Administration and Staff

Daniel Armitage, assistant vice president of Student Affairs/Campus Services, presented “The Future: Academic Partnerships and Programs” at the Chief Housing Officers Workshop in Wilmington, N.C., and “Outside the Box: Managing Creativity” for the Leadership Millington Class of 2010.

Mary Brignole, adviser in the Academic Counseling Center, was presented the Outstanding Primary Adviser Award at the Region Three National Academic Advising Association conference in Lexington, Ky., in May.

Arts & Sciences

Dr. George Anastassiou, professor of mathematics, was a plenary speaker at the Third International Symposium in Chaos and Complex Systems, held in Istanbul at Kultur University. He also presented a contributed paper at the Greek National Conference of Mathematics Analysts, held at the University of Ioannina, Greece, in May. He also published a new mathematics book, Fuzzy Mathematics: Approximation of Theory.

Dr. Gayle Beck, Chair of Excellence in Psychology, has been named president-elect of the Society of Clinical Psychology, a division of the American Psychological Association, for 2011.

Dr. Rick Fischer, professor of journalism, won the Outstanding Faculty Adviser Award at the Region Three National Academic Advising Association conference in Lexington, Ky., in May.

Dr. Stan Franklin, professor of computer science and co-director of the Institute for Intelligent Systems, co-authored a paper, “A Conceptual and Computational Model of Moral Decision-making in Human and Artificial Agents," which appeared in a special issue of Topics in Cognitive Science on Cognitive Based Theories of Moral Decision Making. Franklin is an associate editor of Topics in Cognitive Science, which is published by the Cognitive Science Society.

Dr. Eric Groenendyk, assistant professor of political science, is the co-winner of the 2009 Best Dissertation Award in Political Psychology as selected by the Political Psychology section of the American Political Science Association. He will receive the award at the 106^th Annual Meeting of the organization this month in Washington, D.C. Groenendyk received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2009 with a dissertation on “The Motivated Partisan: A Dual Motivations Theory of Partisan Change and Stability.”

Dr. Gene A. Plunka, professor of English, published a review of Mary Ann Frese Witt’s collection of essays, Nietzsche and the Rebirth of the Tragic, in Recherche Littèraire/Literary Research.

Dr. Cynthia Tucker, professor of English, published No Silent Witness, a biography that sheds light on the hidden lives of ministers’ daughters and wives in a famed American Unitarian family.

Dr. Roy Van Arsdale, professor of earth sciences, co-authored the paper “Triggering of New Madrid Seismicity by Late Pelistocene” in the July 29 issue of Nature.

Dr. Margaret Vandiver, professor of criminology and criminal justice, co-edited a new book, Tennessee’s New Abolitionists: The Fight to End the Death Penalty in the Volunteer State, with MTSU professor Amy L. Sayward.

Communications and Fine Arts

Dr. David H. Evans, professor of music, presented a lecture on “The West Tennessee Blues Tradition” at the First Friday Forum in Jackson, Tenn. He published “The Blues Formula: A Response to Taft,” in Journal of American Folklore (Spring 2010).

Education

Drs. David and Sara Bicard, assistant professors of instruction and curriculum leadership, made several presentations at the Association for Behavior Analysis Annual Conference in San Antonio: “Inclusion: Effective Behavioral Practices and Interventions in the Classroom”; “Further Analysis of SAFMED Training Interverbals of Basic Terminology in ABA: Untimed Interverbals”; “Oldies but Goodies: School Applications of Classic Research in ABA”; “Using Individualized Interdependent Group Oriented Contingencies with Students with Emotional Disorders”; “Using Interventions Informed by Functional Behavior Assessment to Decrease Time Out of Class”; and “Applying the Good Behavior Game to Increase Teachers’ Praise Rates.”

Dr. Richard James, professor of counseling, educational psychology and research, Beverly Shafgen, doctoral student in CEPR, and Amy Poag, master’s student, trained Memphis police officers, Shelby County sheriff officers and officers from Murfreesboro, Tenn., in crisis intervention techniques with the mentally ill in July.

Dr. Patricia Murrell, director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education, and Dr. Philip Gould, instructor of history, conducted a workshop on judicial education for a group of Thai judges who visited Memphis as part of the Global Intellectual Property Academy. U.S. District Judge Bernice Donald organized the local program, which was hosted by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Study Tour for Foreign Judges.

Dr. Brian K. Schilling, associate professor of sport sciences, was awarded the Terry J. Housh Outstanding Young Investigator Award from the National Strength and Conditioning Association. The award is presented to a researcher who has been in the field for less than seven years and who has made noteworthy contributions to the field of applied exercise and sport science.

Schilling, Dr. Lawrence Weiss, professor of health and sport sciences, and graduate students Chrissie Feldmann, Lucas Ferreira and Kelley Hammond presented “Stability Reliability, Precision and Association of Measures of Average Rate of Dynamic Force Development” and “Criterion Validity of Accelerometer-derived Peak Power Obtained During Jump Squats” at the American College of Sports Medicine annual conference in Baltimore.

Dr. Jerrie Scott, professor of instruction and curriculum leadership, presented “Reigniting the Compassion to Teach” at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) conference in Denver.

Herff College of Engineering

Dr. Warren O. Haggard, professor of biomedical engineering and Herff Chair of Excellence, Dr. Joel Bumgardner, professor of biomedical engineering, and nine of their students presented 11 abstracts at the Society for Biomaterials 2010 Annual Meeting and Exposition, “Where Materials Meet Biology,” in Seattle in April.

Loewenberg School of Nursing

Dr. Lin Zhan, dean of Loewenberg, has been selected to receive the National League for Nursing Award for Outstanding Leadership in Nursing Education. The award ceremony will be Oct. 2 during the NLN Education Summit in Las Vegas.

School of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology

Dr. Shaum P. Bhagat, assistant professor of AUSP, and AUSP student Rebecca Jolissaint presented the poster session “Frequency and Occurrence of DP-gram Peaks in Multi-level DPOAE Functions” at the American Academy of Audiology National meeting in San Diego in April.

Bhagat, Dr. Lisa Lucks Mendel, associate professor of AUSP, and student Mary O’Brien presented the poster session “DPOAE Estimates of Cochlear Compression and Speech Perception in Noise” at the same conference.

Dr. Eugene Buder, associate professor of AUSP, and Dr. D. Kimbrough Oller, who holds the Chair of Excellence in AUSP, presented “Vocal Repetition Increases During the First Year of Development” at the International Child Phonology Conference in Memphis.

Buder, Douglas Parham and AUSP graduate assistant Maki Doiuchi presented “Acoustic and Respiratory Perspectives on Glottal Development in Infants 9 to 18 Months” at the same conference.

Dr. Walter Manning, professor of AUSP, presented the keynote address, “A Rationale for Therapy Goals and Principles of Success,” to the European Symposium of Fluency Disorders, held in Antwerp, Belgium, in April. He also presented the keynote address, “Considering the Meaning of Clinically Significant Change for People who Stutter,” to the Leadership and Clinical Conference of ASHA’s Special Interest Division 4, Fluency and Fluency Disorders, in Tampa in January.