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

Recent publications, presentations, honors, exhibitions and service include the following:

Publications

Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and professor of humanities, has an essay in Still Crazy About George Eliot 200 Years Later, edited by Paul Davies and published in the UK by Bite-Sized Books. This volume is billed as a "joyful celebration" of Eliot on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of her birth and is intended to increase a general readership's engagement with her writings. Stetz's chapter, "'Tulliver's Travels': Adapting The Mill on the Floss for Young Audiences," examines a variety of works (especially those issued in the UK and in India) for children and young adults that present new versions of Eliot's novel about Maggie Tulliver, a protofeminist fictional protagonist.

Carolyn Levine, professor of accounting and chairperson of the Department of Accounting and Management Information Systems at the University of Delaware's Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, and Kyungha Lee from Rutgers University are coauthors of a paper titled “Audit Partner Identification and Audit Quality” that has been accepted for publication by the Review of Accounting Studies journal.

John G. McNutt, professor in the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration and in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, is the coauthor of two recent publications With Nina David of the Biden School, he wrote “Building a Workforce for Smart City Governance: Challenges and Opportunities for the Planning and Administrative Professions,” published in Informatics.  6 (4), 47. With Lauri Goldkind of Fordham University, he wrote “We Could Be Unicorns: Human Services Leaders Moving from Managing Programs to Managing Information Ecosystems,”published in Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance, 1-9.

Presentations

On Nov. 5, 2019, Gary Henry, dean of the College of Education and Human Development, presented his findings on early literacy data in low-performing schools In North Carolina at the State Board of Education’s fall planning meeting. As reported by EducationNC, which works to expand educational opportunities for all children in North Carolina, his study found that racial achievement disparities on third-grade reading exams were reduced by more than 20% using assessments from mCLASS, which is a universal screener that measures the development of reading skills of students in grades K-5.

Ken Beidler, a master of fine arts student, has been invited to present at the 2020 CAA annual conference in Chicago on Feb. 14, 2020. His presentation is titled “Utilizing University Museums And Collections To Build Critical-Contextual Frameworks For Assessing 3D Art/Artifacts” as a part of the session,“Connecting Global Issues in the Classroom.” The CAA, formerly the College Art Association, is known as the most prominent international academic art and art history conference.  

Honors

A symposium and banquet were held on Oct. 18, 2019, in honor of Tsu-Wei Chou, Unidel Pierre S. du Pont Chair of Engineering, who recently celebrated his 50th anniversary at the University of Delaware. Dozens of faculty members, colleagues, friends and more attended the symposium in the Audion at the Tower at STAR. Featured speakers included Karl Schulte, professor and former head of Institute of Polymers and Composites of Hamburg University of Technology in Germany; Michael Wisnom, professor of aerospace structures and director of Advanced Composites Center for Innovation and Science at the UK’s University of Bristol; Brian Wardle, professor of aeronautics and astronautics and Raymond L. Bisplinghoff Faculty Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Amanda Wu, research scientist in the Material Science Division at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Later that evening, about 80 people attended a banquet in honor of Chou. Provost Robin Morgan gave remarks and also delivered remarks on behalf of President Dennis Assanis, and College of Engineering Dean Levi Thompson gave a toast. David P. Roselle, president emeritus of the University of Delaware, also attended. Read more about the day’s events here.

Christine Walthers, a master’s degree student in music, is the college division winner of the 2019 Newark Symphony Orchestra (NSO) Betsy L. Kent Youth Concerto Competition. A student of percussion instructor Orlando Cotto, Walthers will be featured performing "Raise The Roof" for timpani and orchestra by Michael Daugherty in the NSO Concerto Winners concert at 3 p.m., Sunday, March 8, 2020, at The Independence School in Newark, Delaware.   

Colette Gaiter, professor of art and design, and Robyn Phillips-Pendleton, associate professor of art and design, and several current and former students will be part of the Picturing Beauty: Celebrating Real Women portrait drawing event, scheduled Nov. 17, 2019, as part of the Delaware Art Museum's “Posing Beauty in African American Culture” exhibition programming.

The 27th annual James Jones First Novel Fellowship has been awarded to  Marco Kaye, a 2002 honors graduate with a BFA in visual communications of Maplewood, New Jersey, for his novel, Levon . Kaye was named a fellow and will receive $10,000. The fellowship is cosponsored by the James Jones Literary Society and the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Wilkes University. Marco was also the Department of Art and Design convocation speaker in June 2019.

“Who Are We the People?,” a March 2018 work by Robyn Phillips-Pendleton, associate professor art and design, is an AI38 Selected Winner in the American Illustration 38 annual award book.

A faculty member and two graduate students in the Department of Fashion and Apparel Studies were honored at the 2019 annual conference of the International Textile and Apparel Association (ITAA), held Oct. 25-29, 2019, in Las Vegas. Sheng Lu, associate professor, received the Mid Career Excellence Award; Mikayla Dubreuil, a master’s degree student, was recognized with the Sara Douglas Fellowship for Professional Promise; and Haobo Zhang, a master’s student who is advised by Kelly Cobb, associate professor, received the French European Inc. Innovative Design Award for “Design and Development of a Visual and Tactile Garment Therapy for Children with Autism.”

Exhibitions

Aaron Terry, assistant professor of art and design, has a solo exhibition at the Gallery at Studio IX in Charlottesville, Virginia, titled “Promises, Promises.” The exhibition opened Nov. 1 and runs through Dec. 1, 2019.

Work by Peter Williams, professor of art and design, was included in the  Luis De Jesus Los Angeles Gallery exhibit at EXPO Chicago 2019, Booth 360 at the Navy Pier, Chicago, from Sept. 19-22, 2019.

Service

Tara L. Smith, instructor in the Department of Communication, has been elected to the Board of Directors of the Public Relations Society of America’s (PRSA) Delaware chapter. Smith, who has been an active PRSA member since 2006, is serving a one-year term on the board, with the opportunity for re-election, that began Oct. 10, 2019. With more than 30,000 professional and student members, PRSA is the nation’s leading professional organization serving the communications community.

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