Collaborative Faculty and Student Research
John Hranitz, biology professor and director of the Office of Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity, received a National Science Foundation grant of $316,000 to study the integrative biology of bees during summer 2013. Hranitz is partnering with the University of Central Oklahoma to study the behavior of honeybees and solitary bees in natural pollination systems and their responses to environmental stressors. Researchers on the eight-week project in Turkey and Greece will include faculty from six universities in three countries, as well as undergraduate student researchers.
IT professor lands $250,000 grant for testing simulation
Karl Kapp, professor of instructional technology, in partnership with Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, and the National Office of Project Lead the Way has recently been awarded a three year $250,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technology Education (ATE) program.
The project is to create and disseminate an open source, online virtual tensile strength testing simulation. Materials created from this project will be utilized by undergraduate engineering technology students and pre-engineering high school students in the Project Lead the Way network of 4,215 schools nationwide. #CollaborativeLearning
Fracking research presented on national stage
Julie Steffen, a December 2012 anthropology graduate, along with Faith Warner, Ph.D., associate professor of anthropology, presented their research, “The Perceived Costs and Benefits of Fracking in Central Pennsylvania,” at the Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meetings in Denver, March 2013.
The ethnographic research presented in this poster documents perceptions of local residents towards the impact of fracking on the region’s environment, economy, laws, and culture. Central foci of the research include the disagreement over the risks associated with fracking, conflict over the distribution of its benefits, and the resulting community tensions over changes in socioeconomic relations, the social and natural environment, laws, policies, and regulations relating to the fracking boom.
The central goal of the research project was to document the often volatile and divisive attitudes of people who live within 30 miles of a fracking well in the Marcellus Shale Region in the vicinity of Williamsport in order to develop a clearer understanding of the degree to which community members perceive both the costs and benefits of fracking to themselves and their community at large.
Faculty and Staff Scholars
Kurt Smith, Ph.D., Ph.D., presented a paper "Was Hobbes an Idealist?" at the Eastern Pennsylvania Philosophical Association (EPPA) meetings in late April at Misericordia University. The EPPA is an organized melting pot of regional philosophers who convene twice a year to share and discuss the latest topics, trends and research, including their own, within the philosophy discipline.
Lam D. Nguyen, Ph.D., associate professor of management, presented his research, "Leadership and Stress Orientations: A Comparative Analysis of German and Vietnamese Adults”, at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Academy of Business Disciplines in Ft. Myers Beach, Fla., on Nov. 10. The Academy of Business Disciplines (ABD) is a non-profit interdisciplinary organization that has as its purpose the expansion of knowledge relative to furthering the understanding of business and all its related functions.
James H. Dalton, Ph.D., professor of psychology, is author of the chapter "Community Psychology" in Volume 1 of the new, second edition of the "Handbook of Psychology," a major resource for the entire field of psychology and for related fields. The Handbook is a ten-volume set covering the science and practice of psychology, edited by Irvin Weiner of the University of South Florida, and published by John Wiley & Sons.
Noreen Chikotas, D.Ed., and Michelle Ficca, Ph.D., both associate professors of nursing, participated in the recent Quality and Safety Education in Nursing (QSEN) Faculty Development Workshop in Orlando, Fla. The workshop aims to develop the capacity of graduate nursing faculty to teach other faculty to incorporate quality and safety competencies and content into their programs.