My NSU Edge, July 1
Author: Christie Williams
“Thirstdays with Friends” Summer Wine Series, Aug. 27
Break out the “red” and join us for our upcoming “Thirstdays with Friends” Summer Wine Series event!
Hosted by the Circle of Friends, wine expert Shari Gherman, President of American Fine Wine Competition and THE Rose Competition, will present an in-depth lesson about wine. Before the session, you’ll receive Shari’s wine picks, suggested food pairings, and recipes. Purchase your wine in advance and join us with a glass!
- Session 3: Thursday, August 27, 5:30 p.m.
The special rate for Circle of Friends Members is $20 per class.
Non-members: $25 per class.
Join Circle of Friends today, and you’ll get the reduced member price for this event and others throughout the year, while supporting the NSU Alvin Sherman Library! All for a good cause! Circle of Friends, the fundraising arm of the Alvin Sherman Library, is a not-for-profit group of individuals which raises awareness and funding for library initiatives. Through memberships, contributions and events, the organization provides the Sherman Library with vital support, such as programs, services, technology, furniture, materials and other resources.
For more information, please visit Sherman.library.nova.edu/cof or email libdev@nova.edu
To join the Circle of Friends or to renew your membership, please click: here
Register today and reserve your spot – please click here.
Education Alum Named President of North Carolina Wesleyan College
Evan Duff, Ed.D., graduate of NSU’s Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice has been named the eighth President of North Carolina Wesleyan College.
Since 2011, Dr. Duff has served in many senior leadership roles at N.C. Wesleyan including, Interim President, Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs and Vice President of Adult and Professional Studies. In these roles, Dr. Duff was responsible for leading the effort to approve new majors, co-writing the College’s first graduate application to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools- Commission on Colleges (SACS-COC) and creating seven new offsite instructional locations. He was also responsible for facilitating the development of partnerships with 20 two-year and four-year colleges, which led to articulation agreements or memorandums of understanding between those colleges and N.C. Wesleyan.
He earned his doctorate degree in education from the Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice in 2007.
CAHSS Faculty, Students, & WCC Consultants Engage in Outreach with House of Hope’s “Stepping Stones: Women Empowerment Series”
During the Winter/Summer 2020 semesters, NSU’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS) faculty and graduate students and Writing and Communication Center (WCC) consultants partnered with House of Hope and Stepping Stones to launch the “Stepping Stones: Women Empowerment Series” outreach program. House of Hope’s mission is to help men and women in need of treatment for substance abuse get the assistance they require to be successful in the community.
The four-part series was created to aid in improving individuals’ personal and professional lives by introducing different forms of literacy practices in effort to best support the recovery process. The outreach was led by WCC faculty coordinator Kelly Conncannon (CAHSS School of Communication, Media and the Arts associate professor); Composition, Rhetoric, and Digital Media graduate students and WCC graduate assistant coordinators, Nicole Chavannes and Sabrina Louissaint; and WCC undergraduate consultants, Mikayla Ruiz (Human Development and Family Studies), Joy Oni (Dr. Pallavi Patel College of Health Care Sciences Speech, Language, and Communication), and Patricia Linoz (College of Psychology).
The series began in January 2020 and the January and February workshops took place on site at the Stepping Stones rehabilitation facility in Wilton Manors, FL. With in-person meetings halted due to COVID-19, the outreach continued virtually through Zoom during the latter half of the winter. April and May workshops ran through the virtual platform and allowed the participants and facilitators to still engage and create an impact with the content they provided.
“This experience has been empowering and meaningful. The impact has been reciprocal, because not only have we worked to inspire and support the women, but they have also taught us a lot, simply through their growth and perseverance. I am immensely grateful to be a part of this group of women supporting other women,” said Louissaint.
The workshops covered the following topics:
January 29th, 2020: Find your “Why” –Setting Professional and Personal Goals
Reflective Writing and Mindset
Reflection is itself an active thinking process—you have to be in the moment to be able to reflect well. Participants will discuss the importance of a reflective mindset, learn tips for reflective writing, and have the opportunity to create personal and professional goals relying on visual literacies
February 26th, 2020: Embody Love
Participants learned to use literacies and mindfulness to improve wellness, drawing on the Embody Love Movement (https://www.embodylovemovement.org/), which is intended to empower girls and women to celebrate their inner beauty. The mission of the workshop was to use writing, reading, speaking and movement to build self-approval and cultivate compassion for themselves and others
April 29th, 2020: Mindfulness and Mindset
Participants learned about different ways to journal, as a therapeutic outlet that encourages reflection. The importance of knowing how to channel your energy, whether it be through the use of writing, or protecting your energy, and making this into their daily practice. Participants also engaged in freewriting.
