IMPACT: Scholarship, Creativity, & Community Engagement at Trinity University

SCHOLARSHIP, CREATIVITY, & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT TRINITY UNIVERSITY 2015-2016

THE CHIRP HE ARD ’ R OU ND TH E WORLD Trinity physics professor collaborates on discovery of gravitational waves

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Trinity partners with SAISD to establish Advanced Learning Academy Urban studies program making a difference on the East Side

Scholarship is a vital part of Trinity University’s mission.

Trinity faculty members are active and prominent participants in scholarly communities that contribute significantly to the worldwide advancement of knowledge.

Statement on the Value of Faculty Scholarship trinity university faculty senate, may 2015

Contents / NO. 1, 2015-2016

18 THE CHIRP HEARD ’ROUND THE WORLD Physics professor collaborates on discovery of gravitational waves

BY SUSIE P. GONZALEZ

30 HEAD START Trinity partners with SAISD to establish Advanced Learning Academy

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BY CARLOS ANCHONDO ’14

41 FRESH PERSPECTIVES TO OLD CHALLENGES University’s urban studies program making a difference on the East Side

BY SUSIE P. GONZALEZ

Departments 2 LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT 3 EDITOR’S NOTE 4 RESEARCH & ACHIEVEMENT 8 ARTS & HUMANITIES 24 SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, & MATHEMATICS 34 BUSINESS & SOCIAL SCIENCES 46 STAFF

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Letters / FROM THE PRESIDENT

President Anderson speaks with biology professor David Ribble ‘82 at the 2015 Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium.

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aculty research is a vital part of Trinity University’s mission.

Our newest University publication, IMPACT magazine, will annually feature the research, scholarship, creativity, and community engagement that enriches and enlivens the Trinity experience. By promoting faculty scholarship and its impact on the broader communities, we are raising our faculty’s scholarly profile. By investing in resources that invigorate faculty and student research, we broaden opportunities for students and reinforce Trinity’s reputation as a top choice in higher education.

The Trinity faculty’s commitment to our students drives their teaching. Their commitment to knowledge drives their research. They link teaching and research in deep, meaningful ways. As a result, Trinity students become active, original thinkers. The faculty’s diligence as scholars and their dedication as teachers combine to benefit our students—one of the true strengths of a Trinity University education.

This strength was recently recognized by the Wall Street Journal, which ranked Trinity University No. 72 out of 500 schools nationwide.

Especially gratifying was the recognition Trinity received because of our faculty. Based on faculty research productivity and student evaluations of faculty accessibility, Trinity was ranked No. 6 in the nation and No. 1 in the state of Texas: we have a top faculty.

Mentorship by faculty scholars helps students develop the skills required to enter the market and succeed in jobs, internships, and

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IMPACT 2015-2016

graduate programs. Trinity students frequently participate in high-level faculty research beyond the classroom, collaborating closely with their professors. Students conduct field work, serve as research assistants, and contribute to professional presentations and published articles. Increasingly, undergraduate research and internships are taking our students into the community to tackle real-world issues and contribute to community-based initiatives that add value to San Antonio and the region.

The Gallup-Purdue report “Great Jobs, Great Lives,” based on the 2014 survey of more than 30,000 U.S. college graduates, found that those who had a professor or mentor who made them excited about learning, encouraged them to pursue their goals and dreams, and who had experiential and deep learning, were more likely to have high well-being. At Trinity University, we create connections—in research laboratories and fine arts studios, through student involvement and residential life, and in the community at large.

With exceptional and accessible faculty, abundant resources and opportunities, a rigorous yet flexible curriculum, and a diverse campus community, Trinity is a place of discovery and growth.

Best regards,

Danny J. Anderson President, Trinity University

Letters / FROM THE EDITOR

SCHOLARSHIP, CREATIVITY, & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

EDITORIAL BOARD Jeanna Goodrich Balreira ’08 /Editor Carlos Anchondo ’14 /Writer Susie P. Gonzalez /Writer Mark Brodl /Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs & George W. Brackenridge Distinguished Professor of Biology Peggy Sundermeyer /Director of Sponsored Research ADVISORY COMMITTEE Victoria Aarons /English Angela Breidenstein /Education Jane Costanza /Library Amer Kaissi /Heath Care Administration Carl Leafstedt /Music Jennifer Mathews /Sociology & Anthropology Maria Paganelli /Economics Heather Sullivan /Modern Languages & Literatures Adam Urbach /Chemistry Harry Wallace /Psychology Mike Wilkins /Accounting PRESIDENT Danny J. Anderson ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT FOR EXTERNAL RELATIONS Sharon Jones Schweitzer ’75

IMPACT is published annually by the Office of University Marketing & Communications and is sent to faculty, staff, and friends of the University.

EDITORIAL OFFICES Trinity University University Marketing & Communications One Trinity Place

I, like many of my fellow Trinity graduates , consider myself a lifelong learner. A penchant for reading anything and everything was instilled in me at an early age: I was the kid who would read the cereal box from front to back at the breakfast table, or the full usage instructions on the bottle of shampoo in the shower. I am sure that at some point, my parents thought, “Come on kid, just eat the cereal and wash your hair.”

But I blame them for this insatiable craving to digest more and more words; legend has it, my dad would read science fiction out loud to me while I was still in my mommy’s tummy.

Fast forward 30 years, and I’m still reading anything and everything. But I’m doing so quite differently.

As an English major at Trinity, I was introduced to reading in new ways. I was encouraged to not only read—to really read, interpret, and understand—what was there, but also what wasn’t.

My professors charged me to think about reading in the context of politics, culture, society, background, and perspective. They challenged my “creative” discoveries and supported my rampant curiosity. They made me a better reader, a better writer, a better learner. And learning in this way has changed my life.

I, like many of my fellow Trinity graduates, am not the only one who has been changed. Through the pages of this inaugural issue of IMPACT magazine, you will meet faculty and staff members from all disciplines across campus who have engaged students—and each other—in research, creativity, and community service. To many students, these dedicated Tigers aren’t just teachers, they’re mentors, role models, and friends. There is no doubt in my mind that they deserve all of the recognition they are given: According to U.S. News & World Report, Trinity is #1 in the West for undergraduate research and teaching; according to the Wall Street Journal, our faculty are No. 6 in the nation. In the nation!

Reader, I hope you enjoy this first issue of IMPACT: Scholarship, Creativity, & Community Engagement; while not an exhaustive list, it showcases a sampling of the works our faculty and staff do for Trinity and our community. A huge shoutout goes to the editorial board and advisory committee for making this endeavor a success! Have fun exploring what our inquisitive and innovative faculty and staff bring to Trinity’s campus and beyond. They, too, are lifelong learners—and aren’t we lucky that they’ve instilled the same in us all.

Cheers,

San Antonio, TX 78212-7200 E-mail: jgoodri1@trinity.edu Phone: 210-999-8406

Jeanna Goodrich Balreira ’08

Fax: 210-999-8449

Send comments, ideas, or suggestions to jgoodri1@trinity.edu or READ IMPACT ONLINE:

Jeanna Goodrich Balreira, One Trinity Place, San Antonio, Texas 78212.

MAGAZINE.TRINITY.EDU/IMPACT

Letters may be edited for style and space considerations.

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Research / GRANTS & AWARDS

GROUNDBREAKING RESEARCH External 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 governmental agencies.

Rolling Average of Expenditures from All Externally Sponsored Sources, 2011-2015 $18 mil

92

$16 mil

$16,203,727

$16,931,328

$16,023,698

$14 mil $12 mil $10 mil $8 mil $6 mil

Between 2011-15, 92 members of the faculty or academic staff held at least one grant award.

$4 mil

$5,401,242

$5,643,776

$5,341,233

2011-13

2012-14

2013-15

$2 mil $0

(that’s more than 1/3 of Trinity’s full-time faculty members)

Source: Office of Sponsored Research, July 2016

Total Expenditures (3-year rolling average)

Average per-year expenditures

Source: Office of Sponsored Research, July 2016 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 Research, 2013-2016

Number of Proposals Submitted by the Office of Sponsored Research, 2015-16

80 75

75 70

74 72

70

65 60 55 50 45 0

48

49

48

43 2013

2014

Number of active grants and contracts managed

2015

2016

Fiscal Year 2015

Fiscal Year 2016

proposals

proposals

39 57

Number of faculty with at least one managed award

Source: Office of Sponsored Research, July 2016

Source: Office of Sponsored Research, July 2016

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

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

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Achievement / FACULTY RECOGNITION

DISTINGUISHED ACHIEVEMENT Trinity faculty members are gifted teachers and advisers who have dedicated themselves to working closely with students in and out of the classroom. In 2015-16, five outstanding members of the Trinity faculty were honored for distinguished achievement in service, teaching, advising, or research. Additionally, the University annually awards the Z.T. Scott Faculty Fellowship to a professor who exemplifies excellence in teaching and advising.

Anne Graf

Associate Professor and Information Literacy Librarian Distinguished Junior Faculty Award

Josh Schwartz

Associate Professor, Department of Engineering Science Distinguished Junior Faculty Award

Diana Glawe

Associate Professor, Department of Engineering Science Distinguished Advising Award

Bert Chandler

Professor, Department of Chemistry Distinguished Research, Scholarship, or Creative Work or Activity Award

David Ribble

Professor, Department of Biology Distinguished University, Community, and Professional Service Award

In May 2016, Trinity recognized Heather I. Sullivan, professor of German studies, with the Z.T. Scott Faculty Fellowship, the University’s highest award for teaching and advising.

