IMPACT No. 7: 2021-2022

SCHOLARSHIP, CREATIVITY, & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

TRINITY UNIVERSITY 2021-2022

MOVING PERFORMANCE

Physics course stages fun, accessible experiments for all

+ English professor applies Shakespeare to the U.S.-Mexico border

+ Choral director and Trinity singers make Carnegie Hall debut

The study of literature, language, philosophy, and the broader examination of the human condition prepares citizens who help lead their communities and workplaces in asking better questions and finding better solutions.

– President Vanessa B. Beasley, Ph.D. october 2022 community message

SHAKESPEARE IS HERE

English professor examines Shakespeare as told from the U.S.-Mexico border

by jeremy gerlach

MOVING PERFORMANCE

“Speaking Physics” course stages fun, accessible experiments for all by jeremy gerlach

LETTER FROM THE PROVOST RESEARCH AND ACHIEVEMENT ARTS AND HUMANITIES

ENCORE EXPERIENCE

Trinity singers reunite and delight at Carnegie Hall in long-anticipated performance by jeremy

gerlach

SCHOLARSHIP, CREATIVITY, & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

2021-2022

EDITORIAL BOARD

Jeanna Goodrich Balreira ’08 / Editor

Molly Mohr Bruni / Managing Editor

Jeremy Gerlach / Writer

Kennice Leisk ’22 / Writer & Editor

Laura Rodriguez / Graphic Designer

David Ribble ’82 / Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs & Professor of Biology

Armando Saliba / Director of Sponsored Research

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Victoria Aarons / English

Angela Breidenstein ’91, M’92 / Education

Jane Costanza / Library

Catherine Kenyon / Director of Foundation Relations

Carl Leafstedt / Music

Patrick Shay ’03, M’05 / Health Care Administration

Adam Urbach / Chemistry

Harry Wallace / Psychology

INTERNS

Madeline Freeman ’23 / Writing Intern

Matilda Krell ’23 / Writing Intern

Hope Paschall ’26 /Publications Research and Writing Intern

Emma Utzinger ’24 / Writing Intern

PRESIDENT

Vanessa B. Beasley

IMPACT is published annually by the Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing. Contact impact@trinity.edu for subscription information and other questions.

EDITORIAL OFFICES

Trinity University

Strategic Communications and Marketing

One Trinity Place San Antonio, TX 78212-7200

Email: impact@trinity.edu

Phone: 210-999-8406

Fax: 210-999-8449

READ IMPACT ONLINE: trinity.edu/impact-magazine

Trinity University Community,

Please enjoy this latest edition of IMPACT, which highlights the fantastic work of our faculty through their groundbreaking, nationally recognized research and scholarship. These stories remind us of our faculty’s commitment to our values of perpetual discovery, enduring excellence, and intentional inclusion.

Those values can manifest themselves in powerful and vibrant ways, like English professor Kathryn Vomero Santos’s “The Bard in the Borderlands” project with the Mellon Initiative for Undergraduate Research. Her study seeks to amplify the voices of playwrights who’ve transformed Shakespeare’s stories into depictions of life along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trinity University also celebrated a trip to New York City’s famed Carnegie Hall, with current and former students led by Trinity’s director of choral activities, Gary Seighman, D.M.A. With a gig like that, you might think the Trinity Chamber Singers would be shoo-ins as professional musicians. But like most Trinity student performers, most aren’t even music majors. They’re simply music lovers who are encouraged to perform through Trinity’s versatile liberal arts approach to learning.

If that’s not eclectic enough, you might want to spend some time in physics professor Nirav Mehta’s “Speaking Physics” course, which uses theater stunts to explain physics to a non-technical audience. Students say the novel approach teaches hands-on design, project management, and communication skills. And where else are you going to have the opportunity to sandwich your professor between two beds of nails?

Our faculty have received significant national arts and sciences grants and awards, including support for diversity, equity, and inclusion in engineering through the National Science Foundation. Trinity researchers have also secured funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Welch Foundation, National Institutes of Health, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Chemical Society, and the U.S. Department of Education, among others.

These accomplishments point toward an even brighter future for the liberal arts at Trinity. I’m proud of our highly engaged faculty and staff. Please join me in celebrating their many accomplishments.

Warmly,

Megan Mustain

Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs

GROUNDBREAKING RESEARCH

External grants and awards are a prestigious and valuable acknowledgement of a faculty member’s intellectual achievements and promise. Faculty members from all disciplines apply for funding from institutions, foundations, consortia, and government agencies.

Faculty or Academic Staff with Grant Awards, 2014-22

Rolling Average of Expenditures from All Externally Sponsored Sources, 2018-22

Between 2014-22, 177 members of the faculty or academic staff held at least one grant award.

Total Expenditures (3-year rolling average) Average per-year expenditures

Source: Office of Sponsored Programs, December 2022

Given the cyclical nature of grant awards, expenditures are calculated using a rolling average that includes the current year and previous two fiscal years. Externally sponsored sources include grants, contracts, and agreements from federal and state agencies, businesses, nonprofit organizations, other universities, etc. It does not include restricted or unrestricted gifts.

Active Grants and Contracts Managed by the Office of Sponsored Programs, 2018-22

Source: Office of Sponsored Programs, December 2022 Number of active grants and contracts managed

Source: Office of Sponsored Programs, December 2022

The number of active grants and contracts is measured at the end of the fiscal year.

Number of Proposals Submitted by the Office of Sponsored Programs and the Office of Foundation Relations, 2021-22

Fiscal Year 2021 proposals

Fiscal Year 2022 proposals

Source: Office of Sponsored Programs, December 2022

The number of submitted proposals is measured at the end of the fiscal year.

FACULTY BEYOND THE CLASSROOM

Trinity funded more than 50 faculty projects for 2022-23

by Matilda Krell ’23

Education professors Laura Allen, Ph.D., Ellen Barnett, Ph.D., and Courtney Crim, Ed.D., aren’t just interested in the mental health of college students because of their profession—it’s personal. All three have college-age children of their own.

“We found it’s great to tell people to go [outside],” Allen says, “but you can’t tell an already stressed undergraduate to go make more time to do something that they already don’t have time for.”

That’s why Allen and Crim proposed a new course called “Natural Environment and Well-Being,” which gets Trinity students out into nature while earning college credit at the same time. The course builds off a previous interdisciplinary “Productive Collision” grant that brought together Allen, Barnett, and Crim along with biology professor Jonathan King, Ph.D., who helped with biometric measures, and sociology professor Benjamin Sosnaud, Ph.D., who helped with data analysis. King and Sosnaud also contributed to the experiment design process. Allen and Crim’s pilot class in Fall 2021 boasted 25 students with a waitlist of 20, and the Fall 2022 class had 30 students, with a waitlist that jumped to 67.

This past summer, Allen, Barnett, and Crim studied qualitative and quantitative data from two specific projects from the Fall 2021 course: photo stories and sit spot reflections. In each activity, students spent time in nature and recorded their

feelings during and after. Additionally, students were surveyed throughout the semester about their mood, resilience, and rumination. Barnett, with the aid of undergraduate researcher Leah Marsh ’23, analyzed the sit spot reflections, while Crim focused on the photo stories and Allen reviewed the survey results.

While Barnett and Marsh used a Murchison grant for their work, Allen and Crim used faculty summer stipends. Each year, Trinity faculty can apply for summer stipends—monetary awards that allow faculty to devote the summer to a scholarly or creative project—and academic leaves—a semester or a year spent on an indepth study. For the 2022-23 academic year, the University selected 25 faculty to receive summer stipends and 26 to receive academic leaves.

Explore the full list of faculty who received 2022-23 summer stipends and academic leaves at gotu.us/2223facultyprojects.

Laura Allen and Jonathan King brought students in the “Natural Environment and Well-Being” course to Guadalupe River State Park.

ACCOUNTING FOR DEPARTMENT LEADERSHIP

Trinity’s ED CLIC initiatives seek institutional changes for student well-being and DEI efforts

by Matilda Krell ’23

As a force in motion, Trinity University is always seeking new avenues for innovation and improvement. In March 2020, the University received a $275,000 grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation through May 2022 for ED CLIC (Empowering Department Chairs to Lead and Implement Change). The funds supported 10 Trinity department chairs as they developed their leadership capacity while directing projects that addressed institutional needs.

As chair of the Department of Accounting, Julie Persellin, Ph.D., used her funding to create a one hour “Tools of Holistic Well-Being” course within the Master of Science in Accounting program. The course’s yoga sessions, nature walks, and cooking classes may seem contrary to the precise and mathematical nature of accounting, but Persellin believes in teaching students to live well-rounded lives.

“The last couple of years have taught us the importance of maintaining balance in our lives,” Persellin says. “I hope this course provides students with an expanded toolkit of life skills that will contribute to maintaining that balance as well as their personal well-being and professional success long after they leave Trinity.”

Along with student success and wellness, another central focus of Trinity’s ED CLIC working group was the recognition of the Diversity, Equity,

and Inclusion work of faculty in Promotion and Tenure (P&T) criteria. Led by Jennifer Mathews, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Trinity’s EDC CLIC working group consisted of five department chairs—E. Cabral Balreira, Ph.D. (Mathematics), Jorge Colazo, Ph.D. (Finance and Decision Sciences), Judith Norman, Ph.D. (Philosophy), and Laura Hunsicker-Wang, Ph.D. (Chemistry). For seven months, the group reviewed Trinity’s P&T data over the last 20 years, teaching evaluation practices and literature, university practices related to faculty service, and information networks at Trinity, while receiving feedback from outside consultants and focus groups of Trinity faculty.

“Taking into consideration the many complications of this issue, we have come to recognize that one significant path to moving this process forward is focusing on transparency and equity, which are values that will benefit all faculty,” Mathews says.

The group compiled their findings into “Building Transparency and Equity into Faculty Evaluation and Development at Trinity University,” a report of recommendations they hope to implement with the support of Academic Affairs, the Faculty Senate, and the Collaborative for Learning and Teaching in 2023.

Accounting students participated in yoga, nature walks, and cooking classes in “Tools of Holistic Well-Being.”

ONWARD AND UPWARD

Trinity receives $2.189 million for Upward Bound grant

Trinity University has received a federal Upward Bound (UB) grant of $2.189 million from the U.S. Department of Education to help potential first-generation and underrepresented students succeed in their pre-college coursework in high school and ultimately in their higher education pursuits. Trinity’s Department of Education has hosted this program for 35 years, and the recent grant allows it to continue for the next five years.

Trinity’s UB program serves two schools from Harlandale ISD and two from Edgewood ISD. This target community falls in the 87th percentile of economically distressed communities nationally, meaning that the community confronts higher economic and social distress levels than 87% of American communities.

Trinity UB graduates are 10 times more likely to have a bachelor’s degree than adults over the age of 25 living within their community.

Campus-based UB programs are held during the academic year and summer, offering students courses, internship and field trip opportunities, and academic, financial literacy, and professional mentorship. The program provides intensive mentoring and support for students as they prepare for college entrance exams and tackle admission applications, financial aid, and scholarship forms.

“Upward Bound provided me with great mentors,” said Maria Olalde, a past Trinity UB student. Olalde later returned to the program to serve as a tutor herself. “Self-advocacy is the greatest lesson I learned from the program. I pride myself in being someone who is actively seeking new opportunities for myself and my community.”

Several UB high school juniors and seniors are placed in career internships, matched with college and community professionals in their career interests. After students graduate, advisers keep in contact with their students, monitoring their transition progress and providing guidance on how to overcome any barriers to their success in higher education either socially or academically.

“Upward Bound is instilling a sense of confidence among the students we serve that college completion is possible. We watch parents send their child, the first in their family, to college with pride in their eyes,” says Alejandra De Hoyos, director of Trinity’s UB program. “For us, it is knowing that the future generations in those families’ lives have been changed because the path has become a bit easier. As a team, we have seen it happen and are proud of the commitment and work we do to serve Trinity University, Harlandale ISD, and Edgewood ISD.”

Trinity Upward Bound students visited the Seattle Great Wheel while on their 2022 summer trip.

TO GRADUATE SCHOOL—AND BEYOND

Trinity awarded $1.6 million grant to continue support of McNair Scholars Program

by Emma Utzinger ’24

In Fall 2022, Trinity University’s McNair Scholars Program was awarded a $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to continue for another five years. This program, now in its 16th year at Trinity, provides funding and support to first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students planning to pursue a doctorate in a scholarly field of study following graduation.

From their sophomore to senior year, Trinity McNair Scholars are provided with opportunities for research, academic support for their coursework, and preparations for graduate school and beyond. In the past five years, 54% of Trinity McNair Scholars students have enrolled in graduate programs, and projections for the 2022-23 grant cycle show that 53% of Trinity McNair Scholars will achieve a doctorate, far exceeding the 10% goal.

“It’s an enormous source of pride when they go off and do great things, and even better when they come back and support the program,” says Kelly Lyons, Ph.D., program director. “It can be a challenge to convince students to take the curriculum and activities seriously day to day, but they inevitably see how it pays off in the future—building that scaffolding and that foundation for them, not only as successful graduate students, but also as successful leaders.”

The McNair Scholars Program—named for Ronald E. McNair, Ph.D., the second Black astronaut in space—is a nationwide initiative that grew out of the Civil Rights’ War on Poverty. Like Upward Bound and Pell Eligibility, this program aims to improve access to education for all. At Trinity, the program has served 186 students since 2007, and there are currently 28 scholars.

The McNair Scholars Program is an invaluable resource, both for helping students realize their passions for academia and for welcoming first-generation and underrepresented students in higher education. Lyons foresees that the $1.6 million grant renewal will allow the program to continue doing what it does best—supporting student success at Trinity and for life afterward.

“There’s a lot of push in our program to try novel approaches to help our scholars thrive,” Lyons says. “But our successes—seeing the number of scholars that we place with full funding in graduate programs each year—are a demonstration that we are getting it right. All we need to do is continue to be scholar-focused in a personal and tailored way. It requires a lot of effort, but the payoff is enormous.”

Kelly Lyons (far right) with May 2022 Trinity McNair Scholar graduates.

DISTINGUISHED ACHIEVEMENT

Trinity University faculty and staff are gifted teachers and advisers who have dedicated themselves to working closely with students in and out of the classroom. This year, numerous outstanding Trinity faculty and staff members were honored for distinguished achievement in service, teaching, advising, mentorship, and research.

Z.T. SCOTT AWARD

Honors the top educator at Trinity

Jane

Childers / Psychology

Childers won Trinity’s most prestigious faculty award for her outstanding track record in developmental psychology research and commitment to teaching and mentoring, both in her classroom and in her lab. Throughout the year, Childers and her team of undergraduate researchers collaborated with international teams and local establishments to uncover more about children’s language development, specifically regarding verb usage in children ages 2-5. Childers’ deep-rooted investment in her undergraduate research students provides opportunities for them to gain hands-on field experience and engage in the real-world applications of their studies.

PRESIDENT’S AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN STUDENT ADVOCACY

Recognizes support for student success in and out of the classroom

Corina Maeder ’99 / Chemistry

Maeder was nominated for her inclusive and thoughtful student mentorship and activism. She plays an active role in promoting experiential research and opportunities for women in STEM.

Valerie

Schweers / Admissions

As the dean of enrollment strategy and planning, Schweers was nominated for her exemplary leadership and innovative problem-solving skills. She is known for her work with various campus partners and for working to make the Trinity student journey streamlined and accessible for all.

DR. DENEESE L. JONES AWARD FOR INCLUSIVE EXCELLENCE

Two Trinity employees were recipients of the inaugural Dr. Deneese L. Jones Award for Inclusive Excellence, celebrating Jones’ time and impact as Trinity’s former vice president for Academic Affairs.

Shawne

Stewart-Zakaria / Alumni Relations and Development

Stewart-Zakaria, director of special events, is deeply engaged in inclusive excellence work at Trinity. Stewart-Zakaria assisted the President’s Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion, helping both research a benchmarking study and form recommendations relating to a DEI Center. She has also encouraged inclusion in Alumni Relations and Development, helping promote a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Workplace Certificate.

Jie Zhang / Modern Languages and Literatures

Zhang’s extensive involvement and advocacy in the East Asian Studies at Trinity program are testaments to her commitment to inclusion. She has planned many events, webinars, and ally trainings as well as a library exhibit and new Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) graduation ceremony. Multiple organizations have invited Zhang to speak about AAPI stories, and last year, she organized the first AAPI panel for the International Society for Educational Biography.

DISTINGUISHED ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS

Recognizes distinguished achievement in teaching, advising, and research

Gina Tam / History

Distinguished Early Career Faculty Award for Teaching and Scholarship

Tam is involved in the East Asian Studies at Trinity program, co-directs the Women’s and Gender Studies minor, and currently holds a fellowship with the National Council on U.S.-China Relations Public Intellectual Program.

Diana Young / History

Distinguished Early Career Faculty Award for Teaching and Scholarship

Young is regarded as an effective educator, trusted adviser, and dedicated mentor. She helps lead the Business Analytics and Technology program, and her student-centered teaching relies on inquiry-based, collaborative, and experiential learning.

Jonathan King / Biology

Distinguished Award for Advising and Mentoring Faculty and alumni commend King for his guidance as an “exceptional mentor” and “exemplary role model.” King is also the new chair of Trinity’s Health Care Professions Advisory Committee.

TRINITY TOMORROW AWARDS

Recognizes significant contributions to Trinity’s educational mission

Andrew Hansen / Human Communication and Theatre

Michele Johnson / Biology

Zhaoxi Liu / Communication

Jacob Tingle ’95 / Business Administration and Sport Management

Luke Tunstall / Quantitative Reasoning and Skills Center

STEPPING UP AND IN

This past year, both longtime and new Tigers were appointed to new significant roles in various departments across campus. Their dedication to Trinity’s mission and contributions to campus life, health, and safety promotes student wellbeing and helps to make Trinity a more inclusive place for all.

Vanessa B. Beasley / President

Frank Guerra ’83 / Vice President for Strategic Communications and Marketing

Juan Sepúlveda / President’s Special Adviser for Inclusive Excellence

Marc Powell / Athletics

Distinguished University, Community, and Professional Service

Powell, head athletic trainer, co-authored COVID-19 policies for Trinity Athletics and the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference, managed COVID-19 testing and monitoring for student-athletes, and implemented updated NCAA pandemic policies.

Andrew Porter / English

Distinguished Award for Scholarship, Research, or Creative Work or Activity

Porter’s writings have been anthologized, translated, adapted into screenplays, and published in prestigious journals and magazines. He recently received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction for The Theory of Light and Matter.

