Oklahoma City University: Scholarly excellence

Scholarly Excellence SCHOLARLY EXCELLENCE

MESSAGE FROM PROVOST The work of university faculty members represents the core of the academic enterprise in higher education. This periodic publication has been developed to recognize faculty members’ talents and to celebrate the work of individuals across campus. Each issue will feature faculty members in both briefs and full-page highlights. The goal is to broaden everyone’s perspective about the creativity of Oklahoma City University’s outstanding faculty.

Although Oklahoma City University emphasizes its stellar teaching environment, our professors are engaged in a variety of scholarly activities as well. Some professors are involved with traditional research, focused on publishing papers in peer-reviewed journals, or on writing books, while others are choreographing original performances, translating plays, interpreting productions, producing original art, composing new music, and engaging in scholarly work that does not fall into the traditional model of research. Oklahoma City University has a broadly diverse environment of creativity, and we encourage exploration of new ways of thinking.

There are many faculty members who deserve to be featured, and future publications will showcase their work on an annual basis. This magazine acknowledges and conveys our gratitude to our gifted faculty for their outstanding contributions to the university.

Susan C. Barber, Provost

SCHOLARLY EXCELLENCE CONTENTS Brian J. Marcum Associate Professor of Dance

Dr. Michael Raiber Professor of Music Education

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Dr. Elizabeth Diener Associate Professor of Nursing, Chair, Graduate Education

Dr. Jacob Dearmon Associate Professor of Economics

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Dr. Tracy Floreani Chair of the Department of English

Dr. Phyllis Bernard Director of the Center on Alternative Dispute Resolution

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Brief Cases

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BRIAN J. MARCUM

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Moving ANN LACY SCHOOL OF AMERICAN DANCE AND ARTS MANAGEMENT

Brian J. Marcum brings his experiences from Broadway into the classroom to give his students practical examples and reasons for learning.

Marcum, an Associate Professor of Dance, joined the OCU faculty in 2010 after a performance career in New York City that spanned 15 years. He has performed in six Broadway shows including “The Gershwins’ Fascinating Rhythm,” “Saturday Night Fever,” the Tony award winning revival of “42nd Street,” “The Boy from Oz,” “The Drowsy Chaperone,” and “Spamalot.” He has toured nationally with “State Fair” and “Annie Get Your Gun” and internationally with “The Who’s Tommy.”

Marcum directed and choreographed “A Grand Night for Singing” and “She Loves Me,” as well as conceived, directed, and starred in “5,6,7,8,: Broadway’s Style and Rhythm,” a concert of some of Broadway’s best dancers for the Alpine Theatre Project in Whitefish, Montana. He was the Associate Choreographer of “Elf, The Musical” on Broadway and has choreographed “Shrek The Musical,” “Little Shop of Horrors” and many others for theatre companies around the country.

“I have incorporated all of my first-hand, real-world, and professional knowledge into every class I teach,” Marcum said. In addition to teaching courses in tap, jazz, and theatre dance, he has developed and delivered workshops and lectures on various topics from “Audition Workshops” and “Singing for Dancers” to “Moving to New York” and “How to Be a Swing on Broadway.”

Marcum is an alumnus of Oklahoma City University’s world-class dance and arts management program, and his students are eager to find success similar to his.

“I am inspired daily by my students’ willingness to listen and learn from what I have to say,” he said. “I had a very rich life in New York and I want my students to realize that with hard work, determination, and a positive outlook on life and themselves, they can too.”

Marcum is currently choreographing for Oklahoma City University’s “Home for the Holidays” dance extravaganza and writing a paper on the role of “Dance Captains in the American Theatre,” which will be presented at this year’s Association of Theatre of Higher Education Conference.