Sullivan has taught at Trinity since 1995, becoming a full professor in 2012. She is known for the wide variety of material she teaches and is lauded for her commitment to each student’s education. In an age where language study has seen a national decline, Sullivan has breathed new life into the German Studies major. Through her guidance, the German Studies program has expanded so that it includes courses in other departments. On top of her teaching duties, Sullivan has served Trinity in leadership positions, including as Chair of the Sustainability Committee, organizer of the FirstYear Experience titled “A Warming World,” organizer of the Interdisciplinary Cluster “Nature, Culture, Catastrophes,” and codirector of the Mellon Initiative.

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Simran Jeet Singh ’06 is a faculty adviser for The Contemporary, a student-run current affairs journal.

Nicole Marafioti was awarded an American Council of Learned Societies Burkhardt Fellowship with a 2016-17 residency at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina.

Works / ARTS & HUMANITIES

ARTS & HUMANITIES Through research and scholarship in the arts and humanities at Trinity University, faculty explore human imagination, creativity, and expression. Our faculty both 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 & art history, classical studies, English, history, human communication & theatre, the library, modern languages & literatures, music, philosophy, and religion.

VICTORIA AARONS / English published “The Making of American Jewish Identities in Post-War American Fiction” in The Edinburgh Companion to Modern Jewish Fiction and “Grace Paley’s Urban Jewish Voice: Identity, History, and ‘The Tune of the Language’” in the fall 2015 issue of Journal of the Short Story in English.

Aarons co-published The New Diaspora: The Changing Landscape of American Jewish Fiction with Avinoam Patt and Mark Shechner. The New Diaspora was named a finalist in the anthologies category of the National Jewish Book Awards. Aarons published “Faces in a Sea of Suffering: The Human Predicament in Saul Bellow’s The Victim” and “Saul Bellow as a Novelist of Ideas: Introduction to the Forum” in Partial Answers: The Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas, 2016, Vol. 14, Issue 1. Aarons also co-published Bernard Malamud: A Centennial Tribute with Gustavo Sanchez Canales. It is featured among a collection of essays by international scholars in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of a major post-war American Jewish writer.

CARLOS ARDAVÍN / Modern Languages & Literatures published “De la necesidad de espejo y de interlocución: El cuarto de atrás de Carmen Martín Gaite” in País Cultural, Vol. 18, in 2015.

He published two book chapters, “Los Estados Unidos de Francisco Um-

bral” in Francisco Umbral: Verdades y contraverdades del cuarto poder in 2015 and “Poesía y filosofía en El ojo del arúspice de José Mármol” in El ojo del arúspice: Una mirada reflexiva in 2016. Ardavín also published “Prava materia” in Santo Domingo: Editorial Santuario, a book of poetry and prose.

CURTIS BROWN / Philosophy pub-

PETER BALBERT / English pub-

lected by Mayor Ivy R. Taylor and the City of San Antonio as San Antonio’s poet laureate. Browne will serve as the City’s third poet laureate for a twoyear term from 2016-18.

lished “The Dark Secret and the Coccygeal Continuum, 1918-1920: From Oedipus to Debasement to Maturity in The Lost Girl” in D.H. Lawrence Studies.

DOUGLAS BRINE / Art & Art History was awarded a J. Clawson Mills Fellowship for 2016-17 in the Department of Medieval Art and the Cloisters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and a National Humanities Center Fellowship in North Carolina. In March 2016, he was invited to speak about “Jan van Eyck and the Shield of St. George” at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom and at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

C. MACKENZIE BROWN /Religion published “Jagadish Chandra Bose and Vedantic Science” in Science and Religion: East and West, 2016.

*Trinity undergraduate/alumni researchers bolded Trinity faculty, staff, or student

lished “Systematic review of observational studies reveals no association between low back pain and lumbar spondylolysis with or without isthmic spondylolisthesis” in the European Spine Journal, 2015, Vol. 24.

JENNY BROWNE / English was se-

ERWIN COOK / Classical Studies published “Homeric Reciprocities: Rethinking Sahlins’ Anthropology of Exchange” in the Journal of Mediterranean Archeology, 2016, Vol. 29. Cook also presented “Mythology’s Role in Early German Romantic Philosophy,” at DePaul University in March 2016, and “Homeric Reciprocities” at the Archaeological Institute of America’s annual meeting. In addition, Cook and Corinne Pache / Classical Studies refereed the articles “The Mythological Background to Homer” in the New Cambridge Handbook and “Homeric Reciprocities” in the American Journal of Archeology. In 2016, Cook was elected as a Fellow of the Fondazione Valla, an Italian catalogue of collections of works that explore themes within classical works of antiquity, specifically Greek and Latin works.

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Works / ARTS & HUMANITIES

Mosley-Jensen works with a group of debate students before the tournament in April.

TRINITY DEBATE DIRECTOR IS COACH OF THE YEAR William Mosley-Jensen is recognized for national award in his second year at the University

by Susie P. Gonzalez

In his second year as Trinity University’s director of debate, William Mosley-Jensen has been named 2016 Coach of the Year by the National Debate Tournament.

Also an assistant professor of human communication at Trinity, Mosley-Jensen said he is the youngest collegiate debate director to receive the award, named in honor of George Ziegelmueller, who served as debate director at Wayne State University for more than 30 years. Ziegelmueller was known for his dedication to his students, his university, to the forensics profession, and to students learning about public debate and public issues. The award was instituted in 1999.

Mosley-Jensen, who took four Trinity debate students to the national finals in Binghamton, N.Y., in April, said he had no knowledge he was being considered for the award. “It was a real shock,” he said. Joining him were seniors Maggie Solice and Nathan Rothenbaum, junior Austen Yorko, and first-year student Drew Sposeep.

Debate season begins in the fall and continues until the early spring. The national debate tournament finals are scheduled to coincide with the NCAA basketball season known as “March Madness.” Although the debaters begin with 78 teams (basketball begins with 64), groups are pared down to the top 32, the Sweet 16, and so on.

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Trinity finished in the top 32 and was encouraged by victories over what Mosley-Jensen called “very good teams” from the University of Vermont, Rutgers, and Kentucky. In addition, he said Trinity and Harvard tied for having the most difficult schedule. This year’s topic was based on a foreign policy question about whether the United States should reduce its military presence in areas such as northeast Asia or the Persian Gulf.

The world of debate is a “tight-knit community” that requires students to immerse themselves in research, Mosley-Jensen said. The four Trinity students who attended the national tournament conducted research and practiced speeches and “arguments” nights and weekends for four to five hours a day. They spent their 2016 spring break on campus and in the Ruth Taylor Fine Arts Center preparing for the national tournament. “One of the students told me, ‘Spring break was the hardest I worked all year,’” Mosley-Jensen said.

Since the Ziegelmueller Coach of the Year Award was announced at the beginning of the national tournament, Mosley-Jensen said, “It recharged me,” and it provided momentum to the student debaters. They “started out of the gate with four victories.” Mosley-Jensen said the award was gratifying but also humbling. He thanked the Trinity debaters “for making my job so easy. They are smart, dedicated, and push me to excel.”

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THE DEPARTMENT OF RELIGION received a $30,000 grant from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion.

The intent of the grant is to prepare the 21st century graduate to appreciate how a major in religion, and the humanities at large, provides transferable skills developed in higher education relevant to the demands of the changing workplace. Angela Tarango / Religion serves as the project director, and Sarah Pinnock / Religion serves as the project co-director.

STEPHEN L. FIELDS / Modern Languages & Literatures published the book The Duke of Zhou Changes: A Study and Annotated Translation of the Zhou Yi. The Zhou Yi, which acts as the foundation for which most of Chinese philosophy is based upon, dates to 1000 BCE and is the oldest book of divination in continuous use in the history of the world.

ALEXANDRA GALLIN-PARISI / Library wrote “The joy of combining librarianship and motherhood” in The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 2015, Vol. 41.

KYLE GILLETTE / Theatre published Thornton Wilder’s Skin of Our Teeth in September 2016 with Routledge.

ANNE JUMONVILLE GRAF / Library and Benjamin R. Harris / Library co-wrote the peer-reviewed article “Reflective assessment: opportunities and challenges” in Reference Services Review, 2016, Vol. 44.

DIANE GRAVES / Library was elected in fall 2015 to a four-year term on the EDUCAUSE Board of Directors where she represented EDUCAUSE at a UNESCO-hosted meeting on Global Open Scholarship in Washington, D.C., in April. Graves also serves as the chair of the Texas Council of Academic

Libraries, which is an organization of college and university library directors.

She is on her second 3-year term on the TexShare Advisory Board, which was appointed by the State Library & Archives Commission to oversee Texas’ library resource-sharing operations.

KELLY GREY CARLISLE / English published her essay “My Guilty Liberal Response to a Hate Crime” in Salon. com in August 2015. She also published her essay “The Dead Baby Window” in Cherry Tree 2 in 2016.

COLEEN GRISSOM / English authored The World According to Coleen, a book of essays published by Trinity University Press. Gemini Ink, a literary arts organization, honored Grissom with its Literary Achievement Award at its annual Inkstravaganza for her contributions to the San Antonio and Hill Country communities and for her encouragement of members to make reading and the study of fine fiction a part of their lives.

NICOLLE HIRSCHFELD / Classical Studies was appointed to the inaugural editorial board for Lever Press, a publisher of open access, digitally native, peer-reviewed scholarly monographs.