Jim Hertel / Chief Human Resources Officer

Wilson Terrell Jr. / Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs - Inclusive Excellence

Jennifer Henderson / Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs - Student Success

Sarah Iverson P’24 / Registrar

John Rowse / Trinity University Police Department Assistant Chief of Police

Frances Frey / Executive Director of Institutional Research and Effectiveness

english professor examines shakespeare as told from the u.s.-mexico border

or Chicanx and Indigenous authors along the U.S.-Mexico border, repurposing Shakespeare is a way to tell their stories.

words

by

Jeremy Gerlach photos

by

Anh-Viet Dinh ’15

Trinity University English professor Kathryn Vomero Santos, Ph.D., has immersed herself in this world for her unique, collaborative “The Bard in the Borderlands” project. It’s a deep dive into the world of playwrights who have transformed Shakespeare’s stories into depictions of life along an area commonly referred to as La Frontera, or the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.

This research project—launched by Santos back in 2019— will culminate in a soon-to-be released publication, The Bard in the Borderlands: An Anthology of Shakespeare Appropriations en La Frontera. This collaboration with Texas A&M University-San Antonio professors Katherine Gillen, Ph.D., and Adrianna Santos, Ph.D., will be published by ACMRS Press (Arizona State University) as an open-access book that contains 12 previously unpublished plays, each re-envisioning Shakespeare in the context of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. Volume 1 will be available in March 2023, with Volume 2 following in 2024. It’s a project that has already earned the team a prestigious Collaborative Research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

“In our research, we started coming across examples of plays by Chicanx and Indigenous playwrights who were radically adapting Shakespeare’s works to meet the needs and tell the histories of the Borderlands,” says Santos, who eventually wants to see these plays taught in border region classrooms the same way traditional Shakespeare has been taught. “We’re hoping that this anthology not only transforms Shakespeare research, but especially impacts teaching.”

Take a look at any high school theater stage or English classroom, after all, and one sees just how transformative this work might be. In English-speaking countries, these spaces have histori-

“This is my dream,” says Díaz-Minshew, a global Latinx studies and English double major who hails from Dallas, but has family with roots in Mexico and San Antonio. “When Dr. Santos invited me to join the project, I said, ‘Wait—you mean I get to talk about borderland politics, immigration, and also theater and Shakespeare? Yes, please!’ If you were to put all of my interests into one little nutshell, it’s basically this research project.”

This research is all happening inside Trinity’s new Dicke Hall, a unique facility dedicated specifically for the humanities (one of only a handful of its kind in Texas). This transformative new

cally been dominated by English-speaking voices and Anglo-centric perspectives, with the Bard himself, William Shakespeare, right at center stage.

This is a world so dominated by these conventional approaches to Shakespeare that it has felt, at times, like it’s left behind students such as Paloma Díaz-Minshew ’24, one of the undergraduate researchers working with Santos on the Borderlands project under Trinity’s Mellon Initiative for Undergraduate Research. Before connecting with Santos, there were even times when Díaz-Minshew felt like the only Mexican-American “theater kid” in the world.

space represents a renovation, rejuvenation, and reaffirmation of the humanities fields as a bedrock of Trinity’s versatile liberal arts curriculum. The Bard in the Borderlands project being conducted at Dicke Hall is perhaps the perfect example of the timelessness of the humanities themselves: a tradition of answering questions—and questioning answers—all in a physical space that invites the type of collaboration and interdisciplinarity that has become synonymous with Trinity’s brand in the modern era.

The plays that Santos, her collaborators, and her students are exploring go beyond merely revamping Shakespeare: Each represents a transformative storytelling process. Imagine Romeo and

Kathryn Vomero Santos (left) and students like Paloma Díaz-Minshew (right) have delved into the Bard in the Borderlands project.

t Trinity, we are invested in exploring what humanistic inquiry can do to enact social justice.”

Juliet, set in Los Angeles during Día de los Muertos with Juliet coming from an upwardly-mobile Mexican-American family seeking to assimilate into Anglo culture, and Romeo is depicted as an undocumented immmigrant. Or, there is another version of the famous play, set in the Rio Grande Valley, in which the central couple meets at a farm workers’ protest, not a party.

There’s Macbeth, now with cartels. The Winter’s Tale now depicts conflicts between the Indigenous peoples and the early settlers of California. The Merchant of Santa Fe transports the play from Venice to 17th-century New Mexico and considers the dynamics of race, religion, and class in that colonial context. And other notables, such as Henry IV, Part 1, Measure for Measure, and The Comedy of Errors, each get similar treatment. These plays are multilingual, with frequent code-switching, where the exchange of languages becomes, well, kind of the entire point.

“Shakespeare himself was obsessed with multilingualism and the boundaries of the English language. But some of these playwrights insert moments of linguistic contact and conflict in significant places in the plays,” Santos says. “The multilingualism we find in Borderlands appropriations of Shakespeare reflects

Santos wants her research to help transform the way classrooms teach Shakespeare.

ur brains are wired for story. And you can tell someone 10 facts about how hard it is to be an immigrant, but a person is going to hold onto a story much, much more.”

Santos doesn’t think of Shakespeare as a saint, but this candle (a gift from a former student) is part of an entire shelf in her office full of kitschy Shakespearean knickknacks. “It’s fascinating to see how Shakespeare’s iconic status circulates in various material forms,” Santos says.

the complex language politics in this region. In Edit Villarreal’s The Language of Flowers, for example, Juliet has been told not to speak Spanish as part of her family’s emphasis on assimilation. So, Romeo becomes a way of connecting to her heritage and connect ing to her language. In Bernardo Mazón Daher’s bilingual Measure for Measure | Medida por medida, which is set in the border city of San Diego, language is used as a weapon of political power.”

To glean this type of insight, Santos has set students such as Díaz-Minshew and fellow researcher Eva Buergler, a December ’22 grad from New Jersey to work on reading the type scripts of each play. Many of these type scripts have been preserved in the ancient digital form of a PDF or typed out on a near-prehistoric typewriter. The students have then transcribed these plays, identified moments in the text that they thought required more annotation and more historical research, and helped frame the types of discussion questions that future school teachers might use to teach these adaptations to their own students.

Buergler, a former biology student turned English major, was excited to trade in her “wet” lab (gloves and chemicals) for a “dry” one (done on paper). As someone who wants to pursue her MFA and become a writer herself, Buergler was ecstatic to get the chance to join Santos’ project.

“At Trinity, there’s a lot of really great professors because all of them are there to teach,” Buergler says. “And Santos is my favorite. She’s amazing. She’s wholeheartedly in this (Borderlands) project, she believes in it, and she’s passionate. It’s really exciting getting to see how a culture can take old things and remix them, essentially.”

That passion is the name of the game for undergraduate research at Trinity, which supports rigorous scholarship and discovery in the fields of the humanities with the same fervor that it does the social sciences and STEM fields. Santos and her team have capitalized on numerous sources of funding, such as from the Mellon Initiative, which is specifically aimed at arts and humanities subjects and provides housing and summer stipends for students as well as additional resources for faculty, striving to create truly collaborative partnerships between these two groups.

Santos, in addition to her research and teaching, also co-leads a special Trinity resource known as the Humanities Collective, which fosters humanistic learning and enables meaningful action through programming, support for research, and beyond. This initiative actually provided the initial funding for the project through the Public Humanities Faculty Fellowship.

“Our Bard in the Borderlands project really started to get going because of this [Humanities Collective] initiative,” Santos says. “At Trinity, we are invested in exploring what humanistic inquiry can do to enact social justice. We’re seeing that Shakespeare has become part of a vibrant tradition in which Borderlands artists use canonical texts to reflect the hybrid cultures that emerged from colonialism and Indigenous resistance and to engage directly with the lived realities of Borderlands residents.”

Santos says that this goal, like so many other humanities-related projects at Trinity, has required an interdisciplinary approach that draws on the many talents of Trinity students to engage with the many facets of humanities research.

“As humanists, we often have to bring many different forms of knowing together in our research,” Santos says. “When we study these plays, we’re studying literature. But understanding these plays also requires knowledge about the longstanding performance traditions, regional politics, and varying belief systems upon which these plays are drawing.”

And, as Santos’s team has discovered, these plays also draw on the talents of visual artists and musicians. “There’s often original music composed for these plays,” says Santos, who points out that the music for The Language of Flowers was written by Germaine Franco, who scored the recent Disney hits Coco and Encanto. Santos also mentions that her team has been lucky enough to have a local San Antonio artist, Celeste De Luna, design a cover image for The Bard and the Borderlands anthology that combines the iconic woodcut style associated with the early printed books of Shakespeare’s time with images from Borderlands-area mythology and iconography.

For Díaz-Minshew, these interdisciplinary glimpses into Borderlands culture have been invaluable, especially in the context of her global Latinx studies major. A relatively recent addition to Trinity’s academic offerings, this major offers Tigers an analysis of the Latinx experience that spans languages, the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences.

“One of the reasons I actually came to Trinity in the first place was because I was going to get to learn about my identity and my community and also get credit for it through my global Latinx studies major. That’s super cool,” Díaz-Minshew says. “But getting the chance to put that together in conjunction with my English major for this project has been an incredible opportunity, especially since I do want to go into academia and get a Ph.D. in Chicano studies. This definitely helped put me on that path.”

The cover art for Santos’s upcoming anthology, made by local San Antonio artist Celeste De Luna, combines a woodcut style with images from Borderlands-area mythology and iconography.

Santos and Díaz-Minshew hope this anthology helps draw attention to the community of borderlands artists, musicians, and playwrights who created these adaptations.

This type of interdisciplinarity is a hallmark of scholarship at Trinity, and it’s also one of the reasons students like Buergler believe this type of humanities research is worth doing.

“I believe all art humanizes, because it’s an expression of humanity,” Buergler says. “I think that one of the easiest ways to get someone to understand something, or to relate to something, is story, right? Our brains are wired for story. And you can tell someone 10 facts about how hard it is to be an immigrant, but a person is going to hold onto a story much, much more.”

says. “I’ve had some conversations with Texas teachers during the workshops I have run for Humanities Texas, and they are hungry for this kind of material.”

And Díaz-Minshew says the importance of this research is not just about the existence of any one of these plays individually.

“Building a Shakespeare anthology that is Mexican-American like this for the first time means being able to bring these plays together, not just as individual works that exist alone, but also as a legacy of works that exist in the same place,” Díaz-Minshew says.

This is what’s at stake for Santos: finding a way to bring more attention to these stories, many of which are being told by artists, musicians, and creative minds who have been marginalized. And in turn, this is also why Santos wants her team’s work to be open access, in order to help bring it to as many classrooms as possible.

“We’re hoping to be able to identify teachers in San Antonio schools or schools in the [Rio Grande] Valley who would like to work on incorporating these texts into their classrooms,” Santos

“In the Borderlands, we are creating our own space, and now, in this anthology, we’re letting the world know about that space.”

Ultimately, one of these plays might end up in the hands of the next Díaz-Minshew. “There were a lot of times that I would be reading things and start crying because seeing yourself accurately represented, that’s something that doesn’t happen often,” she says. “Getting into this research and realizing, ‘Of course there are other Mexican-American theater kids!’—I was never exposed to that.”

s a Mexican American, there were a lot of times during this research that I would be reading things and just start crying because seeing yourself accurately represented, that’s something that doesn’t happen often.”

History professor Gina Tam was selected as a Public Intellectuals Program VII Fellow through the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.

ARTS and HUMANITIES

Through research and scholarship in the arts and humanities at Trinity University, faculty explore human imagination, creativity, and expression. Faculty direct plays and uncover their historic meanings, compose music and analyze its meter and rhyme, and create art and delve into its cultural impact. At Trinity, arts and humanities departments include Art and Art History, Classical Studies, English, History, Human Communication and Theatre, the Library, Modern Languages and Literatures, Music, Philosophy, and Religion.

VICTORIA AARONS / English

published “Reinventing Philip Roth in the Fiction of Others” in the French Review of American Studies, 2021, Vol.1, Issue 166. Aarons contributed two chapters in 2021: “The Burden of the Third Generation in Germany: Nora Krug’s Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home” for The Holocaust across Borders: Trauma, Atrocity, and Representation in Literature and Culture with Lexington Books and “The Late Novellas” for Philip Roth in Context with Cambridge University Press.

CARLOS X. ARDAVÍNTRABANCO / Modern Languages and Literatures published two articles for Cuadernos de Aldeeu: “Apuntes sobre el antiamericanismo en la España democrática” in Vol. 35 in 2021 and “Los Estados Unidos en la imaginación sociológica española” in Vol. 36 in 2022. Ardavín-Trabanco also published “Santayana y los Estados Unidos” in Limbo: International Santayana Studies Bulletin, 2021, Vol. 41.

PETER BALBERT / English

contributed “The Novel” for Norman Mailer in Context with Cambridge University Press in 2021.

DOUGLAS BRINE / Art and Art

History was the recipient of a Paul Mellon Visiting Senior Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the

Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 2021.

NORMA ELIA CANTÚ / Modern Languages and Literatures co-edited Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Critical Edition with Aunt Lute Books in 2021. Cantú contributed “Interview” for Collective Wisdom: Lessons, Inspiration, and Advice from Women over 50 with Artisan in 2021. Cantú also contributed two works in 2022: “Desperately Seeking La Llorona in LA: Myth and Legend in Felicia Luna Lemus Fiction” for The Many Voices of the Los Angeles Novel with Cambridge Scholars Publishing and “Soñando” for Viva Texas Rivers! with Texas A&M University Press. Cantú gave two keynote addresses: “Paso a paso se va muy lejos” at the Insituto Franklin at the Universidad de Alcalá de Henaress in Barcelona, Spain, in June 2021 and “A Pilgrimage: Fifty Years of Ethnic Studies at UNL” at the 50th Anniversary of the UNL Ethnic Studies Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in March 2022. Cantú gave the commencement speech at Texas A&M International University’s Winter Commencement in Laredo, Texas, in December 2021.

GREGORY M. CLINES / Religion published Jain Rāmāyaņa Narratives: Moral Vision and Literary Innovation with Routledge’s Advances in Jaina Studies series in 2022.

DAVID HELLER / Music published “A New Method Book and Some Old Questions” in The American Organist in 2022. Heller performed “As God’s Chosen Ones” by Craig Phillips at When in Our Music God Is Glorified, the opening concert of the Caritas Recital Series, at the Chapel of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio in January 2022. Heller presented “A Means to an End: Organ Method Books in 2022” to the Austin and San Antonio chapters of the American Guild of Organists in San Marcos, Texas, in April 2022. Heller gave a masterclass on French organ literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio in October 2021.

COLLEEN E. HOELSCHER / Library and ANNE JUMONVILLE

GRAF / Library published “Accessible, Sustainable Outreach: New Priorities for an Online Orientation Program” in Marketing Libraries Journal, 2021, Vol. 5, Issue 2. Hoelscher and MICHAEL

J. HUGHES / Library published “Mind the Gap: Teaching Archival Silences in Digital Collections” for Case Studies on Teaching with Primary Sources in 2021. Hoelscher received the M.C. Lang Fellowship in Book History, Bibliography, and Humanities Teaching with Historical Sources from Rare Book School for 2022-23, and she was appointed to a four-year term on the Society of American Archivists Publications Board for 2021-25.

MICHAEL J. HUGHES / Library

published “Comics Plus” in The Charleston Advisor, Vol. 23, Issue 2 and “Pushing Buttons: The Video Game Cartoons of John Holmstrom” in ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories, Vol. 3, Issue 2, both in 2021.

JASON JOHNSON / History

published “‘Homosexual People Do Not Stand Outside of Socialist Society’: Eingaben and the History of Homosexuality in East Germany” in German Politics and Society, 2022, Vol. 40, Issue 1. Johnson presented “Standing Up: German Resistance to the Nazis” at the San Antonio Holocaust Memorial Museum as part of Texas Holocaust and Genocide Remembrance Week in January 2022.

LAWRENCE KIM / Classical Studies contributed two chapters in 2022: “Allegory, Recognition, and Identity: The Egyptian Homer in Context (3.11.5–15.1)” for Reading Heliodorus’ Aethiopica with Oxford University Press and “‘Asianist’ Style in Hellenistic Oratory and Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists” for Late Hellenistic Greek Literature in Dialogue with Cambridge University Press. Kim also contributed “Homer in the Second Sophistic” for Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Homer: From the Hellenistic Age to Late Antiquity with Brill in 2021.

ERIN KRAMER / History contributed “‘That she shall be forever banished from this country’: Alcohol, Sovereignty, and Social Segregation in New Netherland” for Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2022, Vol. 20, Issue 1.

CARL S. LEAFSTEDT / Music published A Thorn in the Rosebush: The American Bartók Estate and Archives During the Cold War, 1946-67 with Helena History Press in 2021.

MAXENCE LECONTE / Modern

Languages and Literatures contributed “(Re)Negotiating Memory: Panama At-Brown ou l’Énigme de la Force, or the Black Boxer vs. the Graphic Novel” for Intermediality in French-Language Comics and Graphic Novels with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press in 2022.

JON LEE / Art and Art History had his woodcut, “O1701,” acquired by the San Antonio Museum of Art in June 2021. The woodcut explores the poetic subtleties of color and line, reinventing traditional printmaking processes and materials.

Read more about the acquisition at gotu.us/sama

KENNETH LOISELLE / History appeared as an expert interviewee for Dans les Secrets des Francs-Maçons, a documentary on the history of Freemasonry on the French television channel RMC in January and February 2022.

STEVEN LUPER / Philosophy

published Mortal Objects: Identity and Persistence through Life and Death with Cambridge University Press in 2022.

NICOLE MARAFIOTI / History was awarded the Best Article prize by the International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England in June 2021 for “Secular and Ecclesiastical Justice in Late Anglo-Saxon England,” published in Speculum, Vol. 94, Issue 3. Marafioti was a visiting scholar at Cornell University for the 2021-22 academic year, where she presented “Crime and Sin in Early English Law” in October 2021. Marafioti presented the invited paper “Awaiting God’s Judgment: Mutilation and the Ordeal in pre-Conquest England” at the International Conference 22 on Justice Carved Into the Body: Maiming Corporal Punishments in the Pre-

modern World at the University of Potsdam, Germany, in September 2021.

SHAJ MATHEW / English published “The Multiple Simultaneous Temporalities of Global Modernity: Pamuk, Tanpınar, Proust” in Modern Language Quarterly, 2021, Vol. 82, Issue 4.

MATTHEW D. MILLIGAN / Religion co-authored “The wheelturning king and the lucky lottery: perspectives new and old on wealth and merriment within Buddhism” in the Journal of Contemporary Religion, 2021, Vol. 36, Issue 2.

