#faculty research

“For many university faculty, new pandemic guidelines resulted in immediate loss of access to research facilities, research participants, community partners, research-related travel, personnel or equipment. These changes came to a sector operating in an environment of finite and constrained resources with faculty experiencing occupational health impacts such as high stress.”

“One of the early stories of the COVID-19 pandemic was that it was a leveller, ignoring social status, ethnic status, biological sex- or gender- identity. ... Our research found the pandemic has had a disproportionately negative effect on women and racialized faculty. We think universities should urgently take measures to ensure they are not unfairly disadvantaged in their career progression.”

“We recommend a collaboration between HR, faculty associations and faculty at all stages of careers. They could work together to create a database that is updated in real-time to assess and monitor ongoing pandemic impacts on faculty conducting research. ... We recommend that universities pay attention to fairness and equity issues pertaining to faculty career progression and bear in mind pandemic effects. Faculty experience less burnout when processes overseeing their performance review are perceived as fair. Annual reviews as well as tenure and promotion processes may need to be adjusted to account for the loss of productivity.”

The Conversation, March 2, 2021: “University survey shows how COVID-19 pandemic is hampering career progress for women and racialized faculty,” by Jennifer Davis

2016 Distinguished Faculty Awards

Norfolk State University’s Distinguished Faculty Awards are presented to faculty members chosen from nominations by colleagues or department chairs. The program announcement indicating the nomination and selection period is made annually by the President. Nominations of qualified faculty can be made by anyone. The 2016 Distinguished Faculty Awards were recently presented to: Dr. Melendez O. Byrd–…

Proposals Sought for 2016 Summer Research and Curriculum Development

The Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs and the Office of Faculty Development are seeking proposals for Faculty Summer Research and Curriculum Development Support. Detailed requirements for proposal submission are available on the Office of the Provost forms web page under faculty development forms tab. Guidelines for Summer Research Support are delineated under Item #4.  Priority…

The hallways of Dickinson were abuzz with science students and faculty, along with friends and supporters from across the College, on Friday December 7 for the Fall Term Poster Session. The building was a hive of activity as students discussed their work, asked questions, and generally enjoyed the challenge of substantively engaging with each other and the broader community about their projects.

Faculty member David Edelman talks to students Katie Giarra and Marilee Goad about the Animal Physiology poster “The Effects of Serotonin on Aggression in Subordinate Crayfish” (photo: Julia Evanczuk)

Roughly thirty posters were presented by students from Physics I, Comparative Animal Physiology, and Foundations of Physical Science. These courses range from introductory to advanced levels and the nature of the work reflected this diversity, featuring experiments of students’ own design, literature reviews, laboratory measurements of physical phenomena, and investigations of alternative energy possibilities for the campus and beyond. Selections of posters from each class will be posted on this site in the near future.

Top: Emily Mikucki (’13) discusses her poster “Fitness Consequences Associated with Variation in Developmental Temperature in Cabbage Butterflies” with dance and environmental studies student, Kaya Lovestrand (’14). (photo: Betsy Sherman) Middle: (left) Chemistry faculty member Janet Foley asks Evan Braun (’13) about his animal physiology research; (right) Evan’s poster “Survey of Worker Ant Plasticity as Mediated by Classical Conditioning” is displayed along with his subject ants in the foreground (both photos: Julia Evanczuk) Middle: Caroline Barnhart (postbac ’13) describes her work on the impact resistance and force transmission of different helmet designs (photo: Julia Evanczuk)

                  Several students gave demonstrations to help explain or place their work in context. For example, Carl Johanson (below) arranged for a  live performance from Lance, a five-year old American Cream horse, a nearly extinct breed of draft horse, for his demonstration of “Horsepower, the Other Way of Getting Energy from Biomass.”

Foundations of Physical Science student Carl Johanson (’14) introduces Lance, an American Cream draft horse, to onlookers as part of his presentation on animal power. (photo: Mike Goldin)

  Biology faculty member Amie McClellan discusses recent work from her lab with Computing faculty member Andrew Cencini and others. (photo: Betsy Sherman)

Honorary student (and actual faculty member) Amie McClellan, enjoying the last full week of her sabbatical, also presented a poster as a sort of trial run for her upcoming presentation “EMC2 Encodes a Putative Novel Hsp90 Co-chaperone in Saccharomyces cerevisiae“, co-authored with Tambu Kudze (’10), at the 2012 Annual Meeting of The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) in San Francisco, CA.

photo: Mike Goldin

    Finally, good food made the event even more enjoyable. Faculty and staff brought in homemade breads and dishes such as Vegetable Lo Mein and Beef Vindaloo, as well as delicious desserts for all to enjoy.

  The view from the second floor. (photo: Mike Goldin)

Students may work on a variety of projects to investigate a class of objects called X-ray binaries.  In these objects, gas is peeled off the outer layers of a normal star by the gravitational attraction of a binary companion which is a black hole or a neutron star.  As the gas falls in, some of its gravitational potential energy is converted to kinetic energy and it heats up to the point where it emits X-rays.  Projects may be related both to understanding the processes of binary stellar evolution that ordinarily produce these systems, processes of stellar dynamical interactions that produce them in dense star clusters, and the process by which gas actually falls into black holes and onto neutron stars, and is sometimes ejected in jets at near the speed of light.

Campbell University English professor Elizabeth Rambo in a Campbell Magazine piece about how she became a world-renowned expert on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" TV show creator and "The Avengers" film director Joss Whedon