Florida State University’s faculty and staff are central to its mission and the key to its countless accomplishments.
Throughout the year, honors and recognitions are awarded to individual faculty and staff members across campus. Faculty and Staff Briefs are produced monthly to recognize accomplishments and provide a space where honors, awards, bylines, presentations, grants, service and any other notable items can be showcased.
HONORS AND AWARDS
Ebrahim Ahmadisharaf, Ph.D. (FAMU-FSU College of Engineering) has been named to the American Society of Civil Engineers Environmental and Water Resources Institute Fellows class of 2025.
Ryan J. Owens, J.D., Ph.D. (Florida Institute for Governance and Civics) was awarded the C. Herman Pritchett Award for his book “Cognitive Aging and the Federal Circuit Courts: How Senescence Influences the Law and Judges.”
Leonardo Liu, Ph.D. (FAMU-FSU College of Engineering) received the 2024 Eberhard F. Mammen Young Investigator Award, a highly prestigious international recognition in the field of thrombosis and hemostasis, by the editorial board of Seminars in Thrombosis & Hemostasis. This distinction honors emerging global leaders whose work advances the scientific understanding of blood clotting mechanisms.
Ebrahim Randeree, Ph.D. (College of Communication & Information) received a 2025 Aspirations in Computing Educator Award from the National Center for Women & Information Technology.
Kacee Reguera (University Libraries) received the Society of Florida Archivists Award of Excellence. The organization noted her excellence in mentoring library staff, major involvement in transitions and critical projects in Special Collections and Archives and her contributions to Society of Florida Archivists (SFA) governance and the SFA Journal.
Rory Grennan, MLIS (University Libraries) has been selected for the 2025 cohort of the Archives Leadership Institute based on his exceptional leadership skills and a strong commitment to the archival profession.
Rachel Bailey, Ph.D. (School of Communication) received the Editor’s Choice of the Year Award from the Journal of Media Psychology (JMP). This is the first time JMP has used this category of award because they have never had a reviewer chosen for their outstanding work by nearly every single editor at JMP.
Suzanne Sinke, Ph.D. (Department of History) was awarded the 2025 German Residency Award from the Organization of American Historians for this summer to teach at the University of Augsburg in Augsburg, Germany, as well as give guest lectures elsewhere.
The FSU Career Center and Michael Reff (Career Center) received the 2025 Best Practices Award for the Experience Recognition Program from the Cooperative Education & Internship Association.
Garret Hall, Ph.D. (Anne Spencer Daves College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences) received the Lightner Witmer Award from Division 16 (School Psychology) of the American Psychological Association, which recognizes early career professional and academic school psychologists who have demonstrated scholarship that merits special recognition.
Joseph Watso, Ph.D. (Anne Spencer Daves College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences) had an abstract selected as one of the Walter B. Cannon Lecture Abstracts of Distinction for the 2025 American Physiology Summit (APS) and was also the recipient of the American Journal of Physiology- Regulatory and Integrative Physiology Impact Paper Award presented at APS.
Kyle Smith, Ph.D. (Anne Spencer Daves College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences) was selected as a 2025 Fellow for the Transdisciplinary Research on Energetics and Cancer Training Workshop funded by the National Cancer Institute.
Donna M. Johnson-Byrd, DNP, RN, NCSN, CNE (College of Nursing) has been awarded a prestigious fellowship with the Golisano Pediatric Nursing Institute of Developmental Disability. This fellowship marks an essential step forward in raising awareness and promoting access to early intervention strategies for children and families in Florida and nationwide.
Steven J. Palazzo, Ph.D., MN, RN, CNE, ANEF (College of Nursing) has been selected as a reviewer for the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education following a highly competitive review of over 500 applicants nationwide.
Yushun Dong, Ph.D. (Department of Computer Science) was awarded the International Studies Office Graduate Academic Excellence Honors award in May from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Dong was also awarded the Outstanding Ph.D. Student Award at the Engineering School of the University of Virginia.
Li Pon (Career Center) was recognized as a 2025 Cooperative Education & Internship Association fellow at the International Work-integrated Learning Conference held in April in Arizona.
Cathy McClive, Ph.D. (Department of History) coauthored the article “Women at the Centre: Medical Entrepreneurialism and ‘La Grande Médecine’ in Eighteenth-Century Lyon,” which was selected as an honorable mention for the 2025 Koren Prize of the Society for French Historical Studies.
Christopher Okonkwo, Ph.D. (Department of English) had his piece “Akuko na Egwu: Music, a Critically (Un(der)played Leitmotif in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Storytelling” selected as the lead essay in the Summer 2025 publication of Research in African Literatures.
