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Department News
Foreign Languages
 Professor of French Dr. Clara Krug will retire at the end of this semester after 36 years at Georgia Southern. After retirement, Krug says she plans to attend more arts and cultural performances, to travel, and to volunteer.
The first Georgia Southern French Club talent show was held on April 24 in the Russell Union Auditorium. Nearly 200 students attended the event that included more than 50 acts and was coordinated under the guidance of Dr. Olga Amarie.
Writing & Linguistics
Christina Olson's poetry was featured in Heavy Feather Review, Commons Magazine, and North Chicago Review. She was recently named a poetry mentor for the National Student Poetry Project, a program of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers.
Bryan Hyer's "I Thought You Might Want to Hear about It" was published in North American Review, and his "You're Note Getting Out of This Alive" appears in Exit 7: A Journal of Literature and Art.
Benjamin Drevlow's "The Heartwarming Story of Arnold Schwarzenegger" was accepted by Fiction On The Web.
Kathy Albertson will present "How Is WPA Work with 'Underprepared' Students Changing in the Current Economic, Political, and Educational Climate? How Are Discourses of Accountability and Retention Affecting WPA Work?" at the Council of Writing Program Administration in July. Albertson and June Joyner have received a two-year $20,000 seed grant for teacher leadership from the National Writing Project. They will use $10,000 each year to conduct writing institutes for middle-grades, high-school, and first-year writing teachers to to visit classroom to work with creating effective writing activities in all classrooms, regardless of grade level or content area.
Dr. Kevin Psonak served on a participant panel with Elissa Gayan, Ellen Hamilton, and Diana Sturges as part of Judith Longfield and Hsiu-Lien Lu's "Moving Faculty toward Learning-Centered Teaching" presentation at the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Commons Conference in Savannah on March 27. Psonak also presented "Iamb Avoidance in 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'" during the "Renaissance and Medieval Poetry" session at the Philological Association of the Carolinas conference in Myrtle Beach, S.C., on March 29.
Janet Dale's "Truth, Imagined" was accepted by Crack The Spine.
Jared Yates Sexton's "Punch-For-Punch" was accepted by PANK; his "Live Off The Land" was accepted by Stymie, and his "HELP" was accepted by Wyvern Lit.
Rachel Van Horn Leroy will present a poster entitled "Using Metacognitive Reflection to Improve Student Revision" at the University System of Georgia's Teaching and Learning Conference in Athens, Ga. The conference focuses on best practices for promoting engaged student learning.
Peggy Lindsay and Nan Lobue chaired the 15th annual Student Success in Writing Conference in Savannah.
Christopher Smith's coauthored illustrated poem, "The Swee Family Siblings," was published in Goryesque.
Political Science
Student Yarkenda Payne was profiled by Connect Statesboro.
Dr. Rich Pacelle presented "Policy, Precedent and Preferences: The Religious Clauses of the First Amendment and the Evolution of Supreme Court Doctrine" with his coauthor Barry Pyle at the Midwest Political Science Association annual meeting in Chicago.
Dr. Brett Curry's "Utilizing Experiments in Judicial Research" was published in Law & Courts: Newsletter of the Law & Courts Section of the American Political Science Association 24. Curry presented "Opinion Specialization and Decision Making on the U.S. Courts of Appeals" with coauthor Banks Miller at the Midwest Political Science Association annual meeting.
Criminal Justice & Criminology
 | | The Department hosted its second internship and career fair on April 9. Students networked with representatives from local, state, and federal criminal justice agencies and were met representatives from graduate programs and law schools. |
The Mock Mediation Club participated in its final competition of the academic year at Kennesaw State University and won two awards: First Place Team and First Place Advocate/Client Pair. The club has won 12 awards since its inception in October 2013 and was nominated for the University's New Club of the Year.
Drs. Laurie Gould, Christina Policastro, and Laura Agnich worked with undergraduate students on poster presentations for the Georgia Southern Annual Research Symposium. The students' research topics included corporal punishment in early childhood and later risk-taking behaviors, sexual orientation and bystander interventions for cases of sexual assault, and the use of the death penalty worldwide.
Drs. Bryan Miller and Laura Agnich collaborated with graduate students who presented research on media portrayals of novel drugs such as "bath salts" and synthetic cannabinoids at the Southern Sociological Society meeting in Charlotte, N.C.
Dr. Chad Posick joined researchers from around the world to discuss the third International Self-Report Delinquency Study. Posick will implement the study for the first time in the U.S. during the coming academic year.
The Department was a gold-level sponsor and the Justice Studies Club a bronze-level sponsor of the second annual Walk a Mile in Her Shoes event at Georgia Southern. Agnich served on the event planning committee and reports that about 100 men donned high heels to raise $1,800 for the Statesboro Regional Sexual Assault Center, which assists victims of rape and sexual assault in Bulloch, Jenkins, and Screven counties.
