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

Recent presentations, publications and honors include the following:

Presentations

Sharon Pitt, vice president of Information Technologies and CIO, spoke on “Flexible Work in Higher Ed – What Does Your Workforce Look Like?” at the Higher Education CIO Congress in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 7, 2022.

Trevor A. Dawes, vice provost for libraries and museums and May Morris University Librarian, was an invited panelist for a webinar sponsored by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) entitled, “Eliminating Outdated Workflows: Developing the New,” on Aug. 10, 2022. Panelists discussed how traditional workflows were suddenly subject to examination due to the COVID-19 pandemic and which workflows, whether due to the pandemic or not, have now become the standard in their respective organizations.

Ethan Joella, adjunct faculty member in the Associate in Arts Program and best-selling author of the novel A Little Hope, was the keynote speaker at the Wilmington Writers' Workshop, held virtually Aug. 6, 2022. He also led a writing workshop.

Publications

Wendy Smith, Emma Smith Morris Professor of Management, and Kyle Emich, associate professor of management, both in the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, collaborated with colleagues on “Conceiving opposites together: Cultivating paradoxical frames and epistemic motivation fosters team creativity,”  published in the July 2022 issue of Organization Behavior and Human Decision Processes. A related article, “Paradox Mindset: The Source of Remarkable Creativity in Teams,” was covered by INSEAD’s Knowledge Blog.  Emich has also coauthored a paper recently published online by the Journal of Business Research. The article, “A house divided: A multilevel bibliometric review of the job search literature,” focuses on how economists focus on organizational budgets when considering job search, while psychologists focus on job-seeker well being.

Timothy J. Shaffer, Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Chair of Civil Discourse and faculty member in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration and Department of Communication, is co-editor of Grassroots Engagement and Social Justice through CooperativeExtension. This book, released Aug. 1, 2022, focuses on contemporary efforts to address systemic inequities and highlights Cooperative Extension's role in, and responsibility for, culturally relevant community education that is rooted in democratic practices and social justice. Shaffer's co-editor, Nia Imani Fields, is a 2006 Biden School alumna and serves as the Maryland 4-H program leader and assistant director of Maryland Extension. 

Melissa Melby, professor of anthropology, coauthored the editorial “Seeking shelter against contagion: households of resilience,” recently published by the Canadian Science Policy Centre in its 2022 Editorial Series titled “Building Resilience During International Crisis.” CSPC publishes opinion, commentary and critique from members of the science and innovation community on a wide range of issues.

Honors

Zvi Schwartz, professor of hospitality business management, and Tim Webb, assistant professor of hospitality business management, both in the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, were awarded the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research’s Article of the Year Highly Commended award at the 2022 International Council of Restaurant Institutional Education Conference in Washington, D.C., for their article “Resource Similarity, Market Commonality, and Spatial Distribution of Hotel Competitive SetPic

Roxanne Evande, graduate student in the Department of Medical and Molecular Sciences, has been selected as one out of 10 students nationally for the role of advocacy trainee delegate by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Evande’s application highlighted how this opportunity fits in with her program and current career goals, as well as her background in policy and science, such as serving on the Graduate Student Government Executive Board. The role provides a three-month externship with opportunities to learn the basics of policy and how science can be applied to it for meaningful connections between these fields, which play critical roles in how society acts against rising issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Evande’s project aims to reexamine and improve the review process for the National Science Foundation graduate fellowships. In her research at UD, she studies the cellular mechanisms of the human papillomavirus E2 protein for effective drug development in the future. 

Alisa Moldavanova, incoming associate professor and director of the Master of Public Administration program in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration, was recently elected to serve on the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) Board of Directors. She has been an active leader and contributor to the ARNOVA community since 2012 and is a known champion of diversity, equity and inclusion in the nonprofit research field. 

Kevin Solomon, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, has earned the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology (SIMB) annual Early Career Award (formerly the Young Investigator Award) for 2022. The award “aims to encourage young investigators to continue their research and to recognize and support their efforts at the beginning of their career” and is given to a scientist or engineer who has demonstrated “outstanding scientific contributions in the field of biotechnology and or industrial microbiology.” Solomon was honored at the SIMB annual meeting on Aug. 9, 2022.

Eleftherios “Terry” Papoutsakis, the Unidel Eugene Du Pont Chair at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has earned the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology (SIMB) annual Charles Thom Award, the society’s senior award. Named after a pioneer in industrial microbiology and mycology, the award honors researchers demonstrating “exceptional merit in industrial microbiology and biotechnology” through research contributions and publications, and for their “independence of thought and originality that added appreciably to scientific knowledge.” Papoutsakis was honored at the SIMB annual meeting on Aug. 9, 2022.

Special program

This summer, Paul Laux, professor of finance and JP Morgan Chase Senior Fellow at the Lerner College, oversaw the University of Delaware/ISCTE-Lisbon University Institute Trading and Bloomberg Program. It was a two-week program for graduate students studying finance at ISCTE. As part of the program, 30 students and faculty from ISCTE participated, training in Lerner’s Geltzeiler Trading Center and visiting other local sites and social gatherings. Lerner Dean Bruce Weber taught a class to participants.

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