Grace Aneiza Ali, MFA (Department of Art) received the Distinguished Jubilee Award from the Queen’s College of Guyana Alumni, New York Chapter. The award honors eight outstanding alumnae to celebrate 50 years of co-education at Queen’s College of Guyana.
Jiha Moon, MFA (Department of Art) was awarded the 2025 Florida Prize in Contemporary Art by the Orlando Museum of Art. Her work will be showcased in the eleventh edition of the Florida Prize in Contemporary Art exhibition, which exclusively features the ten artists selected for this honor.
GRANTS
Karen Works, Ph.D. (Department of Computer Science) was awarded a $3,000 National Science Foundation sponsored Center for Parallel and Distributed Computing Curriculum Development and Educational Resources PDC Curriculum Early Adopter Grant and Summer Training Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Jie Chen, Ph.D., RN (College of Nursing) is co-principal investigator on a cutting-edge National Institutes of Health-funded project focused on using Home-Based Transcutaneous Auricular Vagus Nerve Stimulation for pain and symptom management in young adults with irritable bowel syndrome. This project is in collaboration with colleagues at Yale University.
Michael Gubanov, Ph.D. (Department of Computer Science) received renewal of a grant from the Casey DeSantis Florida Cancer Innovation Fund, overseen by the Florida Department of Health, for his project, “CancerAlKG: a Web-scale Trustworthy Al-Knowledge Graph-LLM hybrid on Cancer, Constructed and Interrogated for Bias,” using deep learning. Gubanov was also awarded an Outstanding PC Chair Award at the 41st IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering, held in Hong Kong, China.
Maximilian Scholz, Ph.D. (Department of History) was awarded a Franklin grant from the American Philosophical Society for his project, “The Dubious Conversion of Friedrich Staphylus, or How Western Christianity Fractured.” His project studies the relationship between migration and religious conversion using archives in Berlin, Germany.
BYLINES
Michael Killian, Ph.D. (College of Social Work) and doctoral students Sonnie Mayewski and Schyler Brummer coauthored “Inter-Dose Variability of Immunosuppressant Medication Among Adolescent Heart Transplants During Video Directly Observed Therapy” in the journal Pediatric Transplantation.
Burcu Izci, Ph.D. (College of Social Work) coauthored “Aligning Early Childhood Science Teaching Beliefs, Practices, and Children’s Learning Outcomes: The Impact of a Professional Development Program” published in Frontiers in Psychology.
Garret Hall, Ph.D. (Department of Psychology) and Matthew Cooper Borkenhagen, Ph.D. (Anne Spencer Daves College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences) coauthored “Parallel Models of Reading and Numerical Cognition” published in the Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Elizabeth Ray, Ph.D. (College of Communication and Information), Karen Oehme, JD, Ann Perko, JD, Lyndi Bradley, Ph.D. (College of Social Work) and Angi Yoder-Maina, Ph.D. (Resilience Institute for Strength and Empowerment) coauthored the article “Adapting After Adversity: Application and Outcomes from Resilience-Based Curricula” published in the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma.
Eundeok Kim, Ph.D. (Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship) coauthored “Climate Justice: The Contribution of Higher Education Institutions” published in Discover Sustainability. Kim also authored the chapter “Certified B Corporations as a Driver for Sustainable Development: An Analysis of Innovative Sustainable Business Models in the US” in the book “North American and European Perspectives on Sustainability in Higher Education” as part of the World Sustainability Series for Springer Nature.
Stephanie Zuilkowski, Ph.D. (Learning Systems Institute) coauthored the journal article “Books That Talk About My Dreams: Understanding Children’s Book Access, Preferences, Motivations, and Support at Home and in Nearby Environments in Rwanda” published by the International Literacy Association.
Brenda Wawire, Ph.D. (Learning Systems Institute) coauthored the book “Hujambo! A Standards-Based Approach to Introductory Kiswahili” published by the Kansas University Resource Language Center.
Tricia Montgomery, Ph.D. (School of Communication Science and Disorders) coauthored an article “Navigating Supervisor Expectations and Securing Clinical Placements: A Guide for Practicum Administrator” in the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Journals.
Balu Bhasuran, Ph.D. and Zhe He, Ph.D. (School of Information) published “Preliminary Analysis of the Impact of Lab Results on Large Language Model Generated Differential Diagnoses” in Digital Medicine.
Zhe He, Ph.D. (School of Information) coauthored “Synoptic Reporting by Summarizing Cancer Pathology Reports using Large Language Models” in Health Systems.
