NEWS AND UPDATES

APRIL 2022

This semester, The University of Baltimore's Hoffberger Center for Professional Ethics expanded its personnel, welcoming alum Daniel Gellasch, B.A. '21, as the coordinator of programming and outreach, UBalt Professor Joshua Kassner as the director of the Research Fellows Program and Rebecca Leiby, a Ph.D. candidate studying ethics and political philosophy at Boston University, as the Center's first-ever Ethics Fellow. Read the article.

Daniel Gellasch

Joshua Kassner

Rebeccah Leiby

• Tim Commo, a History major and new Phi Alpha Theta Honors Society initiate, presented his research on Nazi trials in the Soviet Union as part of an undergraduate panel at the 2022 Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference of Phi Alpha Theta held at The Catholic University of America in March.

• Ugochinyere (Ugo) Onyeukwu, a Counseling Psychology graduate student, received a Diversity Travel Award from the Midwestern Psychological Association to present at their annual conference on the topic of mental health stigma and treatment-seeking attitudes among LBGTQ+ individuals. 

• Maizie Vatsaas, an English major specializing in Creative Writing, was awarded Hollins University's Alumnae Scholarship to participate in the 2022 Tinker Mountain Summer Residential Writer’s Workshop.

• 17 Industrial and Organizational Psychology students will travel abroad to Barcelona, Spain this May, in fulfillment of the study abroad experience that was cut short due to COVID.

• MFA student Adeola Adeyemo (pictured below top) and I-O psychology alum Megan Erickson, M.S. ‘20 (pictured below middle)—who both work with UBalt’s Center for Drug Policy and Prevention—participated in a special briefing for Office of National Drug Control Policy Director Dr. Rahul Gupta on the Center's “A Division for Advancing Prevention and Treatment,” known as ADAPT. ADAPT facilitates public health/public safety partnerships across the nation. Learn more.

• Betsy Boyd, assistant professor and director of the MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts program, and MFA student Micaela Walley were interviewed by WOW! Women On Writing about Welter, UBalt's long-time student run literary journal, for which Boyd and Walley serve as editor-in-chief and poetry editor, respectively. Read the article.

• Jane Delury, associate professor and director of the English program, had her latest short story, "Someone Else," published in the Winter 2022 issue of The Sewanee Review. Read the story.

• Sally Farley, associate professor, has served as the associate editor for all submissions to the forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior entitled, "The Science of Laughter."

• Sharon Glazer, professor and chair, was the recipient of the International Stress Management Association's ISMA Federation International Award. She was presented with the award during the 8th International Congress of Stress, Performance, and Wellness.

• Jennie Keohane, assistant professor, was interviewed by educational nonprofit, The Propwatch Project, about how social media has essentially democratized character assassination. Watch the interview.

• Asst. Prof. Keohane was also invited to write a short essay in literary magazine, Berfrois, about the rhetorical hallmarks of character assassination. Read the essay.

• Kyle Meikle, assistant professor and director of the Digital Communication program, was featured on the television program Hekayat al Cinema (“Tales of Cinema”)—a program produced by the London-based Al Araby TV, for Arabic audiences—discussing contemporary film franchises based on books, like the recent Dune. Watch Prof. Miekle's segment (starting at minute 13:00 in English with Arabic subtitles).

• Elka Porter, associate professor, received a Maryland Sea Grant in the amount of $228k for her proposal, “Aquaculture Nitrogen Removal via Microbial Denitrification: Experimental Measurements with Realistic Resuspension of Bivalve Biodeposits.” The grant includes funding for 10-week summer internships for three undergraduate students.

• Giovanni Vincenti, associate professor, delivered a presentation titled, "Integrating Open Challenges in the Undergraduate Curriculum. Innovations and Opportunities in Liberal Arts Computing Education" at the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE TS 2022) held in March.

New online newspaper, The Baltimore Banner, has selected three graduates of the MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts program for its inaugural class of "Creatives in Residence." The three UBalt alums—(l. to r.) D. Watkins, MFA '14, Kondwani Fidel, MFA '20 and Wallace Lane, MFA '17—are part of a group of eight artists who will participate in the program, which was designed to "help amplify the work of artists and writers from the Baltimore region." Read the article.