Tag: Halmos College of Arts and Sciences

CAHSS Faculty Selected as Judge for 2020 Hit Like a Girl +Beats by Girlz International Contest

 

Jessica Muñiz-Collado, M.F.A.,

Jessica Muñiz-Collado, M.F.A., faculty in the Department of Performing and Visual Arts (DPVA) in NSU’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS), was selected to be a Music Technology/Beat-making judge for the 2020 Hit Like a Girl + Beats by Girlz International Contest. The HLAG +BBG was created to spotlight female beat makers/producers from all around the world and encourage females to engage in music technology. The contest is sponsored and endorsed by renowned music companies including Ableton, ROLI, Native Instruments, Melodics, Novation and Presonus.

Muñiz-Collado has performed and recorded with numerous musicians and artists including Grammy-nominated saxophonist Steve Elson, jazz vibraphonist Arthur Lipner, Cookie “Conga” Lopez, Anders Astrand, Jean Geoffroy, Ney Rosauro, and trumpet all-star John Walsh. She has also performed throughout North and South America, toured with the FROST Percussion Sextet in Japan, and was a guest lecturer and performer at the international music conference LeRock & L’Amour held at the Universite Paul-Valery in Montpellier, France.

At NSU, she taught courses in composition, music production, and percussion. In addition, she directed the Mako Band, NSU Pep Band, and managed NSU Mako Records.

Halmos College Assistant Dean Co-edits Book for Springer

In Spring 2020, Springer – International Publisher Science, Technology, Medicine released “Advances in Artificial Systems for Medicine and Education III”, co-edited by Halmos assistant dean and professor Matthew He, Ph.D.

This book discusses the latest advances in the development of artificial intelligence systems and their applications in various fields, from medicine and technology to education. It comprises papers presented at the Third International Conference of Artificial Intelligence, Medical Engineering, Education (AIMEE2019), held at the Mechanical Engineering Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, on 1–3 October 2019. Covering topics such as mathematics and biomathematics; medical approaches; and technological and educational approaches, it is intended for the growing number of specialists and students in this field, as well as other readers interested in discovering where artificial intelligence systems can be applied in the future.

CAHSS Faculty Authors Book, The Public Relations Writer’s Handbook

Whitney Lehmann, Ph.D., faculty in the Department of Writing and Communication in NSU’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS), has written a book, The Public Relations Writer’s Handbook, published by Routledge.

“I have taught Public Relations Writing since 2013 during my time as a doctoral student at the University of Miami. While I love the text that I previously used for the course, it was published in 2009,” Lehmann said. She wanted to create an updated work for PR students, practitioners, and educators that covered digital/social media. She indicated that her journalism experience was valuable in learning how to write as a PR practitioner and how to best pitch stories to the media.

“Learning the fundamentals of journalistic writing, in my opinion, is key to understanding and succeeding at writing for public relations,” she said.

Lehmann’s book is divided by topic, with the media relations section covering how to create press releases, pitch stories, and create media kits. The storytelling section covers news and feature writing, interviewing and creating bio sketches. A digital media section outlines writing for emails, the internet, and social media. The remaining sections cover business/executive communications and writing for events.

Lehmann plans to use the book in her fall Public Relations Writing class, and said the book is under consideration for use at the University of Miami’s School of Communication, where she earned an M.A. in Journalism and a Ph.D. in Communication.

“I think it would be so cool to have my alma mater adopt the book,” Lehmann said.

Although social media is constantly evolving, Lehmann emphasized the importance of constructing content with a conversational tone that engages the needs/wants of the audience. Social media will be the focus of her next book, Let’s Get Social: Social Media Writing and Strategy. She was a finalist for the 2018 Communicator of the Year by the Public Relations Society of America Greater Fort Lauderdale Chapter. In 2019, the chapter named the Department of Writing and Communication as its Department of the Year for Lehmann’s work establishing and advising the NSU chapter of the Public Relations Society of America. She teaches courses such as Mass Media, Public Relations Campaigns, and Social Media Theory and Practice.

For more information about her book, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/The-Public-Relations-Writers-Handbook/Lehmann/p/book/9780815365280

Conflict Analysis and Resolution Alumna is Guest Services Manager for Spirit Airlines in Baltimore

Marina Stonewall, M.S., PMP,

Marina Stonewall, M.S., PMP, a 2006 graduate of the master’s program in Conflict Analysis and Resolution in NSU’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS), is Guest Services Manager for Spirit Airlines at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. The Guest Services Manager supervises, monitors, and directs station personnel. Prior to her current position, Stonewall was Luggage Resolution Manager for Spirit Airlines in Miramar.

