Category: Academics

Students Chosen as National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists

NSU University School is incredibly proud to congratulate four of our academically talented seniors — Madison Draizin, Zachary Hardgrave, Nikki Steinberg, and Brian Zhi — on being selected as 2022 National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists! They are among 16,000 of the highest-scoring program entrants, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, who qualified as semifinalists for their exceptional academic ability and potential for success in rigorous college studies.

Semifinalists will have an opportunity to continue in the competition to attain finalist standing and qualify for winner recognition as well as National Merit Scholarships that will be awarded in spring 2022.

Art + Design Majors Named ‘Students to Watch’ By Magazine

Vivian Duran

Sol Santecchia

Vivian Duran and Sol Santecchia, Art + Design majors in the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences, were recently named “Students to Watch in 2021” by Graphic Design USA (GDUSA) magazine.

“It is certainly an achievement for our students to gain this national recognition,” said Miriam Ahmed, Ph.D., assistant professor of graphic design for the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts. “GDUSA is a widely recognized publication in the industry, and having our students featured in the magazine demonstrates to the field that our NSU graphic design students are on par with students from top design schools across the country. As we promote and grow the Art + Design program, accolades earned by our outstanding students are indicators of the caliber of talent recruited into our program and their successful career trajectories.”

The magazine’s April 2021 issue also added Nova Southeastern University to GDUSA magazine’s compilation of “Highest Honors: Top Graphic Design Schools.”

“I am so proud of our outstanding Art + Design students and faculty,” said Shanti Bruce, Ph.D., professor and chair for the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts. “They have worked hard, and this is a well-deserved honor.”

Check out the magazine feature!

Learn more about the Graphic Design concentration offered through the B.A. in Art + Design program.

Club Hosts President of American Association of Cosmetic Dentistry

The dental student Cosmetics Club hosted David Chan, D.D.S., 2021 President of the American Association of Cosmetic Dentistry (AACD) who presented a lecture and two-hour, hands-on course to more than 90 dental students on Friday, September 10, 2021.

Mohamed ‘Moe’ Badwan, D-3, Cosmetics Club vice president, lauded Chan’s hands-on simulation lab presentation as “an opportunity to connect and build on what we’ve been working very hard for the last year and a half with this organization, which is to be able to bridge the gap in esthetic education in the field of cosmetic dentistry.”

Franziska Klostermyer, D-4, Cosmetics Club president, noted the club has been trying to create more connections between the AACD and Nova Southeastern University’s College of Dental Medicine. Chan agreed to visit NSU after she reached out to him on Instagram.

Liliana Mosquera, D.D.S., the Cosmetics Club faculty adviser, and Sharon Siegel, D.D.S., M.S., M.B.A., professor and chair, Department of Prosthodontics at NSU-CDM, agreed that Chan’s presentation speaks to the College of Dental Medicine’s excellent reputation. The Cosmetics Club has more than 200 members and is one of the most popular student organizations in the College of Dental Medicine with excellent outside lecturers every month.

U School Students Receive Osteopathic Medicine Fellowship

NSU University School congratulates the outstanding Upper School students who have been selected to participate in the 2021-22 NSU Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine (KPCOM) Fellowship.

  • Leilani Batista
  • Grace Davidson
  • Jordyn Epstein
  • Sophia Ewald
  • Alisa Fedotova
  • Alexander Gannon
  • Lara Hoffman
  • Ava Lawrence
  • Samantha Macarounis
  • Katelyn Mathes
  • Parker Minars
  • Naomi Raisman
  • Ryan Sobol
  • Sam Weiner
  • Allie Ziegler

Throughout this yearlong immersive learning experience, student fellows delve into the field of medicine by participating in several labs alongside NSU College of Osteopathic Medicine professionals and develop essential skills that are going to be relevant to their jobs as future physicians. This prestigious fellowship opportunity, made possible through our unique partnership with Nova Southeastern University, is one of the many advantages of being a USchool student.

WCC Undergrad’s Short Documentary Wins First Place

Janay Joseph, NSU Writing and Communication Center (WCC) undergraduate consultant, and Halmos College of Arts and Sciences history and international studies major, won first place for her short documentary “She Had a Dream: Eula Johnson’s Fight to Desegregate Broward County” at the Undergraduate Student Symposium (USS), hosted by the Farquhar Honors College April 6-8, 2021.

Janay Joseph

Joseph’s “She Had a Dream” began as a short video project for her internship with History Fort Lauderdale, who helped produce the film along with her internship supervisor, Tara Chadwick. Joseph’s film focuses on Eula Johnson, a Civil Rights activist who led the Wade-ins protest on Fort Lauderdale Beach and became the first woman president of the NAACP Broward Chapter. Joseph’s video focused on Johnson’s story in an effort to inform others of her work as a Civil Rights activist, which led to the desegregation of Broward County Schools and other public facilities.

“I found her story inspiring since she was fearless in fighting for the rights of African-Americans including those outside of her community in Sistrunk,” she said. “With the recent Black Lives Matter protests it shows that a lot of the same issues she was fighting for in the past are still the struggles that Black people go through today. In a way, it links her past to our present. It was an honor to take first place and to see that her story resonated with so many people.”

NSU’s annual USS features and celebrates undergraduate student scholarship through poster displays, oral presentations, films, and performances. Representation in the USS often leads students to further research and publication, and presentation opportunities at both local and national conferences and conventions.