ANA MARÍA MUTIS / Modern Languages and Literatures coedited La mirada opuesta: Voces de victimarios en la literatura latinoamericana contemporánea with Bonilla Artigas Editores in 2021. Mutis published “‘Mi estilo lo confirma letra por letra’: la literatura criminal en ‘El niño proletario’ de Osvaldo Lamborghini” in the Latin American Literary Review, 2022, Vol. 49, Issue 98. Mutis gave the keynote “El libro en la selva: textualidades decoloniales en la literatura y el cine amazónico” at the University of New Mexico’s Querencias Graduate Student Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in April 2022.

†CORINNE PACHE / Classical Studies contributed “The Birth and Childhood of Heracles” for The Oxford Handbook to Heracles with Oxford University Press in 2021. Pache presented “‘Flesh, Blood, and Bone:’ Molly Bloom and the Neapolitan Novels” at the International Omniscientific Joyce Conference in June 2021.

DIANE PERSELLIN / Music copresented “Making Difficulties Desirable in a (Post) Pandemic” at the Lilly Conference on College Teaching at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio,

Dream STEAM

Art, theater design, and engineering science combine to create DoSeum exhibit

by Jeremy Gerlach

In spring 2022, a diverse class of Trinity University faculty and students banded together to create a colorful, dynamic “Discovery Cube” for San Antonio’s DoSeum, recently named the top children’s museum in America by USA Today

The project—a modular series of machine-crafted, interlocking boxes—was constructed as part of an interdisciplinary class called “Academic Making for the Built Environment” and was meant to inspire children to think creatively about the concept of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math).

“The class was this unexpected-but-obvious pairing between the engineering and art worlds,” says Trinity human communication and theatre professor Scott Neale, M.F.A., who co-taught the class alongside Trinity art professor

the course is not being taught again this year, the faculty involved have expressed an interest in making the class a continued offering.

The class’ objective was to create an interactive, mobile display for the space that would help The DoSeum with a variety of programming needs. “Two of our strengths as an institution are the ability for interdisciplinary collaboration and the creation of experiential learning opportunities for our students,” Terrell says.

The assignment seemed simple at first: the group wanted to tell the “story of STEAM,” Neale says. But leveraging the class’s diverse talents, as a group with students from backgrounds in the arts, theater, engineering, math, and more, proved a challenge in and of itself.

Kate Ritson, M.F.A. “As artists, we’re used to constantly innovating new ways and using new tools to create the physical embodiment of a creative idea.”

The class, which Neale calls “the first true STEAM class at Trinity,” was funded by Trinity’s Mellon Initiative Humanities/Arts Lab Development Grant and was the brainchild of Ritson, Neale, Wilson Terrell Jr., Ph.D., Trinity’s associate vice president for Academic Affairs—Inclusive Excellence, and Ryan Hodge, machine shop technician. The course is the latest in a growing surge of Trinity classes that utilize the University’s Makerspace, a unique, state-of-the-art machine shop where students of all majors can create together. While

For engineering science major Tristan Arias ’22, working with students of a different background was a refreshing twist on the usual design process used by engineering science majors. Arias, who plans on going to graduate school for engineering, said the draw of the DoSeum project was getting the chance to redesign his personal approach to problem solving.

“It was always a really big struggle for the engineering majors in the class to think thematically, and think about, if we’re making this for a four-year-old child, how do we inspire wonder and interest in a young child’s mind?” Arias says. “But the nature of the course forced us all to think more creatively.”

“Two of our strengths as an institution are the ability for interdisciplinary collaboration and the creation of experiential learning opportunities for our students.”

Wilson Terrell Jr. (far left), Kate Ritson, and Scott Neale (both center front), guided students in their STEAM class to create a colorful “Discovery Cube” for the DoSeum, San Antonio’s children’s museum.

in November 2021 and “How to Make Difficulties Desirable: Teaching in the (Post) Pandemic” at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky, in April 2022. Persellin has served as the chair of the Education and Outreach Committee for the San Antonio Symphony since 2015.

ANDREW PORTER / English published three works in 2021: “Gallery” in Ploughshares, Vol. 4, Issue 74; “Safe Room” in Boulevard, Vol. 36, Issue 2 and 3; and “Sleepless” in Prairie Schooner, Vol. 95, Issue 2. Porter also published “Mennonites” in Alaska Quarter Review, 2022, Vol. 38, Issues 3-4. Porter received the Trinity University Distinguished Award for Scholarship, Research, or Creative Work or Activity in May 2022.

ROBERTO PRESTIGIACOMO / Human Communication and Theatre co-authored “Addressing Resident Mistreatment Through the Use of a Forum Theatre Intervention” in Academic Medicine, 2021, Vol. 96, Issue 11S.

DAVID RANDO / English published Hope, Form, and Future in the Work of James Joyce with Bloomsbury Publishing and “Hope, Hunger, and Spiritual Liberation in Joyce’s Dubliners” in James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 59, Issue 1, both in 2021. Rando remotely presented “Giacomo Joyce: Hope and Spatial Form” and presented and chaired the panel for “Backwards and Forwards: Fluidity and Form” at the Università degli Studi di Trieste in Trieste’s 27th International James Joyce Symposium in June 2021.

KATHRYN VOMERO SANTOS / English published “The Stories We Tell and Sell about Early Modern Women’s Writing: Teaching Toward an Intersectional Feminist Public Humanities” in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching, 2021, Vol. 28, Issue 2 and “Seeing Shakespeare:

Narco narratives and neocolonial appropriations of Macbeth in the US–Mexico Borderlands” in Literature Compass in 2022. Santos contributed “‘Read[ing] Strange Matters’: Digital Approaches to Early Modern Transnational Intertextuality” for Shakespeare and Digital Pedagogy: Case Studies and Strategies with Bloomsbury Publishing in 2021. Santos was invited to virtually present “The Oppressor’s Wrong: Translating Hamlet toward a Borderlands Ontology” at the Interdisciplinary Renaissance and Early Modern Seminar at the University of Leeds in October 2021. Santos received an Arden Shakespeare Fourth Series Fellowship for 202123 as well as a Paul Oskar Kristeller Fellowship from The Renaissance Society of America. In 2021, Santos virtually presented “‘In Shakespeare’s Land’: Education, Cultural (Dis) inheritance, and the Decline of Empire in and around The Prince’s Choice” at Finding Shakespeare in the Royal Collection at the University College London in June and “Language, Labor, and the Logics of Race: Toward Transnational Histories of Translation and Enslavement” at On Belonging

2: English Conceptions of Migrations and Transculturality, 1550–1700 conference hosted by the ERC-TIDE Project at the University of Oxford in July. In January 2022, Santos virtually presented ‘“The want of Interpretors’: Race and the Labor of Language in Sixteenth-Century Travel Literature” at the Reading Race in SixteenthCentury Literature session and virtually presided over the panel “Shakespeare and the Politics of ‘Tradaptation’” of the Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Washington, D.C. Santos co-presented “‘What country, friends, is this?’ Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s ‘El Hamlet Fronterizo’ and the Shifting Landscape of the U.S.–Mexico Border” at the Early Modern Ecocriticism and Critical Race Studies seminar at the Shakespeare Association

of America 50th Annual Meeting in Jacksonville, Florida, in April 2022. Santos was invited to present “What’s Hamlet to the Borderlands?” at Shakespeare and the Poetics and Politics of Relevance at The Huntington Library in San Marino, California, in May 2022. Santos served as a scholarly consultant for an upcoming bilingual production of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors by The Public Theater in New York City and served on the faculty of “Teaching Literature” and “Teaching Shakespeare” for the Humanities Texas professional development program for Texas teachers in Austin, Texas, in 2022. Santos continues to serve as the early modern section editor for The Sundial and the performance reviews editor for Shakespeare Bulletin

MICHAEL SCHREYACH / Art and Art History published “Visual Documentation for Barnett Newman’s Curatorial Projects, 1944–1946: PART I: Image Records for Pre-Columbian Stone Sculpture (1944) & Northwest Coast Indian Painting (1946)” in Source, 2022, Vol. 41, Issue 3.

GARY SEIGHMAN / Music was named a 2021-22 Public Humanities Faculty Fellow by Trinity University’s Humanities Collective. His project centered around a choral music performance collaboration with the Scobee Planetarium in San Antonio.

NATHAN STITH / Human Communication and Theatre, A. GastonPanthaki ’22, and R. Morris ’22 published “The Theatre Industry’s Essential Workers: Catalysts for Change” in Theatre Topics, 2021, Vol. 31, Issue 2.

CLAUDIA STOKES / English published Old Style: Unoriginality and Its Uses in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Literature with the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2021. Stokes published “Bachelor Sketches:

HOME AT LAST

Grand opening of Dicke Hall offers dedicated space for humanities

In late September, Trinity University officially opened the doors to Dicke Hall, the first center specifically for the humanities in San Antonio and one of a handful of its kind in Texas. Dicke Hall is now home to the English and religion departments as well as the Humanities Collective and Mellon Initiative. The sparkling, 40,000-square-foot facility, built and named thanks to the generous support of Janet ’68 and Jim ’68 Dicke and 11 other donors, represents a new, welcoming front door to campus.

“The building’s architecture mirrors and sets the tone for how we approach humanistic work,” says Megan Mustain, Ph.D., provost and vice president of Academic Affairs. “Both the building itself and the humanities are cutting-edge, rooted in what we know and value. Both are open, lightfilled, and intentionally connected and responsive to the human and natural world outside. Both are laboratories for creation, recreation, and fearlessly transparent inquiry.”

Dicke Hall’s sustainable mass-timber construction and design celebrate O’Neil Ford’s architectural legacy, supporting Trinity’s designation as a National Historic District. Inside, the building’s state-of-the-art classrooms, spacious lecture halls, and inviting common spaces provide the English and religion departments with ample room for

collaboration and community gathering inside and outside of the classroom. Dicke Hall provides the Humanities Collective and the Mellon Initiative with a space to host events and sponsor programs for Trinity’s on-campus humanities community and make connections with local and national humanities communities.

“As impressive as the building is, I’m most excited about what happens within,” says University president Vanessa Beasley, Ph.D. “This building is an investment in those who matter most—our students and faculty. Students and their professors are already raving about the concepts they’re exploring and the connections they’re making in Dicke Hall. You can feel the hum of activity in this space, as it promotes interdisciplinary approaches to discovery and lifelong learning.”

As the newest addition to the No. 1 liberal arts university in Texas, Dicke Hall stands as a physical manifestation of Trinity’s commitment to and belief in the power of the humanities as a crucial part of a liberal arts education.

See Dicke Hall for yourself.

FUNDAMENTALLY CONNECTED

Trinity’s Humanities Collective funds faculty members’ local, national, and international research

by Kennice Leisk ’22

The 2022-23 Public Humanities Faculty Fellows—history professor Sarah Luginbill ’14, Ph.D., and English professor Shaj Mathew, Ph.D.— are using their research to explore religious identity and international culture, respectively. Since 2019, Trinity University’s Humanities Collective, the hub for the humanities on campus, has funded the research projects of 11 Public Humanities Faculty Fellows. These projects span various academic disciplines and produce multimedia scholarship that connects Trinity with academic institutions across states and countries, including the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates. With the Collective’s support, Faculty Fellows communicate to the local, national, and worldwide public how the humanities are at the heart of Trinity’s nationally recognized liberal arts education.

For her project, The Materiality of Catholic Devotion in the World Wars, Luginbill is investigating the mobilization of U.S. Catholics in World War I and II to supply chaplains with portable Mass kits. Luginbill conducted research at and sifted through artifacts from local and East Coast museums and special collections, including the National Archives and the Catholic University of America Special Collections in Washington, D.C.

“Despite recent significant publications on U.S. religious identity during World War I and II and new scholarship on military chaplaincy, the

National Catholic War Council and the Chaplains’ Aid Association remain largely absent from scholarly conversations about national religious mobilization in wartime,” Luginbill says.

Luginbill plans to fill these gaps in scholarship with two scholarly articles and a traveling miniature exhibition on World War Catholicism and material culture. “I’m intrigued to see how the intersection of Mass publications, gender, and military faith continue in my study,” she says.

This past summer, Mathew’s project also brought him to museums, but to ones across the world. Mathew is researching the rise of universal museums in the Middle East, specifically the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Museum of the Future in the United Arab Emirates. He is currently working on translating his research into a piece of literary journalism, a public lecture, and a chapter for a scholarly book.

“I hope that anyone who comes across my research is encouraged to learn more about cultures beyond their own. When you study different cultures, you start to see your own in a new light,” Mathew says. “My research focuses on the Louvre Abu Dhabi because it reminds us that our ‘own’ cultures aren’t completely our own. Global cultures don’t exist in isolation. Instead, they are fundamentally connected—the product of ceaseless exchanges across borders.”

Sarah Luginbill ’14 Shaj Mathew

During World War I and II, U.S. Catholics mobilized to supply chaplains with portable Mass kits.

Invisible Women in Irving’s Domestic Writings” in Early American Literature, 2022, Vol. 57, Issue 1 and the invited contribution “Exegesis in the Age of Extremism: The Future of Christianity and Literary Studies in Higher Education” in Christianity & Literature, 2021, Vol. 70, Issue 3. Stokes was awarded the Lillian Gary Taylor Fellowship in American Literature of The Mary and David Harrison Institute for American History, Literature, and Culture at the University of Virginia, which supports research in the literary works of authors residing in the United States.

HEATHER I. SULLIVAN / Modern Languages and Literatures continues to serve as the associate editor of Ecozon@. For this journal, Sullivan published “Editorial 12.2” for Vol. 12, Issue 2 in 2021 and “Editorial 13.1” for Vol. 13, Issue 1 in 2022; she also edited both of these issues. Sullivan published two invited contributions: “Plant Scale and the Anthropocene” for Narratives of Scale in the Anthropocene: Imagining Human Responsibility in an Age of Scalar Complexity with Routledge in 2021 and “Goethes Pflanzen und das ‘Dunkle Grün’” for Literaturen und Kulturen des Vegetabilen. Plant Studies – kulturwissenschaftliche Pflanzenforschung with Peter Lang in 2022. In June 2021, Sullivan was invited to virtually co-present “The Dark Green and the Shifting Plant Scale” at the University of Vienna’s three-speaker workshop on “Locating Plants: Philosophy and Literature.”

ERIN M. SUMNER / Human Communication and Theatre coauthored “Social Network Site Relational Reconnection Among Older Adults” in Communication Studies, 2021, Vol. 72, Issue 5. Sumner co-presented the manuscript Reconnecting with dormant social ties: An examination of SNS relational reconnection and perceived social

support among older adults virtually at the International Association of Relationship Research Biennial Convention in July 2021. Sumner, L. Ross ’22, and a colleague presented “A Qualitative Exploration of Older Adults’ Social Network Site Relational Reconnection” for the Human Communication and Technology Division at the National Communication Association Annual Convention in Seattle in November 2021. Sumner also served as division chair for the Human Communication and Technology division at this convention. Sumner co-presented the manuscript Exploring the Associations between Amount of Use, Network, and Communicative Characteristics of Facebook Use and Quality of Life During Older Adulthood and served as chair for Virtual: Affordances and Their AppliCATions for the Communication and Technology Division at the International Communication Association Annual Convention in Paris, France, in May 2022.

GINA ANNE TAM / History was awarded a Wilson Center Fellowship for 2022-23 to work on her new book on women activists and democracy in Hong Kong. Tam was also selected as a Public Intellectuals Program VII Fellow through the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, a program meant to mentor and highlight a handful of American China specialists and develop skills in public engagement and policy. Tam received the Trinity University Distinguished Early Career Faculty Award for Teaching and Scholarship in May 2022.

Read more about Gina Tam’s Public Intellectuals Program VII fellowship at gotu.us/tamfellowship

BETSY W. TONTIPLAPHOL / English published The Pointe of the Pen: Nineteenth-Century Poetry and the Balletic Imagination with Liverpool University Press in 2021.

LAUREN TUREK / History was invited to publish “The Religious Activism Behind U.S. Refugee Policy” in Religion & Politics in 2021. Turek contributed two chapters in 2021: “Between Values and Action: Religious Rhetoric, Human Rights, and Reagan’s Foreign Policy” for The Reagan Moment: America and the World in the 1980s with Cornell University Press and “Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Relations” for The Routledge History of U.S. Foreign Relations with Routledge. Turek presented her book, To Bring the Good News to All Nations: Evangelical Influence on Human Rights and US Foreign Relations, at a meet the author event at Princeton Theological Seminary Overseas Ministries Study Center in November 2021. Turek virtually presented “The Congressional Black Caucus and the Politics of Foreign Aid” at NYU Tamiment Center for the United States and the Cold War Seminar in March 2022. Turek appeared in “Evangelical Influence on Human Rights and US Foreign Relations,” an interview with Providence Magazine in January 2022. Turek also appeared on three podcasts: Uncommontary in September 2021 to discuss her research and To Bring the Good News to All Nations; “To Bring the Good News to all Nations” of Secular Soapbox in January 2022; and “Season III, Episode III: Church & State” of The Past, The Promise, The Presidency, Season Three: The Bully Pulpit in April 2022.

RITA E. URQUIJO-RUIZ / Modern Languages and Literatures was invited to translate the opera The Three Women of Jerusalem/Las tres mujeres de Jerusalén from English to Spanish for the Los Angeles Opera. The opera was performed in Los Angeles on March 19, 2022.

DEEP DIVE

Classical studies and computer science make the perfect research pair

by Jeremy Gerlach

For decades, Trinity University classical studies professor Nicolle Hirschfeld, Ph.D., has lived an exciting life as an archaeologist.

She has scuba dived down to ancient shipwrecks in the Mediterranean in the summer, then spent her academic years working to catalog and study the artifacts uncovered by these ventures.

But as thrilling as these deep dives are, Hirschfeld is equally as excited for the direction this type of research is taking at Trinity University. Over the past decade, Hirschfeld has worked to incorporate computer science into her research—first with cataloging the artifacts she uncovered, and now with digitally mapping the sites of wrecked ships.

“The mapping project is, in fact, reconstructing how the ship was packed,” Hirschfeld says. “If you can put the ship back together, you know everything that’s in the container, but you also can retroactively configure what was packed into each box and the order in which the boxes were loaded on board, which in turn helps us figure out the route the ship actually took.”

