Author: Christie Williams

Halmos Astronomer Presents at American Astronomical Society Meeting

This January, Halmos College faculty member Stefan Kautsch, Ph.D. presented a talk and poster the virtual 237th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society about a spectroscopic survey of superthin disk galaxies from my international collaboration.

Kautsch also served as a judge for the prestigious Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Awards.  While at the conference, Kautsch included his NSU students in his physics and astronomy courses to discuss the newest discoveries, which were presented at the ongoing conference.

NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale Launches New Online Store

NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale’s new online store makes shopping for unique and artful gifts easier than ever. Accessible at nsuartmuseum.org, it offers an exciting array of specially curated items from artisan-designed jewelry to exclusive limited editions and designs. All purchases directly support NSU Art Museum’s exhibitions and education programs.

“Because of Covid, we accelerated all our virtual programming and services and the online store is now one of ways that we can better connect with and serve our ever-expanding audience,” said Bonnie Clearwater, NSU Art Museum director and chief curator. “We have also been well aware of the economic hardships that so many in our creative community have been facing this year and have increased the number of items we feature in the Museum Store by local artists and makers.”

The store’s delightful selection of merchandise is curated to enhance the overall Museum experience and includes handcrafted jewelry, ceramics and textiles, distinctive accessories for home and office, toys, puzzles, t-shirts, handbags, limited edition art books for children and adults and exhibition catalogues. Shipping is available on all purchases.

NSU Art Museum members receive 10% off on their purchases as well as a 20% discount during members double discount days. Through the Museum’s New Members Portal (accessible at nsuartmuseum.org with password), members also receive special advance access to new shipments of high-demand items such as KAWS Companion vinyl toys and other collectibles. Beginning in February, members will have first dibs on an exciting selection of limited edition designs by Anna Sui, whose much-anticipated retrospective exhibition and pop-up shop will be at NSU Art Museum from February 28 through September 19, 2021.  To become an NSU Art Museum member, visit https://nsuartmuseum.org/join/

M.S. in Disaster and Emergency Management Program Participates in Aviation Exercise 

Members of the M.S. in Disaster and Emergency Management program, including Jesse Spearo, Ph.D., CEM, FPEM, FMI, adjunct associate professor, and students Danielle Arias, Jerri Clairday, and Gregory Kimble, were involved in a massive, full-scale training exercise at the Fort Lauderdale International Airport (FLL).

The training, which is required by all airports every three years as part of the Federal Aviation Administration 139, simulated an aircraft crash while testing the capabilities of the airport, first responders, and mutual-aid assets. The multisite exercise at FLL brought together nearly 100 volunteers and more than 200 first responders in the simulated event.

“Planning for FLL’s exercise began more than a year before the scheduled date, but it had to be rescheduled and modified due to the ongoing pandemic,” Spearo said. “In the end, the exercise was a great success for the airport and public safety first responders. Additionally, volunteers overwhelmingly indicated how great the experience was for them, including our students.”

NSU, United Healthcare, and HOPE South Florida Partner to Give Back to the Homeless

The remembrance of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the values highlighted on MLK Day have historically been a foundation for service to the community. It is often regarded as a catalyst to give back to charities and nonprofit organizations through one’s time and talents.

That catalyst was the motivation behind Lori Halpern’s plans to create care kits for HOPE South Florida, a local organization that supports the homeless in our community.

Lori is UnitedHealthcare of Florida’s Executive Director of Medicare Dual Special Needs Plans. There, she has received much support from her associates and her employer to continuously give back and to lead Day of Service initiatives with her family. This year, Lori and her family chose to support the homeless through HOPE South Florida.

Lori was able to amplify her service by connecting with Nova Southeastern University (NSU) through to the power of social media and networking. She shared her plans to support HOPE South Florida as a Day of Service initiative on her social media. This is where her fellow Leadership Broward alumna and NSU Assistant Vice President of Alumni Relations and Annual Giving, Barbara C. Sageman connected with Lori to join forces.

NSU, which is hosts an annual Global Day of Service, encourages the university’s alumni, friends, and partners to serve their communities with an act of kindness or service project.

In the spirit of service and collaboration, NSU supported Lori’s mission and donated 1,000 pairs of socks to Lori’s care kit drive. Such teamwork and joint forces helped Lori and her family create more than 50 care kits for HOPE South Florida’s mobile shower program in addition to the 1,000 pairs of socks. The socks, coincidentally, were initially received by NSU to help the homeless in October of 2020.

