Category: Academics

Summer Camp Delivers Cutting-Edge Health Care Experience

Students work with Lucina, NSU’s Birth Simulator.

Nova Southeastern University’s Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine opened its doors to high-schoolers through its AIM-High program – a five-day medical school immersive summer camp held from July 17 to July 21 on NSU’s Fort Lauderdale/Davie Campus.

Achieve in Medicine (AIM) – High is designed for academically strong freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior high school students who are interested in pursuing a career in the health professions. AIM-High will provide students with hands-on medical experiences, which include the role of technology in the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions.

Camp participants were able to get seven-plus hours of instruction each day and will learn alongside NSU medical students and faculty.

Among the student experiences this summer were the:

  • SIMTIC Simulator, where students practiced intubation skills, obtained vital signs from the medical student volunteers, and listened to heart and lung sounds on our high-fidelity manikins.
  • Sports Medicine-Splinting Skills Lab, where students learned about using a splint for fractures and other injuries.
  • Labor, delivery, and newborn infant care, where students were exposed to the Lucina Birth Simulator.
  • Immersive Learning Technology in Medical Education, where students received interactive immersive hands-on experience with Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) 3D Anatomy and Mixed Reality (MR).

Posted 07/30/23

CRDM Alum Hosts Workshop for WCC Consultants

Emalee Bishop

Emalee Bishop (née Shrewsbury), an alum from the M.A. in Composition, Rhetoric, and Digital Media (CRDM) program, hosted a workshop for NSU Writing and Communication Center (WCC) consultants and current CRDM students about her experiences as Marketing Manager for OZ Digital Consulting on January 31, 2023. Bishop was also a WCC Graduate Assistant Coordinator while at NSU.

Bishop’s workshop highlighted transferable skills she learned at the WCC and as an NSU student. She discussed how to leverage creativity, communication, and critical thinking in a corporate environment. She guided participants in reflecting on how to use skills they possess in their future careers.

When asked about this experience, Bishop said, “Considering life after higher education is a scary and stressful step. It certainly was for me. The time spent in this workshop was important to me because I wanted to give students who follow in my academic footsteps some tools, resources, and advice on how to think about that next step. [It] does help to have guidance from those who have come before us to help clear the debris from the path they are about to begin. I hope I could be that guide for the attendees of this workshop.”

To learn more about the M.A. in CRDM, visit: https://hcas.nova.edu/degrees/masters/composition-rhetoric-digital-media.html

Posted 07/30/23

NSU Sonography Team Member Defends Dissertation

Robert Moody, Ph.D., M.S., RVT, CVS assistant professor.

The Cardiovascular Sonography (CVS) program is also proud to make known the great accomplishments of Robert Moody, Ph.D., M.S., RVT, CVS assistant professor.

Moody successfully defended his dissertation on Medical Imaging Professionals Experiencing Workplace Interprofessional Conflict: A Phenomenological Study on June 22, 2023. He is a valued faculty member and medical professional in the field of sonography.

We celebrate his accomplishments, tenacity, and leadership and we are honored to have him as a part of Dr. Pallavi Patel College of Health Care Sciences in the Department of Sonography, and especially the cardiovascular sonography team.

Great Job, Robert Moody!

Posted 07/17/23

2023 White Coat Ceremony Welcomes Future Sonographers

Class of 2025 White Coat Ceremony

On June 20, the class of 2025 was officially welcomed into the sonography fold at the Annual White Coat Ceremony, which was held at the beautiful Tampa Bay Campus in Clearwater.

For the 20 students comprising the class of 2025, the White Coat Ceremony served as an auspicious experience that officially marked their entry into the medical profession. The White Coat Ceremony tradition will be continued with where family, faculty members, and administration members proudly watch students receive their white coats.

Posted 07/17/23

Honors Students and Faculty Collaborate Using Research Grant

From left, Amenia Farraj, Jalynn Sylvain, and Dr. Charlene Désir

Faculty and students in the Farquhar Honors College received a $15,000 President’s Faculty Research and Development Grant to study Gen Z college students’ interest in and ways of learning. Their research, titled “In Their Words: Collaborative Assessment of Undergraduate Intellectual Curiosity,” will bridge the generational gap in traditional and modern understandings of education to encourage innovation in the classroom.

The research project is a collaboration between faculty members Charlene Désir, Ed.D., professor in the Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice (FCESCJ), Rachel Panton, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Hamos College of Arts and Sciences, and Georgina Arguello, Ed.D., assistant dean and associate professor in FCESCJ, and honors students Amenia Farraj, and Jalynn Sylvain.

