Kevin Sheets and Randi Storch
Kevin Sheets and Randi Storch, History Department, were awarded a $190,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support their “Forever Wild: Americans and Their Land in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era” program, which provides professional development for K-12 humanities teachers from across the nation. This is their eighth grant from the NEH since 2012. Their program invites two cohorts of teachers to each spend a week at SUNY Cortland’s Camp Huntington facility on Raquette Lake to develop new understandings of US history and to develop innovative teaching approaches using place-based pedagogies.
Katie Silvestri
Katie Silvestri, Literacy Department, was recently elected for a two-year appointment as secretary for the Special Interest Group (SIG) Semiotics in Education: Signs, Meaning, and Multimodality, a SIG within the American Education Research Association (AERA). This SIG provides a forum for teacher educators and literacy researchers to discuss signs, meanings and meaning making processes that people use in the context of teaching and learning from a multimodal standpoint. As secretary, Silvestri will maintain the SIG website and listserv as well as spearhead initiatives to foster conversations about and collaborations in scholarly work across the SIG's membership, as detailed on Featured Member Scholarship. She served in this position as interim secretary during a restructuring of the SIG for the past nine months and will now serve as secretary for the 2020-22 term. To learn more about Silvestri’s work as secretary or about social semiotics and multimodality, visit the Semiotics in Education SIG website.
Ute Ritz-Deutch
Ute Ritz-Deutch, History Department, had footage from her interview with Jose Sadana included in a Dec. 14 Pacifica radio segment on the impact of elders in prison and COVID, titled “Caging in COVID.” The footage originally aired on Ritz-Deutch’s weekly radio show, the WRFI Human Rights and Social Justice Program. The Pacifica show is part of a larger program on COVID, Race and Democracy and the first nationally produced radio program in some years.
Karen Downey
Karen Downey, Chemistry Department, presented a poster with undergraduate student Tyler Potter at the American Chemical Society’s 244th national meeting, held August 19-23 in Philadelphia, Pa.
Robert Spitzer
Robert Spitzer, Political Science Department, is the author of a new book, just published by Oxford University Press, titled, Guns Across America: Reconciling Gun Rules and Rights. The book argues that, contrary to the current national debate, gun laws and rights were perfectly compatible throughout most of American history, and that guns were actually regulated more strictly in the past than in the current era. In addition to gun law history, the book also examines the so-called right of rebellion, the Second Amendment and the assault weapons ban controversy, modern “stand-your-ground” laws, and New York state’s tough new gun laws and their impact on gun habits.
Robert Spitzer
Robert Spitzer, Political Science Department, is co-author of an article posted Nov. 30 by U.S. News and World Report titled, “Obama’s Guantanamo Paradox.” The article is co-authored with Chris Edelson of American University.
James Hokanson
James Hokanson, Kinesiology Department, was invited to collaborate with ongoing ageing research at the University of Salamanca, Spain. The study, sponsored by the Salamanca University Hospital and Department of Physical Therapy and Nursing, focuses on the health and fitness levels of older adults. The study, which has been continuously funded for nearly 20 years, evaluates health and fitness of approximately 600 adults in the province of Salamanca in the Castille and León region of Spain and includes organized rehabilitation and exercise programs.
Anna Curtis
Anna Curtis, Sociology/Anthropology Department, recently had her book, Dangerous Masculinity: Fatherhood, Race, and Security Inside America’s Prisons, published by Rutgers University Press.
Terrence Fitzgerald
Terrence Fitzgerald, Biological Sciences Department, is the author of a paper titled “Collectively Facilitated Behavior of the Neonate Caterpillars of Cactoblastis cactorum (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae)” appearing in the current issue of the journal Insects. The paper consists of a series of studies on the behavioral ecology of the insect conducted over a four-year period by former biology students Elizabeth Fabozzi '14, Katelyn Meyer '16, Michael Wolfin '11, and junior Ryan Young, all of whom are coauthors of the paper. The studies are part of a larger project on the chemical ecology of the insect being conducted by the senior author and Frank Rossi, Chemistry Department, that is supported by grants from the United States Department of Agriculture-Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
Jena Nicols Curtis
Jena Nicols Curtis, Health Department, was named coordinator for the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program. The academic minor, which is part of the Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies, engages students in interdisciplinary research and pedagogy to examine the ways that concepts of gender, sexuality, race, nation, class, ethnicity and ability shape our world. Curtis is an associate professor of health whose research interests focus on gender and sexuality. In 2014, she received a Chancellor’s Award for Internationalization for a study abroad program that she developed. The public health research course takes students to Southern India for a month each summer to explore the impact of gender, class and religion on public health disparities. In April 2016, her article on how EMS providers can most effectively respond to campus sexual violence was a feature article in the Journal of Emergency Medicine. In September 2016, Curtis was invited to Quantico, Va., to deliver sexual violence prevention training to the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) Branch for Marine Headquarters.