The Faculty Colloquium Speaker Series is a forum for faculty members to display the results of their scholarly and creative projects to the Lindenwood University students and faculty and to members of the surrounding community. The Faculty Colloquium Sub-Committee for the Faculty and Student Scholarship Committee organizes two events per year, one in the Fall semester and another in the Spring semester.
For members of the Lindenwood community, these events will continue to foster the burgeoning culture of scholarship across Lindenwood’s campus. These talks will enable Lindenwood faculty to become aware of the excellent work being produced by their colleagues and will, ideally, help to promote interdisciplinary scholarly pursuits between departments and schools, as attendees at these talks might be encouraged to provide feedback or enter into future research projects with the speakers.
For Lindenwood students, these events will allow them the opportunity to explore areas of intellectual interest that they might not have been able to pursue in course work; it will also provide them with the benefit of learning about the faculty members’ research in an in-depth format that is rarely able to be enacted in a classroom setting.
If you are interested in presenting as part of the Faculty Colloquium Speaker Series. Please send the information below to FacultyColloquia@lindenwood.edu.
Wisdom as an Emergent Property Stephen Sherblom, EdD College of Education and Human Services, Educational Leadership
Social scientists engage the concept of wisdom in many different ways. Is it a way of thinking? A balanced form of deliberation? A consistent way of acting? What kinds of self-development does it require? Is it related to self-actualization? To knowledge and expertise? Will wise people be morally good people? Will morally good people necessarily be wise? Conceptualizing Wisdom as an emergent property of a moral-self system illuminates several important dynamics that help to address these questions.
The Impact of Professional Development on Feelings of Inclusion in Supervision Relationships Roger “Mitch” Nasser, Jr., PhD College of Education and Human Services, Educational Leadership
The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of professional development on employee feelings of inclusion. The researcher obtained data through pre-test, post-test, and individual interviews. Although many researchers have reviewed feelings of inclusion and professional development, the two concepts are rarely studied in conjunction. The results of this study suggest new professional development concepts and reiterate the importance of appreciating the individual in the workplace.
Karl Barth and the God who Loves in Freedom W. Travis McMaken, PhD College of Arts and Humanities, Religion
Dr. McMaken will speak about his recent trip to the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz University in Hanover, Germany to present his research on Karl Barth and freedom. Barth was an influential German-speaking Swiss pastor and theologian in the 20th century who was expelled from Germany in 1935 after refusing to subscribe to required oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler. McMaken’s presentation will include discussion of how Barth’s doctrine of God is defined by the relationship between love and freedom.
Decoding Due Dates: Exploring What Pregnant Women Believe about Full Term and Elective Deliveries Amanda Harrod, Ph.D., M.P.H.
The purpose of this research is to compare characteristics of women who believe it is safe to deliver preterm to those who believe it is only safe to deliver at term in a healthy pregnancy; and explore and expand on factors that influence beliefs about safe timing for delivery among first-time pregnant women, and their intention to schedule elective deliveries. This work adds to the limited research about due dates and knowledge of when it is safe to deliver. Childbirth educators and providers should clarify the meaning of due dates with pregnant women and ensure they understand the gestational age terms. Efforts to increase awareness about the risks and benefits of routine procedures and interventions during childbirth, may be effective in reducing women’s desire and request for early elective deliveries.
Experiential Education in Nonprofit Management Curriculum: Assumption or Oversight? Julie E. Turner, Ph.D. Plaster College of Business & Entrepreneurship, Nonprofit Administration
This presentation includes research related to experiential learning as a best/promising practice, data from nonprofit employers regarding “must have” skills for entry-level hires, as well as results from and priorities of the National Survey of Student Engagement related to High Impact Practices (specifically, Learning Communities and Service Learning). Useful examples of effective experiential educational practices in nonprofit management curricula are also provided.