Mia A. Lustria, Ph.D., Obianuju Aliche, Ph.D., Zhe He, Ph.D. (School of Information) and Michael Killian, Ph.D. (Social Work) copublished “Enhancing Patient Engagement and Understanding: Is Providing Direct Access to Laboratory Results through Patient Portals Adequate?” in JAMIA Open.
Michelle Therrien, Ph.D. and doctoral students Ashley Sellers (School of Communication Science and Disorders) and Peter Marti (Anne Spencer Daves College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences) published a paper “A systematic review of AAC interventions using speech generating devices for autistic preschoolers” in the journal Augmentative and Alternative Communication.
Hristo Chipilski, Ph.D. (Department of Scientific Computing) published “Exact Nonlinear State Estimation” in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences through the American Meteorological Society.
Elizabeth Coggeshall, Ph.D. (Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics) published “Resonant Texts in Noisy Spaces: Approaching the ‘Publics’ of the Public Humanities” in the publications of the Modern Language Association through Cambridge University Press.
Paul Renfro, Ph.D. (Department of History) had an excerpt from his book “The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America” published in Teen Vogue for the 35th anniversary of Ryan White’s passing. He also had his book “The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America” published as an audiobook.
Ravi Howard, Ph.D. (Department of English) published “Mobile’s Forgotten Banana Docks: An Alabama Hub Once Brought the Caribbean Fruit to the Nation” in the Spring Food issue of Oxford American. The article covers the Gulf Coast history of the global banana trade and combines a global perspective with Howard’s family labor history, which inspired the piece.
Corey Moss-Pech, Ph.D. (Department of Sociology) published a new book “Major Trade-Offs: The Surprising Truths about College Majors and Entry-level Jobs” exploring how college majors influence early-career job prospects and challenges common assumptions about the relationship between higher education and the labor market.
Alice Maxwell (Division of Student Affairs Marketing and Communications) wrote the peer-reviewed article “Exploring a Model for Student Success Communications that Welcomes Collaboration Across Higher Education Divisions” in the journal Perspectives: Policy & Practice in Higher Education, published by Taylor & Francis, United Kingdom.
Bryant Harden, Ph.D. (Center for Global Engagement) coauthored “Teaching Feminist Theories” in The Palgrave Handbook on the Pedagogy of International Relations Theory. He also published “Review of Enlightenment and the Gasping City: Mongolian Buddhism at a Time of Environmental Disarray” in the book Mongolian Studies: The Journal of the Mongolia Society, and “Becoming a Global Citizen: The Transformative Power of Study Abroad” within the book How Studying Abroad Changed My Life: Tips and Strategies for a Transformative Experience.
Timothy Baghurst, Ph.D. (Anne Spencer Daves College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences) coauthored “‘You Coach Coaches?’ A Rationale for the Coach Developer Role and Practical Guidelines for Effective Working Relationships with Coaches” published in Quest.
Joseph Watso, Ph.D. (Anne Spencer Daves College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences) coauthored “Differential Effects of Female Aging on Sympathetic Blood Pressure Regulation at Rest and During Stress in Humans” published in Physiological Reports. His coauthors include exercise physiology Ph.D. candidates Christin Domeier, Thomas Bissen and Joe Vondrasek.
Annie Wofford, Ph.D. (Anne Spencer Daves College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences) and doctoral candidate Holly Henning coauthored “’We Can Change the Culture Through Those Individual Engagements’: Social Exchange and Equity-Mindedness in STEMM Doctoral Students’ Roles as Mentors,” published in Studies in Graduate and Postdoctoral Education.
Annie Wofford, Ph.D. (Anne Spencer Daves College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences) coauthored “Building Transfer Student Interest in Computer Science PhDs: Examining an Advising Intervention Using a Staged Innovation Design,” published in Research in Higher Education.
Frank Y. Wong, Ph.D. (College of Nursing) is the senior author of the seventh edition book “Community Psychology.” This edition offers a clear and engaging overview of community psychology, from foundational concepts to real-world applications in mental health, education and public health. Featuring updated research, expanded theory and reflects the field’s ongoing growth and relevance.
Lucinda J. Graven, Ph.D., APRN, FAHA, FAAN (College of Nursing) is the lead author for “Palliative Care and Advanced Cardiovascular Disease in Adults: Not Just End-of-Life Care,” a groundbreaking American Heart Association Scientific Statement, recently published in the Circulation.
Jie Chen, Ph.D., RN (College of Nursing) coauthored an article, “Sex-Differences in Mothers’ Own Milk and Neurodevelopmental Outcomes in Preterm Infants,” published in Frontiers in Pediatrics.
