 1774-1776, a book by Shawn McGhee (GSC, 2011), in 2024.
- Richard Monastra (GSC) has started his first year in the History Ph.D. program at Columbia University.
- Doreen Skala (GSC) has just been accepted into the Ph.D. program at the University of Leeds, where she will study eighteenth-century British history. She will start in the academic year 2024-25.
- Rob Swanson (GSC, 2023) is currently in the Ph.D. program at the University of Missouri, where he is also a Fellow of the Kinder Institute for Constitutional Democracy. Rob has had accepted for publication the seminar paper he wrote in our program titled “If the Fire of Liberty shall be kindled amongst them”: American Abolitionists’ Perspectives on the Haitian Revolution, 1791-1816. It will be published in The American Journal of Nineteenth Century History.
- Emily Winters (CCAS, 2021 and GSC, 2023) is the Operations and Development Manager for Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia, one of the oldest and most important museums and public history sites in the city. She is responsible for scholarly programing and institutional operations and fundraising.