Drs. Laurie Gould, Bryan Miller, and Laura Agnich presented their research on the assessment of experiential learning opportunities in diverse criminal justice contexts a the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning conference in Savannah.
Dr. Laura Agnich's research on media coverage of school mass violence was featured by The Ochberg Society for Trauma Journalism in recognition of the seventh anniversary of the shootings at Virginia Tech.
History
Graduate student Amana Kinchen was invited with Dr. Howard Keeley, director of the Center for Irish Research and Teaching, to present "Hidden from Memory: Remembrance and Commemoration of the Sherwood Foresters' Involvement in Easter, 1916" at the Sun-City Hilton Head Irish Heritage Society. The Society is a funder of the University's Edie Ivey Scholarship, of which Amanda is a recipient.
Melissa Gayan participated in a panel at the SoTL Commons Conference in Savannah. Panelists were graduates of CT2's Teaching Academy, an eight-week course on student-centered teaching, and they discussed how the academy's focus on student-centered learning affected their classrooms.
Dr. Michael Van Wagenen spoke about the U.S.-Mexican War to students and faculty of the Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico City in March. Van Wagenen also presented on the Department's upcoming Visual History Summer Institute at the National Council on Public History's annual conference in Monterey, Calf.
Assistant Professor Brian Feltman's "Images of Despair: Artistic Representation and Popular Perceptions of German Prisoners of War, 1914-1919" in Stefan Karner and Philipp Lesiak's Erster Weltkrieg: Globaler Konflikt - Lokale Folgen, Neue Perspektive. He also presented "A German Way of War?" to the Southeast German Studies Workshop at Davidson College. Feltman has been named to the advisory board of Forum: Osterreich-Ungarn im Ersten Weltkrieg and received a summer research grant from the International Office of the Universitaet zu Koeln in Cologne, Germany.
Dr. Paul Rodell hosted Teaching Southeast Asia, a workshop at Georgia Perimeter College's Clarkston Campus sponsored by the Asia Council of the University System of Georgia. Nearly 30 USG faculty attended the workshop, where Rodell presented "Themes and Patterns in Southeast Asian History" and "Literature and Culture in Southeast Asia." Dr. Robert Batchelor presented "Mapping Relations in Southeast Asia: The Selden Map and Southeast Asian Maritime Networks" at the conference. This was the third annual Asia Council teaching workshop, and a film of the sessions will soon be available online.
Dr. Jonathan M. Bryant presented "The Negroes Are the Actual Party: American Law and the Captives of the Antelope" at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Atlanta.
Dr. Solomon K. Smith was accepted to the 2014 West Point Summer Seminar in Military History, which seeks to improve the teaching of military history by broadening its Fellows' knowledge and improving their teaching of military history. Smith also won an award from Georgia Southern's Faculty Development Committee to develop a new course, "The Great War for Empire, 1756-1763."
Dr. Bill Allison was appointed the vice president of the Society for Military History for 2014-2015; he is also a trustee of the organization. Allison's latest book, Crack The Sky, Shake The Earth: The Tet Offensive and the Beginning of the Long End of the American War in Vietnam, is under contract with Oxford University Press.
Dr. Eric Hall presented "Arthur Ashe: A Statesman at Center Court" at Georgia Tech and presented "Foster v. Fourie: Race, Image, and Betrayal in Apartheid South Africa, 1973" at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Atlanta.
Dr. Kathleen Comerford attended the 2014 Renaissance Society of America Conference in New York City, where she organized four sessions on Renaissance politics and cartography and one panel on professional development and presented "The First Tuscan Jesuits." She is a discipline representative of the organization until 2015.
Dr. Craig Roell contributed "Matamoros Before the Texas Revolution" to Still More Studies in Rio Grande History, edited by Milo Kearney, Anthony Knopp, and Antonio Zavaleta and published by the Texas Center for Border and Transnational Studies at the University of Texas at Brownsville. Roell was among six scholars invited to present at the San Jacinto Symposium in Houston, sponsored by the San Jacinto Battleground Conservancy.
Dr. Christina Abreu is the chair of the dissertation award committee of the Latin American and Caribbean section of the Southern Historical Association.
Dr. Emerson McMullen presented "The Pattern of Haeckel's Pictures" at the annual meeting of the Georgia Academy of Science at Georgia Regents University in Augusta. He also chaired the Philosophy and History of Science section of the organization.
Psychology
 | The Department has installed photographs of people who helped it develop in Brannen Hall
and invites you to stop by and see them. |
Graduate student Sara Rothberger participated in the Boston Marathon and achieved her personal record.