Whether used for mapping, cataloging, or other applications, computer science has clearly become a powerful tool for Hirschfeld and other archeologists. Hirschfeld has regularly collaborated with Trinity computer science professor Seth Fogarty, Ph.D., who specializes in creating domain-specific languages (pro-

gramming languages dedicated toward a specific area of study) and formal verification (how to automatically prove that a program satisfies a specification).

Over the years, Hirschfeld has also worked with a talented set of Trinity undergraduate researchers in the field of computer science. Evan Garvie ’16 developed a software program as part of a Mellon Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship that helped graphically and digitally represent the distribution of pottery sherds found on Hirschfeld’s dive down to a 13th century B.C.E. vessel. Patrick Bray ’22 helped update and improve Hirschfeld’s mapping project. And Zach Taylor ’20 helped create a revolutionary new research tool for efficiently performing large-scale studies of ancient coins.

“If you told 12-year-old Zach that I would be playing with the big dogs for coin collecting and coin research? I’d say that’s the coolest thing ever,” Taylor says. “I think that’s something that I can be very proud of, and that was all facilitated by Dr. Hirschfeld.”

Hirschfeld says Trinity is the perfect place for creating the types of interdisciplinary collisions that students like Taylor experience.

“Good liberal arts colleges are doing this,” Hirschfeld adds. “I think we’re doing it on a level with the best of them.”

After Nicolle Hirschfeld (left) uncovers ancient artifacts in the Mediterranean, she works with students like Evan Garvie ‘16 (right) to catalog and study her findings.

ELIZABETH WARD / Art and Art

History had her large-scale drawing, “Ghosts of the Old Mississippi: Dismal Swamp/Northern Lights,” acquired by the San Antonio Museum of Art in June 2021. Ward combined watercolor, gesso, silverpoint, pastel, and collage on paper to create the art piece, which is one in a series of 15 drawings based on maps of the ancient courses of the Mississippi River.

Read more about the acquisition at gotu.us/sama

MEL WEBB / Philosophy was named a 2021-22 Public Humanities Faculty Fellow by Trinity University’s Humanities Collective. Webb’s fellowship supported their involvement with the Trinity University Philosophy and Literature Circle at the Torres Unit, a state prison in Hondo, Texas.

Read more about the Trinity University Philosophy and Literature Circle at gotu.us/philosophycircle

JIE ZHANG / Modern Languages and Literatures won the inaugural Dr. Deneese L. Jones Award for Inclusive Excellence in May 2022. The award recognizes Trinity employees who provide outstanding support of inclusive excellence.

HUMANITIES COLLECTIVE CELEBRATES FREDERICK DOUGLASS DAY

Trinity community transcribes documents for national Colored Conventions Project

by Madeline Freeman ’23

Trinity University’s Humanities Collective, sponsored by the Student Diversity and Inclusion Office and Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, celebrated Douglass Day on Feb. 14, 2022, by hosting a local transcribea-thon. The event was presented by The Center for Black Digital Research at Penn State and Zooniverse in partnership with organizations across the country. Douglass Day honors the memory and activism of Black abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass.

Participants gathered in the Coates Library to transcribe digitized records of letters, diaries, certificates, postcards, and accounts of historic meetings from the Colored Conventions, the 19th century’s longest campaign for Black civil rights. During the movement, Black leaders organized state and national conventions to debate for Black civil rights, racial justice, and equality. These records of Black activism illustrate the immense struggles and the profound courage of those who insisted on organizing and standing for what was rightly theirs.

“This event allows our students and colleagues to see how the conventional history of the United States has so often deliberately excluded the histories and experiences of Black Americans and other marginalized communities,” says Claudia Stokes, Ph.D., English professor and co-director of the Humanities Collective. “The work of history, we hope to show, is ongoing, and this event allows the Trinity community to contribute to the correction and expansion of the historical record.”

Students transcribe documents from the Colored Conventions for Douglass Day 2022.

C i Y S s

MOVING

PERFORMANCE

Trinity physics professor Nirav Mehta, Ph.D., is not a glutton for punishment.

words by Jeremy Gerlach

by

That’s important to clarify after attending his “Speaking Physics” course, where he’s been sandwiched between two beds of nails, had a cinder block sledgehammered atop him, been blasted across the room using a fire extinguisher and a small cart, and has otherwise been subjected to any number of other death-defying feats.

Mehta simply doesn’t think the field of physics should give anyone stage fright.

“The class is a physics communications class called ‘Speaking Physics,’” Mehta says. “The goal is to put together a stage show and do a wide variety of physical demonstrations [that] explain physics at a level suitable for a general audience.”

The stage show is held during each semester Mehta teaches the course. The performance, open to the Trinity community and the public, features each student in Mehta’s class presenting an experiment.

Mehta is a theorist who studies ultra-cold atoms, examining the physics of three-particle and four-particle systems by looking at collisions of atoms and molecules under extremely cold temperatures. Over the years, he’s seen student interest in his “Speaking Physics” course heating up.

That may be because Mehta has urged his students to approach the stage show as a dry run for giving presentations as researchers and professionals.

“People who go on to careers in science and STEM have to communicate their ideas, whether research ideas or

left Trinity physics professor Nirav Mehta is pushing complex physics concepts and terminology into the spotlight.

“Speaking Physics” course stages fun, accessible experiments for all

photos

Anh-Viet Dinh ‘15

canonical curricular content,” Mehta says. “Communicating technical information in a way that people can understand is a ubiquitous skill.”

These skills are a fundamental part of Trinity’s approach to the liberal arts, where writing, speaking, and other forms of communication add value to the student experience regardless of major. And the chance to add these skills, says computer science major Amber Carlson ’23,

class in Spring 2022 and says she first came to the class because it seemed like a fun way to fulfill an oral and visual communication credit requirement, a staple of Trinity’s Pathways curriculum. But each of these students says they’re finding surprising benefits from taking the course—even though it only takes up a single credit hour.

Barahona, an international student from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, says the class twists the

is what makes taking a chance on courses like “Speaking Physics” worth the work.

“I figured public speaking was not my strong suit until this semester,” Carlson says. “But [“Speaking Physics”] ended up being really neat in ways that I did not expect it to be.”

Along with physics majors Sebastian Barahona ’24 and Angela Graf ’24, Carlson took the

typical format of physics labs into something more unique to each learner. “Typically labs are more formal, conducting complex experiments, measuring data, and writing long reports. In [“Speaking Physics”], you’re having more fun with the experiments. You get to choose how you do things rather than having to follow the instructions. So you really have a more personal

“People who go on to careers in science and STEM have to communicate their ideas, whether research ideas or canonical curricular content. Communicating technical information in a way that people can understand is a ubiquitous skill.”

– Nirav Mehta

Mehta encourages his students to look at the performance as practice for presenting research of all disciplines in engaging ways.

Mehta and Angela Graf ‘24 (left) discuss Newton’s laws of motion.

connection with what you’re doing in this class when compared to a traditional lab.”

Graf, from Center Point, Iowa, says the course is a simple but powerful source of energy that allows students the chance to re-invigorate their love for the field.

“I think it’s fun to make the connec tions between the experiments we’re doing in this class and some of the higher level concepts we’re learn ing in our other physics classes,” Graf says. “When you’re reading textbooks and working on equa tions all day long, you kind of forget how cool some of these concepts are. So when we can put them in these fun demonstrations, it reminds me of why I actually like physics so much and why I became interested in it in the first place.”

And for Carlson, from Austin, Texas, the class is the perfect chance to build with her hands. As part of preparing each of these experiments for the stage, Carlson and her team designed, crafted, and honed the physical components for each experiment in Trinity’s Maker space. The Makerspace is a unique, all-in-one design and machine shop where students of all majors (from engineering and entrepreneurship to English) can learn to build using lathes, water jet cutters, 3D printers, and more.

In the Makerspace, Carlson and Graf were challenged to build an experiment demonstrating eddy currents (loops of electrical current induced within conductors by a changing magnetic field) and Faraday’s law of induction (a basic law predicting how magnetic fields interact with electric circuits to produce electromotive force).

“It was interesting because we designed the whole thing, and we were still running into issues (with the magnets),” Carlson says.

“You really have a more personal connection with what you’re doing in this class when compared to a traditional lab.”

– Sebastian Barahona ’24

A student demonstrates the Bernoulli principle, where a ball hovers in midair because of a pocket of low pressure.

This type of experiment might have run smoother in a lab. But students such as Carlson and Graf are often able to directly learn more from the mistakes they make building these experiments themselves.

Next, Mehta and his Spring 2022 students took the results of these individual projects and prepped them for the stage. Mehta says his group polished up the most exciting and visually dynamic of the experiments and prepared simple presentations for each one—all spoken in plain English.

There was a Van de Graaff generator, students spinning on turntables with weights to demonstrate conservation of angular momentum, a bicycle wheel gyroscope—and Mehta even made his entrance by jetting across the stage in a cart using a fire extinguisher.

Think of it as a magic show, but one where the performers actually get to explain how the tricks work: “There’s a lot of demystifying that we can do as far as what physics actually is and what a lot of these concepts are, because physics is a scary word for a lot of people,” Graf says. “This is a really cool way to bridge the gap between what [physicists] do and what other people do.”

As Carlson moves forward toward a career that will not involve physics, the unexpected dividends from taking a course like this will end up being just as important as some of the computer science classes in her major.

“I would say the biggest benefit is learning to manage your own project,” Carlson says. “You’re trying to teach these big concepts [while] starting from scratch and figuring out how you want to … [build] that project from the ground up using whatever method you decide is best. And I think that’s going to be pretty reflective of things in the real world.”

And as Mehta moves forward with staging future editions of the show, he says he plans to keep the format of the course roughly the same, while adding in potential opportunities to make short films and “explainer videos” to complement the stage production.

Ultimately, Mehta says what makes the course the most fun for him is getting to restart the process each semester he teaches it. “I’m looking forward to having a new batch of students,” he says of the spring semester, “with some fresh demonstrations.”

“There’s a lot of demystifying that we can do as far as what physics actually is and what a lot of these concepts are, because physics is a scary word for a lot of people.”

– Angela Graf ’24

A student presents the concept of pressure as force over area. This balloon doesn’t pop when pushed down upon the bed of nails because the force is distributed over a large area of many nails.

left and middle Students reviewed the run of show during a dress rehearsal in Laurie Auditorium. bottom left A student holding a Hoberman sphere prepares to demonstrate conservation of angular momentum. bottom right With a trash can and a fog machine, the class illustrated that one can, in fact, get round air through a square hole.

Geosciences professor Benjamin Surpless was awarded a three-year, $192,830 National Science Foundation-funded Keck Geology Consortium grant to support his investigation of fault evolution along the Sevier fault zone in southern Utah.

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, and MATHEMATICS

Nationally recognized for academic strength, interdisciplinary focus, and undergraduate research, Trinity’s STEM programs offer students cutting edge opportunities that include experiential learning at the interface of disciplines. The University’s STEM departments include Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering Science, Geosciences, Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy, and Psychology.

E. CABRAL BALREIRA / Mathematics

co-authored “Geometry and Global Stability of 2D Periodic Monotone Maps” in the Journal of Dynamics and Differential Equations in 2021.

GERARD M. J. BEAUDOIN III ’99 / Biology, J. F. M. Manrique ’20, P. R. Voit ’18, K. E. Windsor ’19, A. R. Karla ’20, and S. R. Rodriguez ’20 published “SynapseJ: An Automated, Synapse Identification Macro for ImageJ” in Frontiers in Neural Circuits, 2021, Vol. 15.

CAROLYN BECKER / Psychology

co-published five articles in 2021: “An exploratory examination of internalized weight stigma in a sample living with food insecurity,” published with F. Gomez ’18 and colleagues for Body Image, 2021, Vol. 37; “Adapting the body project to a non-western culture: a dissonance-based eating disorders prevention program for Saudi women” in Eating and Weight Disorders - Studies on Anorexia, Bulimia and Obesity, Vol. 26, Issue 8; “Binge eating among older women: prevalence rates and health correlates across three independent samples” for the Journal of Eating Disorders, Vol. 9, Issue 1; and “Psychometric properties of the contextual body image questionnaire for athletes: a replication and extension study in female collegiate athletes” and “The legacy of hope summit: a consensus-based initiative and report on eating disorders

in the U.S. and recommendations for the path forward,” both for the Journal of Eating Disorders, Vol. 9, Issue 1.

MICHELLE M. BUSHEY / Chemistry, S. Y. Li ’13, B. Iba ’15, and colleagues published “A thermodynamic study of capillary electrochromatographic retention of aromatic hydrocarbons on a lauryl acrylate porous polymer monolithic column with measured phase ratio” in the Journal of Separation Science, 2021, Vol. 44, Issue 16.

BERT D. CHANDLER / Chemistry, Akbar Mahdavi-Shakib / Chemistry, L. C. Rich ’22, and T. N. Whittaker ’17 published “Hydrogen Adsorption at the Au/TiO2 Interface: Quantitative Determination and Spectroscopic Signature of the Reactive Interface Hydroxyl Groups at the Active Site” in the ACS Catalysis, 2021, Vol. 11, Issue 21.

JANE CHILDERS / Psychology, E. Warkentin ’22, B. M. Porter ’18, M. Young ’22, S. Lalani ’19, and A. Gopalkrishnan ’20 published “Preschool Children’s Processing of Events during Verb Learning: Is the Focus on People (Faces) or Their Actions (Hands)?” for Brain Sciences, 2022, Vol.12, Issue 3. Childers won the Dr. and Mrs. Z. T. Scott Faculty Fellowship in May 2022, which recognizes the top educator of the year at Trinity University.

CHRISTINA B. COOLEY / Chemistry received a five-year grant of $403,322 from the National Science Foundation for “CAREER: Fluorogenic Radical Polymerization for Signal Amplification and Detection” in August 2021.

Read more about Christina Cooley’s National Science Foundation grant at gotu.us/cooleyNSF

RYAN D. DAVIS / Chemistry, J. Hajek-Herrera ’22, and B. Snyder ’22 won $25,000 as grand prize winners of the Louis H. Stumberg Venture Competition in October 2021. Their company, MicroLev, aims to sell an affordable aerosol research device that can detect and categorize particulate matter. Davis, E. Huynh ’22, and colleagues published “Seeded Crystal Growth of Internally Mixed Organic–Inorganic Aerosols: Impact of Organic Phase State” in The Journal of Physical Chemistry A, 2021, Vol. 125, Issue 39. Davis was awarded a Cottrell Scholar Award from Research Corporation for Science Advancement in 2022 for “Chemistry Beyond the Beaker: Exploring Supramolecular Assembly in Aqueous Microdroplets and Addressing Inequities in Chemical Education.” Davis’ proposal was founded upon his work on “Evidence for a semisolid phase state of aerosols and droplets relevant to the airborne and surface survival of pathogens,” which he, A. Olinger*, D. Woolley ’22, Huynh, and colleagues published in the Proceedings

of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022, Vol. 119, Issue 4.

Read more about MicroLev at gotu.us/microlev

WILLIAM D. ELLISON / Psychology

published “An Initial Study of Practicing Psychologists’ Views of the Utility of Ecological Momentary Assessment for Difficult Psychotherapy Cases” in Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 2021, Vol. 48, Issue 4. Ellison, J. Yun ’21, M. I. Lupo ’21, A. K. Lucas-Marinelli ’22, V. B. Marshall ’20, A. F. R. Matic ’20, and A. C. Trahan ’20 published “Development and initial validation of a scale to measure momentary self-concept clarity” in Self and Identity, 2021, Vol. 21, Issue 8. Ellison co-authored “Improving Quantitative Abilities and Attitudes in Clinical Psychology Courses: Longitudinal Assessment of a Blended Learning Intervention” in the Teaching of Psychology, 2021, Vol. 48, Issue 4.

LUIS D. GIAVEDONI / Biology, E. Mask ’20, Jessica E. Callery / Biology, and colleagues published “Molecular Approaches for the Validation of the Baboon as a Nonhuman Primate Model for the Study of Zika Virus Infection” in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology, 2022, Vol. 12.

PAULA T. HERTEL / Psychology, P. Herrera ’18, and P. Shamapant ’19 published “Rumination: Practicing Retrieval of Autobiographical Memories” in Cognitive Therapy and Research, 2021, Vol. 45, Issue 5.

TOMAS HRBEK / Biology co-authored four articles in 2021: “Ancient DNA of the pygmy marmoset type specimen Cebuella pygmaea (Spix, 1823) resolves a taxonomic conundrum” in Zoological Research, Vol. 42, Issue 6; “An integrative analysis uncovers a new, pseudo-cryptic species of Amazonian marmoset (Primates: Callitrichidae: Mico) from the arc of deforestation” in Scientific Reports, Vol. 11, Issue 1; “Mapping the hidden diversity of the Geophagus sensu stricto species group (Cichlidae: Geophagini) from the Amazon basin” in PeerJ, Vol. 9; and “Uncertainty Regarding Species Delimitation, Geographic Distribution, and the Evolutionary History of South-Central Amazonian Titi Monkey Species (Plecturocebus, Pitheciidae)” in the International Journal of Primatology Hrbek also co-authored four articles in 2022: “Diversity, biogeography, and reproductive evolution in the genus Pipa (Amphibia: Anura: Pipidae)” and “Out of the shadows: Multilocus systematics and biogeography of night monkeys suggest a Central Amazonian origin and a very recent widespread southeastward expansion in South America” in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Vol. 170; “Four in One: Cryptic Diversity in Geoffroy’s Side-Necked Turtle Phrynops geoffroanus (Schweigger 1812) (Testudines: Pleurodira: Chelidae) in Brazil” in Diversity, Vol. 14, Issue 5; and “Two hundred and five newly assembled mitogenomes provide mixed evidence for rivers as drivers of speciation for Amazonian primates” in Molecular Ecology, Vol. 31, Issue 14.

Read more about Tomas Hrbek’s description of a new species of marmoset at gotu.us/marmosets

LAURA M. HUNSICKER-WANG / Chemistry co-authored “Spectroscopic characterization of Mn2+ and Cd2+ coordination to phosphorothioates in the conserved A9 metal site of the hammerhead ribozyme” in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, 2022, Vol. 230.

