College of Arts, Sciences, and Education
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Dear CASE alumni, faculty, staff and students,
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Welcome to the fall semester! Now that the summer hiatus is over, our campus is once again buzzing with activity. Students are back to receive a quality education, and faculty and staff are fully engaged to deliver that education. In addition to all the new first-year, transfer and graduate students, we are delighted to welcome the following new faculty to the College of Arts, Sciences, and Education (CASE):
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- Michael Eze, assistant professor of chemistry
- Qingguo Hong, assistant professor of mathematics and statistics
- Garyfallia Katsimiga, assistant teaching professor of physics (starting January 2024)
- John C. Ketcherside, assistant teaching professor of history and political science
- Clayton Lungstrum, assistant teaching professor of mathematics and statistics
- Wumaier Maimaitiyiming, assistant teaching professor of mathematics and statistics
- Simeon Mistakidis, assistant professor of physics (starting January 2024)
- Michael Peterson, assistant professor of philosophy
- Katherine Sharp, assistant professor of education and biological sciences
- Theo Sumnicht, assistant teaching professor of biological sciences
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In the upcoming issues of this newsletter, we will feature each of these new colleagues so that you get to know them better. I wish a fun and productive fall semester for all!
Warm regards,
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Child Development Center adventures
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The Child Development Center staff and students participated in a fun STEM summer project with the chemistry department and Dr. Garry Grubbs, an associate professor of chemistry. Learn more about the center and how to enroll children in it by visiting childcenter.mst.edu.
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Student Council’s CASE Chair
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Madison Jolly, a senior in education from Cuba, Missouri, is the new Student Council’s CASE chair for this school year. Her role will include supporting students' learning opportunities, promoting student opinions and acting as a liaison to campus leadership. Read her introduction letter online.
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Jessica Frame, a psychological science student, and Kendra Mehl, research project analyst in psychological science, presented their research at the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., in August. Jessica won the "Audience Choice Award" for her presentation.
Dr. Vaibhav Edlabadkar defended his Ph.D. on July 13, and is working as a synthetic chemist at Jacam Catalyst in Midland, Texas. His advisor was Dr. Chariklia Sotiriou-Leventis, chair and professor of chemistry.
Dr. Brian Jameson defended his Ph.D. on July 7, and accepted a postdoctoral position at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His advisor was Dr. Rainer Glaser, professor of chemistry.
Dr. Bin Luo defended his Ph.D. in May and is working at Brewer Science in Rolla. His advisor was Dr. Jay Switzer, Chancellor’s Professor and Curators’ Distinguished Professor emeritus of chemistry.
Dr. Nicole Moon defended her Ph.D. on July 17, and will start as a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory on Sept. 1. Her advisor was Dr. Garry Grubbs, associate professor of chemistry.
Dr. Austin Chase Singler defended his Ph.D. in May and is a senior scientist in chemistry at S&T. His advisor was Dr. Honglan Shi, emeritus research professor.
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Support Missouri S&T's College of Arts, Sciences, and Education by visiting its Giving page and see how you can change the lives of S&T students.
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Dr. Mehrzad Boroujerdi, CASE dean and professor of history and political science, was quoted in a BBC article on the protests in Iran. He was also asked to chair the Association for Iranian Studies Nominating Committee for the election of president and council members.
Dr. Michael Bruening, professor of history and political science, was a plenary speaker at the quadrennial International Congress on Calvin Research, held at Calvin University in Grand Rapids in July 2023. He delivered a paper titled "Calvin’s Opponents and the Predestination Debate from Bolsec to Baro."
Dr. Marco Cavaglia, professor of physics, received a $397,209 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a project titled “WoU-MMA: Enabling Multi-Messenger Astrophysics with Advanced LIGO: from Detector Characterization to Interpretation of Gravitational-Wave Signals.”
Dr. Richard Dawes, adjunct professor of chemistry, received a $51,000 grant from Sandia National Laboratories for a project titled “Theoretical Prediction of Nitrogen Dioxide Potential Energy Surfaces and Absorption Spectra.” With this addition, the award totals $151,244.
Dr. Petra DeWitt, associate professor of history and political science, published "'Zwischen Dallas und New York': A West German's Encounter with the United States Before Moving to East Germany" in the Yearbook of German-American Studies 56 (2021, copyright 2023): 93-110.
Megan Fowler, business operations associate in the CASE dean’s office, was elected as vice-chair for the Intercampus Staff Advisory Council for the University of Missouri System. She begins this role on Sept. 1 and will serve through August 2024.
Erika Jacobs joined S&T’s Child Development Center as a business support specialist.
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Taylor Gruenloh, assistant professor of theater and film, was interviewed by the PopLifeStl podcast and talked about S&T theatre and the students quite a bit. He was also interviewed by Broadway World about the production of Kinky Boots he is directing in St. Louis. During this interview he talked extensively about the production at S&T earlier in April and about the students who are currently working on the production in St. Louis. Current S&T students and alumni pictured got professional theatre experience this summer working at the Tesseract Theatre Company. This project took place in Midtown St. Louis, which Forbes magazine just called “America’s Most Exciting Emerging Arts District.”
