For the Record provides information about recent professional activities and honors of University of Delaware faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Recent honors, publications, presentations and appointments include the following:

Honors

Anna Birkenbach, assistant professor in the School of Marine Science and Policy, recently received the 2023 Outstanding Article Award for the article titled "Do catch shares increase prices? Evidence from US fisheries." This annual award recognizes outstanding works published in the journal Marine Resource Economics. "The analysis by Birkenbach and coauthors offers invaluable insights by advancing the theory of price impacts from catch shares and providing empirically rigorous estimates of these effects across a diverse range of U.S. fisheries. Their work makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of the revenue implications of this key fisheries management tool," said Sunny Jardine, editor-in-chief of Marine Resource Economics.

Wendy Smith, Dana J. Johnson Professor of Management at the University’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, received the 2024 Academy of Management Review (AMR) Decade Award at the Academy of Management annual meeting on Aug. 11. During the meeting, Smith, who is co-founder of the Women’s Leadership Initiative at UD, also received the research journal Organization & Environment’s 2024 Best Paper Award for three-year Impact. Smith’s journal article, “Multiple Institutional Logics in Organizations: Explaining Their Varied Nature and Implications,” coauthored by Marya Besharov, professor of organizations and impact at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, was the most cited body of work from 2014-24 in the AMR and one that has demonstrated a significant impact in the field of management. Smith also won the Decade Award in 2021 and is the only person to have received this award twice. Smith and coauthors Natalie Slawinksi and Blair Winsor of Memorial University, St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, won the Organization and Environment’s Best Paper award for their article “Managing the Paradoxes of Place to Foster Regeneration,” awarded to the best paper over the last three years based on originality, quality and impact. Visit here for more information.

Chase Barnes, assistant policy scientist at the University’s Institute for Public Administration (IPA), was inducted into the Delaware Business Times 40 Under 40 (DBT40) Class of 2024 at the award ceremony hosted on Sept. 11, 2024, at the Deerfield Golf Club in Newark, Delaware. The DBT40 honors leaders making a name for themselves by leveraging their innovative ideas, business prowess, and community engagement to elevate Delaware’s business community. Barnes was recognized for his role in developing, launching and implementing UD’s Grant Assistance Program (GAP), which assists local governments with securing federal and state-level funding opportunities. Barnes collaborates with Delaware municipalities to draft, submit and manage grant applications for large infrastructure projects. Barnes has worked on nearly 36 grant applications, valuing over $48.5 million. In less than two years, the GAP team has already secured over $8 million in project funding, directly supporting municipalities across the state. Barnes, who earned his master of public administration from the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration in 2022, also hosts grant workshops for local government staff to build additional grant-writing capacity across the state. Read Barnes’ full award recognition on the DBT website. The Institute for Public Administration is a research and public service center in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration.

Publications

Amanda Bullough, professor of management and global leadership, published six additional cases to the open-access Women Leaders Case Series, a partnership with UD’s Women’s Leadership Initiative and  The Case Centre. Bullough is co-founder and research director of the Women’s Leadership Initiative at the Lerner College. She curated this series, which now includes 16 cases, and is coauthor on several cases. Thirteen are mini cases about women small business leaders in Pakistan, the U.S., Kenya, Uganda and Côte d'Ivoire. Three are full-length cases about women leading multinational companies like H&M, Flex Co. and Silver Heights Winery. The cases are ready for use in professional, graduate and undergraduate classrooms all over the world.

Annie Johnson, associate University librarian for publishing, research and digital access, Beth Twomey, library department head I, and Colleen Estes, systems programmer III, are coauthors of “It Takes a Village: A Distributed Training Model for AI-Based Chatbots,” published in Information Technology and Libraries, 43(3).

Philip Barnes, policy scientist at the University’s Institute for Public Administration and assistant professor in the Biden School, recently completed a two-part report for the Delaware Department of Transportation exploring the challenges of Delaware’s motor fuel tax system. The state of Delaware relies on motor fuel taxes paid at the pump to build, operate and maintain the state’s transportation and transit systems. This presents a challenge for Delaware because gasoline and diesel vehicles are becoming more efficient, and electric vehicles are becoming more popular, both factors that will negatively impact motor fuel tax revenue and, consequently, Delaware’s transportation infrastructure. The report provides a financial analysis of the combined impact of improved fuel economy and increasing electric vehicle sales on Delaware’s motor fuel tax revenue. Barnes estimates that annual motor fuel tax revenue will decline from nearly $118 million in 2030 to $87 million in 2040, with cumulative losses over that decade of more than $1.1 billion. The report also presents nine policy options that Delaware legislators and administrators could consider to help close the expected motor fuel tax revenue shortfall. Each policy option is evaluated against four considerations (effectiveness, equity, social acceptability and administrative feasibility), and the tradeoffs between the policies are identified and discussed in the report. Delaware’s legislature, state agencies and citizens can refer to this report during public dialogue regarding the motor fuel tax challenge and available policy interventions. Read the full report on UDSpace. The Institute for Public Administration is a research and public service center in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration.