The project was conceived by the students after hearing about Désir’s research on youth education at an honors Research Roundtable event—an event created to connect honors students with faculty research opportunities.

“As an educator, I am humbled always to learn from students, they are my first teachers and this juxtaposition gives me the opportunity to model being a learner/student,” said Désir. “This project is a way for me to be inspired from the knowledge of undergrads . . . and learn ways teachers can effectively engage with them.”

The study aims to highlight the different modalities and environments in which college students learn, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic changed the learning landscape and emphasized the role of technology.

“Often, I think older adults can accuse emerging adults of not being intellectually curious because the younger generation receives information differently from what we experienced or even prefer,” said Panton. “I want to understand how we can better synthesize the knowledge that they bring from their communities, their families, and digital technologies into our classrooms.”

The researchers will use a mixed-methods approach and hope to publish and share their results creatively, such as through a children’s book and Mako Radio segment.

“This [project is] an opportunity to [combine] faculty and student interests and allow[s] us to explore students’ interests in learning in our own community,” said Farraj, a junior political science major. “Working with Dr. Désir and the other faculty has been an enlightening experience.”

Learn more about the President’s Faculty Research & Development Grant.

Posted 07/16/23

NSU Research Continues to Break New, Expanding Ground

Ken Dawson-Scully, Ph.D., associate provost and senior vice president for the Division of Research and Economic Development

$145 million in active grants. 170 grants. 100 different funding agencies.

“All of those numbers are record highs for the university,” said Ken Dawson-Scully, Ph.D., associate provost and senior vice president for the Division of Research and Economic Development (DoR). “We expose our students to genuine research, where they’re developing knowledge rather than just learning knowledge.”

NSU is recognized by the Carnegie Foundation as an R2 Doctoral University with high research activity. In 2022, the National Science Foundation ranked the university 70th out of all private universities in the United States for its research efforts. And, for the first time in the school’s history, NSU received a U-Rise grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, a division of the National Institutes of Health. This $1.5-million grant funds opportunities for undergraduates to work in research labs and get paid for doing so.

In addition, research from NSU faculty and staff members and students was published 750 times during the last year—a 35 percent increase in publications from the previous year.

“The colleges, the faculty and their students, and the staff are the engines of research for the university,” said Dawson-Scully. “I’m just the person who gets to brag about all these wonderful things and gets to serve these individuals through research administration while bringing researchers together, internally or with other companies and institutions looking for collaborators.”

Dawson-Scully joined NSU in 2021. Prior to his current role, he was a professor and administrator at Florida Atlantic University (FAU). In his FAU lab, he conducted research on fruit flies to explore how to protect the brain from different types of neurodegenerations and stress. He also served as the head of institutional partnerships at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience, where he developed programs partnering the world-class researchers at the institute with student trainees from FAU.

“I got to the point where, instead of developing those programs, I was managing them,” he said. “An opportunity came along at NSU to be in a leadership position and start building again. When I moved to Florida in 2008 from Canada, I didn’t know about the research profile of NSU. But, when I applied for the position in 2020, NSU had grown so rapidly, and put such an enormous investment into research, that my mind was blown, and I was excited to be a part of its exponential growth.”

The DoR administers research for the university. This includes—but is not limited to—handling patents and copyrights, assisting faculty members in finding and applying for grants, ensuring that projects are compliant, conducting clinical research, and bolstering the university’s research infrastructure at the Center for Collaborative Research.

“Our core facilities are available to every faculty and staff member within the university, and we even offer our services to the community,” Dawson-Scully said. “When research comes into the university, it helps build a better environment for teaching for our faculty and a better environment for learning for students.”

In the Campaign for Preeminence, NSU has a goal of raising $500 million in cumulative research funds by 2025. As of early March, more than $418 million—84 percent of the university’s goal—has been raised. The university continues to be on an upward trajectory for growth in research, and Dawson-Scully and his team are looking for ways to continue accelerating that growth.

NSU Health is one of the university’s research accelerators. The initiative brings the university’s clinical practices under one umbrella to enable NSU to better serve the community, give students better experiences, and increase the university’s research infrastructure.

One example of how NSU Health is accelerating research in in the work of Eduardo Locatelli, M.D., M.P.H. He sees patients who suffer from ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He also runs clinical trials on new drugs that have the potential to stave off this horrible disease, and one of the drugs he was working with recently received FDA approval. The medication has the potential to double the life span of patients diagnosed with ALS.