MICHAEL HUGHES / Library and Jeff Lacy /Library co-wrote the peer-reviewed article “The Sugar’d Game before Thee: Gamification revisited” in Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 2016, Vol. 4.

RACHEL JOSEPH / Theatre published “Dreaming the Stage within the Screen in The Screen Dreams of Buster Keaton” in Performance Research, Vol.21, Issue 1, in 2016. Joseph also published “‘Eat My Fear!’: Words to Curtained Worlds in the Film and Art of David Lynch” in Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry, Vol. 31, Issue 3, in 2015. Furthermore, Jo-

seph published “The Screened Stages of Slavoj Žižek: The Surplus of the Real” in College Literature, 2015, Vol. 42, Issue 3.

ANDREW KANIA / Philosophy published “An Imaginative Theory of Musical Space and Movement” in the British Journal of Aesthetics 55, 2015. He also published the chapter “Inception’s Singular Lack of Unity among Christopher Nolan’s Puzzle Films” in The Cinema of Christopher Nolan. Kania presented “Gameplay and Narration” at the European Society for Aesthetics in June 2015.

ANDREW KRAEBEL / English received an honorable mention for research in the Center for Research Libraries’ 2016 Primary Source Awards.

His project, “Canterbury Tales: Bodley 686 Project,” was noted for its innovative combination of manuscript study and digital database development, new opportunities for student and faculty research, and impact on the field of Chaucer studies.

KENNETH LOISELLE / History was one of five speakers invited to the Salon Symposium on Enlightenment Science and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis in December 2015. He lectured on the intersections of Christianity and Freemasonry in eighteenth-century France.

STEVEN LUPER / Philosophy published “Animal Interests” in The Ethics of Killing Animals, edited by Tatjana Višak and Robert Garner and published by the Oxford University Press in 2016.

NICOLE MARAFIOTI / History wrote “Seeking Alfred’s Body: Royal Tomb as Political Object in the Reign of Edward the Elder” in the 2015 issue of Early Medieval Europe. Marafioti also wrote “Hagiography and History in the Icelandic Saga of Edward

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Works / ARTS & HUMANITIES

OPEN PAGES, OPEN ACCESS University is a founding member of Lever Press

by Susie P. Gonzalez

Trinity University has become a founding member of Lever Press, a peer-reviewed, open-access, and digitally native scholarly press that is supported by more than 40 liberal arts college libraries.

Diane Graves, assistant vice president for Academic Affairs and University Librarian at Trinity, was the first academic librarian to support the publishing initiative last summer. As a Lever Press pledging institution, Trinity named Nicolle Hirschfeld, associate professor of classical studies, as a member of the inaugural Editorial Board to participate in the governance of the Press.

The Board will shape the Press’ editorial program and approve all titles for publication.

Within the world of scholarly publishing, Lever Press will offer a perspective aligned with the unique

mission and ethos of the nation’s premier residential liberal arts colleges. The endeavor is funded by a consortium of liberal arts college libraries and guided by a partnership of the Amherst College Press and Michigan Publishing at the University of Michigan.

Titles published by the Press will not be limited to works from within the 44 partner institutions, however. “We are looking for work that reflects the identity and characteristic emphasis on excellence in teaching and research that is the hallmark of our sponsoring colleges,” said Mark Edington, publisher of Lever Press.

Over the next five years, Lever Press is expected to publish some 60 titles—all of which will be available both in print (for a small cost) and online (for no cost). Titles will be available both as downloadable files and as screen-readable web pages.

the Confessor” in the 2015 issue of Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Marafioti presented “Crime, Sin, and Punishment in the Laws of Cnut,” at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America in Boston. In addition, Marafioti was awarded an American Council of Learned Societies Burkhardt Fellowship for Recently Tenured Scholars, with a 2016-17 residency at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. The Fellowship supports Marafioti’s work on her next book, Crime and Sin in Late AngloSaxon England.

JOHN MCGRATH / Human Communication, along with medical students V. Fisher and D. Lee and physician J. Krejci-Manwaring published “Skin cancer warnings and the need for new preventive campaigns: A pilot study” in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2016 and “Veterans speak up: current warnings on skin cancer miss the target, suggestions for improvement” in Military Medicine.

WILLIAM MOSLEY-JENSEN / Human Communication was named the 2016 Ziegelmueller Coach of the Year at the National Debate Tournament by the National Debate Tournament Board of Trustees. The award is given annually to a coach who has demonstrated a long and substantial career of dedication to the profession of student learning in debate and public policy; substantial evidence of longterm influence on the lives and careers of student debaters; and substantial evidence of success in debate over that career.

AARON NAVARRO / History wrote

University librarian Diane Graves has pledged Trinity’s support of Lever Press.

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a chapter for the book El Ejército mexicano en la época de la posguerra: el argumento egida. Navarro also presented “Intelligence and Power in Mexico” at the University of Mississippi in September 2015. The lecture was spon-

Works / ARTS & HUMANITIES

sored jointly by the Croft Institute for International Studies, the Center for Intelligence and Security Studies, and the Arch Dalrymple III Department of History.

TIM O’SULLIVAN / Classical Studies published in 2015, “Augustan Literary Tours: Walking and Reading the City” in The Moving City: Processions, Passages and Promenades in Ancient Rome, edited by Ida Östenberg, Simon Malmberg, and Jonas Bjørnebye; “Aurati laquearia caeli: Roman Floor and Ceiling Decoration and the Philosophical Pose” in Images for Classicists, edited by Kathleen M. Coleman, Loeb Classical Monographs; and “Review of God, Space, & City in the Roman Imagination” in the Journal of Roman Studies. O’Sullivan was invited to present “Epic Journeys on an Urban Scale: Movement and Travel in Virgil’s Aeneid” and “Human and Asinine Postures in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses” at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden in June 2015. In addition, he presented “Slavery: Rome’s Peculiar Institution” at the National Junior Classical League Convention in San Antonio in July 2015 and presented “Human and Animal Touch in Apuleius’ Golden Ass” for the International Conference on the Ancient Novel in Houston in October 2015. He also presented the keynote address for the 11th Paul Rehak Symposium, “The Experience of the Ancient Roman City: New Research” at the University of Kansas in March 2016.

DIANE PERSELLIN / Music led a two-day faculty workshop at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., on “Desirable Difficulties and Formative Assessment in Higher Education.”

She also led workshops on this topic at Centre College in Kentucky, at the Texas Music Educators Association conference in San Antonio, and at the Associated Colleges of the South Teaching and Learning Workshop at

Religion professor Angela Tarango works with Isaiah Ellis ’16 during summer undergraduate research.

TEACHING THEOLOGY Religion department secures grant to transform curriculum

by Susie P. Gonzalez

The Trinity University Department of Religion received a $30,000 grant from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion in the summer of 2015.

The grant project is being used to design a senior capstone course in religion and to conduct curricular mapping for religion majors in a way that parallels Trinity’s comprehensive Pathways curriculum.

Both emphasize skills and capacities in critical reasoning, digital literacy, and communication. Using a scaffolding course construction, curricular changes will be designed in the senior capstone, and working backwards, then embedded as key learning goals in lower division courses. Faculty will introduce a new course, required for all majors to take in the sophomore year titled “What is Religion?” to create multiple routes for students to learn and practice needed skills that ultimately support the capstone project they develop.

During an 18-month period—beginning in the spring of 2016 and

continuing into the spring of 2017— workshops have been and will be held with a consultant to finetune the department’s curricular changes. All religion faculty were involved: Sarah Pinnock, department chair and project co-director; Angela Tarango, project director; and professors C. Mackenzie Brown, Simran Jeet Singh ’06, Chad Spigel, Randall Nadeau, and Ruben Dupertuis.

The project addresses the central challenge of balancing a carefully configured departmental curriculum with the significant institutional demand for religion courses. It also enables the department to highlight the interdisciplinary features of religion studies and synchronize courses by level, covering diverse subjects with global scope. The grant goal is to prepare the 21st century Trinity graduate to appreciate how a major in religion, and the humanities at large, provides transferable skills developed in higher education relevant to the demands of the changing workplace.

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Works / ARTS & HUMANITIES

Furman University in South Carolina. At the National Association for Music Education conference in Atlanta, she led a panel on “Research in Early Childhood Music Education.”

Persellin, the director of the Trinity Handbell Ensemble, led the ensemble at the San Antonio Symphony Holiday Pops Concert at the Tobin Center in December 2015. In the spring they presented a concert, “Ringing for Change,” featuring music that inspires positive change and peace in the world through music. A freewill offering raised money for three charities focused on changing the world through music.

KATE RITSON / Art & Art History featured new works of three-dimensional art during her show, “Corona,” at the Southwest School of Art. Corona was reviewed in the June 2015 edition of Sculpture, the publication of the International Sculpture Center.

MICHAEL SCHREYACH / Art & Art History presented the lecture “Pollock’s Self-Projection” as part of the Dallas Museum of Art’s landmark exhibition, “Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots.” Schreyach was a featured speaker at a colloquium concerning Pollock’s late paintings that was sponsored by the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History and the University of Texas at Dallas.

GARY SEIGHMAN / Music acted as chorus master with the San Antonio Symphony for the Trinity University Chamber Singers’ performance of Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe at the Tobin Center in November 2015. Also in November, Seighman acted as conductor for the Texas Music Educators Association Region XI Treble Choir. In May 2016, he was the featured Guest Conductor of the Children’s Chorus of San Antonio at the Tobin Center and

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led conducting masterclasses and choir clinics in Taipei, Kaohsiung, Tainan, and Taichung, Taiwan.

