- Dr. Sara Day’s book Reading Like a Girl: Narrative Intimacy in Contemporary American Young Adult Fiction will be published in 2013 by the University Press of Mississippi.
Dr. Day also had an article accepted for publication: “Pure Passion: The ‘Twilight’ Saga, ‘Abstinence Porn,’ and Adolescent Women’s Fan Fiction.” Her article will appear in the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly. In November, Day also presented a paper entitled “All Happy Families: Functional Families and Dysfunctional Societies in Dystopian Young Adult Fiction” at the South Central Modern Language Association conference in San Antonio.
- Dr. Brian S. Canfield, Professor of Counselor Education at Southern Arkansas University, presented a two-day learning institute in November in Heidelberg, Germany at the Annual Conference of the European Branch of the American Counseling Association. Professor Canfield’s presentation was entitled “Essentials of Marriage Counseling and Couples Therapy.”
- Debbie Guevara, assistant director of Upward Bound II, Barbara Howell, assistant director of Upward Bound I, and Mary Iverson, Upward Bound development/technology coordinator, attended the Arkansas Association of Student Assistance Programs’ annual conference in Little Rock Oct. 7-9. The conference theme was “TRIO: Transforming Lives One Student at a Time.”
Workshops included: Economic literacy, The Total TRIO Experience: Adapting services for students as they grow through TRIO, Facilitating critical thinking, Coping with certification and evaluation, One day at a time, Connecting the dots (Counsel for Opportunity in Education), Transforming lives through mindfulness, scholar recruitment, technology tips for TRIO, and an update from the Arkansas Department of Higher Education.
- Dr. Natalia Murphy, assistant professor of history, political science, and geography, recently published her article “Orthodox America: Alaska” in the scientific research journal Visnuk, Volume 35, published by Volodymyr Dahl East Ukrainian National University.
- Dr. Deborah Wilson and Kasi Townes, LMSW, attended the 14th annual conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology held in New Orleans, La. Wilson and Townes presented a talk, “Relationship violence across the lifespan: The effects of child abuse on personality”, at the preconference on Jan. 17.
- Dr. Brian Canfield, professor of counselor education in the Department of Counseling and Professional Studies, has been named a “Fellow” of the American Counseling Association. Professor Canfield’s professional service, scholarship and international contributions to the counseling profession will be recognized at the ACA National Awards Ceremony on March 23, 2013 in Cincinnati, Ohio.
- Dr. James Ulmer’s recently published book of short stories, “The Secret Life,” has been nominated for a Bram Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and two awards from the Texas Institute of Letters (best fiction and first fiction). A new story, “Sad Annie,” has been accepted for publication in the Valparaiso Fiction Review.
- Dr. Chrisanne Christensen, associate professor of psychology and Miranda Ezell will be presenting research about service learning and activism at the PACE conference at Elon College in February.
The presentation is the first group evaluation of a survey instrument designed to measure unique demographic data and the increase in empathy and activism for students involved in a service leaning activity. The work is in response to three years of research and interviews across the country and collaboration between Dr. George Yancey, at Emporia State University and Miranda Ezell (SAU master’s program graduate) and recent graduate at Forest University’s graduate program in psychology.
- Dr. Misty LaCour, interim chair of the Department of Teacher Education, has been working collaboratively with a colleague, Dr. Laura Tissington from the University of West Florida, researching the impact of a mentoring program on first-year teachers. The focus of the research study involves the sense of self-efficacy as expressed by first-year teachers coupled with the impact of a mentor on the first-year teaching experience. The article entitled “Lessons learned from first year teachers,” which encompasses the results of the research study has been accepted for publication in the Arkansas Association of Teacher Educators Electronic Journal.
- Dr. Chrisanne Christensen’s work in designing a unique approach to teaching the Career Planning for Psychology students was accepted at the National institute on Teaching of Psychology in January. Her presentation entitled “Teaching a Careers in Psychology Course; APPS, video and giant sticky notes of doom” will also be part of an invited chapter for the new APA e-book about advising and career planning.
- Vikram Bhadauria, along with three fellow alumni of the doctoral program in Management Information Systems at the University of Texas Arlington, have had an article entitled “Role of gender, self-efficacy, anxiety and testing formats in learning spreadsheets” published in Computers in Human Behavior. According to Bhadauria, assistant professor of Management Information Systems, the four former colleagues have moved to different places for work, but still maintain contact and continue to work on projects together. The publishing of the article completes two years of research and work for the group of scholars.
- Dr. David Ashby spoke to the El Dorado Kiwanis Club on Jan. 23, regarding the economic outlook for 2013. Focus of the talk was that, in the short term, stock market returns may be substantially different from the current economic picture. Despite an anemic economy in the U.S. and a precarious world situation in the Middle East and Europe, virtually all markets delivered strong returns in 2012.
- Dr. Christie Morgan’s paper entitled: “Analyzing the relationship between age and ethical perception in college of business faculty and students” has been accepted for publication in volume 4 (spring, 2013) of the Mustang Journal of Business and Ethics.
- Dr. Shane Warrick was notified recently that he was accepted to be a member of the 2013 Little Rock FBI Citizens’ Academy Class, which is the 14th annual academy. The academy provides corporate executives and community leaders with an inside look at the bureau’s operations and includes nine sessions with presentations on counter-terrorism, counter-intelligence, cyber-crime, white-collar crime, violent crime, organized crime, drug matters, civil rights, applicant program, and the community outreach program. This program contributes to and expands an area in which Warrick teaches and conducts research and fraud examination.
