Faculty Activities

Executive Director of the Center for Global and Career Education Roger Adkins and Senior Director of Off-Campus Programs Jennifer Lewis represented Earlham in the first-ever Global Senior Leadership Symposium, sponsored by the Forum on Education Abroad and the Association of International Education Administrators held virtually in December 2020. Lewis also participated in the Inclusive Learning Institute sponsored by Diversity Abroad in April.

Assistant Professor of Religion Elizabeth Angowski was a guest on the podcast The Happiness Lab (Ep. 4 “The Buddha” of the series “Happiness Lessons of the Ancients”) with Dr. Laurie Santos of Yale. She also contributed to a book review to the Journal of Buddhist Ethics on Gender and the Path to Awakening: Hidden Histories of Nuns in Modern Thai Buddhism by Martin Seeger and gave an invited talk for the Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum titled “A Clash of Clawed Significations: Reading and Rereading the Life of Yeshé Tsogyal and the Story of the Starving Tigress.”

Assistant Professor of Biology Dan Atwater co-authored two papers that have been accepted for publication: “Climatic Niche Shifts in 815 Introduced Plant Species Impact Their Forecasted Distributions” in Global Ecology & Biogeography and “Invasive Plant Rhizome Production and Competitiveness Varies Based on Neighbor Identity” in Journal of Plant Ecology.

The Richmond Art Museum honored retiring Associate Professor of Art Walt Bistline with a 17-year retrospective of his photography of the Midwest while a member of the Earlham faculty. The exhibition, “Earthbound,” was part of a two-artist, two-gallery collaboration between Bistline and his former student, Marcela Pardo Ariza ’13, titled “Double Exposure.” Marcela contributed work from their San Francisco series, “Kin Streets.”

Geoff Boyce, academic director of the Border Studies program, has published articles and book chapters in the following: Geoforum; Emotion, Space and Society; and Handbook on Human Security, Borders, and Migration. He has also co-authored a report published by the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan on “The Border’s Long Shadow: How Border Patrol Uses Racial Profiling and Local and State Police to Target and Instill Fear in Michigan’s Immigrant Communities.”

Matt Brown, director of the Quantitative Reasoning Center, presented a pop talk at the 2021 National Numeracy Network Conference titled, “Introducing QANS, a Quantitative Assessment for New Students.” This talk outlined a plan for other colleges and universities to mirror Earlham’s increases in retention of students who take advantage of support services and courses offered through our Academic Enrichment Center.

Library Director Amy Bryant and Academic Technologies and Seminaries Librarian Karla Fribley ’03 presented “Librarians as First-Generation Student Retention Partners” at the virtual Academic Libraries of Indiana Annual Meeting in May. Fribley also co-authored the article “Academic Librarians and Campus-Wide Faculty Development: A National Survey,” which was published in the April 2021 issue of Portal: Libraries and the Academy published by the Johns Hopkins University Press.

Director of Graduate Programs in Education Becky Dimick Eastman and Assistant Director of Graduate Programs in Education Cammi Fulvi presented “The Preservice Experience of Teachers Who Identify as LGBTQ+” at the annual conference of the Association of Independent Liberal Arts Colleges for Teacher Education in February.

In February, Associate Professor of English Nate Eastman published his third book, Shakespeare’s Storytelling, with Palgrave.

Tom Hamm, professor of history and Quaker scholar in residence, has been elected to membership in the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. The Society consists of historians with an interest in editing documents illustrating the history of colonial New England. Hamm is currently at work on an edited volume of the records of Dartmouth Monthly Meeting of Friends in Massachusetts, 1698-1785, which the Society will publish.

Scott Hess, professor of English, published two essays: “Thoreau’s Legacy for Climate Change,” which appeared in The Concord Saunterer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies and “Biosemiosis and Posthumanism in John Clare’s Multi-Centered Environments” in Advances in John Clare Studies, edited by Erin Lafford and Simon Kövesi.

The work of Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Physics Ray Hively and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Robert Horn on Hopewell culture was recently featured in a New York Times article, “A Push to Move the Golf Course Atop a Native American ‘Stonehenge.’”

Tiffany Hong, assistant professor of Japanese studies, authored “’You Too Shall Be New’: Synthezoid Phenomenology and Canonical Memory in The Vision,” which was published in ImageTexT, a web-based journal published by the University of Florida. Her essay will also be published in an upcoming collection titled Superheroes and Excess.

In the past six months, Professor Emeritus of Biology John Iverson published papers on his ongoing turtle research in three journals: Chelonian Conservation Biology, Ecology and Evolution and Biological Conservation. Coauthors of two of the papers included former students.

