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Faculty/Staff Accomplishments and News Briefs 8/26/20

In this issue, we celebrate the accomplishments of faculty and staff in business, child development, hospitality and tourism, and marketing. We also share news briefs from the Department of History and a Census 2020 reminder.

News Director Melyssa Allen completed the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Raleigh program on August 7. Program participants get an in-depth view of community issues, develop leadership skills, participate in a service project, and are exposed to community involvement opportunities. Participants this year had to adapt to challenges as the final three sessions of the nine-month program were postponed and had to be completed virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Michael Altman, program director and lecturer in Hospitality and Tourism Management, participated in an expert Q&A about travel credit cards for WalletHub.  Altman has also been invited by a colleague who he worked with many years ago on the USAID sponsored “Armenia Competitiveness Project” to join the editorial board of the Journal of Economics and Business published by Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. His candidacy has been reviewed and accepted and he began his term on August 1.

Assistant Professor in Child Development Fain Barker began working on a collaborative research project with the Tammy Lynn Center for Developmental Disabilities and local homeless shelters in July 2019 under a United Way Grant. This original $75,000 one-year grant was just renewed for a second year. The project is titled “Beyond the Blocks: A Collaborative Project To Promote Protective Factors And Foster Resiliency For Young Children Experiencing Homelessness.”

Barker also began working on a collaborative research project with colleagues Sheresa Blanchard at East Carolina University and Dionne Sills Busio at Appalachian State University. Together, they are interested in better understanding perceived stress, wellness, and accessibility to professional resources among early childhood educators and childcare agency directors amid the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The second phase of this study will include virtual interviews of early childhood system administrators to understand these stressors from their perspectives.

Assistant Professor of Management Lisa Delise and her co-author Abby Mello (Towson University), presented a poster at the virtual conference for the American Psychological Association in August. Results of the work, titled “Team process-loss across two task types,” showed that teams had more creative process gain (teams performed better than their individual members) if teams completed a creative task first than if they performed the creative task after an intellective (right-answer) task, but showed no task order effect for team performance on an intellective task.

News Briefs

Women’s Suffrage Project Featured in EdSurge
EdSurge, an education media outlet, featured a project two recent Meredith graduates completed during their senior year. Morgan Johnson, ’20,  and Marissa Fowler, ’20, worked with Associate Professor of History Angela Robbins on a podcast project commemorating the role women’s college students played in the women’s suffrage movement. This podcast project was featured in the EdSurge article, which was published on August 20.

Reminder: Complete the 2020 Census
September 30 is the deadline to complete the 2020 Census. A significant percentage of North Carolinians have not replied to the US Census. Based on recent data, that percentage may be as high as 40%. A significant undercounting of North Carolinians will cost the state billions of dollars in federal funding for assistance for students to attend college, as well as funding for public schools, health care, affordable housing, food assistance and many other federal programs. North Carolinians can respond by email, phone or mail or by responding to census takers who appear at residences. Meredith’s Office of the Registrar has reported on behalf of students who live in The Oaks and residence halls.

Melyssa Allen

News Director
316 Johnson Hall
(919) 760-8087
Fax: (919) 760-8330

allenme@meredith.edu