Of her education at NSU, Stonewall indicated: “I am using my degree as a an employee of Spirit Airlines as a skill set to coach my team in managing conflict situations between team members or between team members and the general public working.   I started as the Manager of Luggage Resolution in Miramar, FL before moving to Maryland for the Guest Services Manager role at BWI airport; the skills can be used universally across various business sectors. As an example, since graduation I have worked as a federal contractor at the Pentagon, for a non-profit, and now an airline.  I am also a business owner, M Power Fitness, LLC, which allows me the opportunity to use negotiation skills when speaking with potential clients.  The ability to use the resources I have learned as a student at NSU towards the things I love – travel and fitness – has been the best part of recognizing what I wanted to be when I grew up.”

In addition to her degree from NSU, Stonewall earned a B.S. in Political Science from the University of Montevallo, and PMP (Project Management Professional) from the Project Management Institute.

Halmos Faculty Represents NSU at HAPS Annual Conference

This summer, Halmos college faculty member, Santanu De, Ph.D. represented NSU at the 2020 Human Anatomy and Physiology Society (HAPS) Virtual Annual Conference. Organized by Pearson Education, a Zoom meeting at this conference consisted of Anatomy and Physiology (A&P) faculty from across the US. The topic of discussion was “Teaching A&P Online: time-saving strategies for effective instruction”.

The mission of HAPS is to promote excellence in the teaching of anatomy and physiology. HAPS is open to anyone interested in Anatomy & Physiology Education, and currently includes over 1,700 members from high schools, two- and four-year colleges, universities, and private businesses in the United States, Canada and throughout the rest of the world.

The annual HAPS national conference, regional conferences, the HAPS Educator and HAPS Institute courses provide members with an important means of updating their knowledge, improving technical/pedagogical skills, investigating new technologies for the laboratory/classroom, as well as networking with a growing international contingent of peers.

 

Honors College Students Present Family History Narratives at Virtual Class Symposium

This April, students in the honors seminar course Genetics and Genealogy presented their family history narratives in a virtual Class Symposium. As part of this course, students shared inspiring stories of survival, migrations, family traditions, and perseverance. Each student learned something new about their families and where they come from and how they have evolve.

The class research was twofold: students completed genetics studies showing their ancestral markers and also completed a genealogical research project to uncover historical records and other documents. These projects allow students to have a personal connection with historical events. Genetics and Genealogy is unique in that it is taught collaboratively from both a humanities and science perspective by professors James Doan, Ph.D. from the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and Emily Schmitt Lavin, Ph.D. from Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography.

In addition to these faculty members, the students collaborated with the Alvin Sherman Library to access genealogy resources. This was done with the help of Nora Quinlan, Director of Reference and Instruction. She created a genealogy library guide.

This course is offered through the Honors College under Dean, Don Rosenblum along with a variety of other unique course offerings: https://honors.nova.edu/honors/courses.html

Since the completion of the course, several of the  students have contributed their work to the NSU Works Genealogy Reports Site located at https://nsuworks.nova.edu/genealogy-reports/.

CAHSS Offers Basic Guitar Classes and a Virtual Guitar Orchestra “Concert in the Time of COVID Quarantine”

Would you like to learn to play the guitar or improve your playing? NSU’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS) offers Beginning Guitar MUSC 1300 throughout the year and recently students provided a Virtual Guitar Orchestra “Concert in the Time of COVID Quarantine.”  Led by adjunct professor Tarra Guerra, M.M., the students in the class learn music notation and rhythms, strumming patterns and to perform major, minor, and seventh chords. The goal is for the class to be enjoyable, and for the members of the class to form a supportive network for each other’s efforts. Each week there are informal opportunities to play both solo and group (ensemble) performances and there are two public class concerts.

Guerra teaches Guitar at CAHSS and runs Suzuki Strings South Florida. She is a member of the Guitar Foundation of America, the Miami Classical Guitar Society, the Florida Guitar Foundation, the Suzuki Associations of the Americas and of South Florida, Morning Musicale, and the Florida Federation of Music Teachers. Guerra has performed original rock in New York City and Seattle, original country in Nashville, Celtic and modern folk in New Zealand and Ireland, Bluegrass in North Carolina and Florida, been a professional one-person band, and is a published songwriter with several solo albums.

The course, Beginning Guitar is offered in the fall in two sections: MUSC 1300 CRN 21772 and MUSC 1300 CRN 21846 both taught by Guerra.