Lucinda J. Graven, Ph.D., APRN, FAHA, FAAN, Laurie Abbott, Ph.D., RN, DipACLM, CNE, PHNA-BC, FAAN (College of Nursing) and doctoral student Josef Hodgkins coauthored an article “Supporting Physical and Mental Health in Rural Veterans Living with Heart Failure: Study Protocol for a Nurse-Led Telehealth Intervention” published in JMIR Research Protocols.
Adam Hanley, Ph.D. (College of Nursing) coauthored an article “Positive Emotion Dysregulation in Opioid Use Disorder and Normalization by Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement: A Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Clinical Trial” published in JAMA Psychiatry.
Marsha E. Hartline, DNP, RN, CNML, CNE, FACHE (College of Nursing) coauthored an article “Exploring the Nonlinear Impact of Emotional Work Demands and Work Passion on Job Satisfaction” published in the Journal of Managerial Psychology.
Jing Wang, Ph.D., MPH, RN, FAAN, Chengdong Li, Ph.D. and Yijiong Yang, Ph.D., MHA (College of Nursing) coauthored an article “Quantifying environmental waste from diabetes devices in the U.S.” published in Diabetes Care.
James Whyte, ND, Ph.D., FNAP, FAAN, Mia Newlin-Bradner, Ph.D., MSN, RN, CNE (College of Nursing) and doctoral student Josef Hodgkins coauthored an article “A Comparative Analysis of Care Seeking Behaviors in People Living with Congestive Heart Failure During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the U.S. and U.K.” published in the Journal of Nursing Education and Practice.
Tracey Dowling, Anissa Ford (Career Center) and two FSU students were interviewed for an article featuring the FSUshadow program, “Where Experiential Learning Doesn’t Break the Bank,” in the Chronicle of Higher Education Special Report: Hands-On Career Preparation.
Kathleen P. Wilson, Ph.D., APRN, CPNP, FNP-BC, BC-ADM, FAANP, FNAP, DipACLM (College of Nursing) coauthored an article “Boot Camp: Preparing the Next Generation of Nurse Practitioners” published in the Journal for Nurse Practitioners.
Changhyun (Lyon) Nam, Ph.D. (Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship) published “Stacked Crystalline Nanomembrane GaAs/Si Tunnel Diodes on Polypropylene Substrates Derived from Disposable Masks” in Materials Letters by ELSEVIER.
Ibrahim Yigit, Ph.D. (College of Nursing) coauthored an article titled “Association of experienced stigma in healthcare settings with health outcomes among Black women living with HIV: Mediating roles of internalized stigma, anticipated stigma, and trust in HIV care,” published in the journal Social Science & Medicine.
Barbara Parker-Bell, Ph.D. (Department of Art Education) had her coauthored book “Art Therapy and Career Counseling Creative Strategies for Career Development Across the Lifespan” translated into Turkish.
Michael Carrasco, Ph.D. (Department of Art History) coauthored the paper “Citizen Science and the Spread of Aulacaspis yasumatsui Takagi on Amami Oshima, Japan,” presented as part of the symposium “Systematics, Biology, Horticulture, and Conservation of Cycads” at the 13th Latin American Congress of Botany in Havana, Cuba.
Erika Loic, Ph.D. (Department of Art History) coedited “La Edad Media Proyectada: El Pasado Medieval Ibérico en la Creación Audiovisual en Lenguas Portuguesa y Española (The Projected Middle Ages: The Medieval Iberian Past in Luso- and Hispanophone Audiovisual Productions).”
Meredith Lynn, MFA (Department of Art) had her book “Bad Outdoorsmen” featured in “10 Books to Bring to the Beach This Summer” by Hyperallergic magazine, an online art magazine.
PRESENTATIONS AND CONFERENCES
Perry Wisinger, Ph.D. (College of Business) presented “Kenyan Elephants and United Nations Trade Policy” at the Midwest Political Science Association held at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago.
Sonia Cabell, Ph.D. (Anne Spencer Daves College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences) presented multiple studies at the American Educational Research Association Annual Conference. These presentations included “Investigating Teacher Knowledge and Adaptability: Enhancing Literacy Outcomes in K-3 Students;” “Exploring Determinants of Kindergarten Teachers’ Implementation of a Widely Used Content-Rich Literacy Curriculum;” “Word Learning for All Students: Metalinguistic Awareness and Vocabulary Instruction with Multilingual and Multidialectal Students;” and “Kindergarten Teachers’ Explicit Vocabulary Instruction During Informational Text Read-Alouds and Variation by Classroom Characteristics.” She also presented “Using Strive-for-Five Conversations to Enhance Students’ Language Comprehension” at the 2025 Alaska Science of Reading Symposium.
