Tag: Halmos College of Arts and Sciences

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

Local Shark Attack Victim’s Story Inspires NSU to Action

Earlier this year while getting ready for work, Nova Southeastern University’s (NSU) media relations/public information officer Joe Donzelli had NBC’s Today Show on in the background when something caught his attention.

It was the story about Ella Reed, a Florida teenager who had been bitten by a shark while wading in the surf near her home.

“Working at NSU all these years, my ears prick up when I hear someone talking about sharks,” Donzelli said. “When I focused in on the story, I said to myself, ‘Oh, we’ve gotta get her to come shark tagging with our research scientists. That can’t be the only encounter she has with a shark.’”

Donzelli was impressed with her poise and courage – not everyone would be so blasé having been bitten by a shark. And something else in the story caught his attention.

“I heard that Ella was interested in being a marine biologist, and given NSU’s preeminence in the field, I knew this was a perfect match,” he said.

So, when he got to work, Donzelli reached out to the reporter who did the story for the Today Show. Almost immediately the reporter was intrigued and said he would reach out to the family to see if they were interested, after all, he already had a relationship with them. And, sure enough, they jumped at the chance.

“When I got the invitation to go shark tagging, I was super excited,” Ella said.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and researchers from NSU’s Guy Harvey Research Institute (GHRI) welcomed a crew from NBC’s The Today Show, along with Ella, her friend Kloe (who was with Ella and helped her when she was bitten), her brother and parents, who joined Mahmood Shivji, Ph.D., director of NSU’s GHRI and the Save our Seas Foundation Shark Research Center, and Derek Burkholder, Ph.D., an NSU research scientist and their crew for a day on the Atlantic Ocean to catch, tag, and release sharks off the Florida Coast.

You can see The Today Show story HERE

“Understanding sharks is vitally important for restoring and maintaining the overall health of our oceans,” Shivji said. “As high-level and apex predators, they play a major part in balancing the marine ecosystem, and if there are no sharks, the oceans and by extension, the Earth, will suffer.”

Shivji said that some estimates show that annually 100 million sharks are removed from the oceans.

“Clearly that is not a sustainable number, and many shark species have declined by 70-90 percent,” he said. “By learning as much about sharks as we can, that information can be used by ocean management authorities to properly conserve sharks for generations to come.”

When the day finally came to head out on the ocean, Donzelli said that the one thing everyone was nervous about was would they be able to catch a shark during the trip. He had been on trips in the past where they spent the entire day on the water and didn’t catch a thing.

“There’s an old saying – it’s called fishing, not catching,” he said with a laugh.

But nothing was going to dampen this day for Ella – after pulling up a few empty bait lines, bingo, they had a shark. And not just any shark, a nine and a half foot long, 500+ pound female tiger shark.

And true to form, Ella, fearless as ever, jumped right in and worked side by side with our marine biologists to gather tissue samples from the shark and even put the tag on its dorsal fin.

The group managed to catch two additional sharks – nurse sharks – during the trip, and each time Ella and her group was right there working with NSU researchers, enjoying every minute. In fact, with one of the nurse sharks, Ella, fearless as ever, jumped in the water and got up close and personal with the large fish.

When the group returned to shore, there was one more surprise for Ella and her family.

“We talked with our admissions folks, and they agreed that we needed to nurture her love of the ocean and marine biology,” Donzelli said. “So, we are reserving a spot for Ella when she graduates from high school and will work to provide her with as many scholarship opportunities as we can. We’d be lucky to have her become an NSU Shark.”

Posted 06/18/23

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

NSU Juneteenth Event Features Breakfast Book-Reading, June 19

Learn more and find out at the NSU Belonging, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (BEDI) Advisory Council’s “Juneteenth with a Breakfast + Book Reading” discussion on Monday, June 19, at the Alvin Sherman Library from 9 to 11 a.m. Join us in-person or via Zoom in reading, On Juneteenth, by Annette Gordon-Reed.

The “Breakfast + Book Reading” of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annette Gordon-Reed’s 2021 book “On Juneteenth.” To discover more about the history of Juneteenth and African American cultural traditions and access the book in print, eBook, or as an e-audiobook, click here to access the BEDI library guide compiled by the Alvin Sherman Library.

For this event, we are excited to have a panel discussion facilitated and moderated by Ransford Edwards, Ph.D., associate professor of political science from the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences, William Hawks, Ed.D., assistant professor of management from the H. Wayne Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship, and Tamara Lumsden from Campus Life.

The event will take place at the Adolfo and Marisela Cotilla Gallery on the second floor of the Alvin Sherman Library on NSU’s Fort Lauderdale/Davie Campus. For those attending online, here is the Zoom link to participate, and we request that you fill out the registration form.

The first ten registrants will receive a free copy of the book, so register now! Find out more or quickly scan the QR code in the attached flyer. Please share this information to encourage participation in this celebratory event.

Please also visit the BEDI Advisory Council website for information about upcoming commemorative and BEDI-related events.

Posted 06/01/23

Conflict Resolution Studies Hosted Women’s Roundtable

Community Resolution Services (CRS), housed in the Department of Conflict Resolution Studies (DCRS) in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Center (HCAS) hosted The Women’s Roundtable. The Women’s Roundtable features alumni and current students who discuss their career paths and share tips for success in their fields.