Graduate student Callie Gibson has been accepted into the Experimental Psychology Developmental Ph.D. programs at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the University of Alabama. She also earned a fellowship.
Doctoral graduate students Kayla LaBarge and Arthur Hatton published two papers: "Psychological Distress in Sexual Minorities: Examining the Roles of Self-Concealment and Psychological Inflexibility" in the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Mental Health and "Rural Minority Health: Race, Ethnicity, and Sexual Orientation" in Rural Public Health: Best Practice and Preventive Models. Kayla was also nominated for the Outstanding Graduate Research Award at the Southeastern Psychological Association's annual conference for her poster "Procrastination and Suicide Proneness Among Emerging Adults: Testing Mediational Models for Self-control Schemas."
Graduate student Marshall Green and faculty advisor Dr. Bradley Sturz, along with colleagues from Armstrong Atlantic State University, presented a poster at the annual meeting of the Comparative Cognition Society in Melbourne, Fla.
Graduate student Joshua Edwards, faculty advisor Dr. Bradley Sturz, and faculty member Dr. Ty Boyer presented a poster at the annual meeting of the Comparative Cognition Society in Melbourne, Fla.
Graduate student Juan Diego Guevara Pinto was awarded the Georgia Southern University Alumni Association Award, the Psychology Award, and the Georgelle Thomas award. Juan will continue his studies in cognitive psychology at Louisiana State University, where he has been awarded a research assistantship.
Graduate student Rachel Jubran has been accepted to the Ph.D. program and awarded an assistantship to study developmental psychology at the University of Kentucky.
A painting by student Riley Benko will be featured in the print and online edition of the University's Miscellany: Magazine of the Arts this spring.
The Department presented Dr. Mark Leary, social psychologist from Duke University, who spoke on "Overreactions to Trivial Events: Why Do People Sometimes 'Lose It' Over Minor Things?" on April 24.
"Does Constraining Field of View Prevent Extraction of Geometric Cues for Humans During Virtual-Environment Reorientation?," an article by Drs. Bradley Sturz and Kent Bodily with alumnus Zach Kilday, was featured by APA PeePs (Particularly Exciting Experiments in Psychology), a collaboration between six experimental psychology journals of the American Psychiatric Association.
Dr. Bradley Sturz was awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor. Sturz and colleagues from Armstrong Atlantic State University published "Incidental Encoding of Enclosure Geometry Does Not Require Visual Input: Evidence from Blind-Folded Adults" in Memory & Cognition.
Dr. Shauna Joye was awarded a Development of Instruction grant by the Faculty Development Committee for the fall. Joye and graduate student Zach Dietrich's investigation on the therapeutic value of wilderness hikes among veterans was mentioned in an article in VFW Magazine.
Dr. Bryant Smalley, director of the Center of Excellence for Rural and Minority Health, served as coeditor of Rural Public Health, published by Springer Publishing Company. The text is the first of its kind to examine in-depth the implications of rurality on prevention and health promotion across a variety of health conditions. Smalley was also featured in an article in The Monitor on Psychology, the national magazine of the American Psychological Association. He was interviewed regarding the challenges faced in implementing suicide prevention in rural settings.
Dr. Janie Wilson's coauthored book, An Easy Guide to Research Design and SPSS, was published by Safe Publications.
Communication Arts
Theatre major Ibi Owolabi attended the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society's Directing Intensive at the Kennedy Center during the National Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival. She was among 10 nationally selected students, many of whom are in graduate school. Ibi was recognized at the end of the festival with an SDC National Fellowship to the New Play Festival at the Kennedy Center this summer and was granted an associate membership to the SDC.
Student Samira Murphy was profiled by Connect Statesboro.
Sociology & Anthropology
Junior Amanda Shively is the first recipient of the Lee Rogers Berger Scholarship in Anthropology. Amanda is interested in physical anthropology, specifically osteology, skeletal anatomy, and archaeology. She is currently working on an osteological analysis of human cremated remains found on the coast of Georgia. She plans to continue to graduate school for her masters and then her Ph.D.
Ric Stewart was featured by the Department in a Student Spotlight video.
Artifacts from Camp Lawton were featured by the Virtual Curation Museum.
Nathan Palmer was named the University's Professor of the Year at the Honors Day Convocation on April 2.
Ted Brimeyer, April Schueths, and William Smith's "Who Benefits from Honors? An Empirical Analysis of Honors and Non-Honors Students" was published in the Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council.
The Department held a memorial service for Dr. Robert Shanafelt.
Art
Senior Lindsay Deblasio has been offered an internship at the Cornelius Arts Center in North Carolina.
Senior Lauren Davis has secured a position at Ahlers and Ogletree Art Auction Gallery in Atlanta.
Undergraduate Jessica Golden has been accepted to the M.A. program at the University of Georgia.