Leah Sherman, M.A., MLIS, Dianna S. Bradley, M.A., Crystal Mathews, M.A., MLIS, and Laura Pellini, B.A. (University Libraries) co-presented “Infusing Art into the Academic Library Space: Creating Community through Art-Centered Outreach” at the Art Libraries Society of North America 2025 virtual conference.
Rachel C. S. Duke, Ph.D. (University Libraries) presented “Zooming In on Medieval Texts: Three Active-Learning Assignments and Their Outcomes” at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Kari Lien, Ph.D. and Yunjung Kim, Ph.D. (School of Communication Science and Disorders) attended the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s Lessons for Success program at the association’s national office in Rockville, Maryland.
Balu Bhasuran, Ph.D. and Zhe He, Ph.D. (School of Information) presented “LabQAR: A Curated Dataset for Question Answering on Laboratory Test Reference Ranges and Interpretation” at the AMIA 2025 Informatics Summit, held March 10 to 13 in Pittsburgh.
Sonia Cabell, Ph.D. (Anne Spencer Daves College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences) presented “Using Strive-for-Five Conversations to Enhance Students’ Language Comprehension” at the 2025 Alaska Science of Reading Symposium.
Hugh Catts, Ph.D. (College of Communication and Information) presented “Rethinking Reading and Writing: The Role of Knowledge and Higher-Level Thinking in Literacy Development” at the 2025 Amplify Spring Science of Reading Summit: The Deep Links Between Reading, Writing, and Language.
Michelle Bumatay, Ph.D. (Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics) gave the keynote lecture “Creating Comics: Space-Making and Community-Building” in a workshop on Teaching Comic Books in Language Classes at Pomona College in Claremont, California. She also gave an invited talk at the University of California, Los Angeles, discussing her newest book, “Black Bandes Dessinées.”
Kathleen Powers Conti, Ph.D. (Department of History) presented “Increasing Solidarity in Consulting through Community and Communication” and “Creating a Peer-Review Clearinghouse for Public Historians” at the National Council on Public History’s annual conference in Montreal, Canada. She also led a workshop at the conference on consulting in public history and historic preservation.
Andrew Epstein, Ph.D. (Department of English) delivered the 2025 Richard W. Gunn Memorial Lecture, presenting the paper “William James, Attention, and Post-1945 American Poetry” by the English Department at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.
Tarez Samra Graban, Ph.D. (Department of English) presented “The Need for Re-Alignments: Global Rhetorical Traditions, Linguistic Justice, and Myths of Co-Optation” at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Baltimore.
Nilay Özok-Gündoğan, Ph.D. (Department of History) presented “Kurdish Nobility in the Ottoman Empire: Loyalty, Autonomy, and Privilege” at Stanford University’s Abbasid Program in Islamic Studies in Stanford, California. She also presented her paper “Beyond the Cautionary Preamble: Decolonizing the History of Ottoman Kurdistan” at the Stanford Humanities Center conference Kî ne em? Kurdish Literature and Its Studies: An Interdisciplinary Conference; presented at Stanford University’s Humanities Center for her research talk, “Forging Empire: Mineral Extraction, State-Making, and the Colonization of Ottoman Kurdistan, 1720 – 1870;” presented “Decolonizing Kurdish Studies,” for the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California Berkeley; and presented “The Kurds in a Changing Middle East” at the California Kurdish Community Center in Pacifica, California.
Christopher Okonkwo, Ph.D. (Department of English) gave this year’s first African Literature Association’s Lecture Series talk titled “Tracking Fela’s Cameos in African Fiction.”
Michael Shatruk, Ph.D. (Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry) gave the plenary talk “Two-Dimensional Spin-Crossover Materials and Heterostructures” at the Florida Quantum Summit at the University of Florida.
Silvia Valisa, Ph.D. (Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics) co-organized and spoke at the third symposium of Interdisciplinary Network for Nineteenth-Century Italian Studies at the University of Toronto in Canada and co-sponsored by the University of Toronto’s Department of Italian Studies. Valisa delivered the paper “Un Secolo Dopo L’Altro: Sonzogno Come Case Study.”
Wen Zhu, Ph.D. (Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry) gave a talk titled “Conformational Dynamics Regulate the Accessibility of Ammonia in Human Asparagine Synthetase” at the 15th Annual Southeast Enzyme Conference in Atlanta.
Bryant Harden, Ph.D. (Center for Global Engagement) presented his chapter on “Teaching Feminist Theories” from the recently published The Palgrave Handbook on the Pedagogy of International Relations Theory at the International Studies Association Annual Conference in Chicago.