Snapshot Works Produced: 8 Broadway Shows Performed In: 6 Choreography Works Underway: 7

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF DANCE

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DR. MICHAEL RAIBER

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Inspiring WANDA L. BASS SCHOOL OF MUSIC

Weekday afternoons find Dr. Michael Raiber sharing his love of music with several dozen underserved students from Oklahoma City schools. As Director of Teacher Support and Program Evaluation for El Sistema Oklahoma, Raiber works toward social reform through the free music program and ministry.

Inspired by El Sistema in Venezuela, the Oklahoma-based initiative is to serve the community by engaging children with an ensemble-based music program so they can share the joy of music making and grow as responsible citizens. The program is a partnership of OCU’s Bass School of Music, St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, and the Foundation for Oklahoma City Public Schools.

Raiber helped launch El Sistema Oklahoma in 2013, the same year he joined the Oklahoma City University faculty as the Busey Chair of Music Education. His greatest desire is to help prepare quality music educators who will inspire the next generation of music students.

Raiber is an active researcher and author. He was the primary investigator on the collaborative research team for Oklahoma A+ Schools. The team produced a five-volume report on the implementation of the OAS school reform model in Oklahoma Schools. He cur-

rently is the primary researcher for All Aboard, an integrated math and music curriculum for young children, focused on studying the possible development of 21st century skills including critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication.

Raiber co-authored a textbook, released in 2014, titled “The Journey from Music Student to Music Teacher: A Professional Approach” to help prospective music educators begin their transition from music student to professional music educator. The text is divided into four parts: discovery of self; discovery of teaching; discovery of learners; and discovery of the profession.

Raiber serves as president of the Oklahoma Music Educators Association and as the Southwestern Division Representatives for both the Music Teacher Education executive board and the Music Teacher Education Special Research Interest Group.

Snapshot Scholarly Articles: 14 Published Research Reports: 8 Textbooks: 1 Textbook Chapters: 1 Years in Higher Education: 17

PROFESSOR OF MUSIC EDUCATION

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DR. ELIZABETH DIENER

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Caring KRAMER SCHOOL OF NURSING

As technology transforms nursing education, Dr. Elizabeth Diener explores its impact on the focal point of the profession. Caring, Diener notes, is the essence of nursing in both its historical and contemporary contexts.

In addition to caring and simulation, Diener’s research interests include ethnocultural diversity in nursing education and doctoral program attrition at the point of comprehensive examination in schools of nursing.

In “Simulating Care: Technology-mediated Learning in 21st Century Nursing,” published in Nursing Forum Magazine, Diener examines the disconnects created by the use of simulation technology in nursing education. She finds that time must be spent with human beings in the early stages of nursing education to give transpersonal caring relationships the opportunity to develop.

Diener finds inspiration in her students and colleagues.

“Technology does not negate caring – the isolation it fosters makes transpersonal caring all the more important,” she said. “We are called to create a new paradigm for nursing education that merges Florence Nightingale’s vision with technology’s promise.”

Diener joined the OCU Kramer School of Nursing faculty in 2009 and serves as the Chair of Graduate Programs. She is a member of Sigma Theta Tau International, NLN and the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association.

“I am surrounded by extraordinarily gifted and compassionate individuals at Oklahoma City University, both students and faculty,” she said. “It is their passion for teaching, learning, and love of a disciplinary focus that inspires me. There is a certain energy, a combination of dreams, enthusiasm, and a desire to be better people, servants to their professions and communities, that motivates me to be worthy of the trust students place on me to lead them forward in their education.”

Snapshot Scholarly Articles: 2 Textbooks: 1 Current Research Projects: 4 Years in Higher Education: 22

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF NURSING, CHAIR, GRADUATE EDUCATION

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DR. JACOB DEARMON

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Innovating MEINDERS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

Dr. Jacob Dearmon’s research and expertise in economics has led him across academic disciplines and professional industries. His early research explores the effects of trust, which led Dearmon to a collaborative project fueled by machine learning techniques.