David Blacker, professor in the College of Education and Human Development’s (CEHD) School of Education, has published a new book titled Deeper Learning with Psychedelics: Philosophical Pathways through Altered States with SUNY Press. Informed by multidisciplinary emerging research, this book provides an account of the educational aspects of psychedelics and how they can prepare people to learn. Drawing from indigenous peoples across the world and from canonical thinkers in the western tradition such as Plato, Spinoza, Kant and Heidegger, Blacker proposes an original set of categories through which to understand the educational capabilities of psychedelics with visionary qualities.

Lynsey Gibbons, associate professor in CEHD's School of Education, has published a new book titled Learning Together: Organizing Schools for Teacher and Student Learning with Harvard Education Press. Gibbons and her colleagues show school leaders and teachers how to create schools where children’s capabilities, curiosities and identities are nurtured. Drawing from their experiences in research-practice partnerships in six U.S. elementary schools, Gibbons and her coauthors show that deliberate school reorganization is the first step in meaningfully shifting practices from teacher-centered, procedure-based learning to student-centered, discussion-intensive learning that develops student agency.

Presentations

Rebecca Davis, Miller Family Early Career Professor of History, was a featured presenter at the House of SpeakEasy’s Sept. 17, 2024, “Seriously Entertaining” cabaret show live at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater in New York City. Davis discussed her recent book, Fierce Desires: A New History of Sex and Sexuality in America (WW Norton, 2024). Davis shared how her book traces attitudes and cultural expectations through the stories of people like Thomasine Hall, a trained seamstress who changed their name to Thomas to sail from England to the Virginia colony in the 1600s, and Ida Craddock, who worked as a sex therapist and marriage counselor in the 1890s. “Sexuality is a story. We have stories we tell about our own sexuality. It’s a way of telling who we are,” Davis told the audience. Davis also explored how stories about sexuality impact community, politics and family and religious groups, stating that we are living in an extraordinary moment in sexual storytelling on a national political level.

Rachael Hutchinson, Elias Ahuja Professor of Japanese and game studies in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, was interviewed on the major Japanese television channel NHK for the documentary "Sekai sabukaruchā-shi 4: yokubō no keifu. 21seiki-no chiseigaku: gēmu-hen (World Subculture History vol.4: Genealogy of Desire. 21st century Geopolitics: game episode), which aired in Japan in August. Hutchinson discussed the meaning of videogames in Japan's sociohistorical context, covering issues such as bioethics and genetic engineering, nuclear anxiety  and absentee parents in blockbuster games from Japan, including the world-famous Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid and The Legend of Zelda series.

Appointments

Rena Hallam, interim dean of CEHD and professor in CEHD’s Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, has been named research co-director of the National Early Care and Education Workforce Center. With a $30 million federal investment over five years, the center coordinates and provides rigorous research and technical assistance to advance the recruitment and retention of a diverse, qualified and effective workforce in early childhood care and education. UD is a core partner in this work, along with Child Trends, the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, BUILD Initiative, ZERO TO THREE and the University of Massachusetts, Boston. 

Bintong Chen has been appointed Chaplin Tyler Professor and Carlos Asarta has been appointed Bank of America Professor of Business, Oliver Yao, dean of the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics announced. Both appointments were effective Sept. 1, 2024. The Chaplin Tyler Professorship recognizes exceptional accomplishment in scholarship and a profound commitment to graduate education. Chen’s work in optimization theory and its business applications has resulted in 67 scholarly publications, earning him 3,960 Google Scholar citations and an h-index of 36. Chen’s research contributions, including the widely recognized “Chen-Harker-Kanzow-Smale (CHKS)” smooth function, have established him as a leading scholar in supply chain management. The Bank of America Professor of Business is a testament to Asarta’s outstanding teaching, remarkable research contributions and unwavering service to the UD academic community. Asarta, a full professor in the Department of Economics, has taught a diverse array of economics courses at various levels, impacting more than 8,000 students since 2007. His teaching excellence has been recognized through numerous awards, including the 2022 Most Valuable Professor Award from UD Athletics and the 2015 Lerner College Outstanding Teacher Award. Visit here for more information.

Liam Festa, research assistant, and Susanne Morton, associate professor, both in the Department of Physical Therapy, were accepted into a new cohort as part of the TiDe (Training in Diversity for Rehabilitation Research Education) program and attended the recent TiDe conference in Alexandria, Virginia, at the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA). Festa joins as a new student trainee, where he will conduct research with a faculty member over the next two years to develop expertise in clinical research. He aims to acquire his Ph.D. and develop his career as a clinical scientist to enhance patient care. Morton is serving as a faculty member and her research is focused on understanding how the brain controls movement and the process of learning motor skills. “The most important aspect of this program is improving diversity among rehabilitation research,” Festa explained. “If we genuinely want to help all people, we need to have all voices heard. One of the roles of student trainees is for us to provide feedback to faculty to make the environments more inclusive, and I’m excited to collaborate with other people wanting to achieve the same thing.” "The TiDe Program provides both students and faculty with instruction and support in implementing meaningful actions that will improve access for and inclusion of people of diverse backgrounds in the pathway to becoming rehabilitation researchers," said Morton. "I look forward to my continued involvement in the program." 

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