Mention for the Book Prize awarded triennially by the Society for the Study of American Women Writers.

SIMRAN JEET SINGH ’06 / Religion published “Muslimophobia,

HEATHER SULLIVAN / Modern Languages & Literatures wrote a chapter, “Materialism Ecocriticism,” in Ecocriticism: Eine Einführung. Sullivan also published the essays “The Dark Pastoral: Goethe and Atwood” in the 2015 issue of Pastoral in Green Letters and “Nature and the ‘Dark Pastoral’ in Goethe’s Werther” in the 2015 issue of Goethe Yearbook. She co-wrote the essay “Human and non-human Agencies: The Anthropocene, Material Ecocriticism, and the Contributions of Literature” in the 2015 issue of Ecozon.

Sullivan and Ruben Dupertuis / Religion served as co-directors of Trinity’s Mellon Humanities Initiative for the 2015-16 spring and summer semesters.

Racialization, and Mistaken Identity” in the 2015 issue of Muhammad in the Post-9/11 Digital Age and “Anti-Sikh Hate Crimes” in the 2015 issue of Hate Crimes: A Reference Handbook. Singh was named a Handa Fellow in Interreligious Communication and was awarded the DeRose-Hinkhouse Award from the Religion Communicators Council for Best of Class in “Writing for Publication” and Best of Class in “Social Media Campaign.” He was invited to present “Beyond Christian-Jewish Relations: A Conversation about the Holocaust’s Impact in a Multi-Religious World,” for the World Parliament of Religions in November 2015. Singh also became a consultant for the CBS “Religion and Culture” sector.

MICHAEL SOTO / English published “Hemingway Among the Bohemians: A Generational Reading of The Sun Also Rises” which was reprinted in 2016 in The Sun Also Rises

by Ernest Hemingway. Soto published “Harlem Renaissance” in Ethnic American Literature: An Encyclopedia for Students and “Mapping the Harlem Renaissance in the Americas” in A Companion to the Harlem Renaissance in 2015.

CLAUDIA STOKES / English published “The Poetics of Unoriginality: The Case of Lucretia Davidson” in the Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, 2015, Vol. 32, Issue 1. This essay was awarded the Florence Howe Award in English given by the Women’s Caucus of the Modern Language Association. Stokes’ book, The Altar at Home, received Honorable

ERIN SUMNER / Human Communication had research regarding the interpersonal functionality of the Facebook Like button, with L. RugeJones* and D. Alcorn*, selected for presentation at the 2016 International Communication Association annual convention in Fukuoka, Japan. Sumner published “The relational reconnection function of social networking sites” in New Media and Society in 2016 in collaboration with Ramirez, Jr., A. and Spinda, J. Additionally, Sumner published “When online dating partners meet offline: The effect of modality switching on relational communication between online daters” in 2015 in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.

CAROLYN TRUE / Music was invited to teach, perform, and adjudicate at MusiQuest (Pune) in India. She also performed in guest recitals in Boulder, Colo., and Cape Girardeau, Miss. True leads the SOLI Chamber Ensemble,

Works / ARTS & HUMANITIES

which played and presented at two national conferences, Chamber Music America and Music Teachers National Association. SOLI had a residency at Hartt College and also premiered and recorded the first ever QUAD Concerto in Houston.

LAUREN TUREK / History published “To Support a Brother in Christ: Evangelical Groups and U.S.- Guatemalan Relations during the Rios Montt Regime” in the September 2015 issue of Diplomatic History. Turek was bestowed with the Hugh Davis Graham Award from the Institute for Political History. In addition, Turek published and presented, “Evangelical Foreign Policy Lobbying and the Rhetoric of Religious Freedom during the Reagan Administration” at the Policy History Conference, held in Nashville, Tenn., in June 2016.

RITA E. URQUIJO-RUIZ / Modern Languages & Literatures co-edited and co-wrote the introduction of the book Barrio Dreams: Selected Plays by Silviana Wood.

A RAY OF HOPE Human communication professor researches communication of skin cancer prevention in America’s military

by Susie P. Gonzalez

Since skin cancer is a disease that “everybody knows how to prevent,” John McGrath, human communication professor at Trinity University who researches how the public accesses and responds to health risk information, wondered why so many people ignore the obvious deterrent: sunscreen.

In 2015, he embarked on a study of patient communication regarding skin cancer warnings and preventative practices with help from a former student, Jennifer Krejci-Manwaring ’95, who went on from Trinity to become a dermatologist and is affiliated with the South Texas Veterans Health Care System; another doctor; and a medical student.

What they discovered from skin cancer patients at the Audie L. Murphy Veterans Hospital in San Antonio was even more baffling.

Didn’t these military veterans know to use sunscreen?

The answer, McGrath and his colleagues learned, is that sunscreen is not issued to most military members. Nor were they given key instructions during basic training to limit sun exposure or to wear wide-

brimmed hats and long-sleeved shirts to protect their skin.

McGrath and his team encountered Vietnam-era soldiers who used mud to cover their faces and necks from the blistering sun as well as veterans from the Iraq and Saudi campaigns who reported covering themselves with dirt or sand to avoid sunburns.

Another alarming fact: the veterans did not believe they were at risk for skin cancer, McGrath said.

McGrath and his colleagues published results of their veterans’ skin cancer research in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2016 and in Military Medicine in August 2015.

The researchers recommended an emphasis on skin cancer prevention and safety during basic training and possibly showing graphic images of patients with the disease. Another solution could be to elevate the importance of skin cancer prevention with the help of a high-profile celebrity or public figure who could convince veterans and military personnel to make sun protection routine or even start a trend for wearing hats.

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Jenny Browne was named poet laureate for the City of San Antonio for 2016-18.

Works / ARTS & HUMANITIES

WHAT IS A POET LAUREATE? Jenny Browne uses art as a tool for collaboration in her new position as poet laureate of San Antonio

by Mariah Wahl ’16

Amid cheers and a standing ovation, Mayor Ivy R. Taylor invested Trinity University English professor Jenny Browne as the 2016-18 poet laureate of San Antonio on March 28. The City Council Chambers were entirely packed. Felix Padron, executive director of the Department for Culture and Creative Development, notes that no former poet laureate has ever been invested with such an audience.

In spite of all this fanfare, Browne introduces herself to us simply. She tells the story of how she introduced herself to a group of Congalese and Somalian teenage girls in a refugee camp in Kenya. Knowing that her official introduction meant very little to them, she found a different way to tell them who she was.

“My name is Jenny, and I’m a poet and a writer and a reader and a professor. I’m also a wife and a mother and a sister and a daughter. I’m an American and I’m a Texan and I live by a river in a city called San Antonio.”

It’s a humble approach for such a prestigious-sounding title, one that prompts Browne’s daughters to jokingly refer to the investiture as her “coronation.” Browne seems determined to eliminate any mystery about the position, however. When people congratulate her on her award as poet laureate, they also quickly ask: What exactly is that?

The official job of a poet laureate is to promote literacy and the understanding of arts and culture in the San Antonio community, or as Mayor Taylor puts it, it means to have “an endless determination in fostering greater cultural understanding in the San Antonio community.”

As a student, I’ve seen Professor Browne foster this kind of understanding firsthand. In my poetry classes, we frequently share poems and garner feedback from each other in workshop. Sharing work that is often personal could easily be an apprehensive experience, but Professor Browne has a way of making workshop a collaborative and supportive place rather than a critical one. Her trick is this: Every time she comments on a student’s work, she makes her voice very soft and begins, “I wonder about…”

I marvel at how this change of voice and this gentle approach makes it easier for all of us in class to be kinder to one another. About our modern world, one

Browne stands with Mayor Ivy R. Taylor after the investment ceremony for the poet laureate of the City of San Antonio.

supposedly renowned for its connectivity, Browne says, “We are profoundly empathy deprived. Empathy is the task of poetry, writing, art.” From Professor Browne I have learned that when we encourage each other to wonder about how something can be different, our dialogue changes. Our communication opens up possibilities, whether that’s of a poem, or of someone’s creative potential.

“We don’t want to talk about how much language matters,” Browne says in her poem “The First Person,” which tells the story of a seemingly harmless comment that carries immense weight. As poet laureate, Browne’s task seems to be to harness the power of language. Poetry can be a tool to open up the possibilities of our city in what she refers to as both the “physical and imaginary” spaces, to make the different voices of our community heard.

I am excited to see what we can “wonder about” San Antonio, with the help of our new poet laureate and the power of language available to all of us.

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THE CHIRP HEARD ’ROUND THE WORLD

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IMPACT 2015-2016

Trinity physics professor steps to national science stage as gravitational waves theory is confirmed

words by Susie P. Gonzalez photos by Anh-Viet Dinh ’15

D

ennis Ugolini waited 17 years to hear a sound that lasted two-tenths of a second. Described as a “chirp,” the sound captured the motion of two black holes, measuring 29 and 36 times the mass of the sun, as they spiraled toward each other into a headon crash, collapsing into one—a gravitational wave event that occurred more than one billion years ago but did not reach interferometers on this planet until Sept. 14, 2015.

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“It sounded underwhelming,” he recalls.

“That’s ironic because it’s such a cataclysmic thing. The first time many people played that (sound) there were tears in their eyes.”