Dearmon co-authored “Trust and Development,” published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization in 2009, and “Trust and the Accumulation of Physical and Human Capital,” published in the European Journal of Political Economy in 2011. The first study examines the nonlinear effect of trust on economic growth across countries and the latter explores how trust affects the accumulation of education and investment across countries.

Based on his findings that trust seemed to be nonlinearly related to growth and spatially correlated, Dearmon wanted to investigate the relationship in more detail. Unable to find what he was looking for in economics literature, he reached across disciplines to machine learning and began a joint research project with a University of Pennsylvania professor. Dearmon analyzed spatial processes using machine learning techniques that he has applied to real-world issues in the energy industry. His article, “Gaussian Process Regression with Bayesian Model Averaging,” has recently been resubmitted for publication.

Dearmon’s research interest also includes modeling higher education outcomes. He developed a software system to assess optimal scholarship allocation and tuition setting. The software also analyzes retention outcomes by combining traditional econometric techniques with social network analysis. His applications are currently being patented.

Dearmon is an Associate Professor of Economics who joined the OCU business faculty in 2008. He teaches econometrics, business calculus, international economic policies, macroeconomics, microeconomics and statistics. He received the Meinders School of Business Distinguished Professor of Research Award in 2012 and served as a faculty fellow in the Provost’s Office for one year.

He has collaborated with OCU’s Steven C. Agee Economic Research and Policy Institute and various groups to develop forecasts and provide policy analysis, including an Oklahoma sales tax forecast model for the City of Oklahoma City. Dearmon is a member of the American Economic Association and Omicron Delta Epsilon.

Snapshot Patents Pending: 1 Published Articles: 3 Years in Higher Education: 6

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS

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DR. TRACY FLOREANI

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Exploring PETREE COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Fascinated by the paradoxes of American culture and inspired by her own family’s story, Dr. Tracy Floreani researches the country’s ethnic identity in the postwar period.

Her explorations of what it meant to be American in the middle of “America’s Century” led her to write Fifties Ethnicities: The Ethnic Novel and Mass Culture at MidCentury, published in 2013 by SUNY Press. In a series of comparative readings that draws on novels, television programs, movie magazines, and films, the book crosses generic boundaries to show how literature and mass media worked to mold concepts of ethnicity in the 1950s.

“By putting these novels into conversation with popular media narratives, I examine the boundaries and possibilities for participating in American culture in an era that greatly influenced national ideas about identity,” Floreani said.

One of Floreani’s inspirations is the story of her father, who came from an Italian immigrant family and was considered “non-white” before the Civil Rights movement, but was seen as “white” afterward.

Floreani also recently published “Metafictional Witnessing in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated” in the book Unfinalized Moments: Essays in the Development of Contemporary Jewish American Fiction. In her essay, Floreani explores how Foer’s 2002 novel uses experimental narrative styles to offer a new kind of witness testimony in the emerging post Holocaust genre of literature.

Her current projects include co-editing a special issue of American Studies and archival work at the Library of Congress toward possible new book projects.

Floreani joined the OCU faculty in 2010 and serves as the Chair of the Department of English. She teaches American literature and general education literature surveys, topics in ethnic literature, and honors interdisciplinary junior-senior seminars. She also assists English seniors with their capstone projects. In 2013 Floreani was honored as the Outstanding Honors Faculty and received the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning Award for mentoring undergraduate researchers. She also received three grants from the Oklahoma Humanities Council, all related to the Ralph Ellison Centennial celebration in Oklahoma City.

Floreani said she is motivated by her students.

“I’m particularly interested in how notions of national identity evolve over time, how race and ethnicity fit within larger national narratives at various historical moments, and how artists engage in larger discussions of what it means to be American,” she said.

“The way they read the same books changes as our culture changes,” she notes. “This keeps me on my toes, always trying to read texts in new and different ways.”

Snapshot Scholarly Articles: 7 Books: 1 Conference Presentations: 20

CHAIR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

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DR. PHYLLIS BERNARD

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Transforming SCHOOL OF LAW

Dr. Phyllis Bernard is transforming some of the most strife-torn regions of the world with her cutting-edge methods on conflict resolution.