The NSU Global Day of Service supports and promotes several NSU-led service projects, as well as more than 12 community-submitted projects. For more information, visit https://www.nova.edu/alumni/events/Global%20Day%20of%20Service.html

NSU Psychology Student Completes Virtual Internship With South Korean NGO

Troy’nia Douglas, President of the Caribbean Student Association, Sharks Abroad Peer Advisor and a senior in the Bachelor of Science in Psychology program at NSU’s College of Psychology with a minor in Business, completed a virtual internship through the NSU Sharks Abroad program with The Education Abroad Network (TEAN) for a prominent non-governmental organization known as Teaching North Korean Refugees (TNKR) located in Seoul, South Korea. The organization is known for empowering North Korean refugees and providing them with free English learning opportunities to open up their lives to more possibilities and choices outside of North Korea.

The web conference featured 3 guest speakers, the main one being Eunhee Park, a female North Korean defector and popular Korean YouTuber who learned English while at TNKR, alongside Co-Founders Casey Lartigue Jr. and Eunkoo Lee, who were Douglas’s internship supervisors. The web conference centered around the plethora of struggles that North Korean women face as they escape North Korea and try to start a new life in the South. The event offered a perspective of the strength, will and determination that North Korean refugee women possess.

As a Sharks Abroad Peer Advisor, Douglas is now working to open doors to similar experiences for her fellow NSU students.  Douglas organizes virtual international internship presentations and is available for individual advising sessions on Summer 2021 opportunities and beyond.  Learn more at nova.edu/sharksabroad.

“To take action, one must first take the initiative to spread awareness and open up people’s minds to not just what is happening around you but to what is happening in other parts of the world,” Douglas said.

Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine Alumnus Named FOMA President

Marc G. Kaprow, D.O.

NSU alumnus Marc G. Kaprow, D.O., M.H.A., FACOI (‘01), of the Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine will be installed as president of the Florida Osteopathic Medical Association (FOMA) in February. The FOMA serves and represents approximately 10,000 osteopathic students and physicians in the state of Florida.

To learn more about FOMA, click here.

Registration is Now Open for Breaking Barriers: A New Psychoeducational Group Program

The NSU Student Care Team has updated the Breaking Barriers: Group Psychoeducational Program schedule. The program aims to help students learn skills to better manage their lives. This series of virtual group sessions focus on a variety of topics.

Each group is held for a 4-week period, meeting only 1 hour each week. Students can register for one group each period and each group will have up to 12 students.  Interested in more than one group? Don’t you worry; once you have completed one, you can sign up for another!

Groups are held at various dates and times so you will be sure to find one that fits perfectly into your schedule.

To register for a group or to learn more, please call (954) 262-7031 or e-mail nsucareteam@nova.edu.

 

MONDAY

  • 11:00 A.M. – 12:00 P.M.
    Finding Your Anchor:     In our fast-paced world, where the increasing demands of living, places enormous stress on all people, mindfulness has been proven to assist mental, emotional, and physical balance. Join us as we build better habits to manage stress and live in the moment.
  • 5:00 P.M. – 6:00 P.M.
    E.S.T     (Recharge, Energize, and Self Reflect Together): Come REST with us. Explore your self-care routine, develop better habits, and start 2021 as a healthier, happier you!
  • 6:00 P.M. – 7:00 P.M.
    Can We Just Talk?     This group will help you discover your communication style, learn how to set boundaries, and understand how to resolve conflicts through assertive interpersonal communication.
  • 6:30 P.M. – 7:30 P.M.
    Ride the Waves Together:     This group doesn’t have a specific theme. It’s for people who need support, and they may not feel like they fit in another group. It’s a catch-all group.

 

TUESDAY

  • 12:30 P.M. – 1:30 P.M.
    Let’s T.A.L.K.     (Take Action, Listen and Be Kind): Effective strategies to develop better interpersonal and communication skills with self and others.
  • 3:00 P.M. – 4:00 P.M.
    Help! I’m Too Busy to be Stressed:     Stress management group, description: Decrease feelings of stress while providing life skills to manage daily stress. Students will also build healthier school, work and life balance.
  • 5:00 P.M. – 6:00 P.M. Time Flies but You’re the Pilot: A skill-building group aimed at helping students develop meaningful and lasting time management skills.
  • 6:00 P.M. – 7:00 P.M. You’ve Got a Friend in Me: The basics of healthy relationships that can be generalized to all relationships in your life.

