Muskingum News

Laudations is an online collection spotlighting the professional contributions Muskingum University faculty and staff make to their respective disciplines.

INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION

Amanda Adams, Associate Professor of English, and David Rodland, Associate Professor of Geology, each published a chapter in the interdisciplinary collection Planet Work: Rethinking Labor and Leisure in the Anthropocene (Bucknell University Press, 2022). The book investigates the way humans work and play in the current geological age and how such activity has affected and continues to affect our planet.

Dr. Rodland authored Chapter 1, “What’s Past is Prologue: The Dragon, the Phoenix, and the Golden Spike,” arguing that the “Anthropocene is better defined by human agency than by the rules of stratigraphy.”

Dr. Adams authored Chapter 8, “Walking the Line between Leisure and Labor: Dorothy Wordsworth and Harriet Martineau in the English Lake District,” arguing that nineteenth century women’s walking practices blur the line between work and leisure, offering a model for a nonindustrial, human scale of living on a planet in need of one.

COMPUTER SCIENCE

Alisa Neeman, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, won a $500 grant of supercomputing resources from the Ohio Supercomputing Center. The supercomputer was used in Muskingum’s first ever Machine Learning Course, taught by Dr. Neeman in Fall 2022. Student projects included testing images of skin cancer to determine their type, predicting cars' fuel economy, and analyzing the sentiment of tweet-like sentences.

Dr. Neeman was also recognized with a 2023 Honorable Mention by the Better Scientific Software Fellowship Program which provides recognition and funding to leaders and advocates of high-quality scientific software.  She was one of only 12 scientists from across the country to receive a fellowship or honorable mention and the only honoree selected from a small private liberal arts University – the remaining recipients represent national research universities and laboratories. Her proposed work is designing a training program for undergraduates in using a supercomputer for Machine Learning. 

ENGLISH

Andre DeCuir, Associate Professor of English, published a micro chapbook “A Few Bird Songs” (Origami Programs Project, December 2022).

NURSING

Janelle Guentter, Associate Professor of Nursing, was chosen through a highly selective process to participate in the Fall 2022 item writing session for the National Pediatric Nursing certification examination.  She will continue to participate in a three-year cycle of item writing for the national exam.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Richard Arnold, Associate Professor of Political Science, published several recent articles, “Russia Expanding Cossack Military Presence,” “Putin’s Meeting With Mothers of the Mobilized,” and “Russian National Unity Day Against the Backdrop of the War in Ukraine”, in the Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia Daily Monitor.

He also presented a talk “America’s Commitment to Eastern Europe” at a teacher-training conference in Lutherstadt-Wittenberg, Germany (November 2022).

THREE FACULTY NAMED TO ENDOWED CHAIRS

Three faculty members were named to endowed chairs in Fall 2022:

• Karen Dunak, Professor of History, to the Arthur and Eloise Barnes Cole Endowed Chair in American History.
• Keith Eberly, Associate Professor of Education, to the Janet Brown Rothwell Endowed Chair in Education.
• Colleen Stevenson, Professor of Psychology, to the Harry and Mary Evelyn Laurent Endowed Chair in Psychology.