Bernard joined the OCU Law faculty 25 years ago and began dispute resolution research and projects in 2000. In her first international endeavor, she worked with the International Federation of Women Lawyers in the Niger Delta to design a tribal peacemaking program.

Bernard’s model was so successful in bridging traditional and civic justice systems at the village level that it has since been adapted for use in Liberia, Kenya, and the Sudan. She also has served as a consultant with the American Bar Association’s Africa Law Initiative to develop a mediator training program for the Rwandan civil courts.

“This has been the most powerful work of my life,” Bernard said.

She attributes her success in Africa to the arts as much as to her legal research. “My ability to draw, and understand dance and drama all ended up being essential for me to take legal doctrines and make them into a replicable model for training at a grass roots level in Africa,” she said. “Women who were unable to read were able to learn and teach because it was pictures, storytelling, and symbols of justice and community.”

Bernard serves as the Founding Director of the School of Law’s Center on Alternative Dispute Resolution, and teaches administrative law and regulatory practice. Bernard founded the Center with colleagues Stephanie Hudson and Tresa Gouge with the mission of expanding the use of mediation, arbitration, negotiated settlement, and other non-litigious forms of dispute resolution through class instruction, scholarly research, and community outreach.

In her textbook chapter, “Muntu Meets Mencius: Can Ancient Principles Guide Modern Negotiations on the Export of Africa’s Natural Resources to China,” which was published in 2013 in Rethinking Negotiation Teaching: Educating Negotiators for a Connected World, Bernard identifies common elements among differing cultures that lead to principled negotiations.

Bernard sees her job as helping students understand what it means to be a lawyer in the 21st century, and her obligations not just to her students, but to the publics they go on to serve.

Snapshot Years in Higher Education: 25 Book Chapters: 10 Scholarly Articles: 12

DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER ON ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION

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BRIEF CASES

Dr. Dia D. Campbell-Detrixhe, Assistant Professor of Nursing, has published, presented, or reviewed more than 25 scholarly works. She authored chapters in NGNA Core Curriculum for Gerontological Advanced Practice Nurses, published by Sage Publications, and Touhy: Gerontological Nursing and Healthy Aging, published by Elsevier. She co-authored “Gerontology found me: Gaining understanding of advanced practice nurses in geriatrics,” published in the Western Journal of Nursing Research and “Spousal caregiving when the adult day services center is closed” in the Journal of Psychosocial Nursing. She also serves on numerous master’s and doctoral nursing capstone project committees.

Dr. Alexis Downs, Associate Professor of Management, is influenced by public policy analysis. She has published in the Journal of Organizational Change Management, Organizational Research Methods, The Journal of Disability Policy Studies, the CPA Journal, The Journal of Multistate Taxation and Incentives, Practical Tax Strategies and Oil, Gas & Energy Quarterly, among other publications. She is a member of the Executive Board for the Standing Conference for Management and Organization Inquiry and a book review editor for the Journal of Organizational Change Management. She co-authored “The American Dream and the Limits of Transparency” with Dr. Beth Stetson, which analyzed the speeches of presidential political candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. The article was published in 2013 in the Journal of Organizational Change Management.

Dr. Jason Flores, Assistant Professor of Marketing, focuses his research on factors that impact co-created customer value, sources of value for customers that are unique to the customer participation context, and ethics. He has presented research at numerous regional, national, and international conferences including the American Marketing Association and Academy of Marketing Science. His works include “Is Neuromarketing Ethical? Consumers say Yes. Consumers say No,” which will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Legal, Ethical and Regulatory Issues, and “The Impact of Employee Similarity to Customers on Customer Perceptions of Service Quality,” published in the proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science’s Annual Conference. Dr. Flores won the Distinguished Research Award from the Academy of Legal, Ethical, and Regulatory Issues division of Allied Academies for the first paper and the Jane F. Kenyo Best Paper Award from the Academy of Marketing Science for the latter.