Ugolini, chair of Trinity’s Department of Physics, is one of more than 1,000 scientists who belong to the LIGO Scientific Collaboration to support and conduct research with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)— which is actually two facilities in Washington state and Louisiana. The LIGO team measures changes in the curvature of space that happen when objects (such as black holes) move through space. Although space collisions are relatively common, the “chirp” that brought tears to the eyes of thousands of dedicated scientists was the first direct detection of gravitational waves. The event confirmed Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity introduced more than a century ago in 1915.

Ugolini said the LIGO team had predicted the collision—“We knew it would happen”—but, until it was observed, skeptics in the science community remained. Now that the detection has occurred and the observatories have been accepted as valid instruments, Ugolini said the hope is to continue

Numerical simulations of the gravitational waves emitted by the inspiral and merger of two black holes.

The colored contours around each black hole represent the amplitude of the gravitational radiation; the blue lines represent the orbits of the black holes and the green arrows represent their spins. illustration by NASA/ Ames Research Center/ C. Henze [public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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to record data and observe still more detections, possibly leading to additional physics theories or a deepened understanding of what already has been confirmed. The data may help explain what happens inside the black holes as they collide.

While 17 years seems like an eternity to wait for a scientific confirmation, Ugolini said the project’s three leading scientists waited upwards of 40 years for their research to be borne out. They are Ronald W.P. Drever, professor of physics, emeritus, at Caltech; Kip S. Thorne, the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, emeritus, at Caltech; and Rainer Weiss, professor of physics, emeritus, at MIT. In May, that trio was awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for their work, an honor that carried $3 million in award money, and also recognized the contributions of scientists such as Ugolini.

Ugolini earned an undergraduate degree at Caltech and returned there after earning his doctorate at Stanford University to conduct postdoctoral research. Ugolini took a class on LIGO from Thorne as an undergraduate, and when he came back to Caltech to work as a postdoc on a LIGO prototype, he collaborated with both Thorne and

The hope is to continue to record data and observe still more detections, possibly leading to additional physics theories or a deepened understanding of what already has been confirmed.

- Dennis Ugolini

Drever. He says he was searching for mentors to help him learn how to take the instrument apart and rebuild it “from scratch,” a technique that he has used to instruct undergraduates at Trinity and spark their interest in gravitational waves.

Sean Farrell ’18, who began his junior year at Trinity this fall, recalls sitting in one of Ugolini’s classes last spring and witnessing what the student described as “pure joy” on his professor’s face when the LIGO gravitational wave discoveries were announced. “It must have been life-changing for him,” Farrell says.

An engineering science major from Buda, Texas, Farrell plans to minor in mathematics and physics. He expects to attend graduate school to pursue a master’s degree in electrical engineering, and Farrell says conducting research alongside Ugolini has given him a higher understanding on how to use skills learned in the classroom in the “real world.”

“Dr. Ugolini helped me to become a better student by always (encouraging me) to strive to think deeper and make new connections to solve problems,” Farrell says. “This is a skill that I will use not only at Trinity but throughout the rest of my life.”

Farrell is one of about 18 Trinity students who have worked in the Ugolini Lab and the second

engineering science major. “Half of what I do is engineering,” Ugolini says.

Matt Jenkins ’18 from Plano, Texas, was considering graduate school in aerospace engineering until he worked in the Ugolini Lab this summer.

Attending graduate school in physics is now “not out of the picture,” he said, citing the knowledge he gained from his laboratory research experience with Ugolini. Jenkins said he learned the value of patience since the Farrell-Jenkins team worked two weeks before obtaining any useful data. On a personal note, Jenkins recalls receiving an email from Ugolini one summer night indicating that the professor had found a solution to a research problem while watching the NBA Finals.

Ugolini says he wanted students to see that the brain should never shut off.

Jenkins, who is majoring in physics with minors in mathematics and German, said he also observed Ugolini’s excitement in the classroom when the LIGO detection was about to be announced. Once it was, the professor handed out copies to every student of the LIGO journal paper first published in the Physical Review Letters.

Ugolini said every undergraduate physics lab has an interferometer, but as part of their summer research, he directed Farrell and Jenkins to build a small-scale LIGO with mirrors, lasers,

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Jenkins (left) and Farrell (right) work with Ugolini (center) on a small-scale LIGO with mirrors, lasers, converging lenses, and a beam splitter.

Their summer research was a part of Ugolini’s lab in the physics department at Trinity University’s Center for the Sciences and Innovation.

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converging lenses, and a beam splitter to replicate aspects of the much larger observatory. His lab also contains a vacuum chamber to measure the electrostatic charge on objects, a holdover from a summer he spent at MIT more than a decade ago, when he began working on a project by Weiss, one of the LIGO visionaries.

nated from two black holes with masses about 30 times that of the sun, spiraling into each other 1.3 billion light years away.

After the journal paper was published and the confirmation was announced, LIGO scientists held a news conference attended by major media outlets gathered at the National Press Club in

Dr. Ugolini helped me to become a better student by always encouraging me to strive to think deeper and make new connections to solve problems. - Sean Farrell ’18 Farrell presented his research findings at the Gulf Coast Undergraduate Research Symposium in October at Rice University.

Ugolini’s involvement with LIGO has generated interest in his work among Trinity colleagues, prompting organizers of the Distinguished Scientists Lecture to invite the spokesperson for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, Gabriela González, a professor of physics and astronomy at LSU, to speak on campus in September on “The Discovery of Gravitational Waves from Colliding Black Holes 100 Years after Einstein.” When the detection was announced, González said, “This detection is the beginning of a new era: the field of gravitational wave astronomy is now a reality.”

According to the LIGO website, LIGO’s gravitational wave detectors were conceived and research and development was initiated in the 1960s. LIGO was built between 1994 and 2002

by Caltech and MIT in partnership with the National Science Foundation of the United States, with the aim of observing the gravitational waves predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. After a major upgrade from 2010–2015, it only took two days to observe a gravitational wave distorting the structure of spacetime as it passed through the Earth. The detected distortion was less than a billionth of a billionth of a meter in size at LIGO’s two 4-km observatories in Hanford, Wash., and Livingston, La. The wave ema-

Washington, D.C., and beamed to the 133 LIGO-member institutions (including Trinity) via a live satellite feed. That first much-heralded detection “event” was followed by a second one on Dec. 26, 2015, involving smaller black holes that took longer to combine. Although the first “chirp” lasted two-tenths of a second, the follow-up event lasted for a full second, Ugolini says, providing more data.

After waiting anywhere from 17 to 40 years, scientists were astounded to observe a second “event.” In January, the observatories were taken offline for maintenance and upgrades but they were put back into motion this fall.

The next phase of the project will include the two U.S.-based interferometers along with a third one in Pisa, Italy, known as the Virgo interferometer. Ugolini said the third instrument will allow researchers to “triangulate where the gravitational waves come from.”

Whether working with fellow physics researchers or undergraduates at Trinity, Ugolini dates a major turning point in his work to GW150914—the year, month, and day of the first confirmation of gravitational waves—and pondering the universal mysteries of what happened that day when two black holes collapsed into one.

In recalling the “chirp,” he says, “When this collision happened, I couldn’t stop playing that blip, trying to picture the thing that created it.”

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Michele Johnson, the 2014 recipient of a CUR Biology Outstanding Mentorship Award, studies evolutionary ecology by observing lizards.

Works / SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, & MATHEMATICS

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, & 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 & astronomy, and psychology.

FARZAN AMINIAN / Engineering Science published “An Overview of Driver Seat Comfort: Objective and Subjective Measures and Its Neural Network Modeling” in the International Journal of Ergonomics, 2015, Vol. 5.

Aminian also published “A Multiprocessor Version of Modular Neural Networks for Fault Diagnosis of Analog Electronic Circuits” in the International Journal of Modern Engineering, 2015, Vol. 16.

STEVEN BACHRACH / Chemistry published “Cyclooctatetraeneophanes: A Computational Study,” with M.W. Tang* in the Journal of Organic Chemistry, 2015, Vol. 80. Bachrach also published “Designing a ‘Flatter’ ExBox4+ Analogue,” with Zachary O.M. Nickle* in the Journal of Physical Chemistry, 2015, Vol. 119.

E. CABRAL BALREIRA / Mathematics presented at the 2015 International Conference on Big Data Analysis and Data Mining on “Using an Oracle to improve the Quality of Predictions.” Balreira also presented at the 2015 International Conference on Difference Equations and Applications and the 2015 Joint Mathematics Meeting on “Geometry and Global Stability of Higher Dimensional Monotone Maps.” Additionally, he presented at the 2015 Joint Mathematics Meeting on “An Oracle Method

to Rank a Tournament from NFL Teams to Green Anoles.”

CAROLYN BECKER / Psychology published “Our critics may have valid concerns: Addressing our propensity to conflate” in Eating Disorders: Journal of Treatment and Prevention.