 

WEDNESDAY

  • 12:30 P.M. – 1:30 P.M.
    Healthy Connections:     Students will learn tips and strategies to initiate and maintain healthy relationships.
  • 1:00 P.M. – 2:00 P.M.
    Wellness Wednesday:     Throughout the next few weeks you will learn a research-based model of wellness as well as how to apply and integrate self-care practices into your daily life.
  • 2:00 P.M. – 3:00 P.M.
    Recharge Your Rest Routine:     We’ll be talking about sleep hygiene and how that plays a role in falling asleep and staying asleep. We will also be talking about the impact of sleep in your day-to-day life.
  • 4:00 P.M. – 5:00 P.M.
    The Rose That Grew from Concrete:     Learn how to work through difficult circumstances and come out even stronger than before.
  • 7:00 P.M. – 8:00 P.M.
    Love Don’t Cost a Thing:     The purpose of this group is to provide students the tools needed to initiate and maintain healthy relationships, whether it be professional, peer, family, or romantic relationships.

 

THURSDAY

  • 10:00 A.M. – 11:00 A.M.
    Plan Like A Boss:     A skill building group that will help you find your study prime through organizational strategies as well as tips and tricks to optimize your time management.
  • 2:00 P.M. – 3:00 P.M.
    Mindful Self-Awareness:     This group session focuses on helping students understand the importance of knowing their individual responses to stress and provides tools to become more effective in managing it.
  • 7:30 P.M. – 8:30 P.M.
    A Moment to Myself:     This group offers a new mindfulness/relaxation experience each week followed by open discussions.

 

FRIDAY

  • 11:00 A.M. – 12:00 P.M.
    Recharge Your Rest Routine:     We’ll be talking about sleep hygiene and how that plays a role in falling asleep and staying asleep. We will also be talking about the impact of sleep in your day-to-day life.
  • 12:00 P.M. – 1:00 P.M.
    Talk Gritty to Me: Developing Resiliency     Students will explore the importance of resilience in achieving success. They will learn to set goals and develop skills and strengths that will help them persevere in their personal, academic, and professional careers.
  • 1:00 P.M. – 2:00 P.M.
    E.L.A.X     This group helps to recognize stress, learn exercises to release anxiety, let go, and discover tips and tricks to decreasing and managing stress.

 

 

 

 

NSU Writing and Communication Center Executive Director Publishes article in WLN- Journal of Writing Center Scholarship

Kevin Dvorak, Ph.D.

Kevin Dvorak, Ph.D., Executive Director of the NSU Writing and Communication Center (WCC) published “How Course-Embedded Consultants and Faculty Perceive the Benefits of Course-Embedded Writing Consultant Programs,” in WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, vol. 44, no. 7-8.

In the article Dvorak published with along with Julia Bleakney and Paula Rosinski from Elon University, Russell Carpenter from Eastern Kentucky, and Scott Whiddon from Transylvania University, Dvorak et al. studied how embedded tutoring helps first-year composition students achieve course learning outcomes and how course-embedded consultants (CECs) and faculty perceive the benefits. Dvorak, et al. conducted a survey that examined several benefits of CEC programs across four different institutions.

The research not only highlights the several benefits of CEC programs that apply across differing institutional types, but the findings suggest, “CECs believe the work they are doing with students reinforces a long-standing goal for writing centers: providing students with interactions and experiences that help them identify, develop, and hone their own writing processes” (14).

Each semester, the WCC works with faculty to identify potential undergraduate “writing-enriched” (WE) courses. These courses include significant writing through the discourse. The WCC then provides Writing Fellows to each WE course. Writing Fellows are course-embedded writing and communication consultants who assist students with their writing assignments for their particular course.

To learn more about the NSU Writing and Communication Center, visit https://www.nova.edu/wcc/.

 

 

Halmos Faculty Organize Tiny Earth Conference

In December of 2020, Halmos College faculty member Aarti Raja, Ph.D., co-organized the annual Tiny Earth symposium with researchers from around the U.S. The event had 212 attendees, representing 32 academic institutions from the US and around the world. Faculty members Aarti Raja, Ph.D. and Julie Torruellas Garcia, Ph.D., attended the virtual Tiny Earth International Conference, which was run from the Wisconsin Institute of Discovery, Madison, WI. Raja moderated several sessions at the conference. Raja’s students Aysha Patel and Vijay Patel collaborated with NSU University school and presented a poster and talk along with a 11th grade USchool student Dhruv Krishna titled “Bacteria Unearthed”. Garcia mentored Chloe Barreto-Massad, a 9th grade student at the American Heritage School, in her research project entitled, “Using antiSMASH to Compare Antimicrobial Genes of Commensal E. coli (Normal Flora) to Pathogenic E. coli”, which was also presented at the symposium.

Tiny Earth was launched in 2018, however it began six years earlier when Jo Handelsman (former Associate Director for Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Obama) founded a course—then called “Microbes to Molecules”—at Yale University with the goal of addressing both the antibiotic crisis and the shortage of science trainees. In short order, the course grew and became a part of a larger initiative until Handelsman returned to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and launched Tiny Earth in collaboration with its hundreds of partners worldwide.

 

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