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

Recent new presentations, awards and publications, include the following:

Presentations

Sheng Lu, associate professor of Fashion and Apparel Studies, presented his research on U.S. fashion companies’ sourcing strategies for recycled clothing at the Green Trade Innovation and Incentives Forum on July 11, hosted by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The event was held at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Virginia. In 2022, CBP launched a Green Trade Strategy to lead the Biden administration’s efforts to combat climate change in the context of the trade mission. Attended by senior officials from various U.S. government agencies, leaders from the private sector, and academic experts, the forum provided an opportunity to share ideas related to green trade innovation, incentivizing clean and sustainable supply chains, environmental stewardship and international trade decarbonization.

Rudi Matthee, John and Dorothy Munroe Distinguished Professor of History, presented on June 29,  “Iranians and the Colors of their Clothes: From Bright Red to Olive Green,” at Journée d’échanges inter-culturels: le monde indo-persan et le fonds Pozzi Musée d’art et d’histoire, in Geneva, Switzerland.

Farley Grubb, professor of economics, presented on July 12, “The Origins of the Continental Dollar, 1775-1776: Congressional Decisions that Shaped Monetary Structure for Financing the American Revolution,” to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The presentation is from Grubb’s book, The Continental Dollar: How the American Revolution was Financed with Paper Money (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023). The July 12 presentation was made as part of a Zoom webinar: https://www.archives.gov/calendar/event/the-continental-dollar-how-the-american-revolution-was-financed-with-paper-money and is archived on YouTube at: https://youtube.com/live/05mhUlofB_8?feature=share

Awards

Deborah Steinberger, associate professor of French in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend grant of $6000 for her translation project: Women’s Stories from Le Mercure Galant: A Critical Translation of Four Seventeenth-Century Nouvelles. Steinberger plans to incorporate these translations into a bilingual anthology of stories from Le Mercure Galant, one of the first French newspapers.

Kevin Oluoch, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences, has been selected as a 2023-2026 Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) Fellow. The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at North Carolina State University and FFAR created the FFAR Fellows Program to provide professional development and career guidance to the next generation of food and agriculture scientists across FFAR’s challenge areas and strategic initiatives. Cohorts of around 25 Fellows train together and support each other as they continue through their respective graduate programs. In all, 130 Fellows from more than 30 institutions across the U.S. and Canada have participated in six cohorts. Oluoch said he is most looking forward to the career mentorship that the fellowship will afford. “The main focus is on agriculture but they help build you career-wise and help improve your professional development towards a career in agriculture,” Oluoch said. “I will be joining students from all different parts of the agricultural sector and there are also professionals from different areas in agriculture so it will afford mentorship across the sector.” 

Torie Seagraves, who earned her bachelor’s degree in media communications in 2021, recently won first place in Outstanding News Series from the Chesapeake Associated Press Broadcasters Association for her 2022 series, “Cape Henlopen State Park Restaurant Proposal.” Seagraves, an alumna of the Associate in Arts Program's Dover campus, worked as a freelance journalist and photographer for Delaware State News while still a student and has been a reporter and photographer for the NBC affiliate WRDE (Coast TV) since August 2022.

A multidisciplinary team of researchers from the College of Engineering, led by assistant professor Leila Barmaki, received the Best Paper Award at the 2023 IEEE/ACM international conference on Connected Health: Applications, Systems and Engineering Technologies (CHASE), which took place in Orlando, Florida from June 21-23. The paper title is "Virtual Therapy Exergame for Upper Extremity Rehabilitation Using Smart Wearable Sensors." The co-authors include bachelor’s honors program alumna Lauren Baron, Vuthea Chheang, Arooj Liaqat, Aishwarya Chandrasekaran, Yufan Wang and Barmaki from the Department of Computer and Information Sciences; Amit Chaudhari and Erik Thostenson from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Center for Composite Materials; and Joshua Cashaback from the Department of Biomedical Engineering. This effort has been co-sponsored by the College of Engineering Intellectual Neighborhoods and the 2022 INBRE Pilot Project Awards. 

Publications

A new book, co-edited by Ravi Ammigan, associate provost for international programs at UD, and colleagues from the Centre for Higher Education Internationalisation in Milan, Italy, discusses the importance of evidenced-based approaches in higher education internationalization and its role as an intrinsic part of university practice and responsibility towards society. Internationalisation in higher education: Responding to new opportunities and challenges is available for open access download through EDUCatt.

Heinz-Uwe Haus, professor of theatre, reviewed in the recent issue of the Romanian magazine Alternate, revista de cultura, Nr. 3, July 2023, (Mönchen-Gladbach, Germany) the newest book of poetry by Theo Damian, titled Maria Eich (Dionysos Publishing House, Boppard, 2022). Philosopher M. N. Rusu commented that the publication "represents an event of utmost importance in the landscape so arid and so repetitive of our contemporary poetry."

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