Becker also co-authored “Reducing eating disorder risk factors in members of a national sorority: A train the trainer approach to dissemination and implementation” with R. Greif and T. Hildebrandt in the International Journal of Eating Disorders; “Effectiveness of a peer-delivered dissonance-based program in reducing eating disorder risk factors in high school girls” with A. C. Ciao, J. D. Latner, K. E. Brown, and D.E. Ebneter in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, Vol. 48; “Shared risk factors for mood-, eating-, and weight-related health outcomes within a population-based sample of adolescents and young adults” with A.B. Goldschmidt, M. Wall, T. J. Choo, and D. Neumark-Sztainer in Health Psychology, 2016; “Body image in adult women: Moving beyond the younger years” with L. S. Kilpela*, N. Wesley, and T. Stewart, in Advances in Eating Disorders: Theory, Research and Practice, 2015, Vol. 3; and “Distributed and condensed versions of a cognitive dissonance program: comparative effects on eating disorder risk factors and symptoms” with L. S. Kilpela*,

*Trinity undergraduate/alumni researchers bolded Trinity faculty, staff, or student

L. B. DeBoer, M. C. Alley, K. Presnell, and J. W. McGinley, in Advances in Eating Disorders, 2015, Vol. 3. Additionally, Becker became the president of the Academy of Eating Disorders (AED) in 2015 and acted as president until May 2016. She is the 22nd person to serve as president of the AED and only second president to come from a liberal arts college. She gave the keynote address, “From bench to global impact: Lessons learned about translating research to reach” for the 49th annual convention of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies in Chicago in November 2015. Becker was also a speaker in the W. David Baird Distinguished Lecture Series at Pepperdine University.

BERT CHANDLER / Chemistry published “PROX Solved: Controlling Activity and Selectivity using Water in the Au-catalyzed Preferential Oxidation of CO in H2” in Nature Chemistry with Chris Pursell / Chemistry.

Chandler also secured a patent for Catalyst, Process and System for the Selective Oxidation of Carbon Monoxide, Patent Number 62196353, and was awarded the Trinity University Faculty Award for Distinguished Research.

Additionally, Chandler and Adam Urbach / Chemistry were named Cottrell Scholars by the Research Corporation for the Advancement of Science.

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Works / SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, & MATHEMATICS

KWAN KELVIN CHENG / Physics

WILLIAM ELLISON / Psychology

published an article in the 2016 issue of Chemistry and Physics of Lipids, “Maximally asymmetric transbilayer distribution of anionic lipids alters the structure and interaction with lipids of an amyloidogenic protein dimer bound to the membrane surface.”

was invited to join the editorial board of the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration. In this role, Ellison submitted six journal reviews and two grant reviews.

JANE CHILDERS / Psychology published “Early Verb Learning: How do children learn how to compare events?” with R. Parrish*, C. Olson (Velasquez)*, G. Fung, and C. Burch* in the 2016 issue of the Journal of Cognition and Development. She also published and presented “Children align elements of events, or subevents, when learning new verbs” with T. Howard* at the symposium “How multiple exemplars and linguistic cues support generalization in infants and toddlers” at the biennial meeting of the International Society for Infant Studies in New Orleans in May 2016.

CHRISTINA COOLEY / Chemistry was invited to speak at the 251st American Chemical Society national meeting in San Diego in March 2016 on “Chemical and Biological Approaches for the Treatment of Protein Misfolding and Aggregation Disease.”

SABER ELAYDI / Mathematics published “A stochastic modified Beverton-Holt model with Allee effects” in 2015 and “Stochastic Modified Beverton-Holt model with Allee effect II: the Cushing-Henson Conjecture” in 2016 in the Journal of Difference Equations and Applications with L. Assas*, B. Dennis*, Eddy Kwessi / Mathematics, and G. Livadiotis*. With the same co-authors, Elaydi published “Allee effects and resilience in stochastic populations” in the Journal of Theoretical Ecology in 2015 and “Hierarchical competition models with the Allee effect II: the case of immigration,” in the Journal of Biological Dynamics, 2015, Vol. 9.

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THOMAS GARDNER / Geosciences published, along with colleagues, “The dynamic reference frame of rivers and apparent transience in incision rates,” in Geology, 2015, Vol. 43. Gardner, along with C. Freimuth* and a team, published and presented “Beachrock Horizons of the Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica: Geomorphology, Petrology, and Neotectonic Significance,” at the Proceedings of the Coastal Sediments Conference in 2015. In 2016, Gardner and Kristin Morell from the University of Victoria received a grant from the Keck Geology Consortium for evaluating the slip history of crustal faults underlying Victoria, B.C., and the implications for seismic hazards.

LAURA HUNSICKER-WANG / Chemistry is the principal investigator of the 2016 Beckman Scholars Program, an award of $130,000 for three years to support intensive research studies of five undergraduate students with 15 faculty mentors in the departments of biology, chemistry, physics and psychology. Hunsicker-Wang also received a $29,000 grant from the San Antonio Area Foundation in May 2016 for her research, “Determining the Role of the Rieske Protein Reduction Potential in the Formation of Reactive Oxygen Species and the Impact on the Development of Heart Disease.”

ALBERT XIN JIANG / Computer Science published “Using Social Networks to Aid Homeless Shelters: Dynamic Influence Maximization under Uncertainty,” in the proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, 2016, with Hau Chan*.

PAULA HERTEL / Psychology

MICHELE JOHNSON / Biology

was appointed editor-in-chief of the Journal of Applied Research on Memory and Cognition. Hertel and her associate editors aim to revamp the journal, with goals to publish new empirical research on memory and cognition that is theoretically relevant and offers practical application to fields such as law, education, medicine, and technology. Additionally, Hertel published “Distracted by cues for suppressed memories” in the 2015 issue of Psychological Science.

published “The incredible shrinking dewlap: skin elasticity and secondary sexual signal size in the green anole lizard (Anolis carolinensis)” in Ecology and Evolution, 2015, Vol. 5. She also took the cover photo for this issue.

Johnson spoke at the 2016 meeting of the Society for the Integrative and Comparative Biology in Portland, Ore., on two topics: “What does it mean to be green? Body color and social interaction in the green anole lizard” with B.M. Ivanov / Biology and L.A. Selznick*; and “Endurance vs. speed: The evolution of muscle physiology and behavior in lizards” with M.E. Oberndorf*, F.M. Deckerd*, and C.D. Robinson*. Johnson was appointed Secretary of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology, Division of Animal Behavior and Education Council. Additionally, she received $9,026 from Texas Ecolabs in 2016 to study “Social display behaviors in Cophosaurus texanus: How does a ‘zebra-tailed’

MATT HIBBS / Computer Science and Trinity University received a $623,730 grant from the National Science Foundation to support the project “MRI: Acquisition of High Performance Scientific Computing Cluster at Trinity University,” with Hoa Nguyen / Mathematics, Kwan K. Cheng / Physics, and Steven Bachrach / Chemistry.

Works / SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, & MATHEMATICS

lizard use its tail?” and $13,500 from Texas Ecolabs in 2015 to study “Hot brains vs. cool brains: How does body temperature affect brain cell communication in lizards?”

EDDY KWESSI / Mathematics and B. Nguelifack published “Signed-Rank Analysis of a Partial Linear Model with B-splines Estimated Monotone Nonparametric Function,” in Communication in Statistics - Theory and Methods in 2016. He also published “Kappa function as a unifying framework for discrete population modeling” jointly with L. Assas*, B. Dennis*, Saber Elaydi / Mathematics, and G. Livadiotis* in Natural Resource Modeling in 2015.

DAN LEHRMANN / Geosciences and J. M. Bentz*, T. Wood, and A. Goers* published “Permian-Triassic microbialite and dissolution surface associated with the end-Permian mass extinction: new sections and observations from the Nanpanjiang Basin, south China” in Palaios, 2016, Vol. 31, and “Environmental Controls on the Genesis of Marine Microbialites and Dissolution Surface Associated with the End-Permian Mass Extinction: New Sections and Observations from the Nanpanjiang Basin, South China” in Palaios, 2015, Vol. 30. Lehrmann and S. Wigginton* published “Deciphering thrust fault nucleation and propagation and the importance of footwall synclines” in the Journal of Structural Geology, 2016, Vol. 85. Lehrmann and L. Stepchinski* published “An integrated biostratigraphy (conodonts and foraminifers) and chronostratigraphy (paleomagnetic reversals, magnetic susceptibility, elemental chemistry, carbon isotopes and geochronology) for the Permian-Upper Triassic strata of Guandao section, Nanpanjiang Basin, south China” in the Journal of Asian Earth Sciences, 2015, Vol. 108. Furthermore, Lehrmann and E. Dezoeten* published “Drowning of

DETECTING BREAST CANCER WITH A BRA Trinity University engineer uses microwaves and a bendable circuit board to screen for early onset breast cancer

by Susie P. Gonzalez

A Trinity University engineer, his students, and collaborators from McGill University in Montréal, Canada, are designing a bendable circuit board that can be placed in a woman’s bra, sending data to software to keep a health record of her breast tissues over time.

“Think of it as a potential alternative to regular mammography, one that you can wear,” says Joshua Schwartz, Trinity engineering science professor. He and his colleagues have recently demonstrated the second of three planned iterations of a wearable breast cancer detection device.

In short, Schwartz says the device is more comfortable, less expensive, and less dangerous than a mammogram that utilizes X-ray technology.

The team published findings online in IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement in an article titled, “A Time-Domain Microwave System for Breast Cancer Detection Using a Flexible Circuit Board.”

“This board uses microwaves.

And although it sounds scary, it is not,” he adds. “Your cell phone uses microwaves. For people who are skittish about microwaves, I tell them this is less powerful than your cell phone.”

The goal for the final product is not to function as a diagnostic tool;

instead, it would help a woman and her healthcare provider decide whether a more detailed clinical scanning tool such as a MRI would be warranted. Once a final version is available, a woman could wear the “breast cancer detection bra,” plugged into a laptop, for a few minutes to gather the necessary tissue records. The process would be beneficial in a rural or remote area where women do not have convenient access to mammography equipment.