Watch Joseph’s “She Had a Dream: Eula Johnson’s Fight to Desegregate Broward County.”

Learn more about the NAACP Broward Chapter.

Learn more about the Undergraduate Student Symposium.

https://honors.nova.edu/student-symposium/index.html

Learn more about the NSU Writing & Communication Center.

 

Halmos Chemist Publishes International Paper on Symmetry

Russell Driver, Ph.D.

This year, chemistry faculty Russell Driver, Ph.D. collaborated with researchers at KAIST in South Korea (KAIST). Part of Halmos College, Driver’s research focused on the structural elucidation of self-assembling organic materials and the processes that influence nanoscale symmetry selection.

For this paper, published in Small – Wiley Online Library, Driver solved the single crystal X-ray structures of many of the folders in the paper which was published on the inside front cover.

With a 2020 Journal Impact Factor of 13.281 (Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics, 2021)), Small continues to be among the top multidisciplinary journals covering a broad spectrum of topics at the nano- and microscale at the interface of materials science, chemistry, physics, engineering, medicine, and biology.

Halmos Faculty Presents on Understanding Family Violence

Judith McKay

Judith McKay, J.D., Ph.D., director of the doctoral program, and faculty in the Department of Conflict Resolution Studies (DCRS) in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Center (HCAS), presented at the 29th Annual Dispute Resolution Center’s Conference, held virtually in August 2021.  The conference theme was “Bringing People Together.” McKay’s presentation was titled “Creating Safer Communities: Understanding Family Violence and the Effects on Communities and Organizations.”

McKay is the faculty adviser to the Social Justice Roundtable and works with students in the community through Community Resolution Services, a practicum and volunteer site for DCRS. Community Resolution Services hosts Story Café, We Love our Families series, The Women’s Roundtable, and is involved in offering workshops for the county’s Crisis Intervention Teams, and other events for community groups and organizations.

McKay’s scholarly interests include conflict coaching, strategic community planning, and violence prevention and intervention in family, neighborhood, and organizational conflicts.  For more information about Community Resolution Services, please contact McKay at mckayj@nova.edu.

Halmos Faculty Presents at Distance Learning Conference

Santanu De, M.Sc., Ph.D., faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Center (HCAS), presented a 30-minute talk at the Florida Distance Learning Association (FDLA) Conference 2021 held virtually from September 29 through October 1, 2021.

The theme of the conference was “Emerging with New Digital Potentials.”  The title of De’s presentation was “Key Strategies for Effective Pedagogy and Assessment of College STEM Courses Online during COVID-19.”  De collaborated on and co-presented this interdisciplinary project with Georgina Arguello, Ed.D., faculty at NSU’s Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice.

De’s research interests include, STEM education, pedagogy, reproductive physiology, developmental biology, cell biology, and protein biology.

Halmos College Research Explores Mind-Altering Parasite

Research has shown how hyena cubs infected with the toxoplasma parasite become bolder in the face of lions, resulting in higher death rates. Commonly found in house cats, Toxoplasma gondii is the parasite that sometimes spreads to humans who handle domestic cat feces and can cause a disease called toxoplasmosis.

Cats aren’t the only animal to harbor the parasite. It’s also found in wild species, including the hyenas inhabiting a remote region of Kenya. These animals are now helping researchers answer longstanding questions about T. gondii’s impacts on wild hosts. In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers from a variety of fields joined forces to look if the parasite impacts the animals’ behavior and survival.

Eben Gering, Ph.D., the co-lead author of the study and Halmos College of Arts and Sciences biology faculty said, “Hyenas turned out to be an excellent model for asking questions about the links between infection and behavior.” Research showed that in hyena cubs, the parasite impacted survival rates. The team found that hyena cubs up to a year old were more likely to be killed by lions if they were infected with the parasite. In fact, all the infected cubs that died were killed by lions. Only 17% of the uninfected cubs died from lion attacks before turning a year old.

Superthin Galaxies Contain Large Amounts of Dark Matter

Examples of blue (EON 32.766 6.667, top) and red (EON 149.150 20.646, bottom) superthin galaxies. The horizontal bar in each panel demonstrates the scale in arcseconds and kpc at the distance of the galaxies.

The thinnest disk galaxies have been studied a long time because of their unusual appearance. Why are they so thin? It is unclear what preserves the disks in this state. These rare galaxies are a mystery.

An international group of astrophysicists, including Halmos College physics faculty Stefan Kautsch, Ph.D., recently published an article on the spectral observations of 138 superthin galaxies (STGs). Using the Dual Imaging Spectrograph on the 3.5m telescope at the Apache Point Observatory located in the Sacramento Mountains in Sunspot, New Mexico, the research group focused on spectroscopic observations of STGs and how those may help explain the resistance of STGs against morphological transformations and disk thickening.

“We discovered that the thinnest spiral galaxies, the so called superthins, contain very big amounts of Dark Matter. It is like this unknown material squeezes the stellar galactic disks in those galaxies into their superthin state,” Kautsch said.

The researchers found that most of the STGs reviewed were dark matter dominated. Their rotational velocity and dark halo mass correlates with galactic color. The blue STGs also have less compact dark halos than the red STGs, whereas the galaxies in both color groups have their halo-to-disk scales ratios under two.

Their results are published in The Astrophysical Journal, published by the American Astronomical Society.

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