The featured speakers included Michaella Babrich, Family, Dependency, Appellate Mediator; Alicia Booker, Principal Ombuds for Baylor College of Medicine; Heizel Prince, Associate Director for Labor Relations, Stockton University; and Scottie Visser, Sr. Manager of Ethics for The Boeing Company. The moderator was Charlotte Santana.

CRS is a practicum and volunteer site providing workshops and training to the NSU and local community. For more information about CRS, please contact Judith McKay, J.D., Ph.D., faculty in DCRS at mckayj@nova.edu.

Posted 06/04/23

Halmos Professor Presents Paper at International Conference

Amanda Furiasse, Ph.D.

Amanda Furiasse, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Humanities & Politics, presented “Looping Back to Nature: AI, Machine Learning, and the

Resurgence of Nature Religions” at the Implicit Religion Conference hosted by Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, UK.

The presentation offered critical insight into the design and application of more culturally and ecologically responsible machine learning and artificial intelligence models. By examining the ways in which technology mimics natural systems, the presentation shed light on the potential pitfalls and ethical considerations that arise when developing AI systems and highlighted the need for a more ethically conscious and responsible approach to AI that contributes to a more harmonious and balanced relationship between technology and the natural world.

According to Furiasse, “Presenting at the conference afforded me the opportunity to share my research with scholars from around the globe and prepare my research for publication. Engaging in discussions and exchanging ideas with fellow researchers has enabled me to refine my research and develop a more nuanced perspective on the potential contributions of religion to the development of ecologically conscious AI models.”

Posted 06/04/23

Halmos Faculty Co-Authors Article with Nursing Faculty, Students

Santanu De, Ph.D.

Santanu De, Ph.D., faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences and Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Center (HCAS), co-authored an article with colleagues from the College of Nursing, based on an interdisciplinary collaboration with faculty and students from the College of Nursing. The article entitled, “Immersive Learning and Participatory Engagement Connecting in the Online Classroom through Virtual Reality.” It was published in the International Journal of Distance Technologies (IJDET).

The project involved designing a structured Virtual Classroom and showing its effectiveness in contributing significantly to learning and engagement among undergraduate and graduate students of healthcare sciences, especially during unprecedented challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cavanaugh, G., Condry, H. M., Afable, C. F., Morris, M., De, S., Madison, H. E., Marshall, J., Victor, C. P., & Weiner, M. (2023). Immersive Learning and Participatory Engagement: Connecting in the Online Classroom Through Virtual Reality. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies (IJDET), 21(1), 1-19. http://doi.org/10.4018/IJDET.317364

Posted 05/21/23

Halmos Faculty Presents at International Studies Association Conference

Cheryl Duckworth, Ph.D.

Cheryl Duckworth, Ph.D., faculty and director of the M.S. program and Graduate Certificates in the Department of Conflict Resolution Studies, in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Center (HCAS), presented recent research on the role of schools in preventing violent extremism.  She presented on March 17th at the International Studies Association’s annual conference held in Montreal. The theme of the conference was “Real Struggles, High Stakes: Cooperation, Contention, and Creativity.”

Duckworth is the faculty facilitator for the Peace and Conflict Education Working Group in DCRS. She teaches qualitative research methods, foundations of conflict resolution, History, Memory and Conflict Resolution, and peace education.

Posted 05/21/23

Halmos Interdisciplinary Collaboration Produces Research Article

Santanu De, Ph.D.

The Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Center (HCAS), engaged in an interdisciplinary STEM research collaboration between Arthur Sikora, Ph.D., Department of Chemistry and Physics, and Santanu De, Ph.D., Department of Biological Sciences, along with multiple student-mentees. This collaboration resulted in an original research article published in April, 2023 by the Florida Distance Learning Association (FDLA) Journal.  The project was based on the Biochemistry Authentic Scientific Inquiry Lab (BASIL) model for a Course-based Undergraduate Student Experience (CURE):

Kapil, Ambika; Gonzalez Isoba, Luis C.; Pathak, Niraj; Sikora, Arthur; and De, Santanu (2023) “Analysis of Attitudinal Student Learning Benefits from a Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) Adapted for Online Format”, FDLA Journal: Vol. 7, Article 2. https://nsuworks.nova.edu/fdla-journal/vol7/iss1/2

Posted 05/08/23

Halmos M.S. Biological Sciences Students Visit Cadaver Lab

Students in the M.S. Biological Sciences program and in the Health Studies Concentration in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and the Guy Harvey Oceanographic research Center (HCAS) visited the NSU MD cadaver lab along with their faculty, Reza Razeghifard, Ph.D.

Students in the program aspire to various fields in health care ranging from optometry to medicine. Being able to tour the lab was a meaningful experience for them as they near completion of their program. Members of the graduating class will be attending a variety of professional school programs including NSU’s College of Dental Medicine.

One of the alumni of the program, Adrian Monteagudo, is currently an adjunct faculty member for NSU and works in the Lab. This program is one of three concentrations offered by the Masters in Biological Sciences.

Posted 05/08/23

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