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Dr. Michel Gueldry, professor of French, presented a paper on the new spiritualities in France at the American Association of Teachers of French conference in Quebec on July 25.
Dr. Irina Ivliyeva, professor of Russian, has been named interim chair of arts, languages and philosophy. Irina also published a featured article in the July issue of the monthly international scientific journal Interactive science. This work is the seventh in a series of articles by Ivliyeva that evaluate word-formation synthesis concepts in application to the Russian language system.
Dr. Merilee Krueger, teaching professor of psychological science, was appointed to the advisory member of the Phelps Health Board of Trustees.
Dr. Clair Kueny, chair and associate professor of psychological science, was elected as an ADVANCE Faculty Fellow to lead a project on standardizing performance evaluation processes for faculty and training chairs on interrupting bias in performance evaluation processes.
Cassie Liscombe has joined the CASE dean’s office as senior business support specialist.
Maj. Gen. Samuel (Bo) Mahaney, a member of CASE Dean’s Leadership Council, was elected to join Missouri S&T’s Board of Trustees this September.
Dr. John McManus, Curators’ Distinguished Professor of history and political science, published an op-ed piece about WWII’s Pacific front published in “The Diplomat,” a defense and security journal. He wrote it at the request of Gen. Charles Flynn, commander of U.S. Army Forces in the Pacific, with the hope that this history lesson from an expert in the field will help influence the decision-making of defense policy leaders.
Dr. Manashi Nath, professor of chemistry, received a $168,725 grant from NSF for a project titled “CAS: Understanding Structural Metamorphosis of Transition Metal Chalcogenide Electrocatalyst Interfaces.” With this addition, the award totals $548,308.
Dr. Rob Paige, professor of mathematics and statistics, has been awarded a two-year, $100,000 NSF Collaborative Research grant for a project titled “Advances in the Theory and Practice of Non-Euclidean Statistics.” He collaborates with Dr. Victor Patrangenaru at Florida State on this project.
Dr. Shun Saito, assistant professor of physics, received a $588,768 grant from the Department of Energy’s Funding for Accelerated, Inclusive Research (FAIR) initiative. His project is titled “Accelerating Dark Energy Science from Emission-Line Galaxy Surveys and Participation of Women and Underrepresented Minority Groups in Midwest.”
Dr. Daniel Shank, associate professor of psychological science, presented his research at two European conferences this summer. First, he presented on accent prejudice toward Siri at the Moral Psychology of AI conference in England. Second, he presented on the immorality of artificial intelligence at the European Association of Social Psychology conference in Poland.
Dr. Chariklia Sotiriou-Leventis, chair and professor chemistry, and her co-authors published an article titled “Using Catalysis to Control the Morphology and Stiffness of Shape Memory Poly (isocyanurate−urethane) (PIR−PUR) Aerogels,” ACS Appl. Polym. Mater. 2023.
Dr. Jay Switzer, Chancellor’s Professor and Curators’ Distinguished Professor emeritus of chemistry, presented a plenary lecture titled “Epitaxial Electrodeposition and Lift-off of Ordered Inorganic Materials: From Transparent Hole Conductors to MOFs,” at the Workshop on Advanced Epitaxy for Freestanding Membranes and 2D Materials in Seoul, South Korea, in July. Switzer and his co-authors also published the following papers:
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- Zhang, B. Luo, A. Banik, J. Z. Tubbesing, and J. A. Switzer, “Epitaxial Single-Domain CuBTC Metal-Organic Framework Thin Films and Foils by Electrochemical Conversion of Cuprous Oxide,” ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2023, 15, 18440-18449.
- A. Switzer and A. Banik, “Epitaxial Electrodeposition of Ordered Inorganic Materials,” Acc. Chem. Res. 2023, 56, 1710-1719. [This was an invited paper for the special issue on “Electrosynthesis of Inorganic Materials” and was featured on the cover of the journal.
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Dr. Robin Verble, associate professor of biological sciences, attended the Fire in the Earth System conference in Granada, Spain, in July with two graduate students, Bryan Held and Jennifer Harrell. They presented two posters on their work on wildland fire dispatcher health and safety.
Dr. Philip Whitefield, Curators’ Distinguished Professor emeritus of chemistry, and Dr. Klaus Woelk, associate professor of chemistry and associate dean of academic affairs at CASE, received a $3,050,812 grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation for a project titled “ASCENT 002 - Understanding Changes in Aviation Emissions due to SAF with New Combustor Engine Technology.”
Dr. Klaus Woelk, associate professor of chemistry and associate dean of academic affairs at CASE, and three S&T colleagues (Z. G. Mayes, W. H. Rice IV, and L. Chi) published an article titled “A robust Freeman-Hill-inspired pulse protocol for ringdown-free T1 relaxation measurements,” J. Magn. Reson. 2023, 352, 107490. This article describes a new nuclear magnetic resonance technique for measuring spin-lattice (T1) relaxation times.
Dr. Aaron Zalis, director of the South Central Regional Professional Development Center, received $3,043,150 grant from MO DESE for the project titled, “South Central Regional Professional Development Center Consolidated Contract.”
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College of Arts, Sciences, and Education
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Missouri University of Science and Technology
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