“Locatelli’s research not only increases our clinical research profile, but also brings students at the undergraduate and graduate levels who are working with this cutting edge, clinical research,” Dawson-Scully said.

The Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation is another entity that increases the university’s research capabilities. Faculty and staff members and students interact and innovate with everything from phone apps to interacting with NASA and the space foundation. The Levan Center is attracting large grants from federal agencies, as well as local, state, and county sources.

Dawson-Scully established a Changing Lives scholarship for undergraduate students who want to pursue research. Donors can also create a scholarship fund or programming endowment.

“It’s always a positive thing to be able to donate, because it’s used toward creating knowledge and giving our students that edge,” Dawson-Scully said.

For more information on research at NSU, please contact Alissa Hechter, Assistant Vice President of Development & Alumni Engagement, at (855) 792-2230 or ah833@nova.edu

Posted 07/02/23

Criminal Justice Grad Student Receives Changing Lives Scholarship

Graduate student Travis Brooks

The Carl Cecil Eagle Changing Lives Scholarship recipient Travis Brooks is a graduate student in the criminal justice program at NSU’s Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice. He is a member of Alpha Phi Sigma, the Criminal Justice Honor Society. In addition to working toward his master’s degree, Brooks serves as a commissioner’s aide in the City of Lauderhill, Florida.

“I would like to personally thank Dr. Massey for making it possible for me to be awarded the Carl Cecil Eagle Changing Lives Scholarship,” Brooks said. “It has made a huge impact on my self-confidence and provided me with funds to not only continue my education, but has also help me out in a time of need.”

The scholarship was created by Larry Massey, Ph.D., in honor of Eagle, a Native American, Bronze Star recipient for valor, and WWII veteran. After WWII, Eagle used his GI Bill to attend college, majored in history, and then became a high school teacher. His family legacy involves respecting cultural traditions within context of historic events. The award contributes to the education of future teachers and studies relating to understanding the history of marginalized groups.

Brooks is a first-generation graduate student who hails from Maxton, a small rural town in North Carolina. Raised on a farm of produce and livestock, he is a member of a Lumbee tribe in southeastern North Carolina. The people of the Lumbee tribe are known for their entrepreneurial spirit and focus on education. The criminal justice program, professors, and offered courses at NSU drew Brooks to Florida, where he has found success due in part to the networking he has been able to do at the university.

Future plans for Brooks include pursuing a career with the Department of Homeland Security and possibly returning to school to earn his law degree. He also hopes to follow Dr. Massey’s lead and establish a scholarship fund for students in need at NSU and at the University of North Carolina Pembroke, where he earned his bachelor’s degree.

“Thank you to Dr. Massey for honoring me with this scholarship and for everything he and his family have done for Native American students in need who are on the path to continuing their education,” Brooks said. “For someone to notice my hard work and dedication to my studies has given me the confidence and strength I have been missing. I am not always the one to boast about my studies, but when someone else notices, it truly means I am doing something right or I’m on the right path to success.”

For more information on scholarships at NSU, contact Andria Cunningham, Executive Director of Development & Alumni Engagement, at (833) 910-0372 or acunningham@nova.edu

Posted 07/02/23

Halmos Faculty Member Presents at Crustacean Congress

Tamara Frank, Ph.D.

Tamara Frank, Ph.D., faculty in the Department of Marine and Environmental Sciences in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Center presented at the 10th International Crustacean Congress, May 22-26, in Wellington, New Zealand. The title of her presentation was “The Micronektonic Crustacean Assemblage in the Gulf of Mexico:  Temporal Changes Since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.”

Frank was interviewed for the Armatus Oceanic Deep-Sea Podcast:  036 – Crustacean Congress special — Armatus Oceanic

Halmos Student Explores Sea Turtle Hatchling Success

Once numbering in the millions, sea turtle populations have dwindled to the thousands with six of seven extant sea turtle species currently listed as endangered or threatened globally. The decrease in their once abundant populations are primarily attributed to human actions and lifestyles such as fishing practices, illegal poaching, habitat loss, climate change, and pollution. Because humans are the greatest threat to sea turtle populations, sea turtles have become a key species for conservation efforts. Conservation efforts have included monitoring sea turtle nesting beaches to help keep track of populations, introducing legislation to protect nesting females and hatchlings (such as light ordinances), studying the diseases and injuries affecting juvenile and adult populations, and employing satellite tags to track their movement to understand their behaviors.

