Arts and Sciences News & Events

See news and events in Merrimack College’s School of Arts and Sciences.

News

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By: Kara Haase
Merrimack College recently hosted an engaging panel discussion with three accomplished alumni from the Master of Public Administration and Affairs (MPAA) program.
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By: Michael Cronin
Andrew Cote, assistant professor of practice and assistant director of bands, also presented at this year’s National Association of Music Merchants Show in Anaheim, CA.
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By: Michael Cronin
Under Andrew Cote’s leadership, more student musicians are enrolled at Merrimack than ever before.
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By: Michael Cronin
The Revs. Terence Ayuk and Njuakom Romaric this fall will enroll in Merrimack’s Spiritual Direction graduate certificate program.
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By: Michael Cronin
Over the past seven years, Laura Kurdziel has worked to expand Merrimack’s Department of Psychology and its curriculum.

Notable & Quotable

Sociology assistant professorDaniel Herda,with coauthors John Hagan (Northwestern) and Bill McCarthy (UCDavis),have published a study in the journalThe DuBois Review.The research looked into the connections between legal cynicism, the electoral regime of Mayor Richard M. Daley and citizen calls for police assistance and police reports of drug crime.

Michael DeCesare, professor and chair of sociology, delivered the keynote address April 27, 2017,at the State University of New York Voices Conference on Shared Governance in Suffern, New York. The conference examined the challenges facing governance leaders and members, and explore alternative solutions. DeCesare was also the keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the Kentucky AAUP (American Association of University Professors) Conference on April 8 at the University of Louisville, where he delivered a talk titled “Threats to Traditional Academic Governance.” DeCesare was invited to speak at both conferences due to his work as the chair of AAUP’s National Committee on College University Governance.

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Emma Duffy-Comparone’s debut book “Love Like That” was named to Vogue magazine’s Best Books to Read in 2021 list. The book came out in March and includes nine short stories that all focus on women and relationships. Vanity Fair also included it on its Best Books to Buy for Valentine’s Day list in February.

Professor Dan Herda published a research paper titled “Experienced, Anticipated, and Vicarious Discrimination” in the journal Social Currents.

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.

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.

Dr. Daniel Herda, chair and associate professor in the Department of Sociology, recently published a book titled “Chicago’s Reckoning,” which discusses the complicated history of race, politics and policing in Chicago to explain how crime works from the top-down through urban political machines and the elite figures who dominate them. The book was just awarded the American Society of Criminology Division of Communities and Places’s James Short Senior Scholar Award.

Nancy Wynn, associate professor of visual and performing arts, chaired a panel, “Using ‘The Flip’: Why Your Students Want to Hear From You Rather Than YouTube,” April 6, 2017, at the eighth annual Foundations in Art: Theory and Education conference in Kansas City, Missouri. The panel presented papers on ways to integrate technology to allow students to learn, engage and get feedback quickly outside of class.

Sociology Associate Professor Daniel Herda published an article on Immigration Innumeracy in Canada in the journal Migration Letters.

Gretchen Grosky, adjunct lecturer in journalism and adviser to the student newspaper, The Beacon, completed two fellowships this summer — one at Columbia University’s Age Boom Academy, focusing on the international response to the aging workforce, and the other as a Journalists in Aging fellow at the Gerontological Society of America and New Media. As part of the latter fellowship, Grosky spent four days at the World Congress on Gerontology and Geriatrics in San Francisco, which attracted 6,500 experts in the field of aging from around the world. Grosky, who led a team of journalists in winning the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news, is a reporter at the Union Leader newspaper in New Hampshire, with a beat focused on the state’s rapidly aging population.

Events

Graduate Student Celebration

Graduate Student Celebration is an exciting event where prospective and accepted students can get a glimpse into becoming a warrior through information sessions, campus tours, and opportunities to connect with faculty, staff, and peers!

Arcidi Welcome Center