May 27, 2020: Moving forward
Participants had the opportunity to workshop their resume/CVs and other professional documents. In conjunction with House of Hopes missions to help individuals maintain stable employment, participants learned how to identify and articulate their skills, strengths, and experiences. The facilitators discussed the difference between hard and soft skills, and what professional development means
To view the NSU Current’s article “We are in the business of second chances:” NSU’s partnership with House of Hope,” spotlighting the project:
Skin Microbiome Could be Used as Evidence
When mapped to the environments we interact with daily, the 36 million microbial cells per hour that humans emit just from our skin leave a trail of evidence that can be leveraged for forensic analysis. A group of researchers, including Halmos College faculty member Jose Lopez, Ph.D., affiliate NSU professor George Duncan, Ph.D., collaborated with microbial ecologist principal investigator Jack Gilbert, Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego. Funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Justice (NIJ), the research applied 16S rRNA gene markers to characterize how distinctive human skin microbiomes really were, and determine if they could identify individuals.
Besides researching if the skin microbiome could identify an individual, another question was asked: How long would the microbiome “signal” last at a potential crime scene? The team has now published a new paper in the journal, Forensics Science International, describing the NIJ study. They found that the human microbiomes of volunteer participants contain rare microbial taxa that can be combined to create unique microbial profiles. Using mock burglary data, it was possible to detect the correct burglars’ microbiota as having contributed to the invaded space of the residents. Unfortunately, the predictions appeared very weak in comparison to accepted forensic standards and therefore the 16S tools cannot be used as “as a reliable trace evidence standard for criminal investigations” at this time.
SharkBytes Summer Schedule 2020
SharkBytes will begin its bi-weekly publication schedule with the last weekly edition on June 10.
The dates for the summer editions of SharkBytes are:
August 19, 2020.
SharkBytes will return to its weekly format with the August 26 edition.
If you have any questions, send email to Sharkbytes@nova.edu
Writing and Communication Center Faculty and Students Present at the 2020 Southeastern Writing Center Association Conference
Three faculty coordinators and eleven graduate and undergraduate student consultants from NSU’s Writing and Communication Center (WCC) presented on nine panels at the 2020 Southeastern Writing Center Association (SWCA) conference. The conference was hosted by University of Alabama-Birmingham in Birmingham, AL, Feb. 20-22. The 2020 SWCA Conference was attended by over 200 participants and featured 63 presentations from over 50 institutions.
From the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, the following individuals presented at the conference:
- School of Communication, Media, and the Arts (and WCC faculty coordinators), Kelly Concannon (Associate Professor), Eric Mason (Associate Professor), and Janine Morris (Assistant Professor)
- Composition, Rhetoric, and Digital Media (CRDM) graduate students (and WCC graduate assistant coordinators), Monique Cole, Ricky Finch, Jordan Guido, Sabrina Louissaint, Danielle Pierce, ‘Aolani Robinson, Carlos Rodriguez Rosa
- CRDM graduate student (and WCC consultant), Angelica Zadak,
- Human Development and Family Studies undergraduate student (and WCC consultant), Mikayla Ruiz.
From the Dr. Pallavi Patel College of Health Care Sciences, B.S. in Speech-Language and Communications undergraduate student (and WCC consultant), Joy Oni presented.
From the Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography, Biology undergraduate student (and WCC consultant), Melissa Vas-Ayez presented.
“Since attending SWCA the past three years, I have been able to network with people I would not have normally met and expanding on those relationships has been a great experience. This conference has exposed me to new writing center research and it has been useful to take what we have learned to strengthen our center,” Ricky Finch.
To learn more about the NSU Writing and Communication Center, visit https://www.nova.edu/wcc/
About the Panels
“Changing the Culture: Serving Exceptional Students in the Writing Center” (Joy Oni and Mikayla Ruiz)
This workshop discussed ways writing center consultants can interact with and perceive individuals with exceptional cases, such as autism.