Finding Afro-Mexico: The Politics of History and Racial Visibility Theodore Cohen, PhD
In 2015, the Mexican state counted its African-descended peoples as such for the first time since the nation’s independence in 1821. Scholars and activists in Mexico and the US have commended this newfound demographic visibility for the political and cultural representation it could provide these communities. This presentation, which is based on the research in my forthcoming book Finding Afro-Mexico: Race and Nation after the Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2020), will explore the historical undercurrents of these celebrations and will unpack the much politicized concepts of visibility and invisibility that are at the heart of contemporary discussions of race-based social justice initiatives in Mexico, the US, and the rest of the Western Hemisphere.
A Reading & Discussion of Short Story Collection Dancing Madly Beth Mead, MFA
MFA in Writing program director Beth Mead will read from her short story collection Dancing Madly (Adelaide Books 2019). She will discuss the publication process and the therapeutic value of writing about and fictionalizing difficult personal experiences. The stories in Dancing Madly explore how we keep trying to survive in our flawed ways as life breaks us down, sends us spinning—that mad dance that gets us through each day.
Francesco Scannelli’s Microcosm of Painting: Art and Medicine in Early Modern Criticism James Hutson, PhD
Art theory and criticism were established with the self-conscious investigation of art and artists of the Florentine Renaissance. Initially, practicing artists, such as Giorgio Vasari, Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, and Giovanni Battista Armenini dominated this dialogue, writing as experts in the field who understood the educational and theoretical background necessary to create and understand great art. Of the prescriptions for laudable art was a thorough understanding of the sciences, particularly anatomy. Interestingly, though not entirely surprisingly, these artist-biographers and critics would be replaced in the following century with a new breed of authority: the physician-connoisseur. Put in charge of large collections, physicians, such as Francesco Scannellli and Giulio Mancini were seen as ideal given their medical training, which included careful discernment to diagnose maladies. The most comprehensive application of said training can be seen in Scannelli’s Il Microcosmo 1657 where he would adopt a conceit to the allegorical corpus of painting as a diagnostic map, casting great artists of each regional tradition as their appropriate equivalent as organs, tissue, muscles, nerves, and skin.
In Norah Lange's book Childhood Notebooks (1937), through the voice of a young girl, the text establishes a platform for the discussion and recognition of women in modern Argentina, taking a clear stance about female participation in socio-historical affairs and cultural debates. Lange strategically deviates from her formerly open exploration of female sexuality, and centers her text on a fictionalized autobiography comprised of a collection of vignettes which recount childhood memories about games, obsessions, tragedies, and joyous events, all seen from the perspective of a child. The apparent naïve and uncritical voice of the girl, however, gives way to a larger discussion about the role of women in modern society and the inescapability of their participation in the making of history.
Reproductive and Sexual Health: Exploring promising data within our current culture Amy Estlund, PhD, MPH
Data indicate that while unintended pregnancies (UIP) in the US have decreased, it is still significantly higher than many other developed countries. Even with the decline in UIP, disparities exist for low-income women, women aged 18-24, and Black women. Sexually active high school students report low contraception usage, increasing the risk for unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Research suggests that when contraception and education are easily accessible, UIP rates go down. However, several state and federal policies legislate less access to reproductive health services, less funding for services, and do not require medically accurate information be provided in schools. This presentation will discuss trends in data, policies, and reproductive health outcomes nationally and here in the metro St. Louis area.
Obesity and unhealthy living practices are reaching epidemic proportions in the United States. This study investigated the physical health risk and risk behavior differences between high and low identified fans of sports teams. The rationale for the study was that if highly identified sports fans were found to engage in elevated health risk behaviors, targeting this group may represent a significant opportunity for sports organizations and health policy makers to achieve a significant impact on the health and wellness of a large segment of Americans. The results indicated individuals self-reporting to be more psychologically connected, personally committed, and emotionally involved with a team have a significantly higher Body Mass Index (BMI) than did those self-reporting lower identification levels. Additionally, high identified fans significantly differed from low identified fans on numerous health related behaviors. The results of this study provide preliminary evidence to suggest that sports fans may be a perfect segment to which health prevention marketing efforts can be directed. Discussion will center on the implications for health prevention policy and programming, with particular attention focused on revenue generation opportunities which may exist for both sports organizations and providers of health prevention services through sponsorships and other business related relationships and practices.
