Faculty/Staff Accomplishments and Departmental News 4/24/19

In this issue, we celebrate the accomplishments of faculty and staff in biological sciences, child development, communication, education, English, foreign languages and literatures, history, human environmental sciences, and music. We also share news from the Nutrition program and Undergraduate Research.

Assistant Professor of Child Development Fain Barker has been elected chair of the N.C. Birth-Kindergarten Higher Education Consortium.

Professor of Education Tisha Duncan attended and presented at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual conference held in Toronto, April 4-9, 2019. The presentation, Long-term Collaborative Partnerships: Impacting Change in Practice for Middle School Teachers and Students, highlighted recent work completed in collaboration with a local middle school. Former graduate student, Jennifer Miske, MED ’16, also attended and presented with me.

Piano faculty member Margaret Evans adjudicated Hong Kong’s most prestigious piano competition and festival for pianists ages 23 and under. This was Dr. Evans’ fourth time serving as member of the international panel of judges (with the UK, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and Spain also represented this year). The event, which took place in February and March, also included daily musical interaction with students, teachers, and parents, one of the more colorful and intriguing aspects of the competition.

Professor of Biological Sciences Erin Lindquist was a coauthor of “Teaching Quantitative Skills and Carbon Sequestration Concepts with the EREN Permanent Forest Plot Project,” published in the Proceedings of the Association for Biology Laboratory Education. Her four co-authors came from Ohio-Wesleyan University (OH), The University of the South (Tenn.), Macalester College (Minn.), and Swarthmore College (Pa.).

Pamela Linton Norcross, Assistant Professor in Child Development, presented at the annual Association of Child Life Professionals conference: Identifying and Applying Pedagogical Best Practices on April 13, 2019 in Chicago.

Assistant Professor of History Amy O’Keefe attended a conference on World Christianities at Princeton Theological Seminary in March. She presented a paper, “God of our Fathers: Protestant Adaptations of Chinese Ancestral Worship Practices.”

Associate Professor of English Kelly Morris Roberts presented “Low Tech, High Reward: Using Google Docs to Help Students Pattern Teacher Feedback” at the 2019 annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, held this year in Toronto. Roberts’ research was based on a shared data set with alumna and high school English teacher, Macy Allen Cole,’16, who co-presented at the conference.

Associate Professor of History Angela Robbins was a guest on WUNC Radio’s The State of Things on April 18. Robbins was part of a panel discussing the history of the Equal Rights Amendment, its defeat in 1982, and its current reemergence in the NC General Assembly. The program featured clips from the Women’s Forum series of interviews from Meredith College’s North Carolina Women’s Oral History Collection. These interviews were collected and preserved by Meredith College History majors Miranda Pikaart, Morgan Johnson, and Dominique Bateman.

Associate Professor of Mass Communication Doug Spero attended Broadcast Education Association/National Association of Broadcasters conferences in Las Vegas in April. At the BEA, he was a panelist for the Sports Broadcasting Program Showcase. The showcase featured programs from three different levels of colleges. Spero represented the small college division, presenting a video produced with Instructional Design Specialist Paul Keys and Assistant Athletics Director Wendy Jones. The video focused on how Meredith livestreams athletic events. Dennis Cox from 99.9 The Fan was featured in the video, describing how he does play-by-play of the games and what goes into our streaming operation.

Professor of Human Environmental Sciences Deborah Tippett attended the Caribbean Association of Home Economists (CAHE) Bi-Annual Conference in St. John’s, Antigua, from April 11 – 17, with four students, Jill Bronmenschenkel, Kayla Davis, Kelly Fox, and Stephanie Yarborough. Tippett presented a follow-up session on “Using Appreciative Inquiry to Build a Stronger Future,” which she did as a pre-conference for CAHE in 2017. Participants from the 2017 conference shared how they had used Appreciative Inquiry in their countries to improve their schools, universities and communities.

Associate Professor of Spanish Jonathan Wade performed with his puppetry troupe, Dragoncillo, at elementary schools in El Paso (April 8-9) and at the closing of the Association for Hispanic Classical Theater’s Golden Age Theater Symposium (April 13). The troupe also organized a conference panel titled, “How to Train a Dragon: Reaching Young Audiences through Shadow Puppets.” The show will make its way to Meredith and the Triangle in the fall, with students performing on campus and at area schools.

Professor of English Garry Walton was a guest on the Tom Kearney show on WPTF radio on April 22 in celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday. Walton discussed Shakespeare’s place in the contemporary world.

Departmental News

Nutrition Students Have 100% Match Rate

The Meredith Department of Nutrition, Health & Human Performance is pleased to announce that all of our Master of Science and Bachelor of Science nutrition students who applied to a Dietetic Internship this year were matched to a program. This 100% match rate is no small feat when compared to the national average of approximately 50-60%. These future Registered Dietitian Nutritionists will be attending DI’s at University of Virginia, Duke University, Vanderbilt University, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, North Carolina Central University, the VA Medical Centers in Memphis and Chicago and of course our very own Meredith College Dietetic Internship.

CSA Day Survey
The CSA Day Planning Committee and the Undergraduate Research Advisory Committee encourage faculty and staff to participate in the post-CSA Day survey. The survey was sent via email on April 18.