MICHELE A. JOHNSON / Biology and Laura Hunsicker-Wang / Chemistry co-chaired a $30,000 Inclusive Excellence Learning grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for making first- and second-year STEM courses more inclusive to all students. Johnson, Brittney M. Ivanov / Biology, and colleagues published “Use it and bruise it: copulation rates are associated with muscle inflammation across anole lizard species” in the Journal of Zoology, 2021, Vol. 314, Issue 3. Johnson co-published two articles in Vol. 61 of Integrative and Comparative Biology in 2021: “What Determines Paternity in Wild Lizards? A Spatiotemporal Analysis of Behavior and Morphology” with C. M. Stehle ’13 in Issue 2 and “Understanding Drivers of Variation and Predicting Variability Across Levels of Biological Organization” in Issue 6. Johnson also co-authored “Linking ecomechanical models and functional traits to understand phenotypic diversity” in the Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 2021, Vol. 36, Issue 9 and “Best practices for building and curating databases for comparative analyses” in the Journal of Experimental Biology, 2022, Vol. 225. Johnson was elected as secretary of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology for 2021-24. Johnson won the Trinity Tomorrow Award in May 2022, which recognizes Trinity University faculty who have made significant contributions to the mission and strategic priorities of the University.

DYNAMIC RESEARCH

Professor builds strong interdisciplinary research team with NSF grant

by Jeremy Gerlach

Mathematics professor Hoa Nguyen, Ph.D., is right at home in collaborating across disciplines.

In 2021, Nguyen wrapped up her first NSF grant (NSF DMS-1720323), a four-year collaboration with co-PI Hakan Basagaoglu, Ph.D., at the Edwards Aquifer Authority. They collaborated with Trinity physics professor Orrin Shindell, Ph.D., to develop a numerical model to simulate the growth and deformation of viscoelastic biofilms in shear flow under different nutrient conditions. A separate collaboration with UC Berkeley biology professor Mimi Koehl, Ph.D., and Tulane University mathematics professor Lisa Fauci, Ph.D., studied how different cell morphologies affect the swimming and feeding of choanoflagellates (protozoans that share a common ancestor with animals). These research projects and several others on bacterial chemotaxis and collective motion have been conducted with the aid of 12 Trinity students, with six being fully supported by the prestigious grant.

“Thanks to the NSF grant, I was able to provide stipends to female and first-generation students, who are underrepresented in STEM,” Nguyen says. “The grant has had a significant impact on educating our undergraduates and supporting faculty and student interdisciplinary research activities.”

This isn’t the first time a small liberal arts university like Trinity has rubbed elbows with bigger research institutions. And it won’t be the last,

Nguyen says, thanks to Trinity’s strong culture of interdisciplinary collaboration.

“The interdisciplinary work we proposed was key to winning these NSF grants,” Nguyen says. “Our work is being conducted in biology, physics, mathematics, computer science, and engineering, and it was very exciting to see the enthusiasm from the recruited students from all of these STEM fields.”

Leacadia Silveira ’22, a Trinity mathematics major who was part of Nguyen’s team of students, urges other students considering interdisciplinary research to give it a try. “I was curious as to what the collaborative setting of a lab was like, the sort of team,” she says. “I appreciate the skills I’ve gotten in this environment, and it gives me a better picture of the fields I could go into for math.”

Nguyen says this type of positive energy is one of the reasons she’s loved working with Trinity students on her NSF grants. “These grants give you the ability to train undergraduate students, to get them involved in every aspect of the research,” she says. “I’m thankful for the generous support from Trinity and the powerful impacts of these NSF grants, which help me stay at the cutting edge of the computational fluid dynamics field in a liberal arts environment.”

Hoa Nguyen (center) wrapped up her first NSF grant in 2021, an interdisciplinary collaboration in biology, physics, mathematics, computer science, and engineering.

JONATHAN M. KING / Biology

co-authored “Understanding increased ferritin levels in pediatric ECMO patients” for Blood Cells, Molecules, and Diseases, 2021, Vol. 92 and “Cingulin binds to the ZU5 domain of scaffolding protein ZO-1 to promote its extended conformation, stabilization, and tight junction accumulation” in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2022, Vol. 298, Issue 4. King, J. E. Doran*, A. Avery*, and colleagues presented “Understanding paradoxical EPO elevation during pediatric ECMO” at the Critical Care session of the Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting in Denver in April 2022. King received the Trinity University Distinguished Award for Advising and Mentoring in May 2022.

EDDY A. KWESSI / Mathematics

published “Discrete Dynamics of Dynamic Neural Fields” in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 2021, Vol. 15 and co-published “Analysis of EEG Data Using Complex Geometric Structurization” in Neural Computation, 2021, Vol. 33, Issue 7.

JOSEPH B. LAMBERT / Chemistry, T. A. Contreras ’19, C. L. Johnson ’14, and colleagues published “Characterization of Phenolic Plant Exudates by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy” in the Journal of Natural Products, 2021, Vol. 84, Issue 9.

DANIEL J. LEHRMANN / Geosciences, L.M. Stepchinski ’15, H. E. Wolf ’22, and colleagues published “The role of carbonate factories and sea water chemistry on basin-wide ramp to high-relief carbonate platform evolution: Triassic, Nanpanjiang Basin, South China” in The Depositional Record, 2021, Vol. 8, Issue 2. Lehrmann also co-published “Implications of giant ooids for the carbonate chemistry of Early Triassic seawater” in Geology, 2021, Vol. 49, Issue 2. In 2022, Lehrmann co-published

“Contractional fold amplification through bed-parallel gypsum vein (“beef”) formation” in the Journal of Structural Geology, Vol. 156; “Duration and Intensity of End-Permian Marine Anoxia” in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, Vol. 23, Issue 1; and “Quantitative evaluation of the roles of ocean chemistry and climate on ooid size across the Phanerozoic: Global versus local controls” in Sedimentology, Vol. 69, Issue 6.

KAH-CHUNG LEONG / Psychology, H. S. Ballas ’22, S. M. Wilfur ’22, and N. A. Freker ’22 published “Oxytocin Attenuates the Stress-Induced Reinstatement of Alcohol-Seeking in Male Rats: Role of the Central Amygdala” in Biomedicines, 2021, Vol. 9, Issue 12.

KELLY G. LYONS / Biology secured for Trinity University $1.6 million over a five-year period by the U.S. Department of Education for the McNair Scholars Program, designed to support first-generation, low income, and underrepresented minority students. Trinity University matched support from the Department of Education with $28,000 in funding and $88,000 in in-kind support. Lyons co-published “Season of prescribed fire determines grassland restoration outcomes after fire exclusion and overgrazing” in Ecosphere, 2021, Vol. 12, Issue 9.

CORINA MAEDER ’99 / Chemistry won the Trinity University President’s Award for Excellence in Student Advocacy in May 2022, which recognizes Trinity employees who have been significant partners in supporting student success both inside and outside the classroom.

KEVIN P. MCINTYRE / Psychology co-authored “Romantic Relationships and Mental Health: Investigating the Role of Self-Expansion on Depression Symptoms” in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships in 2022.

NIRAV P. MEHTA / Physics and Astronomy co-authored two articles in Vol. 104 of the Physical Review A in 2021: “Scattering of two particles in a one-dimensional lattice” in Issue 5 and “Complex collisions of ultracold molecules: A toy model” with C. Johnson ’20 and colleagues in Issue 2.

DANY J. MUNOZ-PINTO / Engineering Science was awarded a $199,988 standard grant from the National Science Foundation for his laboratory to support “Network by network fabrication approach of bioinspired scaffolds to study the effect of fibrin and hyaluronic acid on the reactive and inflammatory response of human astrocytes” in January 2022. Munoz-Pinto, A. Jones ’20, K. Poole ’20, and a colleague presented “Regulation of proliferation rates in human astrocytes by modulating mitochondrial and cell metabolic activity” at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Denver in July 2021. Munoz-Pinto, A. Gonzalez*, M. McKee*, C. Koch ’22, and a colleague presented “The Effects of Hyaluronic Acid Molecular Weight on the Differentiation Potential of Human Neural Stem Cells in 3D Contexts” at the Society For Biomaterials Annual Meeting and Exposition in Baltimore in April 2022.

TROY G. MURPHY / Biology, L. E. Johnson ’21, and colleagues published “No genetic evidence for parent–offspring relatedness in post-breeding social groups of Black-crested Titmouse (Baeolophus atricristatus)” in The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, 2022, Vol. 134, Issue 1.

PAUL MYERS / Computer Science and O. Bangs* were invited to present “An Application of Vulnerability Theory to Computing: Online Privacy” at The Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative through Emory University Law School in Atlanta in August 2021.

HOA NGUYEN / Mathematics, Orrin Shindell / Physics and Astronomy, A. Ybarra ’20, and another author published “Biofilm viscoelasticity and nutrient source location control biofilm growth rate, migration rate, and morphology in shear flow” in Scientific Reports, 2021, Vol. 11, Issue 1.

KIMBERLY A. PHILLIPS / Psychology

co-authored “The nucleus accumbens and ventral pallidum exhibit greater dopaminergic innervation in humans compared to other primates” in Brain Structure and Function, 2021, Vol. 226, Issue 6 and “Recently Integrated Alu Elements in Capuchin Monkeys: A Resource for Cebus/Sapajus Genomics” in Genes, 2022, Vol. 13, Issue 4. Phillips, Brittany M. Ivanov / Psychology, and colleagues published “Use it and bruise it: copulation rates are associated with muscle inflammation across anole lizard species” in the Journal of Zoology, 2021, Vol. 314, Issue 3. Phillips, C. M. Watson ’21, and a colleague published “Myelin characteristics of the corpus callosum in capuchin monkeys (Sapajus [Cebus] apella) across the lifespan” in Scientific Reports, 2022, Vol. 12, Issue 1.

DAVID POOLEY / Physics and Astronomy co-wrote “Seven Years of SN 2014C: A Multiwavelength Synthesis of an Extraordinary Supernova” for The Astrophysical Journal, 2022, Vol. 930, Issue 1.

REBECCA RAPF / Chemistry

co-authored “Water–Air Interfaces as Environments to Address the Water Paradox in Prebiotic Chemistry: A Physical Chemistry Perspective” for the Journal of Physical Chemistry A, 2021, Vol. 125, Issue 23.

DAVID O. RIBBLE / Biology published “Ahead of his time: Joseph Grinnell, natural history, and inclusion and equity in STEM” in Therya, 2022, Vol. 13, Issue 1.

JASON SHEARER / Chemistry

co-authored three articles in 2021: “Controlled Protonation of [2Fe–2S] Leading to MitoNEET Analogues and Concurrent Cluster Modification” in Inorganic Chemistry, Vol. 60, Issue 21; “Scaffold-based [Fe]-hydrogenase model: H2 activation initiates Fe(0)-hydride extrusion and non-biomimetic hydride transfer” in Chemical Science, Vol. 12, Issue 38; and “The Oxo-Wall Remains Intact: A Tetrahedrally Distorted Co(IV)–Oxo Complex” in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol. 143, Issue 41. In 2022, Shearer co-published “Dinitrogen Coordination to a High-Spin Diiron(I/II) Species” in Angewandte Chemie - International Edition, Vol. 61, Issue 22 and, with D. Ocampo ’21 and colleagues, “Zinc sequestration by human calprotectin facilitates manganese binding to the bacterial solute-binding proteins PsaA and MntC” in Metallomics, Vol. 14, Issue 2.

ORRIN SHINDELL / Physics and Astronomy, Hoa Nguyen / Mathematics, Nicholas Coltharp / Mathematics, and colleagues published “Using Experimentally Calibrated Regularized Stokeslets to Assess Bacterial Flagellar Motility Near a Surface” in Fluids, 2021, Vol. 6, Issue 11.

BETHANY STRUNK / Biology received a three-year, $450,000 grant from the Max and Minnie Tomerlin Voelcker Fund as the recipient of a 2021 Voelcker Fund Young Investigator Award. Her research focuses on Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, or hereditary motor sensory neuropathy.

Read more about Bethany Strunk’s research and her grant at gotu.us/voelcker.

BENJAMIN SURPLESS / Geosciences was awarded a three-year, $192,830 National Science Foundation-funded Keck Geology Consortium grant to support his investigation of fault evolution along the Sevier fault zone in southern Utah for 2021-24. Surpless and S. Thorne ’17 published “Segmentation of the Wassuk Range normal fault system, Nevada (USA): Implications for earthquake rupture and Walker Lane dynamics” in the GSA Bulletin, 2022, Vol. 134, Issue 1-2.

Watch Benjamin Surpless’s research in action at gotu.us/geologyfromabove

KATHLEEN D. SURPLESS / Geosciences was awarded a three-year, $198,401 grant from the National Science Foundation Division of Earth Sciences for “RUI: Collaborative Research: Testing models for the Late Jurassic Nevadan Orogeny: Age, provenance, and structural evolution of the Galice and Mariposa basins, OR and CA.” Surpless co-wrote “Detrital zircon record of magmatism and sediment dispersal across the North American Cordilleran arc system (28–48°N)” for Earth-Science Reviews, 2021, Vol. 220. At the Geological Society of America Connects Conference in Portland, Oregon, in October 2021, Surpless co-presented two publications from the Geological Society of America’s Abstracts with Programs: “Using detrital zircon geochemistry to study deep arc processes” from Vol. 52, Issue 4 with colleagues and “Detrital zircon and hafnium analysis of the

TRINITY AIMS TO INCREASE DIVERSITY IN STEM

National Science Foundation grant of $2.5M will be shared by four San Antonio schools

The National Science Foundation has awarded Trinity University and three other private liberal arts universities in San Antonio a grant of nearly $2.5 million to increase the number of historically underrepresented students and those from lower-income backgrounds obtaining bachelor’s degrees in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields.

St. Mary’s University will administer this $2,478,170 grant-funded project from the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Program and implement it over the next five years. Our Lady of the Lake University and the University of the Incarnate Word are the other local grant recipients.

St. Mary’s University, Our Lady of the Lake University, and the University of the Incarnate Word are Hispanic-Serving institutions, while Trinity is currently an emerging Hispanic-Serving Institution. The long history and strength of the relationship between the four universities was a key factor in receiving the grant.

“Trinity is pleased to be part of this alliance and to learn what activities best support student retention in STEM fields,” says David Ribble, Ph.D., associate vice president for Academic Affairs and biology professor at Trinity. “This is vital to the future of STEM, our universities, and the greater San Antonio community.”

About 400 STEM majors across the universities will benefit from the grant. Each university will launch a cohort of 20 students annually and support them for their first two years of college, which is when they have identified a drop in retention.

As part of the alliance, Trinity aims to recruit, enroll, and support these underrepresented STEM students by nurturing their psychosocial development needed to transform their sense of belonging as scientists; to engage students’ families in an orientation event to help them understand the demands of the STEM academic world; to collaborate between universities on data collection to understand better the effectiveness of different retention strategies; and to eventually evaluate the project’s activities to maximize impact on student retention, persistence, graduation, and the workforce.

The program will include a joint orientation for each cohort of students and their families from all four institutions, including alliance-wide workshops and programming. During eight-week summer research sessions, up to six scholars from each institution will have their housing covered and receive a stipend as they conduct research with faculty at any of the four institutions that share their area of interest.

Ribble says the grant will promote greater opportunities and a better sense of belonging for Trinity students.

“We want all students at Trinity to be successful regardless of background,” Ribble says. “It’s important that we support STEM students from underrepresented groups, and that they feel like they belong in STEM.”

A $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation will help underrepresented and lower-income Trinity students get STEM degrees.

Galice Formation, Klamath Mountains, OR and CA: A record of the Late Jurassic Nevadan Orogeny” from Vol. 53, Issue 6 with R. Alford ’22, N. Weis ’22, and colleagues. At the Geological Society of America Combined Rocky Mountain and Cordilleran Section Meeting in Las Vegas in March 2022, Surpless, Alford, Weis, and colleagues presented two publications from Vol. 54, Issue 2 of the Geological Society of America’s Abstracts with Programs: “Late Jurassic evolution of the Galice basin, Klamath Mountains, CA and OR, from detrital zircon ages” and “Paleogeography of the Late Jurassic Klamath arc from detrital zircon hafnium analysis of the Galice Formation, Klamath Mountains, OR and CA.”

SHENG TAN / Computer Science

co-authored “Winect: 3D Human Pose Tracking for Free-form Activity Using Commodity WiFi” in the Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, 2021, Vol. 5, Issue 4.

EMMA TREADWAY ’11 / Engineering

Science co-authored “Consideration for Scaffolding Open-ended Engineering Problems: Instructor Reflections after Three Years” and “‘Let Me See what I Could Do’: Students’ Epistemic Affect when Solving Open-ended, Real-world Problems” in the 2021 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference in 2021. Treadway also co-authored “Open-Ended Modeling Group Projects in Introductory Statics and Dynamics Courses” in the 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference in 2021. Treadway and A. Marcee* published “Self-Powered Microgravity Resistance Exercise with Soft Pneumatic Exoskeletons” in the IEEE Aerospace Conference in 2022. Treadway, J. Nania ’22, and N. Younkins ’22 published “Effects of Dual-Frequency Environment Exploration on Stiffness Discrimination Thresholds”

in the IEEE Haptics Symposium in 2022.

DENNIS UGOLINI / Physics and Astronomy co-authored four articles for the Physical Review D in 2021: “Tests of general relativity with binary black holes from the second LIGO-Virgo gravitational-wave transient catalog” with H. Rafferty ’20 and colleagues in Vol. 103, Issue 12; “Search for anisotropic gravitational-wave backgrounds using data from Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo’s first three observing runs” and “Upper limits on the isotropic gravitational-wave background from Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo’s third observing run” in Vol. 104, Issue 2; and “All-sky search for continuous gravitational waves from isolated neutron stars in the early O3 LIGO data” in Vol. 104, Issue 8. Ugolini also co-authored “Constraints on Cosmic Strings Using Data from the Third Advanced LIGO–Virgo Observing Run” for Physical Review Letters, 2021, Vol. 126, Issue 24. Ugolini co-authored five articles for The Astrophysical Journal in 2021: “Observation of Gravitational Waves from Two Neutron Star–Black Hole Coalescences” in Vol. 915, Issue 1; “Search for Gravitational Waves Associated with Gamma-Ray Bursts Detected by Fermi and Swift during the LIGO–Virgo Run O3a” with Rafferty and colleagues in Vol. 915, Issue 2; “Searches for Continuous Gravitational Waves from Young Supernova Remnants in the Early Third Observing Run of Advanced LIGO and Virgo” in Vol. 921, Issue 1; “Constraints from LIGO O3 Data on Gravitational-wave Emission Due to R-modes in the Glitching Pulsar PSR J0537–6910” in Vol. 922, Issue 1; and “Search for Lensing Signatures in the Gravitational-Wave Observations from the First Half of LIGO–Virgo’s Third Observing Run” in Vol. 923, Issue 1. Ugolini also co-published

“Diving below the Spin-down Limit: Constraints on Gravitational Waves from the Energetic Young Pulsar PSR J0537-6910” for The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2021, Vol. 913, Issue 2. Additionally, Ugolini, Rafferty, and colleagues published “GWTC2: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo during the First Half of the Third Observing Run” for Physical Review X, 2021, Vol. 11, Issue 2.

