In Print
 
Faithlink: Connecting Faith and Life, a resource of the United Methodist Church, interviewed  
Terry Lindvall
on religious satire. He celebrated 35 years as the Library Acquisition Choice Magazine's Reviewer in Film with reviews of Dru Jeffries' "Comic Book Film Styles," Tracey Mollet's "Cartoons in Hard Times," J. Telotte's "Animating the Science Fiction Imagination," and Kristen Anderson "Wagner's Comic Venus ."   

Alain Gabon published two articles in French and English in the "Middle East Eye" on European Islamic intellectual leader Tariq Ramadan's affair in France. 
 
Ben Haller presented his paper entitled "Classical Counterfactuals: George Sandys's 1632 Metamorphoses Commentary and 'Good Newes from Virginia,'" based upon a chapter drafted during his summer 2017 faculty development grant, at the 2018 annual meeting of the Southwestern/American Popular Culture Association, where he serves as area chair for the Classical Representations in Popular Culture Area.
 
Dan Margolies published a review of "Steven E. Nash, Reconstructions Ragged Edge: The Politics of Postwar Life in the Southern Mountains." (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016) in The American Historical Review, 123:1 (1 February 2018), 233234.
 

Presentations and Panels
 
Kathy Merlock Jackson chaired and participated in a panel discussion titled "Publish and Prosper!" on February 24 at the Far West PCA/ACA Conference in Las Vegas.
 
Dan Margolies presented "Gran Plaza México, USA: The Sonic Textures of Transnational Migration at Mexican Rodeos in the Southeastern United States" at the Migration: Movement(s) Around the Globe Symposium at the Center for Global Engagement at Columbus State University, Columbus, GA.  
 
Sara Sewell presented a paper at a conference hosted by the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England: Echoes of Revolution,1848, 1918: Revolution, Nationalism, and Socialism. The paper was entitled "Forging a Revolutionary Identity through Ritual: Communist May Days during the Early Weimar Republic."
   
Denise Wilkinson presented "Social Cohesion and Success: The Benefits of Integrating Icebreakers through the Semester" at a session at the National Association for Developmental Educators conference in National Harbor, Maryland.
March 2018
 
Leona Baker and  Elizabeth Malcolm published a blog entitled "Community Resilience Building in the Virginia Wesleyan Community" on the website for Second Nature, an organization "committed to accelerating climate action in, and through, higher education." The blog details the process behind the Community Resilience Building Workshop that took place on the VWU campus in October 2017. http://secondnature.org/2018/02/19/community-resilience-building-virginia-wesleyan-university/ 
         
Mort Gamble is marking 10 years as a columnist for "The White Tops," the national bimonthly magazine of the Circus Fans Association of America (CFA). Topics include circus industry trends, circus history, and reviews of circus and CFA member activities.
 
Eric Mazur has published an entry on "Film & Religion in America" in the online Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion.
 
Kathy Merlock Jackson published an article titled "The Trajectory of a Comic Celebrity's Career: Robin Williams Does Television" in the Popular Culture Review, vol. 20, number #1, Spring 2018.

Doug Kennedy and Jill Sturts co-authored a chapter in the third edition of "Introduction to Recreation and Leisure." The chapter is titled "History of Recreation."
 
Kathy Stolley authored entries on Alan Chadwick, John Leal, John Snow, the Public Health Service, and Schistosomiasis for "Environmental Health in the 21st Century: From Air Pollution to Zoonotic Diseases."


   



Benjamin Dobrin
presented a paper titled "Organizational Motivation for Police Agencies to have V olunteer Police Units" at the Academy of Criminal Justices Sciences annual conference in New Orleans.
 
Kathy Stolley, Robin Takacs, Rebecca Hooker, and Denise Wilkinson
collaborated on a poster titled "Storytelling Through the Four Cs in the Classroom: Strategies for Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity across the Curriculum" presented at the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy held at Virginia Tech.

