F acult y N ews The 2021 Council for the Study of Community Colleges (CSCC) invited Dr. Duane Brooks to present “Student Engagement is Half the Story: A Case Study to Account for Institutional Engagement as a Complex Adaptive System for Assessment.” Dr. Mark J. Hager (right) has pivoted his research with the pandemic. He recently collaborated with Dr. Julie Weitlauf on a series of cyber-seminars for the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Health Services Research & Development. His launch session was “Coping through Covid-19: Mentoring Needs of Early Career Clinician Researchers in VA,” which was followed by “Career Shock: An Explanatory Framework for the Impact of Covid-19 on Research Careers.” Drs. Hager and Weitlauf also served as discussants for Veterans Affairs leaders helping junior researchers manage their research careers during the pandemic. Offered for the first time at Menlo College this coming fall semester, Board Trustee and Adjunct Professor of Management Helene Kim will teach “The Role of Blockchain in Business Model Innovation.” This new course will cover topics related to blockchain and cryptocurrency, and it will explore how the rise of digital assets is transforming financial services and other global industries. The course will give a leg up to students who will be pursuing a range of careers, including technology management, analytics, financial services, risk compliance, and emerging digital asset investment industries. Provost Grande Lum (left) was the featured speaker at the Cambridge Negotiation Institute’s roundtable discussion: “Bridging and Healing Across Racial Divides Post-Election 2020: The Role of Conflict Resolution.” Interest in the new book he co-authored, America’s Peacemakers: The Community Relations Service and Civil Rights led to numerous speaking engagements, including at the Alliance for Peacebuilding, and at Peace Week, sponsored by the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University. Dr. Marianne Marar recently developed the Equity & Justice Studies (EJS) minor, which is aimed at fostering students’ development and/or reclaiming of dignity and agency. Dr. Marar and Dr. Sean Pradhan continue to merge social justice and sports management in their research with conference presentations such as “Bought, Traded and Sold: A Closer Look at Black Players and the Liberty Principle in the National Football League (NFL)” and “Interception! Sports Fans’ Responses to Social Justice in the National Football League (NFL).” “Is Baseball Going Soft? Perceptions of Womxn General Managers in Major League Baseball,” with Aaron Flores ’20 and Courtney Cooper ’21, was presented at the Annual Western Psychological Association (WPA) Convention. Dr. Marar was also recently invited to speak on a panel entitled Intersections of Discrimination, Religion and Civil Rights in a Variety of Contexts for the Massachusetts Fair Housing and Civil Rights Conference (FHCRC). Dr. Margaret McFarland has joined the Board of Advisors of CREO Design, LLC, a green tech company based in Sausalito, CA. CREO has several products in concept stage, the most promising of which is BioBulb, scheduled for its first commercial installation later this year. The company is an early stage start-up that combines artificial intelligence for collecting nutrient, water and light needs
25 SUMMER 2021