ADAM URBACH / Chemistry received a $527,940 grant from the National Institutes of Health to fund biomedical research from 2021-24 on the development of minimal protein affinity tags. Urbach presented for the Anslyn, Iverson, Sessler Lectureship at the University of Texas at Austin in October 2021 on “Sequence-Selective Recognition of Peptides and Proteins.” Urbach serves on the editorial board for Supramolecular Chemistry under Frontiers in Chemistry.

HARRY M. WALLACE / Psychology, J. Kelley ’15, and a colleague published “Perceptions of narcissism in college professors” in The Journal of Social Psychology in 2022.

ELAINE WONG / Psychology contributed “Chinese Translingual Writing: In and Out” for The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translingualism with Routledge in 2021.

YIAN XU / Physics and Astronomy, Orrin Shindell / Physics and Astronomy, and colleagues published “Universality in kinetic models of circadian rhythms in Arabidopsisthaliana” in the Journal of Mathematical Biology, 2021, Vol. 83, Issue 5.

ENGINEERING, DOWN TO A SCIENCE

Trinity’s Department of Engineering Science named a top-30 undergraduate engineering program

by Jeremy Gerlach

Trinity University was recently named No. 29 in Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs by U.S. News and World Report So: What is Trinity’s engineering science program doing right?

Engineering science department chair Farzan Aminian, Ph.D., says that the program produces engineers that are “different by design.” Trinity engineers stand out thanks to a versatile liberal arts curriculum that merges a deep understanding of not only mechanical, chemical,

“These are really exciting times for engineering at Trinity,” Aminian says. “Our focus on teaching and design, in addition to our special attention to developing students’ communication, interpersonal, and leadership skills, differentiates us from hundreds of other engineering programs across the country.”

The engineering science curriculum doesn’t force students to silo themselves into mechanical, electrical, or chemical fields, but rather dive into all three. “This allows Trinity

and electrical engineering, but also that of the physical sciences, mathematics, and fields like the humanities; the rigor of a design sequence that spans all eight semesters; and continuing education and career prospects nationwide, thanks to access to state-of-art facilities and dedicated faculty who create elite opportunities in undergraduate research.

students to be managers at companies and supervise multidisciplinary projects because of their broad background,” Aminian says

So, where do the liberal arts come into play?

“Well, engineering is a profession that must serve the society where it functions,” Aminian says. “An engineering solution that works in one culture may not work in another. So having a

“Our focus on teaching and design... differentiates us from hundreds of other engineering programs across the country.”

liberal arts program gives students a better scope of cultural values.”

A set of nationally acclaimed faculty enrich this curriculum with real-world experience, Aminian says.

“What always amazes me is that our faculty are coming from different backgrounds, with different expertise,” Aminian says. “But given their broad backgrounds and broad base of knowledge, our faculty come together as one to deliver such a unique experience to our students.”

And that curriculum is highly experiential, thanks to a design sequence that explores the fundamentals of solving engineering design problems, built into all eight semesters at Trinity.

Now, Aminian says that the outlook for Trinity engineering grads is beyond stellar.

“Our graduates go to very good graduate programs like Stanford, MIT, Georgia Tech, UT Austin, University of Michigan, Vanderbilt, and Northwestern University, and a lot of these programs are actually coming to us to recruit,” Aminian says. “And our graduates are also going on to great companies such as Southwest Research Institute, Google, Apple, IBM, Tesla, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, and USAA.”

CAROL Y. YODER / Psychology and L. Chan ’17 published “Don’t Blame Me, Blame Those around Me: How Family and Friends Induce Unethical Acts” in Deviant Behavior, 2021, Vol. 42, Issue 7.

YU ZHANG / Computer Science, L. Li ’20, C. Zhang ’21, and H. Guan ’25 published “Application of Correlation Pre-Filtering Neural Network to DNA Methylation Data: Biological Aging Prediction” in Methods in Molecular Biology, 2022, Vol. 2432.

BRADY A. ZIEGLER / Geosciences co-authored “Arsenic in Petroleum-Contaminated Groundwater Near Bemidji, Minnesota is Predicted to Persist for Centuries” in Water, 2021, Vol. 13, Issue 11 and “Months-long spike in aqueous arsenic following domestic well installation and disinfection: Short- and long-term drinking water quality implications” in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, 2021, Vol. 414. Ziegler also co-authored “Sedimentation across the Paraburdoo spherule layer: Implications for the Neoarchean Earth system” for Large Meteorite Impacts and Planetary Evolution VI with The Geological Society of America in 2021.

encore Experience

Trinity singers reunite and delight at Carnegie Hall in long-anticipated performance

words by Jeremy Gerlach

Singing in New York City’s famed Carnegie Hall is as prestigious as it gets for any vocal performer. But making a debut conducting an entire performance? That’s a career changer, and that’s what Gary Seighman, D.M.A., Trinity University’s director of choral activities, experienced this past summer as part of a cathartic and memorable sold-out Trinity performance at the venue.

“Our choirs really provide a sense of family for many of our students, a home away from home,” Seighman says. “I vividly recall being in my [Carnegie Hall] dressing room resting my eyes and sitting on the couch directly underneath a framed picture of Leonard Bernstein, an enormous figure in our profession who performed regularly on that stage. I reflected back on the journey the past couple of years and how this sure beat our various makeshift rehearsal spaces. Yet at the same time, it was those challenging experiences that strengthened our group over the past couple of years to create a tighter bond musically and socially, two aspects so intertwined.”

The past couple of years have been tough for vocal performers at Trinity, with a global pandemic restricting practice and performance opportunities. But Seighman says his students have banded together and persevered through such challenges as having to sing through masks, spaced outdoors in a parking lot.

Olivia Wehrung ’22, one such student, also made her conducting debut during the Carnegie Hall trip. Wehrung is a music education major and a teaching minor who is pursuing a career in music as an instructor and conductor in Trinity’s Master of Arts in Teaching program.

“Singing at Carnegie is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Wehrung says. “Being shoulder to shoulder in Carnegie Hall, barely a year after we had to constantly measure 6 feet between each other just to practice in the parking garage under Northrup [Hall], is a testament to how much things have changed for us.”

This trip saw Seighman lead a group comprised of both current and former students into Carnegie Hall, staging an individual performance and also serving as the core ensemble for the large festival chorus performing Mozart’s Requiem with the Chamber Orchestra of New York. Both performances were met with standing ovations.

You might think this group, known as Trinity’s Chamber Singers, are all on course for professions in music. But many of them—as is the case with most students in musical ensembles at Trinity—aren’t even music majors.

That’s music at Trinity—where amazing experiences happen in harmony thanks to an inclusive, versatile liberal arts approach; a commitment to musical excellence spurred by dedicated, acclaimed faculty; and a strong community of social and financial alumni support.

Stronger in Sync

Perhaps one of the most vital of these opportunities for the Tigers on the trip was the chance to reconnect with a closeknit Trinity community of classmates and alumni.

In addition to nearly 20 Trinity alumni from earlier decades, many recently-graduated singers joined the students on this trip, thrilled to be seeing their friends again after many never got to come back to campus in spring 2020, or had trips postponed and classes held over Zoom or distanced over the course of 2021.

“It was tough for many to simply part ways mid-year back in March 2020 without any sense of closure— especially while we were in the middle of two big projects,

Just a couple of years ago, Trinity choral students were singing through masks, outdoors, across parking decks and fields.

one of which was preparing to perform at Carnegie Hall that summer,” Seighman says.

“It was a wonderful sense of closure, especially for the 2020 grads, because their time at Trinity ended so abruptly,” Wehrung says. “And then the ’20, ’21 grads…didn’t go on tour, and we didn’t have any in person concerts. I was speaking with a lot of them, and they all expressed similar sentiments of how it was the closure they all needed from a really tumultuous end to their college experience. “

That’s not to say the trip was all about the performance. In addition to seeing the usual sights of New York City, the

the Carnegie Hall performance, along with fellow alumna Erika Zetty ’77, who recently established an endowment for the choir program to honor her late father and former Trinity choir director, Claude Zetty.

Crescendo of Accolades

In addition to the generosity and musical warmth of the Dickes and Zetty, Seighman also notes the integral role of the Dickson-Allen foundation in the success of the trip.

Carnegie Hall isn’t a one-time deal, thanks to this foundation. In the past few years alone, Trinity singers have

group also attended a Broadway show as part of their stay and even got the chance to connect with the Dicke family, a longtime source of inspiration, energy, and support for music and so many other aspects of Trinity, Seighman says.

Trinity’s music department, knowing that the Dickes had a residence in New York City, invited the Dickes to attend

visited Austria and China as well, among other opportunities. These types of “once-in-a-lifetime” trips that define music at Trinity keep happening multiple times in students’ lives thanks to this powerful level of financial support, Seighman says.

“Our singers and myself are thankful for the generosity of the Dickson-Allen Foundation, which has supported so many

In summer 2022, the voices of Trinity students filled the storied venue of New York City’s Carnegie Hall.

“Being shoulder to shoulder in Carnegie Hall, barely a year after we had to constantly measure 6 feet between each other just to practice in the parking garage under Northrup [Hall], is a testament to how much things have changed for us.”

– Olivia Wehrung ’22

of our initiatives over the years. These experiences really have enabled Trinity students to share their musical talent with the world, putting us on the map and being a destination for young, aspiring musicians,” Seighman says.

These types of prestigious opportunities feed into strong recruitment for the program, which Seighman in turn says produces an engaged and excited alumni base. And these opportunities also put Trinity on a national stage where rankings and industry accolades are concerned.

most comprehensive series of contests in the classical arts. This prize evaluates, recognizes, and rewards the best performers, ensembles, composers, directors, and administrators in the United States. “What’s even more remarkable is that Trinity was the smallest school among the cohort of 12 national finalists,” Seighman says.

And upcoming in 2023, the Trinity University Chamber Singers have been invited to perform for the 2023 Texas Music Educators Association (TMEA) convention, one of only two collegiate choirs in Texas selected. Here, Trinity also represents the smallest school to have ever performed at TMEA, which is one of the largest music educator conventions in the world, hosting more than 26,000 people annually.

Siezing the Moment

As important as alumni support and connections are to these experiences, opportunities, and accolades, the students have each pointed to Seighman himself as an equally vital source of energy for their ensemble.

In 2022, even after the Carnegie Hall trip, Seighman says that Trinity’s banner year has continued. Trinity’s choir was recently awarded third place for The American Prize, the nation’s

Wehrung says she struggled with a sense of imposter syndrome on the Carnegie Hall trip. But when Seighman surprised her with the chance to conduct a segment of the Chamber Singers’ performance, Wehrung says she felt like she belonged on that stage.

“These experiences have enabled Trinity students to share their musical talent with the world, putting us on the map and being a destination for young, aspiring musicians.”

– Gary Seighman

Gary Seighman leads the Trinity singers in a rehearsal onstage at Carnegie Hall.

“One of the pieces that Dr. Seighman chose was one that I actually conducted in our spring concert. He gave me the opportunity to conduct that at Carnegie Hall as well, which was absolutely incredible,” she says. “At Trinity, there are so many opportunities in every department, regardless of your major—and you just have to take them. You don’t let the imposter syndrome scare you away, because these are often once-ina-lifetime opportunities.”

Usually, Seighman says that when he’s conducting a performance, there is rarely anything else drawing his focus away from the music and the musicians in front of him. But as monumental as a musical moment like Cargegie Hall was, Seighman says he allowed himself one brief moment to enjoy the moment on his own terms.

“I tend to let myself go to the music and don’t remember how I might ‘look’ to the singers or the audience during the actual music making,” he says. “The experience of standing on that podium in front of a sold-out Carnegie Hall was absolutely surreal. While conducting the “Lacrimosa” movement (of the Mozart piece), one of the most recognizable parts in the entire work, I slightly glanced over my right shoulder to catch a glimpse of the hall and audience just to take in the moment for myself. I wanted a snapshot memory of that experience!”

Experiential Encores

Each member of the trip says they wanted to take similar mental snapshots of this performance, to replay this memory over and over again.

As Wehrung soaks in the Carnegie Hall experience, she says she’s starting to feel less like an imposter, and more like someone who belongs on the big stage.

“This is the world’s most famous stage, and having the opportunity to sing there was already cool enough, but getting to conduct was a once-ina-lifetime opportunity that some people don’t even get to have once. And I got to have it at the age of 22,” Wehrung says.

And if you stop to think about the fact that a 22-year old musician has already had multiple lifechanging musical moments at Trinity, you might realize that Trinity’s version of “once in a lifetime” may not mean “only once in a lifetime.”

“I’m thinking about pursuing a doctorate in conducting because I want to conduct college choirs,” Wehrung says. “Dr. Seighman tells me that this won’t be my only time conducting in Carnegie Hall, so this trip felt, for me, like a little sneak peek into what my future holds.”

“At Trinity, there are so many opportunities in every department, regardless of your major—and you just have to take them.”

– Olivia Wehrung ’22

Wehrung felt the trip was a glimpse into a promising musical future.

Finance and Decision Sciences

professor Shage Zhang

co-authored “Female directors: Why are some less informed than others?” in the Journal of Corporate Finance, 2021, Vol. 68.

BUSINESS and SOCIAL SCIENCES

The University’s business and social science education is distinctively grounded in a balanced blend of liberal arts and applied professional programs, where faculty engage and prepare students for meaningful lives of leadership and service around the world. At Trinity, this area incorporates the Michael Neidorff School of Business (Accounting, Business Administration, and Finance and Decision Sciences) as well as Communication, Economics, Education, Health Care Administration, Political Science, and Sociology and Anthropology.

ENRIQUE ALEMÁN JR. / Education co-authored “‘Two schools within a school’: Elitism, divisiveness, and intra-racial gentrification in a dual language strand” for Bilingual Research , 2021, Vol. 44, Issue 2. Alemán also co-contributed “Confronting Our Own Complicity: Complexities and Tensions of a Critical Race Feminista Praxis in Higher Education During the Movement for Black Lives” for the Handbook of Critical Race Theory in with Routledge in 2021.

ROBERT M. BARNETT / Business Administration co-authored “Qualifying for USMCA Preferential Treatment” and “Qualifying for USMCA Preferential Treatment Checklist” in Thomson-Reuters Practical Law in 2021.

JOHN FRANCIS BURKE / Politipublished “‘Rev.’ Donald Trump and the Christian Right – A Secular Transformation of the Great Awakening Heritage” in the 2021 Annual Proceedings of the Association for the Scientific Study of Religion. Burke contributed “Eucharistic Bread & Wine: A Concrete Sacramentality That Liberates” for Sustenance for the Body and “Recasting Catholicism in the Face of Death: Las Casas, Zavala, and Romero” for Death & Dying in Hispanic Worlds The Nexus of Religions, Cultural Traditions, and the Arts, both with Sussex Academic Press in

2021. Burke reviewed Medina, Néstor, Christianity, Empire, and the Spirit: Reconfiguring Faith and Culture for the Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology, Vol. 23, Issue 1; Desegregating Dixie: The Catholic Church in the South and Desegregation, 1945-1992 for Catholic Southwest, Vol. 32; and The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Christian Nationalism for Journal of Church and State, Vol. 63, Issue 4, all in 2021.

YEN-HSIN CHEN / Political Science

co-authored “Who Protests and Why: Hierarchical Government Trust and Protest Participation in China” in the Journal of East Asian Studies, 2021, Vol. 21, Issue 3.

SEONGWON CHOI / Health Care Administration co-authored “The effect of gastrointestinal patients’ health literacy levels on gastrointestinal patients’ health outcomes” in the Journal of Hospital Management and Health Policy, 2021, Vol. 5 and “Antecedents of geographical expansion: The case of federally qualified health centers” in the Health Care Management Review, 2022, Vol. 47, Issue 2.

JORGE COLAZO / Finance and Decision Sciences published “Problem-solving by total productive maintenance swift teams: communication network structure, media choice and team

effectiveness” in the International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 2021, Vol. 39, Issue 9.

DAVID A. CROCKETT / Political Science contributed “Understand Your Moment in Time” for Fixing American Politics with Routledge in 2021.

JESSE M. CROSSON / Political Science published “Extreme districts, moderate winners: Same-party challenges, and deterrence in top-two primaries” in Political Science Research and Methods, 2021, Vol. 9, Issue 3. Crosson co-authored “Partisan Competition and the Decline in Legislative Capacity among Congressional Offices” in the Legislative Studies Quarterly, 2021, Vol. 46, Issue 3.

J. CHARLENE DAVIS / Business Administration, Mario González-Fuentes / Business Administration, Kim R. Robertson / Business Administration, and a colleague published “In These Unprecedented Times: A Critical Incidents Technique Examination of Students Perceptions’ of Satisfying and Dissatisfying Learning Experiences” in the Marketing Education Review, 2021, Vol. 31, Issue 3.

ROCÍO DELGADO / Education, Ellen Barnett / Education, and K. M. Pérez ’19 published “¿Qué es un código?: Supporting Emerging Mul-

MAKING NATIONAL STRIDES

Juan Sepúlveda extends his work at White House to Latinx students nationwide

Juan Sepúlveda, J.D., works for two presidents: Vanessa B. Beasley, Ph.D., Trinity University president; and Joe Biden, J.D., United States president. At Trinity, Sepúlveda is the President’s Special Advisor for Inclusive Excellence and the Ron Calgaard Distinguished Professor of Practice in the Department of Political Science. For the White House, Sepúlveda now serves on the Commission on Presidential Scholars, which recognizes the nation’s most distinguished graduating seniors.

“I am humbled and honored to have been appointed to the Commission on Presidential Scholars by President Biden and look forward to selecting the next cohort of U.S. Presidential Scholars,” Sepúlveda says. “I’ve had the privilege to serve on the selection committees for global leadership scholarships before, and every time, I finish the process re-energized— knowing that the tremendous talent and leadership of our youth will take care of us as we face ever more complicated issues as a country and a planet.”

This is not Sepúlveda’s first time working at the White House. He served on the Biden-Harris Transition Team as a member of the Arts and Humanities Agency Review Team, and he was the executive director of the White House Initiative on Education Excellence for Hispanics during

the Obama-Biden Administration. In this role, he designed and led the first-ever White House Hispanic Police Conference and a series of White House Hispanic Community Action Summits.

Sepúlveda most recently applied his national connections to support Latinx college students from Trinity and across the country. In collaboration with the Hispanic Heritage Foundation (HHF), Sepúlveda created a two-day event this past September in Washington, D.C., that focused on leadership development, community building, and professional networking.