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D. Lance Marsh, Associate Professor of Theatre, has acted in nearly 100 professional productions including almost all of Shakespeare’s cannon during the last 20 years. He serves as the Artistic Director of TheatreOCU and the Associate Artistic Director of Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park, and has directed 25 productions for the two companies. Five of his adaptations have been produced locally including “A Christmas Carol,” “Three Sisters,” “The House of Atreus,” “The Seagull,” and “Uncle Vanya.” Marsh authored “Desire and Self-Knowledge in Shakespeare: The Aesthetics of Sexual Hypocrisy in Measure for Measure,” presented at the 2013 American Society for Aesthetics conference. Marsh received the Daniel J. Travanti Acting Award from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the Excellence in Teaching Award from OCU. A member of the Actors Equity Association, Marsh is inspired by his students and his daughter, noting, “My students are amazingly creative and hard-working young theatre artists and they constantly inspire me to create beautiful and challenging projects for them. My daughter, Lily, a budding actor herself, is a constant inspiration by always reminding me how important play is to a theatre artist.”

Dr. Robin R. Meyers, Distinguished Professor of Social Justice, delivered the 2014 Robinson/Spong Lectures on Progressive Christianity at the historic Gladstone Library in North Wales. He gave five one-hour lectures, including one public lecture, under the theme, “The Once and Future Dissident Church.” In 2013, he gave the Lyman Beecher Lecture at Yale Divinity School, presenting three one-hour lectures on the recovery and renewal of the church as dependent on the capacity to be a beloved community of resistance titled “Faith as Resistance to Ego, Faith as Resistance to Orthodoxy, and Faith as Resistance to Empire.” Dr. Meyers has published six books including With Ears to Hear: Preaching as Self-Persuasion (Pilgrim Press), Morning Sun on a White Piano: Simple Pleasures and the Sacramental Life (Doubleday), The Virtue in the Vice: Finding Seven Lively Virtues in the Seven Deadly Sins (Health Communications), Why the Christian Right is Wrong: A Minister’s Manifesto for Taking Back Your Faith, Your Flag, and Your Future (Jossey-Bass), Saving Jesus from the Church (Harper Collins), and The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus (Jossey-Bass). Among those endorsing his books are Bill Moyers, Desmond Tutu, John Shelby Spong, and William Sloane Coffin Jr. Dr. Meyers is an award-winning commentator for National Public Radio and a frequent speaker at church workshops, academic conferences, and political events around the country. He has appeared on Dateline NBC, The McNeil-Leher Hour, ABC World News Tonight, and numerous PBS programs. His next book, expanding on his Lyman Beecher Lectures, is forthcoming from Yale University Press.

Jo Rowan, Chair of the Dance Department, pioneered American dance in higher education by creating a program focused on tap, jazz, and musical theatre dance. Rowan and her husband, Dean John Bedford, established the program at Oklahoma City University in 1980. Since that time, 47 alumni have become Rockettes and more than 50 have performed on Broadway. Rowan served as ballet mistress of the Dallas Ballet, taught for all major dance organization in the U.S., and created dance instruction CDs and videos on the Hoctor, Stepping Tones, and Statler labels. Rowan also created OCU’s American Spirit Dance Company, which has grown into a premier entertainment organization representing Oklahoma in landmark moments such as the Rose Parade opening in 2007. The company appears in the critically acclaimed Home for the Holidays production annually and has performed around the world under Rowan’s direction. Her numerous honors include receiving the National Dance Teacher of the Year in Higher Education Award from Dance Teacher magazine, a Flo-Bert Award, induction into the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame, and a proclamation from the President of the Borough of Manhattan for contributing, through her career at OCU, “significantly to the cultural life of Manhattan and all of New York City.” Under Rowan’s leadership, the OCU dance program has been recognized among the top 10 university dance programs in the U.S. and the leading dance program specializing in preparing dancers for careers in musical theatre and the entertainment industry.