“A woman wears the bra for just a few minutes to collect the data,” Schwartz says. “She could wear it in an interval in which her doctor wanted to collect data over time and watch the evolution of the tissues. It can help to establish a healthy baseline early on—or possibly to monitor a known tumor during a course of treatment without X-raying yourself repeatedly.”

His team is in early talks with a bra manufacturer, he has written a federal grant proposal to fund the next iteration of the design, and the team is also seeking a patent to protect the idea. “We want to make it so convenient that you could use it anywhere,” he says. “I never thought as part of my engineering training that I would be designing ladies’ undergarments. But we were told to be ready for the unexpected!”

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Works / SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, & MATHEMATICS

the Triassic Yangtze Platform, south China by tectonic subsidence into toxic deep waters of an anoxic basin” in the Journal of Sedimentary Research, 2015, Vol. 85. Lehrmann also published “Cycle calibrated magnetostratigraphy of the Middle Carnian of south China: Implications for Late Triassic time scale and termination of the Yangtze Platform” in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 2015, Vol. 43. With A. Goers* and T. Wood* he also published “Basin filling Patterns of Triassic Turbidites in the Nanpanjiang Basin of South China: Implications for Tectonics and Impacts on Carbonate Platform Evolution” in Basin Research, 2015, Vol. 27.

JACK LEIFER / Engineering Science and Nick Swanson* gave a conference proceeding on “Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Lodengraf Damping Approach for String Trimmers” at the 34th International Modal Analysis Conference in Orlando, Fla.

MARK LEWIS / Computer Science

al DNA by selective precipitation,” in Analytical Biochem, 2016. Maeder also received a $195,000 grant from the Welch Foundation for her research, “Assembly of the spliceosome: the interactions and function of a critical protein” for 2016-19, plus a $29,979 grant from the San Antonio Area Foundation for her research, “Identification of Protein Cleavage as a Novel Regulatory Mechanism in Pre-Messenger RNA Splicing and its Implications to Cancer” for 2016-17.

In addition, Maeder helped to found an American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology student chapter on the Trinity campus, a group that has attracted about 40 students involved in local outreach, journal clubs, and group activities.

BRIAN MICELI / Mathematics and G. Cochran published “Generating functions and Wilf equivalence for generalized interval embeddings,” in the Australasian Journal of Combinatorics, Vol. 64, issue 1 in 2016. Miceli was invited to speak at the AMS Fall Sectional Meeting to present “The Laplace Transform & Some Combinatorial Identities,” held at Loyola University in October 2015.

published “Simulating ‘Straw’ in the Keeler Gap Region” for the AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts in 2015 with A.K. Hansen*.

Lewis also published “Modeling Cassini Occultations for High Resolution Simulations of Saturn’s Rings” for AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts, 2015, and “Uncommon Languages” for the proceedings of the 47th Association for Computing Machinery Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education in 2016.

TROY MURPHY / Biology and Michele Johnson / Biology published an article in the 2015 issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B on “Migration and the evolution of sexual dichromatism: evolutionary loss of female coloration with migration among wood-warblers.”

CORINA MAEDER ’99 / Chemistry

PAUL MYERS / Computer Science

published “Impact of size, secondary structure and counterions on the binding of small RNAs to layered double hydroxide nanoparticles” in Biointerphases, 2015, Vol. 10, and published “Identification of RNase-resistant RNAs in Saccharomyces cerevisiae extracts: separation from chromoson-

with Mario Gonzalez-Fuentes / Business Administration led a Japan Summer Program in 2016 at Kinki University to offer language classes, cultural activites, and lectures to computer science along with an upper-level computer science course on the Principles of Logic Programming.

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KEVIN NICKELS / Engineering Science and D. Frasch*, T. Davison*, Hoa Nguyen / Mathematics, and Joseph Aucher published “Robotic Chemotaxis and Obstacle Avoidance” for The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition in 2015. Nickels, Frasch*, Davison*, and Nguyen published “Robotic localization of chemical sources using E. Coli chemotaxis” for the SPIE Conference on bioinspiration, biomimetics, and bioreplication in 2016.

SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics.

HOA NGUYEN / Mathematics along with H. Basagaoglu*, C. McKay*, A. Carpenter*, S. Succi*, and Frank Healy /Biology, published “Coupled RapidCell and Lattice-Boltzmann Models to Simulate Hydrodynamics of Bacterial Transport in Response to Chemoattractant Gradients in Confined Domains,” in Microfluidics and Nanofluidics, Vol. 20, Issue 2, in 2016. Nguyen, along with colleagues and undergraduate students, F. Xu, R. Bierman*, and F. Healy published, “A multi-scale model of Escherichia coli chemotaxis from intracellular signaling pathway to motility and nutrient uptake in nutrient gradient and isotropic fluid environments,” in Computers and Mathematics with Applications, 2016, Vol. 71. Furthermore, Nguyen, along with colleagues and undergraduate students, S. Cheng, H. Duong*, C. Compton*, M. Vaughn, and Kwan K. Cheng / Physics, published, “Characterization of 3D Voronoi tessellation nearest neighbor lipid shells provides atomistic lipid disruption profile of protein containing lipid membranes,” in Biophysical Chemistry, 2015, Vol. 198.

KIMBERLEY PHILLIPS / Psychology published “The corpus callosum in primates: Processing speed of axons and the evolution of hemi-

Works / SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, & MATHEMATICS

spheric asymmetry” in the 2015 issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B. She also published: “Handedness for Unimanual Grasping in 564 Great Apes: The Effect on Grip Morphology and a Comparison with Hand Use for a Bimanual Coordinated Task” in the 2015 issue of Frontiers in Psychology; “A comparative analysis of Meissner corpuscles in the fingertips of humans and other primates” in the 2015 issue of Journal of Anatomy; “Tractography of the corpus callosum of spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) using diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging” in the 2015 issue of PLoS ONE; “Handedness influences intermanual transfer in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) but not rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta)” in the 2015 issue of Experimental Brain Research; and “Take the Monkey and Run” in the 2015 issue of Journal of Neuroscience Methods.

JOSHUA SCHWARTZ / Engineering Science published “A time-domain microwave system for breast cancer detection using a flexible circuit board” in IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, 2015, Vol. 64, with E. Kang*, T. Piske*, and McGill University collaborators. They are designing a bendable circuit board that is placed in a woman’s bra and sends data to a laptop.

The circuit board keeps a health record of her breast tissues over time.

DIANE SMITH / Geosciences was appointed to the Executive Committee of the Board of the American Geosciences Institute.

BENJAMIN SURPLESS / Geosciences with C. Beasley* and N. Hill* published “The unusual 3D interplay of basement fault reactivation and fault-propagation-fold development: a case study of the Laramide-age Stillwell anticline, west Texas” in the Journal of Structural Geology, 2015, Vol. 79.

KATHLEEN SURPLESS / Geosciences published “The Hornbrook Formation, Oregon and California: A Sedimentary Record of the Late Cretaceous Sierran Magmatic Flare-Up Event” in Geosphere, 2015, Vol. 11, Issue 6.

DENNIS UGOLINI / Physics is a collaborator on the LIGO Project and a scientist on the team that has been awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for the detection of gravitational waves 100 years after Albert Einstein predicted their existence. Stephen Hawking, who won the prize in 2013, said, “This discovery has huge significance: firstly, as evidence for general relativity and its predictions of black hole interactions, and secondly as the beginning of a new astronomy that will reveal the universe through a different medium. The LIGO team richly deserves the Special Breakthrough Prize.”

ADAM URBACH / Chemistry published an article in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on research to detect proteins by mass spectrometry. William Mobley* worked on the project, which was completed with Hugh Kim’s group at Korea University.

Urbach and Bert Chandler / Chemistry were named Cottrell Scholars by the Research Corporation for the Advancement of Science, and Urbach additionally received the inaugural Cottrell Scholars LEAD award from the Research Corporation, which provided a $25,000 unrestricted grant to support leadership advancement opportunities.

Urbach received a $240,000 research grant from the Welch Foundation for his project, “Multivalent Cucurbit[n] urils for High-Affinity Reversible Binding,” which will be dedicated entirely to supporting the research activities of Urbach’s lab at Trinity, including nine Trinity students. He was invited to present “Application of Cucurbit[n] urils to the Sensing and Separation of Peptides and Proteins” at the Inter-

national Chemical Congress of Pacific Basin Societies in 2015 in Honolulu, Hawaii.

HARRY WALLACE / Psychology published “When people evaluate others, the level of others’ narcissism matters less to evaluators who are narcissistic” with A. Grotzinger*, T.J. Howard*, and N. Parkhill* in Social Psychological and Personality Science, Vol. 6, Issue 7. He also published “Grandiose narcissism predicts willingness to behave badly, without proportional tolerance for others’ bad behavior” with B. R. M. Scheiner* and A. Grotzinger* in Current Psychology, 2016.

YU ZHANG / Computer Science published “Big data - A 21st Century Science Maginot Line? No Boundary Thinking: Shifting from the Big Data Paradigm,” in BioData Mining, 2015, Vol. 8, and “Reward-Selective Propagation Cascade Model, Agent-Directed Simulation Symposium” for the Society for Modeling & Simulation Spring Simulation Conference in Washington, D.C., in 2015.