Grace Fennema, M.Ed. and Brittany Stover (Student Engagement) presented “Illustrating the Past, Designing the Future: Art as a Tool for Student Empowerment” at the 2025 National Association of Student Personnel Administrators Annual Conference held in New Orleans.
Bridgid Shannon (Center for Leadership & Service) presented “Pathways to Peace: Storytelling Tools and Global Models to Lead with Curiosity, Boost Collaboration, and Sustain Engagement” at the 19th Florida International Leadership Conference. Shannon also presented a seminar on community entry and critical community engagement for FAMU-FSU Partners United for Research Pathways Oriented to Social Justice in Education (PURPOSE) Research Fellows, providing community engagement framing for PURPOSE Fellows’ research since 2019. Shannon also facilitated “Healing Harmonies: Using Music to Inspire and Empower Through Life’s Challenges,” a pre-conference session at the Gulf-South Summit on Service-Learning and Civic Engagement Through Higher Education held in Tennessee in March. Additionally, she co-facilitated “Place-Based Frameworks for University-Community Engagement.”
Bridgid Shannon (Center for Leadership & Service), Hillary Harbauer (University Housing), and other community partners presented “PeaceJamming: Youth-Centric Coalitions for Positive Peace & Healing-Centered Praxis” at the Gulf-South Summit on Service-Learning and Civic Engagement Through Higher Education, held in Tennessee.
Bridgid Shannon, Katelyn Palmer and Paige Rentz (Center for Leadership & Service) presented “Chords & Contexts: Community Embedded Learning & Communities of Practice” at the Gulf-South Summit on Service-Learning and Civic Engagement Through Higher Education.
Kaylee Vasquez (University Housing) and Ella Windlan (UGS Academic Engagement) presented the posters: “Service and Sustainable Futures in Morocco and Beyond” and “Algorithmic Law Enforcement: The Community Impact of Predictive Policing” (respectively) at the Gulf-South Summit on Service-Learning and Civic Engagement Through Higher Education, which was held in Tennessee.
Tracey Dowling, Ph.D. (Career Center) co-presented the sessions “Breaking Into Work-Integrated Learning: The Essentials Toolkit for New Practitioners” and “Cultivating Talent: The Role of Competencies in Work-Integrated Learning Programs” at the Cooperative Education and Internship Association (CEIA) Annual Conference in Arizona. Dowling is also the CEIA vice president for professional development.
Tracey Dowling, Ph.D. and Li Pon (Career Center) presented “Internships 101: A Toolkit on Increasing Reach of Employer Training” at the Cooperative Education and Internship Association Annual Conference, held in Arizona.
Li Pon (Career Center) presented “CEIA Fellow Presentation: Creating an Oasis of Opportunities for International Students” at the Cooperative Education and Internship Association Annual Conference.
Alicia Craig-Rodriguez, DNP, MBA, APRN, FNP-BC, DipACLM (College of Nursing) was an invited speaker at the Preventive Cardiovascular Nurses Association Annual Symposium. She delivered a podium presentation titled “Lifestyle Medicine: The Six Pillars of Health.” Additionally, Craig-Rodriguez co-presented at Sigma Theta Tau International’s Creating Healthy Work Environments 2025 conference in Phoenix. Their talk, “Caring for the Caregiver: Enhancing Personal and Professional Wellbeing,” focused on practical strategies to build resilience and support the well-being of nursing professionals.
Jessica Bahorski, Ph.D., APRN, PPCNP-BC, WHNP (College of Nursing) presented research in partnership with the UF College of Medicine, focusing on a cross-sectional study exploring mothers’ perceptions of postpartum visit benefits by rural status.
Jie Chen, Ph.D., RN (College of Nursing), was invited to present at the Scholars Research Panel at the US Association Study of Pain (USASP) 2025 Annual Scientific Meeting as a recipient of the USASP-MAYDAY Clinical/Translational Research Award. Chen and doctoral student Meghan Poe (College of Nursing) also presented their research poster, highlighting their impactful work in pain research and the advancement of clinical science.
Savanna Harris-Mazon, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC and Lynn Sleeth, MSN, RN (College of Nursing) attended the National Consortium of Nursing Academic Coaches (NCNAC) conference in Auburn, Alabama. They led discussions on enhancing The National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) outcomes with individualized remediation for the Comprehensive Predictor Exit Exam and shared strategies for Health Education Systems Incorporated remediation.