Deborah Jackson, research professor of sociology/anthropology, authored a chapter titled “Being Native in the Midwestern City: Regional Variations on a National Theme” for Oxford History of the Midwest (Jon Lauck, ed.), to be published later this year by Oxford University Press.

Director of the Global Management Program and Associate Professor of Global Management Becky Jestice ’97 co-led a workshop for the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Challenge, their social entrepreneurship program for high school students. The workshop for team mentors focused on motivating, supporting and coaching virtual teams. In April, Jestice served as a judge for Virtual Enterprises International’s business plan competition and human resources competition.

In January, Plowshares Assistant Professor of Politics and Co-Director of the Center for Social Justice Ahmed Khanani’s book, All Politics are God’s Politics: Moroccan Islamism and the Sacralization of Democracy, was published by Rutgers University Press.

Collections Manager Ann-Eliza Lewis helped secure a $2,981 grant from Indiana Humanities for a redesign of the Joseph Moore Museum’s mummy exhibit. The new exhibit will provide more context about both Egyptian history and the mummy itself, including how it was acquired and the ethics of displaying human remains.

James Logan, interim academic dean and professor of religion and African and African American studies, authored the essay “Mass Incarceration,” which was published in the T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Ethics, edited by Tobias Winright.

In March, Director of International Student and Scholar Services Candice Marshall virtually presented “Cloud Life with Box: Portfolios, Live Collaboration and More” during the TESOL 2021: International Convention and English Language Learning Expo as part of the Electronic Village Tech Fairs portion of the conference.

Priscilla Maghrabi, advising services coordinator, was invited to co-create and facilitate a virtual fitness and wellness readiness program this spring for the Crossmen Drum and Bugle Corps, a nonprofit organization with headquarters in San Antonio, Texas.

Academic Dean Emeritus and Research Professor of Politics Greg Mahler is editing a forthcoming book titled The Effect of Donald Trump on Foreign Perceptions of the US. The book includes chapters on 18 different nations, mostly written by scholars from these nations.

Ryan Murphy, associate professor of history and women’s, gender and sexuality studies, received a grant from Indiana Humanities to assist in producing a podcast that will accompany his forthcoming book, Teamsters Metropolis. The book will explore how union activism was a tool for workers to process the journey from the complex world of the central city to suburban heterosexuality in the 1950s.

Seth Powless, associate professor of global management, has been elected vice president of communications for the Midwest Decision Sciences Institute. In November 2020, Powless presented a pedagogical workshop in Operations Management at the Decision Sciences Institute’s 2020 Virtual Conference. In April, Powless and global management students Juana Serna ’22 and Denise Bergdolt ’22 presented a paper titled “The impact of COVID-19 on Global Retail Grocery Logistics Consumer Behavior” at the Production, Operations, Management Society’s 2021 Virtual Conference. Powless was also an invited workshop presenter at this conference and presented “Learn-By-Doing Approaches in Project and Supply Chain Management Courses.”

 Vince Punzo, professor of psychology, authored an article on the transformation of healthcare in the digital age, which was published in the spring 2021 issue of the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly.

Associate Professor of Politics and Director of the Peace Corps Prep Program Jennifer Seely co-authored the fourth edition of the Historical Dictionary of Togo, which was published in April 2021.

Since retiring in 2019, Brent Smith, emeritus professor of biology, has continued as coordinator of natural areas for the biology department, but he has also been honing his passion for woodworking. Two of his pieces were accepted into the Richmond Art Museum’s 2020 Annual Exhibition, and three are presently being shown in the Bird Art Show at Cope Environmental Center. The wood portraits, titled Portraits from the Wild, are made of unstained hardwoods treated for outdoor display and are of biological subjects that Smith has studied over the years in Indiana, his home state of Colorado and East Africa, where he co-led many off-campus study programs with Nancy Taylor.

Associate Professor of Theatre Arts Lynne Perkins Socey served as a coordinator and mentor for the Region 3 Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival New Play Program directors in January. This spring, she also directed and did sound design for the world premiere of Rotten Illusions by Brianna Miller ’21 as well as two of the three Samuel Beckett Shorts: An Assortment of Absurdist Plays. In May, she participated in the 2021 Federal Defenders of San Diego Trial Skills Academy as an actor/trainer with the Sapphire Theatre Company.

Eboni Stevens, assistant director of EPIC communications and career coach, completed a digital marketing course through the Digital Marketing Institute in May.

Professor of Art Mark Van Buskirk’s paintings have been juried into several national and regional art shows recently, including “Magnitude 7” at Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati and annual exhibitions at the Richmond Art Museum and Minnetrista Cultural Center, where one painting received third place in the professional division.

Professor of Chemistry Lori Watson virtually presented a poster titled “Remember the IONiC: A Community of Transformation for Teaching and Learning Inorganic Chemistry” at the 261^st National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in April.