Colleen McMaken

For more than 30 years, NSU has been contracted by Broward County to implement and manage the Broward County Sea Turtle Conservation Program (BCSTCP), which monitors sea turtle nesting activity on over 24 miles of Broward County beaches. More research is constantly being done to gain a better understanding of these imperiled species. One area that is starting to gain more speed is understanding the microbiome of sea turtles to determine what microbes are negatively affecting healthy individuals and egg hatching success. In 2021, a Department of Marine and Environmental Sciences master’s student, Colleen McMaken, studied with Jose Lopez, Ph.D. at the Molecular Microbiology and Genomics (MMG) laboratory at the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Center (GHOC) and the BCSTCP to create the most comprehensive study of bacterial impacts on sea turtle eggs to date within the continental US. The department is part of the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Center (HCAS).

“Having the association between NSU and the BCSTCP provided a unique opportunity where I could be involved with the daily sea turtle monitoring and collect samples from nesting females and nests myself, while also being able to take those samples and sequence the bacterial DNA in house within the MMG,” says McMaken.

The environment is already known for impacting sea turtle nests, most notability temperature which determines the gender of the turtles. However, their research found that the environment, rather than the mother, may be playing a stronger role in influencing the microbiome of sea turtle eggs. Additionally, their research found that the abundance of certain bacteria (Pseudomonas) may influence the hatching success of the eggs themselves.  Being able to identify pathogens influencing the success of sea turtle eggs and understand their transmission can help reduce threats to the conservation of these threatened and endangered species. This research is now available through MicrobiologyOpen.

McMaken graduated with her M.S. in Marine Sciences in 2022 and presented this research in a talk entitled, “Microbial impacts on loggerhead (Caretta caretta) & green (Chelonia mydas) sea turtle hatching success” at the Florida Branch of the American Society for Microbiology (FLASM) meeting the same year. The funding for the research, along with her attendance to the FLASM meeting, were generously sponsored by NSU’s President’s Faculty Research and Development Grant (PFRDG) with McMaken as principal author.

Currently McMaken works as a research technician at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA and is still doing research.

Posted 06/19/23

NSU Students Get Hands-On Shark-Tagging Experience

Nova Southeastern University students tagged 10 sharks through a graduate-level course that partners with a non-profit, the Field School. David Shiffman, NSU adjunct professor led the class to South Beach, in waters more than 100 feet deep, showing them the important roles of shark scientists.

The Field School helped with safely holding the sharks. Students touched the sharks to collect data from them, tagging the new sharks. When away from the sharks, the students sorted bait, prepared the drum line, which is a technique used to reel in the sharks and handled the boat’s maintenance.

Weeks of reading textbook pages, listening to lectures, and studying led up to hands-on experience with the top of the food chain. With three days on the boat, students learned exactly what takes to be a shark scientist. Unlike your regular classroom, this one took sail with plenty of lessons on deck.

Madeline Hammond, the graduate assistant for Dean Holly Lynn Baumgartner for the NSU’s Halmos College of Arts and Sciences, participated in the outing.

“This three-day trip was the field portion of a class that was offered as an elective for the master’s programs in the HCAS’s Department of Marine & Environmental Sciences,” she said. “It was the first time this class was offered, as this was Dr. David Shiffman’s first semester as an adjunct faculty.”

Shiffman is a well-known conservation biologist and many of the students were excited for the opportunity to take a class with him and gain hands-on experience on a research vessel; the first section filled up quickly, so the department and Shiffman opened a second section to allow more students to take the course, Hammond said.

Shiffman, a University of Miami alum, knew the founders and many of the crew of the Field School.

“This, along with the opportunity to experience spending overnights on a research vessel and the ability to invite guest scientists on board to speak with students, led Shiffman and the program office to host the field-portion of our class on the Field School boat in Key Biscayne,” Hammond said.

“As a student, I really liked this opportunity because it allowed me to learn whether or not I would enjoy the day-to-day life of being a field scientist, and it also gave me the opportunity to make connections with different scientists pursuing various environmental career paths that I otherwise may not have met,” she said. “As the first group of students to take this class, we offered Dr. Shiffman and the program office a ton of feedback … about the course so that they can decide whether to offer this class again in the future and if so, how they can adjust it to make it an even better experience for students in the future.”

See the video of their experiential journey!

Read the story The Current!

Producer: Paulina Riojas

Videographer: Ashley Lopez and Paulina Riojas

Posted 06/18/23

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