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

Recent presentations, awards and publications include the following:

Presentations

UD’s John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance in the Lerner College of Business and Economics held its third symposium on the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) movement and how it affects public companies and their strategy. Panelists discussed how boards and committees can handle ESG considerations, and the evolution and future of the movement. They included Paul Atkins, chief executive at Patomak Global Partners and former SEC commissioner; Michael Arnold, partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore; Paul Beswick, EY Americas director of accounting and former chief accountant for the SEC; Andre Bouchard, former chancellor of the Delaware Chancery Court and advisory board chairman at Weinberg; Mary Francis, corporate secretary and chief governance officer at Chevron; Consuelo Hitchcock, principal at Deloitte in its Regulatory Affairs Group; and Jeffrey Mahoney, general counsel for the Council of Institutional Investors. John White, partner and chair of the Corporate Governance and Board Advisory practice at Cravath, Swaine & Moore and a regular commentator at the ESG forums, moderated the panels. Read the full article on the Lerner College website.

On Wednesday, March 27, Sarah Marshall, an associate policy scientist at UD's Institute for Public Administration, led a breakout session, “How to Craft Your Message for Different Audiences,” at the second annual Developing Data Analytics Capabilities Conference. The University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government hosted the two-day conference for approximately 300 data users in government agencies throughout Georgia. With three tracks for data analysts, data developers and data foundations, this conference explored dashboard design, communicating findings and using generative artificial intelligence to improve governance and citizen experience. Marshall's presentation shared key considerations and common mistakes when communicating insights to leaders, legislators and the public. The Institute for Public Administration is a research and public service center in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration.

Awards 

Monica A. Coleman, professor of Africana studies and John and Patricia Cochran Scholar for Inclusive Excellence, is a recipient of the 2024 grants from the (Henry Luce-American Academy of Religion) Luce-AAR Advancing Public Scholarship Grant program. This program provides grants to support scholars of religion who are working to engage publics in innovative ways, through projects designed for presentation in public spaces and outreach through publicly accessible sites.

Jignesh Shantaram Mahajan, a College of Engineering doctoral student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, was selected as the Top Oral Presenter for this year’s American Chemical Society (ACS) Division of Polymer Chemistry (POLY) Excellence in Graduate Polymer Research Symposium. Mahajan also received a Special Recognition of Outstanding Nomination from the Journal of Polymer Science (Wiley). The Excellence in Graduate Polymer Research Symposium is organized and hosted by the POLY division during the ACS Spring 2024 national meeting, which took place from March 17-21 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Mahajan was formally recognized during the symposium, where he presented his research titled “Structure-activity and structure-property relationships in lignin-derivable, sustainable polymers.” The ACS is a nonprofit scientific organization that champions chemists and chemistry across the world. It is one of the world’s largest scientific societies and has more than 200,000 members in 140 countries.

Publications

Hamed Mahmudi, assistant professor of finance in UD’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, co-authored the article “Director Networks and Firm Value,” which was recently published in the latest edition of the Journal of Corporate Finance.

To submit information for inclusion in For the Record, write to ocm@udel.edu and include “For the Record” in the subject line.