Notable & Quotable
An article in Credit Donkey on April 27, 2020, features associate professor of marketing, Joseph Stasio, as an expert source on people’s shopping habits. Stasio, who studies entrepreneurship, discussed how people behave when looking at products in-person and online.
Simona Sharoni, professor of women’s and gender studies and director of theInterdisciplinary Instituterecently received theEminent Scholar Awardfrom the feminist theory and gender studies section of the International Studies Association (ISA). Sharoni has been an active member of ISA, one of the largest international academic associations, since 1991.
Mechanical Engineering Department assistant professors Anthony Di Carlo and Rickey Caldwell Jr., and former student Courtney Videchak ’19, have co-authored the paper, “Optimization of Spatially Distributed Soil Conductivities for Horizontal Ground Heat Exchanger” which has been accepted by the journal Applied Thermal Engineering.
Health sciences assistant professor Juliana Cohen was interviewed by both the Washington PostandGood Morning America(GMA) for a story on school lunches.Cohen says that because children learn better when they eat, schools should provideenough time to have lunch.
Kathryn Welby, Ed.D., associate professor of practice in the Winston School of Education and Social Policy, was a featured educator in EducationWeek in January. She offered three things she would tell herself as a first-year teacher.
Dr. Emma Polyakov gave public lectures on her latest book, The Nun in the Synagogue: Judeocentric Catholicism in Israel, at Brandeis University and Boston College in the United States. Following these lectures, Dr. Polyakov was invited to speak about her book later this spring at Abo Akademi University and Helsinki University in Finland, and Lund University in Sweden.
Assistant professor of communication and media Melissa “Mish” Zimdars, author of “Watching Our Weights: The Contradictions of Televising Fatness in the ‘Obesity Epidemic,’” was quoted in a Los Angeles Times article March 24, 2020 discussing the portrayal of fat women on television.
Associate Professor Joseph Stasio was featured in WalletHub’s piece about Credit Card promotions. Stasio teaches in the marketing department at Merrimack’s Girard School of Business.
Assistant professor of communication and media, Melissa “Mish” Zimdars, was featured on Newsy television to discuss how more news sites are sharing partisan messages while “masquerading” as local news sites.
Eight faculty members from four schools at Merrimack attended the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies conference in Amsterdam last semester. They include associate professors Luis Saenz de Viguera Erkiago and Cinzia DiGiulio of the World Languages and Cultural Studies Department, Civil Engineering Department assistant professor Cynthia Carlson, visiting associate professor Ellen Fitzpatrick, Women and Gender Studies Department professor Simona Sharoni, Graduate Education Department associate professor Susan Marine, Accounting and Finance Department associate professor Ana Silva, and Education Department assistant professor Laura Hsu.
Emma Duffy-Comparone, director of The Writers House, will publish her first book,Love Like That,a collection of short stories from Henry Holt & Co., in March 2021.
Father Rick Piatt, director of the Rogers Center for the Arts, was quoted in an Aug. 22, 2017, Burlington (Mass.) Union story about an interfaith peace and unity gathering at Temple Shalom Emeth in Burlington. Piatt said he attended the event “to listen, learn and be supportive.” He added that he is confident Americans will stand up against the type of bigotry that was on display in Charlottesville, Virginia, the previous week. “They (white supremacists) will not win,” he said.
Brittnie Aiello, associate professor of criminology, spoke to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review for a story about an increase in female inmates due to the opiate crisis. She focused on the high bails set in some cases. For a poor suspect, she said, “$10,000 might be like $5 million.”
Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice Nicole Frisch-Scottwas the co-author of a recent study, Time for a Change: Examining the Relationships Between Recidivism-Free Time, Recidivism Risk, and Risk Assessment,published in Justice Quarterly. The study was featured in a press release from the Crime & Justice Research Alliance.
Jonathan P. Kessler, LICSW, who is completing his first year as an assistant professor of practice in the department of social work, presented a lecture at Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU) in Riga, Latvia in March titled “The Triple Threat: Brain Development-Attachment, Trauma, and Addiction“. Kessler’s presentation was attended by about 45 current RSU social work students, the dean of the Rīga Stradiņš University School of Social Work as well as administration and faculty members.
Merrimack Assistant Professor Dan Vlahos, a founding member of Design Museum Everywhere, has recently been selected to serve a three-year term on the Design Museum Council for the Design Museum Foundation.
Dr. Brandi Baldock, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, is our final STARTer of the semester. Her project, “Inclusive Learning in the STEM Gateway: Design & Evaluation of Robust Alternative Assessments for Chemistry Curriculum,” focuses on developing strategies to support and evaluate student achievement of non-cognitive chemistry program outcomes, with the ultimate goal of improving inclusivity and student retention in STEM fields.
Dr. Tunde Szivak, associate professor of health sciences, and Dr. Alyssa Yetter, assistant professor of criminology, in collaboration with former Exercise and Sport Science graduate student Timary Malley, recently published a paper titled “Physical Training Considerations for Police Academy Recruits“.
Dr. Kevin McGravey, associate professor in the Department of political science and public policy, has published an article in the Ethics, Policy & Environment journal titled Between Neutrality and Action: State Speech and Climate Change.
Dr. Daniel Herda, associate professor of sociology, has published an article titled “Population Innumeracy and Anti-Immigrant Violence: The Case of South Africa” in International Migration Review. Dr. Herda will be presenting his research at the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR) conference in Prague in September.
