Faculty and Staff Briefs: March 2017

HONORS & AWARDS

Robert Schwartz, Ph.D. (Education), was selected as the recipient of NASPA’s 2017 Robert H. Shaffer Award for Academic Excellence as a Graduate Faculty Member. The award, named for a dean and professor emeritus at Indiana University, recognizes a full-time, tenured faculty member in a graduate preparation program who has inspired and guided graduate students, has produced exemplary scholarship and has assumed leadership roles in professional associations.

Tonja Guilford (Social Sciences and Public Policy) received the Shooting Star award from the United Way of the Big Bend on March 8 for significant contributions to the success of the 2016-2017 FSU United Way campaign. The Shooting Star award was established in order to recognize individuals who embody the core principle of the United Way: a commitment to helping vulnerable people overcome personal difficulties and become self-sufficient.

NOTABLE

Ella-Mae Daniel (Education) was the keynote speaker at the W.E.B DuBois Dean’s List Reception on Feb. 2. The W.E.B. DuBois. Established at Florida State University in 1991, the W.E.B. DuBois seeks to honor the legacy of the seminal educator and intellectual DuBois by promoting academic excellence and an engaged community of scholars.

Kathy Guthrie, Ph.D. (Education), was the featured guest on episode 18 of the NASPA Leadership Podcast. NASPA is the foremost national association for the advancement, advocacy and sustainability of the student affairs profession. The Leadership Podcast provides a platform to showcase influential professionals in the student affairs community.

Mia Lustria, Ph.D. (Communication and Information) has been named associate editor of the Advanced Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) section of the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), one of the most esteemed journals in the information field. The mission of the ARIST section of the journal is to furnish readers with instructive and accessible insights into the trends and developments in the field of information science and technology.

Inken von Borzyskowski, Ph.D. (Political Science) will serve as a panelist at a U.S. Institute of Peace event (USIP) in Washington, D.C., March 23, 2017. The panel will discuss past and upcoming elections that illustrate the risk of violence in countries like the Philippines, Gambia, Haiti, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The aim of the discussion is to identify promising ways to realize peace at the polls. Panelists include ambassadors to the U.S., leading election scholars and the contributing authors of Electing Peace, a new USIP book that examines the effectiveness of common practices to prevent election violence.

BYLINES

Laurie Abbot, Ph.D. (Nursing) and L.T. Elliot (2016) “Eliminating health disparities through action on the social determinants of health: A systematic review of home visiting in the United States, 2005-2015.” Public Health Nursing 34(1), 2-30.

Irene Padavic, Ph.D. (Sociology) and Anastasia Prokos (2016) “Aiming High: Explaining the Earnings Advantage for Female Veterans” Armed Forces and Society

GRANTS

Albert Deprince, Ph.D. (Chemistry) has granted a $207,000 research award for his project: “Parallel Two-electron Reduced Density Matrix Based Electronic Structure Software for Highly Correlated Molecules and Materials.” The award was conferred by Q-Chem, a quantum computational software company.

Don Compton, Ph.D. (Psychology), Yaacov Petscher (Florida Center for Reading Research) and Laura Steacy, Ph.D. (Education) received a research award of nearly $190,000 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for their work: “Experiential and Child Factors That Determine Acquisition of Orthographic-Phonological Regularities in a Quasi-Regular Writing System: An Integrated Behavioral/Computational/Neurobiological Approach.”

Qinchun Rao, Ph.D. and Shridhar Sathe, Ph.D. (Human Sciences) were recognized with a $300,000 research award from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture for their project: “Enhancing Education and Research Training of Under-represented Students in Food Safety.”

Akash Gunjan, Ph.D. and Eric Laywell, Ph.D. (Medicine) received a $430,000 research award from the National Cancer Institute for their work: “Developing Therapeutic Strategies for Histone H3.3 Mutant Tumors Via Rational Targeting of Specific DNA Repair Pathways.”