The Economics of the Walking Dead Tawni Hunt Ferrarini, PhD
Tap into students’ fascination with popular culture and illustrate the importance of strategic decision making. Consider a world overtaken by zombies and stripped of all modern conveniences. Join this talk to see how six "common sense" economic principles can help survivors make each day better while increasing overall security. Join, Tawni, the author of "The Economics of the Walking Dead" in the book Dystopia and Economics: A Guide to Surviving Everything from the Apocalypse to Zombies (2018).Â
Repairing American Political Culture: Individuals, Central Government, and Democratic Dignity in Twenty-First Century Conditions Dale Walton, PhD
This presentation examines how global economic, socio-cultural, and technological trends have increasingly undermined long-prevailing conceptions of US democracy and the relationship of citizens to the state. Much of the anger of today’s American politics flows from fundamental disagreements regarding the nature of a healthy democratic society and the relationship of citizens to their central government. The presentation will address some of the major “stress points” in American politics, and examine how the US political community may alleviate them, with a particular focus on the building of a healthy, robust political culture that prizes both the dignity and autonomy of individuals and the needs of the national political community.
Childhood Obesity and Food Insecurity: A Public Health Paradox Catherine Shoff, PhD, MPH
We are in the midst of an obesity epidemic in our country, and recent news and publications indicate the issue is not improving. One third of American children are obese or overweight, putting them at risk for a myriad of short-term and long-term health problems. News outlets continually report on the epidemic, sharing information about unhealthy foods, the dangers of screen time, and how advertising causes youth to overeat. While these factors contribute to the rise in obesity, food insecurity and its role in the obesity crisis is not well publicized. Youth who live in food insecure households, meaning that their families lack consistent access to healthy foods, are more likely to be obese. Public Health refers to this as the food insecurity-obesity paradox. Low-income, minority youth are at increased risk for both food insecurity and obesity. Nutrition education programs are a promising strategy for improving nutrition intake of youth, but few programs consider the unique barriers of food insecure youth. The pilot project Healthy Access Plus Information (HAPI) is a comprehensive nutrition education program, tailored to address the barriers associated with healthy eating among youth in St. Louis, Missouri, who are at risk for food insecurity and obesity.
The Dessert Creates Space for the Meal John Barr, PhD
Every curriculum has a checklist that should allow students to achieve mastery of a series of concepts and problems. This is difficult for most introductory physics students, and it can be tempting to sacrifice thought experiments and demonstrations in order to spend more time on the tangible. However, the contextualized concepts unveiled in demonstrations often pay dividends in student motivation. Necessary but mundane activities become more palatable when the “why” is supplied, and there is a chance of kindling a joy in understanding that is irreplaceable. Examples include explanations of the direction of beach breezes, pulling a truck from a ditch, producing beats in the classroom, and the colorful rotation of polarization by corn syrup. Students have been brought to tears for the sheer beauty and marvelous nature of the universe. Forgoing the opportunity to inspire such wonder in the service of curriculum or proficiency seems a poor bargain. Co-author: Sajalendu Dey, PhD
More Than We Think: Cultivating Preverbal Insight Gillian Parrish, MFA
Our minds are more than we think. And our thinking tends to apprehend less than we know. This session pauses our customary processes of thought to touch upon a mode of thinking that extends from somatic sensing. This approach suspends preconceived thought patterns, dropping below language to implicit information found in the felt experience of an issue. We will briefly access this natural capacity through the first step of a practice that cultivates a preverbal, complex mode of thinking that can surface germinal words, new perspectives, and fresh solutions.
The Psychology in Greek Lit Andrew Thomason, MA, MLA
The insights of the ancient Greek authors into human psyche is astonishing. They used storytelling to teach, to explain, and to heal long standing social wounds. This discussion will look at some of the ways their literature did that and will try to elucidate Aristotle's elusive concept of catharsis.