This event concluded Trinity’s summer 2022 LOFT (Latinos On the Fast Track) Leadership Institute. Eight Trinity students were among the top 80 Latinx college students nationwide who participated in the trip. These students had the opportunity to attend a work session with Biden Administration White House and Domestic Policy Council staff, host an Open Space Action Summit, and attend HHF’s celebration at the Kennedy Center.

“It is critical for these young leaders from all over our nation to be connected to each other through their journeys in education, the workforce, and in the community in building social and professional capital,” Sepúlveda says.

left to right Juan Sepúlveda and eight Trinity students visited the White House during their trip to Washington, D.C., for the LOFT Leadership Institute.

tilingual Learners in digital literacy” in Science and Children, 2021, Vol. 58, Issue 5. Delgado, R. Montes-Bazaldúa M’14, B. Sparks ’04 and a colleague contributed “The Perfect Marriage: How a PDS Partnership Strengthened a Nascent Community School” in PDS and Community Schools: The Nexus of Practice with Information Age Publishing in 2022. Delgado and a colleague published “This Fall, Prioritize Opportunities for Students to Socialize” for www.ascd.org in 2021.

REBECCA L. DENSLEY / Communication co-authored “Influencer Marketing Between Mothers: The Impact of Disclosure and Visual Brand Promotion” in the Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising, 2021, Vol. 42, Issue 3 and “Sharenting and the extended self: self-representation in parents’ Instagram presentations of their children” in Popular Communication, 2022, Vol. 20, Issue 1.

TIANXI DONG / Finance and Decision Sciences co-authored “Identifying Incident Causal Factors to Improve Aviation Transportation Safety: Proposing a Deep Learning Approach” in the Journal of Advanced Transportation, 2021, Vol. 2021. Dong, T. Peña ’22, and a colleague virtually presented “Effects of COVID‐19 on Critics’ Rating Behavior” at the Workshop on e-Business in December 2021. Dong and Peña also presented “Are critics really unbiased? The impact of social ties on critics’ rating behavior” at the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California, in October 2021.

ASHLEY DOUGLASS / Accounting, Amy Foshee Holmes / Accounting, and a colleague published “Bringing COSO to life: Engaging students with real world examples of internal controls using digital storytelling” in the Journal of Accounting Education, 2022, Vol. 58.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP led the successful application for Trinity University receiving a $346,079 “Build to Scale” Program grant by the U.S. Economic Development Administration in 2021. The program also received the 2021 Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers Nasdaq Center for Excellence Award for schools with 5,000 students or fewer.

Read more about the entrepreneurship program’s grant and award at gotu.us/buildtoscale

MARIO GONZÁLEZ-FUENTES / Business Administration co-presented “Global and National Identities as Drivers of Young Consumers’ Choices for Foreign vs. Domestic Stories: A cross-country analysis” and served as the chair for the Consumer Choice & Sustainability in a Global World session at the Society for Marketing Advances Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida, in November 2021.

AHREUM HAN / Health Care Administration co-authored “Disparate Impacts of Two Public Reporting Initiatives on Clinical and Perceived Quality in Healthcare” in Risk Management and Healthcare Policy, Vol. 14; “The Dynamics of Cross-Sector Collaboration in Centralized Disaster Governance: A Network Study of Interorganizational Collaborations during the MERS Epidemic in South Korea” in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Vol. 19, Issue 1; “The Impact of Public Reporting Schemes and Market Competition on Hospital Efficiency” in Healthcare, Vol. 9, Issue 8; and “The World Bank Education Sector: From Internal and External Perspectives” in the Journal of International Development Cooperation, Vol. 16, Issue 1, all in 2021. Han virtually co-presented “The Landscape of Hospital Competition for Technology Adoption: A New Medical Arms Race” at the Academy

of Management Proceedings in 2021 and also presented it virtually at the AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting in June 2021. Han co-presented “Strategic Emergency Management and Organizational Learning: Does South Korea Capitalize on Previous Experiences for the COVID-19?” at the Korean Association for Public Administration Annual International Conference in Busan, South Korea, in June 2021. Han also co-authored three presentations for the American Society for Public Administration Conference in Jacksonville, Florida, in March 2022: “Cross-Boundary Coordination and Collaboration in Centralized Governance: The Case of South Korea’s Response to an Epidemic;” “Distributive Justice and Organizational Sustainability: Environmental Justice and Access to Health Care;” and “Intracrisis Learning: An Examination across Five Waves of the COVID-19 Pandemic in South Korea.” At this conference, Han also co-presented “Incorporating Social Responsibilities into Hospital Strategic Management and Managerial Factors Affecting Financial Distress among U.S. Hospitals.” Han hybridly presented “Examining the Intersection of Disaster and Public Health Policy Subsystems in Times of Crisis” for the Midwest Political Science Association Conference in Chicago in April 2022. Lastly, Han co-presented “Adding A Social Dimension to Strategy for Price Transparency in Healthcare” at the Public Management Research Conference in Phoenix in May 2022.

AMY FOSHEE HOLMES / Accounting co-published “Connecting students to community: Engaging students through course embedded service-learning activities” for The International Journal of Management Education, Vol. 20, Issue 1 and “Strengthening the accounting pipeline through diversity: preference for Big 4 employment and intentions to change” for Accounting Education, Vol.

31, Issue 4, both in 2022. Holmes was a panelist for the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Courageous Conversations Forum Sponsored by the AAA-TLC Section” at the 2022 Western Region Annual Meeting of the American Accounting Association in Long Beach, California, in April 2022.

SAMMYE JOHNSON / Communication published “Omnibus” in the Journal of Magazine Media, 2021, Vol. 22, Issue 1-2.

AMER KAISSI / Health Care Administration published Humbitious: The Power of Low-Ego, High-Drive Leadership with Page Two Press in 2022. Since its publication, Kaissi has been invited to speak about the book for dozens of organizations and professional associations in the United States and Canada.

PATRICK KEATING / Communication published “Light and Time in the Narrative Fiction Film” in the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 2022, Vol. 61, Issue 3. Keating also published two video essays: “The Moment of Recognition: Phantom Lady and Sorry, Wrong Number” in [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, 2021, Vol. 8, Issue 3 and “Figueroa’s Lines” in Caligari, 2022, Vol. 4. Keating presented “Cinematography and the Screenplay in Studio-Era France” at the International Film-Photography Colloquium in Rennes, France, in 2021.

JARED KOREFF / Accounting

published “Are Auditors’ Reliance on Conclusions from Data Analytics Impacted by Different Data Analytic Inputs?” in the Journal of Information Systems, 2022, Vol. 36, Issue 1. Koreff co-authored “Data analytics (ab) use in healthcare fraud audits” in the International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 2021, Vol. 42.

JARED D. LARSON / Political Science was interviewed by the Spanish television news program Bos Días about the fallout from the mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, the politics of gun control, and the place of firearms in U.S. political culture in May 2022.

ZHAOXI LIU / Communication presented “A Fan Culture that Went Awry: Chinese Youth Caught in Between Capital and Politics,” served as the chair for “Virtual High-Density: When Storms Hit Social Media - Between Misinformation” as part of the Environmental Communication division, and presented with R. Li ’22 “Media Discourse on the Paraxylene (PX) Controversy in Kunming: A Comparison between Local Newspapers and Weibo,” all at the International Communication Association Annual Convention in Paris, France, in May 2022. Liu won the Trinity Tomorrow Award in May 2022, which recognizes Trinity University faculty who have made significant contributions to the mission and strategic priorities of the University.

JENNIFER MATHEWS / Sociology and Anthropology and colleagues received a $38,530 Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) grant for revising introduction to archaeology courses for diversity, equity, and inclusion in August 2021. As part of the ACS grant project, “At the Trowel’s Edge: Reimagining Inclusivity and Diversity Within Our Archaeological Future,” Mathews co-published “Contested Monuments, Contested Histories: Mission San Antonio de Valero,” a decolonizing curricular video module developed in a collaboration between the Texas Heritage Project, American Indians of Texas of the Spanish Colonial Missions, and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Trinity University in 2021. Mathews also received an Arthur Vining Davis Foundations Grant of $21,200. With

the funding of this grant, she wrote “Building Transparency and Equity into Faculty Evaluation and Development at Trinity University” as the chair of the ED CLIC (Empowering Department Chairs to Lead and Implement Change) Working Group.

SHANA M. MCDERMOTT / Economics co-authored “Infant Health Outcomes in Mega-Fire Affected Communities” for Applied Economics Letters, Vol. 29, Issue 14; “The economic costs of biological invasions around the world” for NeoBiota, Vol. 67; “The Local Labor Market Impacts of US Megafires” for Sustainability, Vol. 13, Issue 16; and “When does natural science uncertainty translate into economic uncertainty?” for Ecological Economics, Vol. 184, all in 2021. McDermott presented “Infant Health Outcomes in Mega-Fire Affected Communities” at the Northeast Agriculture and Resource Economics Association Annual Meeting in June 2021.

KATSUO NISHIKAWA CHÁVEZ / Political Science co-authored “Summer study abroad in Japan: Maximizing intercultural competency development through self-guided cultural exploration and reflection tasks” in the Foreign Language Annals, 2021, Vol. 54, Issue 3.

PETER O’BRIEN / Political Science served as the panel chair for “Social Capital and Social Movements in Europe, Past & Present” at the Southern Political Science Association Annual Conference in San Antonio in January 2022.

MAURO OLIVEIRA / Finance and Decision Sciences and Shage Zhang / Finance and Decision Sciences published “The trends and determinants of board gender and age diversities” in the Finance Research Letters, 2022, Vol. 46, Part A. Oliveira co-authored “Effects of customer horizontal merger on supplier capital structure decisions”

TRANSFORMATIVE RESEARCH

Amy Stone receives $300,000 NSF grant, studies complex LGBTQ+ issues

by Jeremy Gerlach

In 2022, Trinity sociology and anthropology professor Amy Stone, Ph.D., conducted research into issues that deeply affect the LGBTQ+ community, namely identity and housing instability.

This past summer, Stone was part of a team of faculty and undergraduate researchers that included communication professor Althea Delwiche, Ph.D., library liaison and associate professor Alexandra Gallin-Parisi, MSLS, and students Cutter Canada ’24, Gwen McCrary ’23, Megan McGuire ’23, and Lauren Stevens ’24 to examine the effects of shelter-in-place orders on trans and non-binary individuals making discoveries about their gender. This project was conducted under Trinity’s unique Mellon Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship in the Arts and Humanities, known as the SURF program.

Stone’s team made good use of the SURF’s 10-week summer period (which comes with stipends for both faculty and students, as well as a travel and supplies budget to present their research at national conferences), and the group continued their work into the fall semester.

In fall 2022, Stone also ramped up work on a separate $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Stone, in partnership with gender and sexuality studies professor Brandon Robinson, Ph.D., at University of California, Riverside, is using this grant to examine the effect of non-parental family members (grandparents, aunts, uncles, and the like) on housing instability among LGBTQ+ youth. This project, “Family Housing and Me,” will continue for two more years.

Stone says that for both researchers, this question started out as a personal one.

“When Brandon and I looked at our own lives, and we looked at how the people around us that we knew got kicked

out for being LGBTQ, everyone lived with their grandparents. They had a relative who was so supportive, and they went and moved in with them,” Stone says. “I’ve been really struck by how little we know about the impact extended family members, especially grandparents or siblings, have on alleviating housing insecurity.”

Stone, along with their lab of five full-time Trinity undergraduate researchers, has recruited 83 LGBTQ+ youth into a longitudinal study, has already conducted interviews with them, and plans to follow them for the next three years.

About half are based in South Texas and half from the inland empire of Southern California—“very close to where I grew up,” Stone adds.

Stone says they want this study to inform the adoption of active strategies and policies aimed at helping curb housing instability in LGBTQ+ youth.

“We’re hoping to see that there are some practices that these relatives engage in that can help protect LGBTQ youth from bad outcomes,” Stone says. “Because then we can do something with that: We can develop programs that can encourage relatives to know that they’re an important part [of protecting LGBTQ+ youth], and we can know which practices may be most important.”

For Stone, this study also serves as a crucial opportunity for Trinity to help make an impact on its immediate community.

“Almost one in five LGBTQ people in San Antonio have experienced homelessness either now or in the past. One in four transgender youth have experienced it before their 25th birthday. Those are really high rates of housing insecurity,” Stone says. “I think those numbers make San Antonio a really important place to study that issue.”

Amy Stone (right) spent the past year conducting research into LGBTQ+ identity and housing instability issues.

A hands-on anthropology lab excavates Trinity’s campus history

Trinity University’s rich history as , municipal dump, and liberal arts college has left traces both below and on the surface of campus, and an anthropology lab led by professor Jennifer Mathews, Ph.D., seeks to recover it through hands-on excavation. Mathews began this lab after anthropology major Claire Sammons ’24 discovered ceramic pieces in the

Because of COVID-19, anthropology students have had fewer hands-on experiences since digs and excavations shifted online to virtual field schools and online internships. “So, when Claire walked into my lab with pictures of artifacts and said, ‘I have to know what these are!,’ I thought, ‘If she’s really interested in this, right here on campus, then let’s go for it,’” Mathews says. Mathews, chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Z.T. Scott Faculty Fellow, and Piper Professor, studies ancient and historical Maya archaeology

and has conducted fieldwork and archival research in Mexico since 1993. But with this project, Mathews was happy to dive into fieldwork a little closer to home.

While Mathews and Claire continue to gather artifacts through their excavations, they also turn to Trinity’s Special Collections and Archives for materials that might help connect their artifacts with the land. University archivist Abra Schnur showed the pair a faded copy of a tract map from 1917 for more information about Trinity’s history as a dump site and uncovered several other useful resources for the project’s timeline.

“This project is going to help the University have a broader understanding of Trinity’s place within the city,” Schnur says. “It’s been exciting to go back through newspaper archives to understand what the land was used for at the turn of the century.”

“It’s been such a great experience,” says Sammons, who has plans to turn

A corroded pocket watch found during the surface dig.

The right ear of a ceramic doll; the left leg of another, both found during the surface dig.

left Jennifer Mathews and Claire Sammons ’24 search for artifacts on campus. center and right Mathews holds glass artifacts found in the surface dig.

her ongoing work of surface collection into her senior capstone project. “We’re uncovering a past, even if it’s just through a broken piece of glass. There’s history here with the battle of the Alamo, the Spanish missions, and before all that, Native American lands. This project makes these connections, so we can acknowledge the site that we are on.”

Sammons and Mathews will again enlist the help of Schnur and others in Coates Library to create a searchable set of sources, including 3D scans of diagnostic artifacts, photographs, and research reports, as well as make the physical artifact collection itself available for public study.

Explore the history of the land Trinity University’s campus is built on, and read more about this story.

for the International Review of Finance, Vol. 21, Issue 4 and “Binding ties in the supply chain and supplier capital structure” for the Journal of Banking and Finance, Vol. 130, both in 2021.

O. VOLKAN ÖZBEK / Business Administration was invited to virtually present “The Effect of Institutional and Managerial Ownerships on the Market Performance of U.S. Corporate Spin-offs” at the KHAS Finance Webinars, sponsored by the International Trade and Finance Department at Kadir Has University, in Istanbul, Turkey, in November 2021. At the 51st Annual Meeting of the Southeast Decision Sciences Institute in Jacksonville, Florida, in February 2022, Özbek served as the chair of the “Internet Research” session and presented “Explaining Corporate Competitiveness via Cognitive Conflict and Environmental Munificence,” “Increased Importance of Global Virtual Teams Following the COVID-19 Pandemic,” and “The Influence of CEO Origin on the Market Valuation of Spun-off Subsidiaries: The Moderating Effect of Firm Capital Intensity.” At the 22nd annual conference of the National Business & Economics Society in Maui, Hawaii, in March 2022, Özbek presented “Market Performance of Spun-Off Subsidiaries: Effects of Board Independence and Directors’ Industry Experience” at the “Competitive Behaviors” session, which he also chaired at the conference.

MARIA PIA PAGANELLI / Economics published “Population as a GDP Proxy in Adam Smith” in the Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 2021, Vol. 19, Issue 2 and “Adam Smith’s Digression on Silver: the centrepiece of the Wealth of Nations” in the Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2022, Vol. 46, Issue 3. Paganelli also published “Adam Smith and Economic Development in Theory and Practice: a Rejection of the Stadial Model?” and “Crime and Punishment: Adam Smith’s Theory of Sentimental Law and Economics” in the Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2022, Vol. 44, Issue 1 and 2, respectively. Paganelli contributed “Adam Smith and Dying Peacefully” for Political Theory on Death and Dying with Routledge in 2021.

EVA POHLER ’89 / Entrepreneurship published A Holiday Haunting at the Biltmore: The Mystery House Series, Book 8 with Eva Pohler Books in 2022, for which she was awarded “Best Mystery Book of the Year” at Utopia Con 2022.

GUY POITRAS / Political Science contributed “Mexico’s Problematic Transition to Democracy” for Accessing Democracy in Latin America with Routledge in 2021.

CAMILLE REYES / Communication published “Spinning at the Border: Employee Activism in ‘Big PR’” in Media and Communication, 2021, Vol. 9, Issue 3.

RICARDO SANTOS / Economics presented “The Champions League, Bosman Rule, and Competitive Balance in Domestic European Football Leagues” at the Institute for Global Business Research International Conference in New Orleans in April 2022 and at the Southwestern Social Science Association Annual Meeting in San Antonio in April 2022, where he also chaired the “Potpourri of Topics 1” session.

ROBERT F. SCHERER / Business Administration and colleagues received a civic grant from the San Antonio Foundation to understand the state of the nonprofit sector in the San Antonio region. This grant supported their research for “How a Nonprofitness Orientation Influences Collective Civic Action: The Effects of Civic Engagement and Political Participation,” which was published in VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations in 2022.

PATRICK D. SHAY ’03, M’05 / Health Care Administration co-published “Do Organizational Char-

acteristics of Lung Procurement Operations Matter: The Association Between Transplant Center Centrality and Volume With Total Ischemic Time” in Transplantation, 2022, Vol. 106, Issue 3. Shay co-contributed “Healthcare Professionals” for Human Resources in Healthcare: Managing for Success, Fifth Edition with Health Administration Press in 2021. Shay, Edward J. Schumacher / Health Care Administration, and a colleague contributed “Leadership for the Future Health Sector: Transformation, Innovation, and Change for Population Health Managers” for Population Health Management for Health Professionals: Strategies, Tools, Applications, and Outcomes with Springer Publishing in 2021. Shay, Schumacher, and colleagues also contributed the case study “Coproduction Leadership for the Future Health Sector” for Population Health Management for Health Professionals. At the 2021 AUPHA Annual Meeting in June 2021, Shay, Schumacher, and colleagues virtually presented “The innovation journey: Three programs’ experiences promoting entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial thinking” and the poster “Why wait to innovate? Finding a different view of the prism,” which won recognition for Best Poster.

