Florida State University has selected Robert Large as its new chief compliance and ethics officer. He will start in the position Oct. 23.

Large comes to FSU from Kansas State University, where he has worked in the Office of General Counsel since 2019 and currently serves as senior associate general counsel. He served as associate general counsel at Florida State University from June 2018 to September 2019.

“We’re very pleased to welcome Robert back to Florida State University,” said President Richard McCullough. “He is a highly respected attorney whose legal expertise and background in higher education will help us navigate complex issues and ensure the university is complying with all federal and state laws and conducting business in an ethical manner.”

The chief compliance and ethics officer, which dually reports to the university president and the chair of the FSU Board of Trustees, is responsible for establishing, maintaining and promoting an effective Compliance and Ethics Program designed to prevent, monitor, detect and respond to non-compliance and recommend corrective actions to fully meet regulatory requirements for the university. In this role, Large will advance an ethical university culture that supports a safe and respectful learning, working and living environment.

Large has served as chief legal counsel at the Kansas Department of Agriculture, as a civilian attorney with the Fort Riley Office of the Staff Judge Advocate and as an assistant general counsel for the Florida Department of Education.

A two-time alumnus of Florida State University, Large graduated with a bachelor’s degree in finance and political science in 2004 and J.D. from the College of Law in 2007.

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Allison Wing, an associate professor in Florida State University’s Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science (EOAS) has been named the recipient of the 2024 Clarence Leroy Meisinger Award, a prestigious early career award given by the American Meteorological Society (AMS). 

Each year, AMS recognizes outstanding individuals and organizations in the weather, water and climate community.  

 “The American Meteorological Society Clarence Leroy Meisinger Award is one of several prestigious Early Career Accomplishment Awards,” said Robert Hart, professor of meteorology and chair of the EOAS department. “We in EOAS are very proud to see this well-deserved award for one of our own colleagues.” 

 Wing was honored for her significant contributions to understanding how tropical convection organizes, using innovative modeling, theory and observation.  

 “I am deeply honored to receive the AMS Meisinger Award,” Wing said. “Even more than receiving the award itself, it means so much to me that my colleagues in the field thought of me as deserving of the award and took the time to nominate me. The past winners of the Meisinger Award are a veritable ‘who’s who’ in atmospheric science, including my Ph.D. adviser and one of my postdoc advisers, and it astounds me to see my name listed among those of so many who I respect.” 

Wing’s research addresses critical questions in atmospheric and climate science, like how tropical clouds and thunderstorms cluster together, how this clustering affects climate, and how tropical cyclones form and intensify. This research is essential for improving storm predictions and understanding long-term climate changes. 

Since joining FSU in 2017, Wing has secured research funding from National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA and the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration.  

She has received the NASA New Investigator (Early Career) Award and the NSF CAREER Award. In 2021, she was named one of Popular Science’s top emerging early career researchers. Her work has also been recognized by the AMS Committee on Tropical Meteorology and Tropical Cyclones.  

Wing, who teaches undergraduate courses and mentors graduate students in tropical and climate science, earned a doctorate in atmospheric science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2014 and conducted her postdoctoral studies at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory before joining the faculty at Florida State. She earned a bachelor’s in atmospheric science from Cornell University in 2008.  

Wing’s research is widely published, including journals such as the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate, and Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences. 

“I’m so grateful to all of my mentors, collaborators, current and former students and FSU colleagues,” Wing said. “None of the research that I or any scientist does happens in a vacuum; my scientific contributions have been made possible by having an outstanding network of people to work with and learn from. I also have had the great privilege to work with 10 outstanding students in my research group at FSU so far and any of my success is in part due to their achievements.” 

The AMS Clarence Leroy Meisinger Award recognizes exceptional research in atmospheric motions, spanning all scales. This includes explaining current climate patterns and long-term climate changes.  

The award’s namesake developed a method for calculating pressures and winds at specific heights above the ground. He presented his findings at the 1923 AMS meeting. 

Wing will receive her award at the 104th AMS annual meeting in Baltimore in late January. 

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For the second year in a row, Florida State University is set to host the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) InVenture Prize Competition at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 30. 

The ACC InVenture Prize is a Shark-Tank-style competition in which teams of undergraduate students from each ACC university pitch their inventions or businesses before a live audience and a panel of judges.  

Teams will compete for $30,000 in prizes.  

“We’re excited to host this event for the second year and excited to see the innovative ideas that this year’s teams are presenting,” said Britain Riley of the Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship. “ACC InVenture is an opportunity for us all to enjoy the entrepreneurial spirit and to root for the Seminoles against rivals we usually find in athletic competition.” 

Since its establishment in 2016, the ACC InVenture Prize has grown to become the nation’s largest student innovation competition and has helped fund multiple student inventions and projects.   

For more information and to watch the competition, visit the livestream.  

Viewers are also encouraged to vote for their team to win the People’s Choice Award. Those interested can vote here. 

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Florida State University has chosen alumna Lisa Magruder as the next leader of the Florida Institute for Child Welfare.  

Magruder, the institute’s associate director of research since 2020, takes over the director’s role from fellow FSU graduate Jessica Pryce. Pryce, who served as director for six years, will lead the institute’s Alliance for Workforce Enhancement initiative.  

Magruder’s expertise in child welfare research positions her to lead the organization with a renewed dedication to evidence-based training, programming and initiatives at a time when the institute has been tasked with revitalizing Florida’s child welfare system. 