Yushun Dong, Ph.D. (Department of Computer Science) presented his papers “ST-FiT: Inductive Spatial-Temporal Forecasting with Limited Training Data” and “BrainMAP: Learning Multiple Activation Pathways in Brain Networks” at the 39th Annual Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Conference in Philadelphia. Dong also presented his papers “Graph Neural Networks Are More Than Filters: Revisiting and Benchmarking from A Spectral Perspective” and “CEB: Compositional Evaluation Benchmark for Fairness in Large Language Models” at the Thirteenth International Conference on Learning Representations in Tampines, Singapore.
Nicole Patton Terry, Ph.D. (Anne Spencer Daves College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences) presented “The Politicization of Teaching Reading, Seeking a Research-Informed Remedy;” “A New Vision for High Quality Preschool Curriculum — A Report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine;” “The Institutional Challenge Grant: Community-Engaged Research to Improve Youth Educational Outcomes;” “University Research Partnerships to Reduce Educational Disparity in College Towns: Building a Model in Tallahassee, FL;” “The 28th Conversations with Senior Scholars on Advancing Research and Professional Development Related to Black Education;” and “Means for Achieving and Thriving in Your Doctoral Program to Graduation” at the annual American Educational Research Association conference.
Clifton Callender, Ph.D, Jane Clendinning, Ph.D. and David Kalhous, DMA(College of Music) presented at the International Musicology Conference, “Virtuosity in the Music of György Ligeti,” as part of the Fifth Ligeti Festival Transylvania. The conference included contributions by many of the foremost scholars of Ligeti’s music, including the composer’s long-time assistant, Dr. Louise Duchesneau; musicologist Wolfgang Marx; composer Manfred Stahnke; curator at the Paul Sacher Foundation (Basel), Heidy Zimmermann, and many others. The festival and conference took place in the city of Ligeti’s youth, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
Ann Rowson-Love, Ph.D. (Department of Art Education) presented her paper “Feminizing the Outdoorsman: Creating Self-Care Metaphors in 52 Survival Playing Cards” in the symposium “Women who Create 2025: the Feminine and the Arts,” organized by The London Arts-Based Research Centre, Cambridge, England.
Robert Neuman, Ph.D. (Department of Art History) and two graduate students from his fall 2024 Walt Disney seminar — Raigen Sumrall and Valarie Godwin — presented papers at the international Disney, Culture and Society conference.
Paul Niell, Ph.D. (Department of Art History) presented “Roofs of Resilience: Thatching and Urban Life in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico” in The Early Modern Symposium at Yale University.
Erika Loic, Ph.D. (Department of Art History) presented “Winged Women in Medieval Art: Drawing the Lines between Monstrous and Angelomorphic Gender Expressions” at the Centennial Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America at Harvard University.
Paul Niell, Ph.D. (Department of Art History) presented “Dancing to Drum and ‘Shake Shake’ and ‘Congo Upon the Ramparts’: Rhythm and the Urban Landscape in Nineteenth-Century San Juan, Puerto Rico” at the Huntington Library conference Music in the Early Spanish Americas, Performance Spaces and Archives.
Adam Jolles, Ph.D. (Department of Art History) presented a public lecture “Surrealism in Black and White” at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Tenley Bick, Ph.D. (Department of Art History) gave an invited book talk and signing at Lévy Gorvy Dayan Gallery in New York on “Michelangelo Pistoletto: Figuration and Cultural Politics,” in association with their Pistoletto exhibition. She concluded a 2-year appointment in February as president of the Italian Art Society.
Kaylee Spencer, Ph.D. (Museum of Fine Arts) presented “Text, Image, and Materiality in a Maya Ritual Container” at the Annual Conference for the Society for American Archaeology, in Denver.
PERFORMANCES AND EXHIBITIONS
Liliya Ugay, MM, DMA (College of Music) was featured as a guest composer at the Yale School of Music New Music New Haven series with performances of her works “Spread. Flowers.” (commissioned in 2021 by former College of Music Dean, Patricia Flowers) by Yale School of Music students, and the premiere of “Hammers Over the Moon” for which Ugay joined award-winning pianist Clara Yang. “Hammers Over the Moon” has been a part of Yang’s show “Ex Machina” with the visual art of the prominent artist Xuan and contributions from popular math-rock guitarist Yvette Young; the show has just received a double-premiere in Chapel Hill, NC. Additionally, Ugay’s composition for electroacoustic harp “pull no more,” created in collaboration with and performed by the College of Music’s Assistant Professor of Harp and Entrepreneurship, Noël Wan, has been featured at CAMPGround festival (Tampa), MTNA National Conference (Minneapolis), and Chicago Electroacoustic Festival.
