Category: SharkBytes

Craig Johnson, M.S., 2015 graduate of the College Student Affairs master’s program in NSU’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS) currently serves as the Director of Orientation Programs at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. As Director, he oversees the development and execution of online and on-campus welcome programs for incoming undergraduate students. For the fall of 2018, orientation programs at Purdue University welcomed over 8,600 students, the largest in Purdue’s 150-year history.

Outside of Purdue, he is an active member of the Association for Orientation, Transition and Retention in Higher Education (NODA) at the national and regional levels. In 2018, Johnson was recognized as the NODA Outstanding New Professional for Region VII (Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and the province of Ontario), and next spring, he will serve as host for NODA’s 2020 Region VII Conference held at Purdue.  Johnson also serves as a member of the Leadership Operations Projects Team (LOPT) for the Barbershop Harmony Society, a music organization with 22,000 members across North America and affiliated men’s and women’s organizations in more than a dozen countries. As a member of the LOPT, he works closely with a group of Leadership Facilitators who help active BHS chapters align organizational goals to their program and community impacts through a series of active facilitation practices.  Inside and outside of work, conflict analysis and facilitation strategies are critical to the success of his teams and others. “I often reflect back on strategies learned in my time at NSU, and see myself opening doors for others into the conflict, mediation, and facilitation communities.”   Prior to earning his M.S. from NSU, Johnson earned a B.A.A. in Organizational Communication from Central Michigan University. He has been at Purdue University since July 2015.

At the beginning of August 2019, Halmos M.S. alumna Nina Pruzinsky and her research were featured by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI). As a master’s student in marine biology, Ms. Pruzinsky examined the abundance, distribution, and morphological characteristics of larval and juvenile tunas (family Scombridae) and identified primary drivers of their distribution to help fill this gap and inform future management and conservation efforts.

The research took place in the research laboratory of Halmos faculty member Tracey Sutton, Ph.D. who leads the DEEPEND Consortium, which is assessing how the Deepwater Horizon oil spill may have damaged the Gulf of Mexico’s little-explored deep-sea ecosystems.

GoMRI’s mission is to investigate the impacts of the oil, dispersed oil, and dispersant on the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico and affected coastal States in a broad context of improving fundamental understanding of the dynamics of such events and their environmental stresses and public health implications.

For more information:http://gulfresearchinitiative.org/grad-student-pruzinsky-uses-morphological-patterns-to-id-young-tuna-for-population-assessments/

Michelle Cromwell, M.S. (’01), Ph.D. (’08), is an associate vice president for inclusive excellence and the chief diversity officer at Regis College in Weston, Massachusetts. As a member of the college’s President’s Cabinet, Cromwell counsels the president and administrative council on matters of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Previously at Regis College, Cromwell was an associate professor of politics and social justice, as well as director of the Honors Program from 2010 to 2016. She has also served as the chief diversity officer at The School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont. Describing herself as a pracademic, Cromwell says she is a scholar-practitioner who has “one foot in the academe and the other in the community, as a practitioner.”

She was the cofounding executive director at the Massachusetts Peacemaking and Talking Circle Initiative, a nonprofit organization designed to foster conversations about discrimination and racism in schools, nonprofits, and organizations. In addition, Cromwell serves as an independent consultant working with nonprofits, higher-education institutions, corporations, and government entities with an emphasis on conflict resolution, crisis management, and diversity and inclusion.

At Nova Southeastern University, Cromwell earned an M.S. in Dispute Resolution and a Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution specializing in ethnic conflicts. She earned a B.S. degree in social work at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago in 1998.

Deborah A. Tedder, M.B.A. (’00), M.S.N. (’09), is the chief nursing officer at Northwest Medical Center in Margate, Florida.

With 42 years of experience, Tedder has held nursing leadership positions at major health care systems, including Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, and Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida, where she served as chief nursing officer. She also worked at Grand Strand Regional Medical Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, before moving to Northwest Medical Center in 2016.

“Achieving an M.B.A. at NSU provided me with the financial and business knowledge to fiscally manage and oversee nursing,” said Tedder, whose early nursing career focused on medical-surgical intensive care. “Obtaining an M.S.N. degree-also at NSU-allowed me to combine nursing leadership knowledge with the business skills needed to successfully lead the nursing division of these major health care systems.”

In 2016, Tedder was elected to the Board of Nursing Consortium of South Florida. She serves on the boards at Mercy Hospital and Mercy Care Hospice and the advisory board at Florida Atlantic University. She belongs to the Florida Nurses Association, National League for Nursing, and South Florida Organization of Nurse Executives. Tedder is the 2017 recipient of the American Hospital Association (AHA) Patient Leaders Fellowship and the 2011 recipient of AHA McKesson Quest for Quality Prize award.