A Classical Liberal Approach to the Systemic Oppression of African-Americans Rachel Douchant, PhD
I argue that conservatives ought to acknowledge the reality of systemic injustice, since it can be understood in terms of violations of property and contract rights. Also, based upon the same evidence, the left ought to reject the assumption that market forces generally promote injustice. Rather, the injustice consists in marginalized groups being coercively excluded from the market, and particularly, from asset appropriation. I hope to bring people on the left and the right to a deeper mutual understanding from a classical liberal perspective.
Can Intelligence Explain Economic Outcomes? Rik Hafer, PhD
Human capital, that combination of innate skill and training, is a key factor used to explain economic outcomes, such as economic growth. In this talk, I will consider the use of IQ, measured at the national level, as a proxy for human capital. I also will survey empirical findings that use nation-level IQ. It turns out that aggregate intelligence may be more important than your own.
Relativity and Román RamĂrez: What Can We Know about the Past? Patrick O’Banion, PhD
This talk uses the historical figure of Román RamĂrez (1540-99), a Spanish Morisco from the small town of Deza, to engage the issue of the nature of our knowledge of the past. That knowledge is fundamentally limited by (and relative to) the sources that exist, but when those sources are themselves contradictory or untrustworthy, historians must engage with them in more complex ways. RamĂrez's inquisitorial trial record provides a fascinating example of that process.
A Do-it Yourself Empowerment Tool for Families of Young Children with Developmental Disabilities Rebecca Panagos, PhD
Families of infants and toddlers diagnosed with developmental disabilities quickly find themselves forming new frames of reference and adjusting to a new reality. Early intervention service providers coach parents and caregivers, the first teachers of their children, to be active partners in a child’s therapy and development, known as family-centered practice. To promote family capacity-building, the researcher examined a do-it-yourself tool designed to increase family competence, confidence and sense of ownership. The Family Facilitated Planning Tool (FFPT) allows families to create a dynamic blueprint for their child and family identifying strengths, supports, and successes throughout their child's life. As their child grows, families regularly revisit and revise this blueprint to meet the child and family’s needs. This presentation will discuss continued research efforts to examine empowerment, relationships of support, and the utility and usability of the Family Facilitated Planning Tool.
Gothic Tensions between Faith, Science, and Faith in Science in Doctor Who Geremy Carnes, PhD
This talk examines the use of Gothic tropes on the television show Doctor Who, through the lens of current theories about the Gothic's original emergence in the eighteenth century. I argue that the Gothic’s resurgence in contemporary literature results from anxieties very similar to the anxieties that led to the Gothic’s birth in the eighteenth century: anxieties that resulted from a loss of faith in the ideologies of both the “enlightened” science of modernity and the religious beliefs of premodernity. Over the course of the Doctor Who series, Gothic tropes have often been deployed to generate a tension between scientific and religious worldviews, but for much of the show’s early history, this tension was not legitimately Gothic because the show expressed little real skepticism of science. For instance, the heavy use of Gothic tropes in 1970s episodes was in service of a staunchly scientistic ideology (an ideology which scholars such as Lindy Orthia have shown was highly evident in this era of the program). In contrast, certain Gothic episodes of the twenty-first-century incarnation of the series are more authentically animated by doubts in both traditional religion and modern science. Like the traditional Gothic, these recent episodes do not unequivocally favor science in this conflict. I suggest that, for a public whose faith in science and Enlightenment values as a means of human progress has faded, scientism may be taking on the role once played in the Gothic by Catholicism: that of an outdated belief system with a powerful pull on the imagination which must nevertheless be defeated by a new ideology. This new ideology’s characteristics, while still under negotiation, appear to include a level of religiosity, or at the very least, skepticism in science’s ability to determine truth.