To enjoy the virtual concert, please see: https://youtu.be/7Ak7AZ5-Vvo

 

Halmos Undergraduates and Faculty Abstract Accepted in Chemical Symposium

This spring, undergraduates Brian Kim, Rohan Muchintala, Owayne Haughton, and their faculty advisors Santanu De, Ph.D. and Arthur Sikora, Ph.D. had their abstract “Novel assessment strategies for biochemistry courses using the research-based Biochemistry Authentic Student Inquiry Lab (BASIL) model” accepted by the South Florida Section American Chemical Society’s Chemical Sciences Symposium, 2020 organized by Larkin University, Miami, FL. Unfortunately, the symposium was cancelled due to COVID-19 shutdown.

Their abstract is as follows:

Recently, many academic units have started implementing Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) to increase student research opportunities. CUREs offer the key advantage of course integration that enables all students to participate in a research project, irrespective of economic or time constraints. A major obstacle hindering further expansion of CUREs centers around the design of assessments. Designing more effective content and assessment tools for this growing group of courses presents unique challenges. New adopters often struggle with important pedagogical decisions while shifting from traditional cookbook biochemistry labs featuring predetermined answers to ones that focus on student-driven discovery demonstrating the scientific method. Nova Southeastern University recently implemented a CURE-based laboratory course using the discovery-based BASIL (Biochemistry Authentic Student Inquiry Lab) model. Students hypothesize and test functions of enzymes with no known function, through wet-lab and computational approaches. Using established Anticipated Learning Outcomes (ALOs) established for BASIL, specific assessment questions were created. Likert scale analysis was employed to analyze responses from students enrolled in the biochemistry course to determine mastery of the ALOs. Identification of deficiencies in understanding permits targeted intervention using lab procedure changes and assessment optimization. The complex nature of ALOs frequently demand diverse assessment design. While assessment tools were tailored according to the varied ALO statements, interesting patterns were observed. Student responses indicated notable improvement in comprehension of bioinformatic concepts by the semester’s end. Several ALOs were detected as areas requiring improvement. This allowed for better designs of experimentation, questionnaire and explanation. Understanding the fundamental problems students face when first entering research will help attract more talented students from diverse backgrounds to vital chemistry/biochemistry courses. This preliminary study can expose undergraduate students to the experience of participation in a research project, guide the transition of ALOs to VLOs (Verified Learning Outcomes), and lead to novel assessment strategies towards standardized adoption of CUREs across educational institutions and curricula, potentially transforming the way chemical sciences are taught. The BASIL project is funded by NSF IUSE 1503811 and 1709170.

 

 

CAHSS Faculty and Student Co-author Book Review in Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society

Andrea Shaw Nevins, Ph.D., and Shari Drumond, B.A., co-authored a book review in Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society. Nevins is professor in the Department of Literature and Modern Languages and Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs in NSU’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS). Drumond is a graduate student in the M.A. in Composition, Rhetoric, and Digital Media in CAHSS. They reviewed the book, Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings.

Nevins teaches courses in international studies, literature, writing, and film, with a focus on the Caribbean and African Diaspora. Drumond received her B.A. in Secondary English Education from Florida Atlantic University.

For more information about the book review, please go to https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21604851.2020.1747721

NSU Faculty Research Concierge Health Care Service

NSU associate professors Louis Nemzer, PhD of The Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography and Florence Neymotin, PhD of The H. Wayne Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship teamed up to study concierge doctors using machine learning. Concierge care in the United States represents an important part of the rapidly increasing “Velvet Rope Economy,” in which premium service is available for the privileged few prepared to pay a hefty price. Similar to the system of first class on airplanes or box suites at a football game, instead of a regular practice, these physicians charge large annual retainers. In return, patients can get priority attention with less time spent in waiting rooms. The use of machine learning methods in Economics is becoming increasingly popular, especially in the field of health care, which has huge amounts of data waiting to be analyzed. For this project, the faculty members scraped thousands of patients reviews from the website healthgrades.com and performed a machine learning sematic analysis to determine which words were most associated with concierge doctors in California and Florida, as compared with conventional family or internal medicine physicians. They found that technical words, like “staff,” and “diagnosis” are more likely to be on the minds of consumers of concierge care, who are paying for rapid access. In contrast, patients of conventional doctors mentioned “concerns” and “listen”, which show a greater concern for bedside manner. The work is published in Health Economics, which is classified as a first-tier journal by the Harzing Journal Quality List. Future work may include extending these semantic analysis methods to other online feedback sites.

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