SERVICE
Vilma Fuentes, Ph.D. and Amber Wiest (Learning Systems Institute) traveled to South Africa as work continued on the Community College Administrator Program.
Tricia Montgomery, Ph.D. (School of Communication Science and Disorders) will become President of the Council of Academic Programs in Communication Science & Disorders, effective July 1.
April Lovett, Ed.D. (College of Nursing) has been selected as President of Working Well — an organization promoting workplace wellness in Tallahassee. Lovett will help shape strategic goals, champion community well-being and lead meaningful programs that support healthier, more connected workplaces.
Casey Guynes, Ph.D., Kristen Guynes, Ph.D. and Catherine Johnson (School of Communication Science and Disorders) coordinated a student engagement event at the Family Deaf Connect event at Buck Lake Elementary School. This was a free event for families of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children.
Bridgid Shannon (Center for Leadership & Service) served a second year on the Executive Committee for the Gulf-South Summit on Service-Learning and Civic Engagement Through Higher Education.
Bryant Harden, Ph.D. (Center for Global Engagement) was elected to serve another year on the executive committee for Theory for the International Studies Association.
Darryl Lovett, Ph.D. (Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs) was selected to serve as the NASPA Chair of the Centering the Student Affairs Workforce Workgroup to help ensure Student Affairs professionals are empowered, supported and equipped to deliver meaningful experiences for students.
Suzan Kurdak (Division of Student Affairs Marketing and Communications) was elected to serve on the Consulting Together Community Outreach Board as director of communications.
Tyrone “TJ” Johnson (Career Center) chaired the technology committee for the annual Cooperative Education International Conference in April, held in Tucson, AZ. He coordinated audiovisual technology for all aspects of the conference with the assistance of Career Center staff: Cheyenne Egstad, Jessica O’Neill and Kaylee Webb.
Lyndsay Jenkins, Ph.D. (Anne Spencer Daves College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences) was invited to join the Society for the Study of School Psychology.
Carrie Meyers (Learning Systems Institute) led the first workshop for the “Afterschool Math Success: Developing the Vision and Support” project, which is designed to help out-of-school providers and parents foster math success and enjoyment among children in kindergarten through fifth grade.
Rabieh Razzouk, MBA (Learning Systems Institute) led a multi-year partnership with the Learning System Institute and the Education Development Center on the Higher Education Capacity Development program with Lebanon, which recently concluded.
George Williamson, Ph.D. (Department of History) was elected Vice President Elect of the Central European History Society, an affiliated society of the American Historical Association. He will rotate through the officer positions of Vice President, President and Past President in the next four years.
Stephane Zuilkowski, Ph.D. (Learning Systems Institute) led an ELA assessment writing training for Florida educators for the FAST standardized assessments.
NOTABLE
Adam Hanley, Ph.D. (College of Nursing) and the Complementary Health Innovation Lab are launching a new partnership with Beyond Meds and the FSU Lifestyle Medicine Clinic. Together, they will conduct a pilot study evaluating Beyond Meds — a digital platform designed to deliver personalized lifestyle medicine prescriptions. In addition to this partnership, Hanley is launching another pilot study in collaboration with Vivian Rosenthal of Frequency Breathwork and the veterans’ association Heroic Hearts. The study, titled “Breathwork Intervention for Veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),” is a single-site clinical trial exploring how cyclical breathwork may enhance well-being in veterans living with PTSD.
Kathleen Wilson, Ph.D., APRN, CPNP, FNP-BC, BC-ADM, FAANP, FNAP, DipACLM (College of Nursing) has been invited to design and lead a statewide, high-level continuing education master class for Nurse Practitioners through the Florida Nurse Practitioner Network—the state’s leading nurse practitioner organization.
Vilma Fuentes, Ph.D. (Learning Systems Institute) led the Ukraine Task Force in hosting Dmytro Stepanskyi, a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow at Emory University and the American Society for Microbiology Ambassador to Ukraine in a weeklong tour of campus as he visited FSU biologists, doctors and scientists.
Elizabeth Madden, Ph.D. (School of Communication Science and Disorders) attended the Aphasia Access Leadership Summit in Pittsburgh. The conference brought together professionals who support people with aphasia.
Selena Snowden and Chelsea Alexander (School of Communication Science and Disorders), along with nine undergraduate students, attended the American Academy of Audiology National Conference and HearTECH Expo in New Orleans.
Lorenzo Pericolo, Ph.D. (Department of Art History) chaired the session “Beyond the Painter-Architect – Exploring Art and Architecture as Integrated Practices III: Roman Ruins” at the Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting in Boston.