“Digital Wasteland: Rethinking Multimodality in the Writing Center” (‘Aolani Robinson)
The workshop explored strategies for working with writers who bring multimodal assignments, such as PowerPoints and infographics to the Writing Center for assistance.
“Expanding Inclusive Praxis: Toward an Everyday Queering of the Writing Center” (Jordan Guido and Carlos Rodriguez Rosa)
This workshop focused on how to better include queer identities in our current praxis.
“For the Expanding Ensemble: Create Connections in a Growing Writing Center with Improv” (Angelica Zadak)
This workshop focused on how to build connections within growing writing centers through the use of improv games and techniques.
“Game On: Designing a Digital Badging System for Consultant Training and Professional Growth” (Eric Mason and Ricky Finch)
This poster presentation focused on the idea that writing centers do not simply train consultants to work with student authors. Instead, they guide consultants’ professionalism and success throughout their academic careers and beyond.
“Graduate Students, Mentorship, and the Affective Dimensions of Writing Center Administrative Work” (Janine Morris and Kelly Concannon)
This presentation examined the preliminary results of a study of graduate student administrative mentoring relationships in writing centers.
“Growing a Writing Center via Course-Embedded Consultant Programming, Part I: Connecting to First-Year Composition Courses” (Russell Carpenter Ph.D., Eastern Kentucky University; Danielle Pierce; Ricky Finch)
This (first of a two-part) panel explored how two SWCA-based writing centers have experienced substantial growth through the creation of course-embedded consultant (a.k.a., writing fellows) programming that targets first-year composition courses.
“Growing a Writing Center via Course-Embedded Consultant Programming, Part II: Connecting to First-Year Biology Courses” (Russell Carpenter; Clint Stivers, Eastern Kentucky University; Kelly Concannon; Melissa Vaz-Ayes)
This (second of a two-part) panel explored how two SWCA-based writing centers have experienced substantial growth through the creation of course-embedded consultant (CEC; a.k.a., writing fellows) programming that targets first-year biology courses.
“Linked-In’ to the Writing Center” (Sabrina Louissaint and Monique Cole)
This workshop focused on how writing center administrators and consultants can effectively use LinkedIn to grow their writing centers.
NSU Clinic Offering Online COVID-19 Support Groups
If you are feeling stressed out by COVID-19, free online support groups are available from one of the clinics at the College of Psychology’s Psychology Services Center. The support groups, which meet on Zoom, are offered by the Healthy Lifestyles Guided Self-Change Clinic (GSC).
For additional information about the support groups, please call (954) 262-5922. For information on other GSC programs, visit https://www.nova.edu/gsc/.
NuPark/Passport Parking Resource Software
Public Safety is happy to announce that Nova Southeastern University will be launching a new parking management software.
The NuPark/Passport software solution will provide a custom-branded e-commerce dynamic website that can scale down to meet any cell phone screen, allowing our NSU Community to interact with the parking department on their schedule. The system is expected to go live summer 2020.
Below are some of the features that will be available online:
• For employees: Vehicle Permit purchase on annual or payroll basis
• For students: Easy vehicle registration for Residential and Non-Residential students
• For NSU Departments: Department Portal Management for pre-paid parking permits for guests
• Parking Citations payments
• Parking Citations appeals
• Add or Change Vehicle information
By using real-time and historical parking data, this software will provide some of the most sophisticated data analytics and decision-making reporting tools to help maximize the utilization of our parking resources.
Additional information will be provided in the near future with instructions and further information about the new software.
For additional information, please visit our Public Safety Parking website at www.nova.edu/parking.
NSU’s “Return of the Sharks” Faculty and Staff Guide for Fall 2020
Last week, NSU President Dr. George Hanbury issued a new memo containing a workplace guide for faculty and staff, in preparation for the Fall 2020 semester. The guide contains a detailed update on the provisions and protocols that are being put in place at all NSU facilities, grounds, and locations between now and July 27, 2020. Faculty and staff will find directives for ensuring safe physical distancing and hygiene standards, what to do if you are sick, how to keep others safe, when to report to work, and more. You can find a copy of the guide at https://www.nova.edu/ehs/cv19-resources/return-the-sharks-guide-1.pdf