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Dr. John Starkey, Professor of Religion, has published two articles and presented 15 papers focused on his research work with Paul Tillich’s theology and Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy of human nature and interpretation of religious experience. His article, “Ricoeur and the Symbolic Roots of Religious Experience,” was published in the Journal of French Philosophy. It investigates the early and late Ricoeur approach to non-verbal religious experience. Dr. Starkey and David Pellauer co-translated one of Ricoeur’s books, Being, Essence, and Substance in Aristotle and Plato, which was published in 2013 by Polity Press. Dr. Starkey was one of 25 participants selected by the Council of Independent Colleges and the Interfaith Youth Core for the Teaching Interfaith Understanding program this summer at Lesley University. Dr. Starkey enjoys teaching biblical literature, world religions, peace and non-violence, and liberation theology among other courses and describes himself as Catholic by tradition, Quaker by conviction, and a servant of Methodists.

Tiffany van der Merwe, Associate Professor of Dance, is investigating the current expectations of performance venues in major U.S. cities known for employing dancers in show business. She is viewing a variety of performances in Las Vegas, New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles to evaluate production values and interviewing performers and arts management staff. Van der Merwe seeks to understand each venue from the perspectives of an audience member, performer, and production team. She recently worked on the creative team for Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma City and the Thelma Gaylord Academy on the production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat.” Van der Merwe also conducted a case study titled “Effective Dimensions of Teaching Employed within the American Dance Classroom: A Study of an Exploratory Dance Student Ratings Tool.

Dr. Ally A. Zhou, Associate Professor of TESOL, published “Do adult ESL learners’ and their teachers’ goals for improving grammar in writing correspond?” and “What adult ESL learners say about improving grammar and vocabulary in their writing for academic purposes” in Language Awareness, a peer-refereed journal of Routledge. She also co-authored “Handbook of Standards for Teachers of Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages” (under review) for Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, a premium publisher in China. She has appeared on the largest Chinese television network, CCTV4, as a result of her service as a key trainer for a Chinese teacher training program sponsored by the Confucius Institute Headquarters (Hanban). Dr. Zhou has presented at national and international conferences including the World Congress of the International Association of Applied Linguistics, the American Association for Applied Linguistics annual conference, and the annual TESOL International Convention and English Language Expo. She served on the U.S. Student Fulbright National Screening Committee and was the Higher Education and Applied Linguistics Chair for Oklahoma Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. She is currently a manuscript reviewer for the journal Language Awareness and is Associate Editor for American Review of China Studies.

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Robert Henry, President Susan Barber, Provost

ADMINISTRATIVE CABINET

Jim Abbott, Assistant Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics Kent Buchanan, Assistant Provost Joey Croslin, Chief Human Resources Officer Liz Donnelly, Acting Vice President for Student Affairs Gerry Hunt, Chief Information Officer Mary Jenkins, General Counsel Craig Knutson, Chief of Staff Donna Nance, Chief Financial Officer Charles Neff, Vice President for University-Church Relations Marty O’Gwynn, Vice President for 
University Advancement and External Relations Sandy Pantlik, Senior Director of University Communications Kevin Windholz, Vice President for Enrollment Management

DEANS

Steven Agee, Meinders School of Business John Bedford, Ann Lacy School of American Dance and Arts Management Valerie Couch, School of Law Mark Davies, Petree College of Arts and Sciences Mark Parker, Bass School of Music & School of Theatre Lois Salmeron, Kramer School of Nursing

EDITORIAL STAFF

Leslie Berger, Editor and Director of Public Relations Josh Robinson, Photographer and Web Content Coordinator Issei Aoyama, Senior Graphic Designer

Scholarly Excellence at Oklahoma City University 2501 N. Blackwelder Ave. Oklahoma City, OK 73106-1493 Summer 2014

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