  Michelle Vachris gave a presentation "Jane Austen, Adam Smith, and the American Virtues of Prudence, Benevolence, and Justice" as part of a weekend institute for 20 high school teachers on Consequential Ideas and American History. The institute was hosted by the Center for Reflective Citizenship (CRC) at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
 
Other Accomplishments
 
  Benjamin Dobrin was awarded News Channel 3's People Taking Action Award for his work in organizing the in-water safety operation for the Special Olympics Polar Plunge.  http://wtkr.com/2018/02/06/people-taking-action-rescue-divers-brave-frigid-waters-to-keep-plungers-safe/   

Benjamin Dobrin attended the Eastern Virginia Medical School's Public Health Grand Rounds on the opiod epidemic on February 6.
 
Clay Drees has been chosen from among over 200 professors nation-wide to teach a course on Tudor England as part of a six-week summer 2019 institute at Harlaxton College in Lincolnshire, England. VWU students will be encouraged to accompany Drees to Harlaxton as part of VWU's Study Away Program.
 
Ben Haller was accepted with funding as a seminar participant in the CIC-CHS 2018 ~ Ancient Greece in the Modern College Classroom Seminar, "Traveling with Pausanias through Greece," led by Gregory Nagy (Harvard University) and Kenneth Morrell (Rhodes College), which will focus on a selection of readings from Pausanias and other relevant authors while visiting sites in Greece.
  Leslie Caughell's article "The characteristics of news stories that help attack misinformation"  was recognized as one of 2017's ten most read articles on fact-checking by the Poynter Institute.

Leslie Caughell was quoted as a source in the Richmond Times Dispatch article "Field operations director for Nick Freitas' Senate campaign called women b*tches on Facebook."

Leslie Caughell
was quoted in the Richmond Times Dispatch as an expert source in an article about women's political activism in the suburbs of Richmond.  
http://www.richmond.com/news/local/chesterfield/a-switch-got-flipped-in-me-liberal-women-of-chesterfield/article_e0d4a4e4-a808-5d71-8bea-a9171cac7cac.html 
 


Chris Haley and Maynard Schaus
were recently quoted in an article for Tradeline titled  "Immersing an Interdisciplinary Science Lab in the Natural World - Virginia Wesleyan University's Greer Environmental Sciences Center."  
https://www.tradelineinc.com/reports/2018-2/immersing-interdisciplinary-science-lab-natural-world ?
Community Engagement

Special guest Elaine Dessouki
explained financial planning for college students and enlightened students about the financial circumstances of the working poor. Seventy-five students were engaged in 1400 + hours of service-learning involving the homeless during Winter Session. In addition to direct service hours, students learned about moving through homelessness in Hampton Roads in a Winter Session course with Professors Collins, Stolley, and Takacs.

Technology Corner

Creating e-Portfolios with Portfolium
 
This past fall the University purchased a cloud-based ePortfolio system for student and faculty use at VWU. This platform allows students to develop an electronic portfolio while at VWU that the student can also retain as an alumnus for as long as they care to keep the site current.  The student can upload additional artifacts at their discretion to connect their academic, co-curricular and work experience as they formulate a digital identity.  Faculty can also have a Portfolium site for their own professional use as well as for tracking and evaluating student assignments.  Blackboard and Portfolium are fully integrated to allow faculty to create a Portfolium-based assignment that students will upload through Blackboard.  Faculty can then log into their Blackboard account and grade their e-portfolio assignments. In addition, Portfolium will allow the institution to track these assessments for internal use in grading student work or as evidence for accreditation purposes.

If you would like to see what can be done with Portfolium, log into their website and watch the video at  https://portfolium.com/.  If faculty would like some help getting started, they should contact Robin Takacs via phone 757-455-2112 or email  [email protected] , attend an INTEL sponsored workshop, or make an appointment to come to the INTEL Center for training on this useful product.
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