“It has been my privilege to expand my work in research with the institute and lead at such an exciting time for the child welfare profession,” Magruder said. “We are eager to continue developing our Greater Resilience of the Workforce (GROW) Center and other initiatives established in the past two years to professionalize the child welfare workforce and improve outcomes of the children and families we serve.” 

The FICW was established in 2014 by the Florida Legislature to conduct research, policy analysis and program evaluation of child protection and child welfare services. The institute received $10 million in recurring funds in 2021 to develop and implement a statewide professional development network, which will provide continuous support to child welfare professionals. 

“The Florida Institute for Child Welfare (FICW) has become a crucial part of statewide efforts to serve vulnerable children and their families and is an integral part of the College of Social Work,” said Craig Stanley, interim dean of the College of Social Work. “We appreciate the trust the legislature continues to place in Florida State University and FICW to improve child welfare outcomes. I am happy to welcome Dr. Magruder into this role.” 

Prior to her leadership roles with the institute, Magruder served as a post-doctoral scholar and a project manager within the institute. She has also held adjunct teaching positions with the FSU College of Social Work and University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work, along with a staff liaison position at the Oasis Center for Women and Girls as a part of the Tallahassee/Leon County Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. 

Magruder is a two-time Florida State graduate with a master’s degree in social work and bachelor’s degree in psychology and sociology. She earned her doctoral degree in social work from the University of Denver in 2017. Her research interests in child welfare have focused on the child welfare workforce and the outcomes for vulnerable populations within the child welfare system and domestic/intimate partner violence. 

The institute will continue to build on its early successes in implementing the GROW Center, expanding offerings that support both future and current child welfare workers and leaders. The team will also continue to conduct innovative research and evaluation responsive to emerging issues in child welfare that can inform future institute programming.  

For details on the Florida Institute for Child Welfare, visit ficw.fsu.edu. 

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Peatlands store a significant amount of the Earth’s carbon and have functioned as an important moderator of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for thousands of years. But as peatlands are lost to overextraction and affected by a warmer climate, the impact on these natural carbon scrubbers remains unclear.

A team of researchers from Florida State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Oak Ridge National Lab and the University of Arizona received a $3.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to investigate the status of carbon stored in peatlands, environments that are at risk of carbon release due to climate change. The funding is part of a wider $178 million effort to advance breakthroughs in sustainable technology to improve industries such as public health and food production and to address climate change.

 The FSU team aims to uncover the relationship between carbon dioxide and methane production in peatlands that can be directly applied to climate models to better predict future warming. The three-year grant will provide support as the researchers delve deeper into the mechanistic controls of the below-ground carbon cycle and greenhouse gas production from peatlands by monitoring environmental changes at the Spruce and Peatland Responses Under Changing Environments, or SPRUCE, research facility in northern Minnesota.

The facility in Minnesota’s Marcell Experimental Forest is experimentally warmed to various temperatures to simulate warmer climates and study the peatland climate feedback. Data from the collected samples will help researchers assess carbon release and retention in the face of rising temperatures.

As the plant community in the study facility is affected by warming and produces more sugars, those sugars become fuel for the anaerobic microorganisms that produce carbon dioxide and methane during respiration.

“We know that the plant community at the site is changing in response to warming and that with those changes come changes in the inputs of organic matter and phenolic compounds belowground, as different plant species release different compound compositions,” said Rachel Wilson, a research scientist in the FSU Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science and the principal investigator for the FSU research team.

A major question for researchers is what will happen to the peatlands if climate change damages the environment’s ability to retain its carbon and other greenhouse gases.

“The amount of carbon that is stored in peatlands is equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” said research team member Jeff Chanton, a Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor and the John Widmer Winchester Professor of Oceanography. “As the climate warms, there is concern about what is going to happen to these large carbon reservoirs that are held on the surface of the Earth. Will they continue to store carbon or are they going to release carbon?”

Phenolic compounds, secretions from the mosses that grow in peatlands, act as a soil stabilizer by helping to preserve the carbon in the peatlands. Alexandra Cory, an EOAS alumna who earned her doctorate last year, contributed to the phenolic compound research that plays a significant role in this study.

“Building off Alexandra Cory’s work, this project will help us understand how different types of phenolics affect the belowground carbon cycle by directly inhibiting microorganisms or altering the availability of easily decomposed organic matter,” Wilson said.

Once the spring thaw warms temperatures enough to collect samples, Wilson and the team will travel to the SPRUCE experimental site four times to capture seasonal trends in the lead up to the next fall freeze. The team will also collect porewater for comparison from additional sites in Minnesota and Wisconsin, allowing Wilson to place the study’s results into a larger context and extrapolate their conclusions to areas beyond the SPRUCE site.

“This is a great opportunity to work at a world-class experimental facility and collaborate with over a dozen other institutions, all working toward understanding the whole ecosystem effect of climate change,” Wilson said.

Other members of the FSU research team include research assistant Samantha Bosman and graduate assistant Alexis Slentz.

Additional contributors to this project include Joel Kostka and Kosta Konstantinidis from the Georgia Institute of Technology; research scientist Caitlin Petro and third-year doctoral student Katherine Duchesneau from Georgia Institute of Technology; Malak Tfaily from the University of Arizona, and Chris Schadt from Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

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