HEATHER HAYNES SMITH ’97, M’98 / Education co-published GET feedback: Giving, exhibiting, and teaching feedback in special education teacher preparation with SLACK Incorporated and contributed “Service-learning field experience with students with exceptionalities: A commitment to inclusion in general education teacher preparation” for Research Anthology on Instilling Social Justice in the Classroom with IGI Global, both in 2021. Smith co-presented “Building Bionic Powers in Explicit Lesson Plans: How to Give,

Exhibit, & Teach Feedback”; “Reflecting on Reflection: Scaffolding Practices Across Programs”; and “Feedback – backward design with the adult in mind” at the Teacher Education Division of The Council for Exceptional Children Conference in Fort Worth, Texas, in November 2021. Smith also co-presented “Integrating Evidence-Based Research on Tiered Intervention in Teacher Preparation Coursework” at The Consortium of State Organization for Texas Teacher Education Conference in San Marcos, Texas, in October 2021. Smith, Rocío Delgado / Education, Ellen Barnett / Education, Laura Allen / Education, Courtney Crim ’93, M’94 / Education, and Gabriel Garcia / Education virtually presented “Cultivating global teaching competencies: Exploring one local school and university partnership” at the Global Conference on Education and Research in June 2021.

BENJAMIN SOSNAUD / Sociology and Anthropology published “CrossState Differences in the Processes Generating Black–White Disparities in Neonatal Mortality” in Demography, 2021, Vol. 58, Issue 6 and “Reconceptualizing Measures of Black–White Disparity in Infant Mortality in U.S. Counties” in the Population Research and Policy Review, 2022, Vol. 41, Issue 4.

AMY L. STONE / Sociology and Anthropology was awarded a $300,000 three-year grant from the National Science Foundation for “Collaborative Research: Extended Family Support and the Housing Stability of Youth” in May 2022. Stone published Queer Carnival: Festivals and Mardi Gras in the South with NYU Press and “Making an inclusive collective party or building LGBTQ+ community? Tensions in LGBTQ festival events in American Mardi Gras” in the Journal of Policy Research in

Tourism, Leisure and Events, both in 2022. Stone also co-authored two articles in 2022: “The Relationship Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Utilization of Different HIV Testing Strategies Among Young Men Who Have Sex with Men in Texas” in AIDS and Behavior, Vol. 26, Issue 11 and “Development and psychometric properties of the sexual and gender minority adverse childhood experiences (SGM-ACEs): Effect on sexual and gender minority adult mental health” in Child Abuse and Neglect, Vol. 127.

JACOB K. TINGLE ’95 / Business Administration co-published “Female Sports Officials and Mental Health: The Overlooked Problem” in the Journal of Sport Management, 2021, Vol. 36, Issue 4. Tingle co-contributed “Transcending ball and ballin’: Connecting the Jordan Brand and college football fans” for Sport Governance and Operations: Global Perspectives with Routledge in 2021. He also contributed both “Learning abroad in action: A case study of sport in England’’ and “Study abroad opportunities: The impact upon learning” for Sport Management Education with Routledge in 2021. In June 2021, Tingle remotely co-presented “‘It was my story to tell and I wasn’t ready to tell it. I wanted to just continue and referee’: Stigma management amongst LGBTQ+ sport officials” and “Shrouded by stigma: Mental health among female basketball officials” at the North American Society for Sport Management Conference as well as “The Experiences of LGBTQ+ Sport Officials: Exploring Stigma Management” at the University of Kansas’s LGBTQ Research Symposium. In 2021, Tingle was selected to serve as one of the three new associate editors for Recreational Sports Journal, a scholarly, peer-reviewed publication

of the NIRSA Foundation, published with Sage. Tingle also won the Trinity Tomorrow Award in May 2022, which recognizes Trinity University faculty who have made significant contributions to the mission and strategic priorities of the University. Tingle and Paul McGinlay / Athletics received the Center for International Engagement Award for their contributions to enhancing the international programs and footprint at Trinity University through “Sport in England,” their co-taught course.

MARCIA WEIDENMIER WATSON / Accounting co-published “Act or Be Acted Upon: Revolutionizing Accounting Curriculums with Data Analytics” in Accounting Horizons, 2021, Vol. 35, Issue 2, which won Accounting Horizons’ Best Paper Award from the American Accounting Association in 2022. Watson also co-authored “A Framework and Resources to Create a Data Analytics-Infused Accounting Curriculum” in Issues in Accounting Education, 2021,Vol. 36, Issue 4.

DIANA K. YOUNG / Finance and Decision Sciences co-authored “How Social Media Analytics Can Inform Content Strategies” in the Journal of Computer Information Systems, 2022, Vol. 62, Issue 1. In May 2022, Young received the Trinity University Distinguished Early Career Faculty Award for Teaching and Scholarship.

SHAGE ZHANG / Finance and Decision Sciences co-authored “Female directors: Why are some less informed than others?” in the Journal of Corporate Finance, 2021, Vol. 68.

SUNING ZHU / Finance and Decision Sciences co-authored “Train Your Frontline Personnel from Newbie to Master IT Users: A Three-Phase Longitudinal

Experiment Focusing on Technology Compatibility” in the Pacific Asia Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 2021, Vol. 13, Issue 3. Zhu, Tianxi Dong / Finance and Decision Sciences, and a colleague co-wrote “A longitudinal study of the actual value of big data and analytics: The role of industry environment” for the International Journal of Information Management, 2021, Vol. 60.

Head women’s basketball coach Cameron Hill was named the Regional Women’s Basketball Coach of the Year by D3hoops.com for the 2021-22 season.

STAFF

Staff at Trinity University are lifelong learners whose talents grow the University as an exceptional place to study and work. They contribute diverse backgrounds and perspectives to the culture of the University, serving as leaders, mentors, and role models for the campus community. Staff create new and innovative advances in higher education, propelling the education of the whole student forward.

LESLIE F. BLEAMASTER ’98 / Center for Sciences & Innovation co-published “Geologic Map of the Guinevere Planitia Quadrangle of Venus” for the U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Series Map in 2022.

ANDREW COHN / Athletics was named the Women’s Tennis Coach of the Year by the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference for the 2021-22 season.

CRAIG CROW / Investments was named to the San Antonio Business Journal 40 Under 40 list in February 2022.

SHELBY DEVORE ’18 / Athletics was named the Women’s Golf Coach of the Year by the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference for the 2021-22 season.

CAMERON HILL / Athletics was named the Regional Women’s Basketball Coach of the Year by D3hoops.com for the 2021-22 season.

KINDEL HOLLIS ’07 / Admissions completed the Enrollment Leadership Academy with College Board, a yearlong program focused on leadership skills, strategic enrollment management, and the deveolopment of the next generation of enrollment leaders.

LISA JASINSKI / Academic Affairs co-authored “Reflecting on the value of vignettes in higher education research: toward a preliminary typology to guide future usage” in the European Journal of Higher Education, 2021, Vol. 11, Issue S1.

JULIE JENKINS / Athletics was named the Women’s Volleyball Coach of the Year by the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference and the Region 10 Women’s Volleyball Coach of the Year by the American Volleyball Coaches Association for the 2021-22 season.

RUSSELL MCMINDES / Athletics was named the Men’s Tennis Coach of the Year by the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference and the West Region Men’s Tennis Coach of the Year by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association for the 2021-22 season.

PAUL MICHALAK / Athletics was named the Division III Assistant Coach of the Year by the American Football Coaches Association in 2021.

MARC POWELL / Athletics received the Trinity University Distinguished Award for University, Community, and Professional Service in May 2022.

CATHLEEN PRUDEN / Athletics and her staff were named the Men’s Swimming and Diving Staff of the Year by the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference for the 2021-22 season.

GEORGE RIVERS / Athletics was named the National Men’s Tennis Assistant Coach of the Year and the West Region Men’s Assistant Tennis Coach of the Year by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association for the 2021-22 season.

LORENZO D. SANCHEZ / Trinity University Police Department was selected by the National Weather Service (NWS) to serve and represent higher education on the NWS Integrated Warning Team (IWT) for south-central Texas. The IWT aims to find the best ways to communicate a consistent warning message during a regional and significant weather event.

TIM SCANNELL / Athletics was named the regional Men’s Baseball Coach of the Year by the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference and the Region 10 Men’s Baseball Coach of the Year by the American Baseball Coaches Association and D3baseball.com for the 2021-22 season.

VALERIE SCHWEERS / Admissions won the Trinity University President’s Award for Excellence in Student Advocacy in May 2022, which recognizes Trinity employees who have been significant partners in supporting student success both inside and outside the classroom.

MARCUS COLEMAN AWARDED BILL WALSH FELLOWSHIP

Trinity coach works with NFL for a diversity coaching fellowship

by Emma Utzinger ’24

Marcus Coleman is no stranger to the world of the National Football League (NFL). After playing for the New York Jets, Houston Texans, and Dallas Cowboys for more than 11 seasons, he brought his knowledge of professional football into his coaching career at Trinity University as the assistant football coach and special teams coordinator.

the league is a great experience,” Coleman says. “A lot of the coaches, especially on the staff in Jacksonville, have been coaching a long time. Some of them have won Super Bowls and divisional championships.”

Coleman and the other fellows experienced the logistics of the NFL during the Jaguar’s training camp. Here, the fellows were given an intimate

This summer, Coleman was selected to participate in the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship, which gave eight minority coaches the opportunity to work with the Jacksonville Jaguars coaching staff and other NFL coaches to gain the experience and skills necessary to eventually be hired by the NFL. This fellowship was hosted in Jacksonville, Florida, from late July to early August.

“To be in front of coaches that you’ve been coached by and recognizable coaches throughout

look into the workings of the NFL, from the administrative aspects to relationship building.

Coleman felt right at home among the experienced coaches and successful players. “I was very comfortable there. As a former player, I understood the environment and what it was like. So, I jumped right in and got to work—it was a blast,” he says.

Coleman isn’t the only Trinity coach who has received this fellowship. Former assistant coach Adam McGuire held the same fellowship in 2019, learning under the Minnesota Vikings.

Marcus Coleman coaches Tiger football players from the sidelines of a football game.

“The more that I learn as a coach, the more that I can pass on to my players, the better it is for them.”

Coleman has been applying the knowledge he gained from the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship to game day with the Trinity Tigers. Trinity’s football team capped off its 2022 season as Southern Athletic Association conference champions, with its first playoff win in 20 years.

“The more that I learn as a coach, the more that I can pass on to my players, the better it is for them,” Coleman says. “You’re always trying to absorb something. The things that I learned there I can bring back here.”

SPENCER SCRUGGS / Academic Support co-authored the contribution “’Nothing About Us Without Us’: Challenging Ableist Leadership Education” for Shifting the Mindset: Socially Just Leadership Education with Information Age Publishing in 2021.

SHAWNE STEWART-ZAKARIA / Alumni Relations & Development won the inaugural Dr. Deneese L. Jones Award for Inclusive Excellence in May 2022, which recognizes Trinity employees who provide outstanding support of inclusive excellence.

STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS

AND MARKETING won a gold MarCom award in the Educational Institutions: Magazines category for its Spring 2021 issue of Trinity magazine, “Tunnel, Meet Light.”

KATHERINE TROYER / Collaborative for Learning and Teaching was named a 2021-22 Public Humanities Faculty Fellow by Trinity University’s Humanities Collective. Her project centered on Monster MAYhem, a tournament that offered the horror community an opportunity to think more deeply about the monsters we create and the horror narratives we tell.

LUKE TUNSTALL / Quantitative Reasoning and Skills Center won the Trinity Tomorrow Award in May 2022, which recognizes Trinity employees who have made significant contributions to the mission and strategic priorities of the University.

JERHEME URBAN / Athletics was named the Football Coach of the Year by the Southern Athletic Association, the Regional Coach of the Year by D3football.com, and the Regional Football Coach of the Year by the American Football Coaches Association in 2021.

MARCUS WHITEHEAD / Athletics and his coaching staff were named the Track and Field Coaching Staff of the Year by the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference for both men’s and women’s competition in the 2021-22 season.

MAKING WAVES

Kasey Gonzalez spreads awareness about the dangers of underwater breath-holding drills

by Kennice Leisk ’22

Kasey Gonzalez has been in pools her whole life. She began swimming competitively at age 5 and has worked at waterparks as well as municipal, HOA, and public and private campus recreation pools throughout her career. Now, as Trinity’s director of aquatics, Gonzalez draws on her experiences to help ensure the health and safety of the University’s swimming and diving student-athletes.

One of Gonzalez’s main concerns is providing safety and educational trainings for Trinity coaches and student-athletes about the dangers of underwater breath-holding drills. Swimmers participate in these drills to ‘train’ their lungs to become stronger and hold more air—their logic being “the less you breathe, the faster you go,” she says.

But the dangers of these drills far outweigh any

advantages. While holding their breath, swimmers can suffer hypoxic (low oxygen) blackouts, which can lead to long-term heart, brain, and lung deficits, bouts of unconsciousness, and even death.

Gonzalez presented on hypoxic blackouts, which she terms “The Modern Day Swimming Controversy,” at the NIRSA Region IV Conference in Olathe, Kansas, this past October.

“I wanted to bring more information to the public about the risks of these activities since they have been the status quo for so long,” Gonzalez says. “Becoming knowledgeable [and educating others] in the aquatics industry shows people the real-life consequences [of these drills] and hopefully breaks the barrier with older or more experienced coaches. The number of drownings per 100 has gone down since awareness about [hypoxic] blackouts has spread in the news, society, and the swimming world overall.”

Kasey Gonzalez presents “The Modern Day Swimming Controversy” at the NIRSA Region IV Conference.

“I wanted to bring more information to the public about the risks of these activities since they have been the status quo for so long.”

CRAIG CROW NAMED TO SABJ 40 UNDER 40 Trinity’s chief investment officer honored for management of the University’s $1.725 billion endowment

by Matilda Krell ’23

The San Antonio Business Journal honored Trinity University’s chief investment officer, Craig Crow, on 2021’s 40 Under 40 list, which recognizes young business and community leaders.

Crow leads Trinity’s Office of Investments, which is composed of a team of six professionals responsible for managing and investing the University’s endowment, which in the 2021 fiscal year increased by $446 million to a total value of $1.725 billion. During the 2021 fiscal year, the endowment covered 37% of Trinity’s operating budget, nearly twice the percentage of other private universities’ operating budgets. This funding goes toward a wide array of uses, including scholarships, professorships, curriculum development, and building and ground maintenance.

Crow is particularly passionate about the use of endowment funds for scholarships. “The idea that we’re supporting Trinity’s educational

mission in such a meaningful way is exciting and fulfilling,” he says.

Endowment investing has a long-term horizon, which allows Trinity to develop long-term relationships and a long-term investment view.

“The University has unique access to invest in world-class investment partners across a diversified set of strategies and industries. From early-stage venture capital to multi-family real estate and beyond—the relationships and subject matter are incredibly exciting and rewarding,” Crow says. “Trinity’s partners are at the forefront of innovation and thought leadership across their respective industries.”

“The idea that we’re supporting Trinity’s educational mission in such a meaningful way is exciting and fulfilling.”

ENGINEERING AN IDENTITY

Trinity alum, professor works to understand experiences of engineering students

by Jeremy Gerlach

Trinity University graduateturned-engineering science professor Emma Treadway wants to know what makes an engineer an engineer.

What emotions and experiences play a role in creating this sense of identity? And how might this process be unique for women and minorities?

Treadway, in partnership with University at Buffalo professor Jessica Swenson, has secured a National Science Foundation grant of $178,171 to delve deeper into these issues. Here, we ask her about her project, which focuses around the interactions between affect and identity in first- and second-year engineering students.

WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT YOUR RESEARCH?

This is an engineering project that’s a little different from my previous research. We’re asking these big-picture questions of, “How does affect influence the development of engineering identity? How does identity influence affect?” We’re going to represent the diversity of our students by looking at the development of engineering identity and its ties to the emotions and the values that students have within the lenses of their other identities, such as race and gender.

“Affect” is a psychological term describing an individual’s underlying experience related to feelings or moods. You have your emotions, but then you can also have an overall sense that engineering is “cool” or “useful.” You might also have values, like, “Being an engineer is socially important.” So, having your engineering major be really closely tied to a profession–that also contributes to your sense of identity.

HOW WILL THIS STUDY BE TIED TO TRINITY ENGINEERS SPECIFICALLY?

This project will follow two groups of about 16 students toand-through the engineering science major at Trinity. We’re really interested in tracking both the students who stay in engineering and the ones who switch to other majors.

This is not a research project where subjects are numbers in a spreadsheet. Our student subjects are real people, with real experiences, and those experiences matter to me.

I’ve had students who are emotional in my office hours, apologizing for being upset that they didn’t do as well as they wanted to do [on a test or in class]. So, if a student is sitting in front of me tearing up because they’re frustrated with how something went, I don’t want them to feel like they have to apologize; I don’t want them to feel that their experience is somehow a “non-engineering thing.”

HOW DOES THIS PROJECT DELVE INTO ISSUES OF REPRESENTATION AND EQUITY?

I’m a graduate of Trinity’s engineering science program, so I can relate to being a young engineering student here. And I do have these experiences of being a woman in a largely masculine engineering space. That comes with things like feeling that you, maybe, can’t show that you’re really frustrated, or you can’t show that you’re upset because that might be perceived as “not looking like an engineer.” Those are definitely experiences that I remember happening.

I imagine that we’re going to find additional things with students who have intersecting identities or other identities (apart from) being women in engineering. For this project at least, it was very exciting to have that recognition that, if the NSF is funding it, this is work that people care about.

Emma Treadway ’11

Our student subjects are real people, with real experiences, and those experiences matter to me.

– Emma Treadway ’11 Assistant professor, Engineering Science

One Trinity Place

San Antonio, Texas 78212-7200

Change service requested.

I’m so excited to work with our undergrads because I’ve been able to have undergraduate researchers from Trinity do things that I would normally associate with higher-level work. Some of these students are in their sophomore year, and they’re doing work that I might not typically expect a sophomore to be able to do.

– Emma Treadway ’11, Ph.D., Engineering Science