Exploring the Use of Technology to Support Literacy of Middle School Students with Reading Disabilities. Jaime Inman, EdD
The degree to which the utilization of technology supports the academic achievement of sixth grade students with reading disabilities was examined using a quantitative research design. The data analysis involved the results from the Educational Technology Assessment Program to measure achievement. The Standardized Test for the Assessment of Reading (STAR) provided 2015-2016 scores regarding academic accomplishment of middle school students with reading disabilities. The central research question was developed based on the current literature on the impact technology can have on student academic achievement (Grinager, 2006). Using a specially designed survey, the researcher examined the teachers’ understanding of educational technology and what technology was used to support learning in students with reading disabilities was determined. Along with the technology used by teachers, student reading scores, as well parent and student perception of technology use surveys were used to answer the research questions. In comparing data sources (STAR assessment and surveys), the degree to which technology supports student academic achievement was described.
How Technology in Exercise Science Can Improve Health and Performance Chad Kerksick, PhD
Gone are the days of just whistles, timers and clipboards. Faculty and researchers in Exercise Science now have a plentiful supply of technology that can help assess many different aspects of health and performance. Through the use of this technology, faculty as well as health care and fitness professionals can better inform students and patients about key information and use that information to prescribe effective and efficacious treatment programs. This presentation will review many of the key pieces of technology used in Exercise Science research to allow attendees to better understand what is being measured and how that information can be applied to optimize one's health or performance.
“Probing Ebola VP35 Viral Protein Structures by Chemical Cross-linking and Mass Spectrometry” Ken Chanthamontri, PhD
Ebola virus (EBOV) infections show a fatality rate of 50% to 90% in humans. More specifically, multifunctional viral protein VP35 plays major role in viral replication, RNA silencing suppression, RNA-dependent protein kinase (PKR) inhibition, and ucleocapsid formation. The C-terminal domain binds viral RNA and sequesters it from host pattern recognition receptors and binds the host protein PACT that inhibits the interferon induction pathway. The N-terminal domain is thought to be involved in viral replication and oligomerization of the full length VP35 but mechanisms of these functions are not fully understood. Understanding how the protein oligomerizes and influences replication can elucidate therapeutic targets for controlling infection. Here, the applications of cross-linking and mass spectrometry approaches are presented for probing Ebola VP35 protein structure.
Living Dangerously in the Womb Deborah Kiel, PhD
Living Dangerously in the Womb: The association between infant mortality, low birth weight and chronic disease in adult life.
The Living Dead: Rural Cemeteries and Envisioning Cities in Nineteenth-Century America Jeffrey Smith, PhD
A new kind of burial site emerged in the United States in 1831 when Mount Auburn Cemetery opened—the rural cemetery movement. These large, lavishly landscaped cemeteries were much more than mere burial grounds, though. They were designed to be used by the living as a community asset to preserve and articulate a series of values and ideas about Americans in the 1800s.
“From Best Authorities”: Men, Women, and the Contested Ethos of American Cookbook Authorship, 1796-1860 Elizabeth Fleitz, PhD
This presentation analyzes the ways in which male and female cookbook authors construct ethos in their text. Using the assumption that authorial ethos is one of the most important aspects of a cookbook, this preliminary study compares texts with respect to the methods the author uses to construct his or her own authority as an expert cook within the front matter of the publication.
New Developments in Female Earnings and Marriage William Rogers, PhD
Summary: In the 1990s, female earnings were significantly lower for married women compared to never-married women, exactly opposite for men. This statistical marriage penalty has declined to the point where never-married women earnings profiles are difficult to distinguish from married women. This project uses the Current Population Survey to trace out the factors of this change. Preliminary results suggest that the change has largely come from the mix of women who stay married as opposed to changes in the effects of marriage on earnings.
Sharing Your Academic Backpack – Women and Mentorship in Academe Monica Wynn Flipping, PhD
Summary: This discussion will consider the critical need for sisterhood in the academy. It will reflect on the current status of women today in higher education and review how community and sisterhood can speak to issues of marginalization for women in the academy based on race, age, ability, gender, and class. In addition, this discussion will defend the continual need for informal and formal networks