Undergraduate Virginia Angles has been accepted to the M.A. program at Georgia State University.
Students Lois Harvey and Eric Clark have each had ceramic works accepted for the national exhibition Playdate, a juried show exploring the role of games, toys, and childhood memories as inspiration in the creative process. The exhibition will be on display at the Ceramics Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, from May 2 to June 5.
Graduate students Ruth Patel and Janet Suarez participated in Georgia Southern's annual Research Symposium.
Undergraduates Kenneth Olowoyo and Emmitt Smith presented posters at the University's Phi Kappa Phi Research Symposium.
Graduate students Scott Foxx, Claudia Furlow, Dianne Johnson, Michael Lesh, Brandon Strode, and Ruth Patel were featured in the Averitt Center for the Arts' Graduate Fusion exhibition.
The Department held its annual ArtsFest event on April 5 at Georgia Southern's Sweetheart Circle.
Jessica Burke exhibited and was a visiting artist at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, where she presented an artist talk and conducted studio visits. Burke's solo exhibition Pop Portraits is on display at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill through June 5, and she was awarded Best in Show and a Purchase Award at the 25th National Drawing and Painting Exhibition at Notre Dame of Maryland University.
Kimberly Riner's installation "The Sun Also Rises" and Marc Mitchell's painting "The Echo" were featured at Art Fields in Lake City, S.C.
Dr. Julie McGuire's "Fun House" was published in the spring edition of Number: Inc., and her article "Face to Face: Artists' Self-Portraits from the Collection of Jackye and Curtis Finch, Jr." was accepted for the summer edition.
Sarah Bielski's "Goalie" was accepted by the Ceres Gallery 11th National Juried Exhibition in New York, curated by Lauren Hinkson, assistant curator of the Guggenheim Museum.
Ceramics professor Jeff Schmuki was awarded two international residencies during the summer: KulttuuriKauppila Artist in Residence in Li, Finland, and Buitenwerkplaats Artists in Residence in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Music
 | Students from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Bulloch County, directed by music education majors,
presented a recital on April 10. |
The Georgia Southern Symphony and Southern Chorale teamed up with area choirs to stage Elijah at the First Baptist Church in Statesboro.
Graduate students Maggie Alley and Brian Dyson presented research papers at the University's Phi Kappa Phi Research Symposium. Maggie's research identified strategies that choral directors use to help choirs memorize music, and Brian conducted a qualitative study to examine whether band programs are considered relevant by high school students.
Dr. Laura Stambaugh presented on two research topics at the National Music Research & Teacher Education Conference in St. Louis. One study indicated that band and choral music education majors listened differently when identifying mistakes in band and choral performances, and the other demonstrated that woodwind players should implement different practice strategies.
Dr. David Murray was named "America's champion of C.P.E. Bach" in an article by Benjamin Ivry in the March/April edition of International Piano.
Advisement
Danielle Bostick, advisor of sociology and anthropology, was selected to teach the extended orientation for a First Year Experience course in the Fall.
Kimberly Simpson, advisor for criminal justice and criminology, was awarded a Certificate of Merit of Outstanding Advising Award - Primary Advising Role by the National Academic Advising Association. Simpson also received a student nomination for the University's 2014 Outstanding Advocate for First-Year Students Award, which recognizes excellence in the teaching and mentoring of first-year students.
Jennifer Glenn, CLASS advisement coordinator, was nominated for the NACADA 2014 Outstanding Administrator Award.
Jennifer Glenn, Kimberly Simpson, and Music Advisor Veena Shankar presented "Parents: Friend or Foe to Academic Advising?" at the National Academic Advising Association conference in Savannah. Glenn, Shankar, and Simpson challenged the audience to create strategies and techniques for actively and appropriately engaging parents in students' academic advisement experience.
Kinsley Baker, who served as an advising intern during the Spring, will graduate with her master's degree in education and student services in higher education on May 9. Baker will become an advisor for communication arts majors on July 1.
Women's & Gender Studies
Rebecca Fortenberry's essay "Women in World War II: The Unmentioned Horrors Following the End of the War" won the 2014 Women's & Gender Studies program's Undergraduate Research Project Award. The Award Committee was particularly impressed with Rebecca's fair assessment of the prevalence and meanings of the mass sexual assaults of women after WWII.
Christine Vitiello's essay "Implicit and Explicit Attitudes toward Mothers in the Workplace" received the 2014 Women's & Gender Studies Graduate Research and Project Award. Members of the Award Committee praised Christine's innovative research design and the contemporary relevance of her topic.
Candice Gary received the 2014 Linda Rohrer Paige Award for Service in Women's & Gender Studies for her leadership in coordinating the on-campus performance of The Vagina Monologues in February.
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