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H E A D

Trinity University’s Department of Education forms a unique partnership with SAISD to found the Advanced Learning Academy

words by Carlos Anchondo ’14 photos by Scott Ball, courtesy of The Rivard Report

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Each morning, as students climb the stairs into San Antonio’s Advanced Learned Academy, they are met by a smiling and familiar face: their principal Kathy Bieser.

Waving hello, Bieser pauses to ask individual students about what they are learning in the classroom, or, at dismissal, she asks them about their favorite part of their day.

“That is probably my favorite thing to do with students,” Bieser says. “I encourage them to tell me what excites them, what is going well, and something that we can do to make school better.”

The academy opened its doors in August 2016 and is designed around a “gifted curriculum for all” model. Five hundred and fifty students, admitted on a first-come, first-serve basis, are enrolled in grades K-10 until the academy can expand to grades Pre-K-12. For the 2017-18 school year, the academy will have a published deadline and will accept students by lottery. Teachers use strategies typically reserved for gifted and talented students to raise expectations and achievement for all students, whether they are considered intellectually advanced or not. The school was established through collaboration from Trinity University’s Department of Education and the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD).

Bieser ’97, ’98, ’03 says the academy employs the “best practices in gifted education”

to support all its students. The academy’s curriculum is largely project-based and prompts students to solve real-world problems using an interdisciplinary approach. Students are asked to draw inferences and analyze data, applying multiple lenses to one topic.

“Our goal is for students to grow their critical thinking and problem solving abilities,” Bieser says. “Designing this school from the ground up has allowed us to examine best practices and to decide which ones make sense for the type of school we want to create.”

In addition to Bieser’s leadership as the academy’s founding principal, 16 alumni from Trinity’s Master of Arts (MAT) in teaching and MAT teaching interns work at the school. Moreover, assistant principal David Nungaray ’14 earned his Master of Education in School Leadership (MEd) from Trinity. Bieser’s other assistant principal, Frances “Beth” Koennecke ’05, ’06, ’12, holds a Bachelor of Arts, an MAT, and an MEd from Trinity. The academy is engineered so that the teacher interns work side-by-side with master teachers to earn their Trinity graduate degrees. All interns and faculty at the school are provided with

Trinity works deeply with a small subset of schools to ensure that they are the strongest learning laboratories possible.

- Shari Albright ’83, ’86

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right Principal Bieser says she always dreamed of opening a school from scratch. below President Anderson addresses academy leaders at the community forum announcing the new school.

In this school, we will train the next generation of San Antonio teachers and school leaders.

- President Danny Anderson

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Two Trinity MAT intern teachers work with a K-2 learning group in a hands-on activity during an event previewing the learning process at the new school.

professional learning to enable them to earn the Texas state certification in serving gifted and talented learners.

Shari Albright ’83, ’86, chair of Trinity’s Department of Education, adds that a critical aspect of the academy is that it doubles as an incubator for adult learning and talent. All Trinity education master’s students are trained in professional development schools. The academy brings Trinity’s list of professional development schools up to five, including Robert E. Lee High School, Lamar Elementary, Jackson Middle School, and the International School of the Americas (ISA).

“Trinity works deeply with a small subset of schools to ensure that they are the strongest learning laboratories possible,” Albright says.

“Our candidates train in urban settings, in functional and healthy schools, with adults who are being prepared and supported to mentor new teachers into the field.”

The academy’s intern teachers started their training in Trinity’s master’s program during the summer. San Antonio nonprofit City Education Partners (CEP) has awarded resident teachers with scholarship grants in exchange for a commitment to teach in SAISD for three years after graduation. Candidates applying for the

CEP grants underwent an additional round of interviews on top of requirements for Trinity’s graduate program. The grant includes a paraprofessional salary with SAISD while completing the MAT internship and $25,000 structured as a forgivable loan for the three years of SAISD teaching service. Upon successful completion of their graduate degree, candidates are guaranteed a job with SAISD and funding for students’ supplemental gifted and talented state certification.

As the former director of ISA, Bieser underscores the importance of adult learning in schools and the need to refine education practices. Bieser says she is “surrounded by a team of amazing staff and faculty” who are all engaged in making the new academy a success. Already thriving in its third month of operation, the academy itself is a testament to the commitment Trinity has to the San Antonio community and the future success of its students.

“In this school, we will train the next generation of San Antonio teachers and school leaders,” says Danny Anderson, 19th president of Trinity.

“Together Trinity University and SAISD support enhanced learning and teaching for students across the city as well as leadership development for teachers and principals.”

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Mike Wilkins has accepted an appointment as one of three national academic members of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Assurance Research Advisory Group (ARAG).

Works / BUSINESS & SOCIAL SCIENCES

BUSINESS & 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 incorporates the School of Business (accounting, business administration, and finance & decision sciences) as well as communication, economics, education, health care administration, political science, and sociology & anthropology.

DENNIS AHLBURG / Economics was invited to present “Should you take a Gap Year?” at the Rector’s Seminar held at Exeter College at the University of Oxford in March 2016.

Ahlburg presented “A Hazard Model of Waiting Time to College Entry and Graduation” at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America in May 2016.

SHARI ALBRIGHT / Education has developed the new City Education Partnership scholarship program for Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) students, which gives students forgivable loans for the MAT program. It also provides modest income and health benefits as they are hired as resident intern teachers by the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) for their residency in the new K-12 Advanced Learning Academy. The academy has been co-created by Trinity and SAISD.

LAURA ALLEN / Education started the Summer Curriculum Writing Institute (SCWI) in 2005, and, as of 2016, 358 online units have reached more than 1 million downloads. The SCWI is an outreach to alumni that supports their ongoing development as teachers, while creating curriculum that is accessed by others globally.

ANGELA BREIDENSTEIN / Education co-authored “Cultivating outstanding physics mentorship” in Recruiting and Educating Future Physics Teachers: Case Studies and Effective Practices.

NELS CHRISTIANSEN / Economics published “Greasing the wheels: Pork and public goods contributions in a legislative bargaining experiment” in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2015, Vol. 120.

CHARLENE DAVIS / Business Administration presented “Outraging to Delightful Classroom Incidents: Student discussion, diffusion,and future enrollment” at the 2015 Art and Science of Marketing Education Conference.

ROCÍO DELGADO / Education presented a session in Spanish at the Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development (ASCD) annual conference titled “Extender lazos hacia las familias latinas: estrategias para cultivar relaciones duraderas” / “Reaching out to Latino families: strategies for fostering lasting relationships.” This was the first-ever bilingual session for the organization.

KATHLEEN DENNY / Sociology &

and Canadian News, 1989-2013” in Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 86, and “Quantity of Maternal Time and Child and Adolescent Development: Response to Kalil and Mayer (2015) and Waldfogel (2015)” in the Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 78.

MARIO GONZALEZ-FUENTES / Business Administration published the economic impact of the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo performed by his marketing research class. With Paul Myers / Computer Science he led a Japan Summer Program in 2016 at Kinki University to offer language classes, cultural activites, and lectures to computer science along with an upper-level computer science course on the Principles of Logic Programming.

AMY HOLMES / Accounting presented “Globalization Trends in Top Accounting Publications: An Overview of Non-U.S. Universities’ Representation from 1985 to 2010” at the American Accounting Association annual meeting in Chicago.

ROBERT HUESCA / Communication published “Top-down, bottom-up, or both? Successful structures and processes in youth radio training projects” in the Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media.

Anthropology published “What Kind of War? ‘Mommy Wars’ Discourse in U.S.

*Trinity undergraduate/alumni researchers bolded Trinity faculty, staff, or student

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WOMEN OF WORTH Life Launch organization empowers victims of domestic violence

by Carlos Anchondo ’14

In the United States, one in four women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime. In Texas, the statistic rises to one in three. These figures, while staggering, are combated daily by Family Violence Prevention Services in San Antonio. For nearly 40 years, the organization has aided victims of domestic abuse at the Battered Women’s and Children’s Shelter.

Suarez speaks about financial literacy and awareness to a Life Launch class on Trinity’s campus on a Tuesday evening in April.

As affected women regain control of their lives, Trinity University students and professors are helping them in this transition through Life Launch, a program that teaches financial literacy skills, technology knowledge, and professional development.

Life Launch is managed by finance professor Dante Suarez, who has worked hard over the years to ensure that the program is a service that actually benefits the women of the shelter. To reflect the demographics of the shelter, which protects women of all socioeconomic backgrounds, Life Launch has developed a curriculum that is individualized for each participant and mindful of their education histories.

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“Life Launch is intended to help these women enter the labor force and secure a job quickly,” Suarez said.

“Often, the reason women cannot leave an abusive relationship is because they lack financial independence, so this prepares them to get back into labor market.”

Suarez advises that high-interest credit cards are one of the most common sources of ongoing debt.

Suarez, who researches the integration of international financial markets, also acts as the faculty adviser for the Trinity chapter of Delta Sigma Pi, an international business fraternity. This year, he recruited Delta Sigma Pi members to volunteer with him at the shelter.

The organization was able to secure funding from the Student Government Association to pay for Life Launch dinners and coursework.

Abigail Tisdale ’18, the Delta Sigma Pi vice president of community service, says that her club views Life Launch as the perfect opportunity to get involved in San Antonio. Life Launch takes place over four sessions and culminated in a concert on April 26 with the Trinity Women’s Choir. A diploma ceremony before the concert recognized the ten women that participated in the Life Launch program. Delta Sigma Pi members also provided babysitting services so that the women could attend the concert.

“Over these four weeks it has been inspirational to see these women grow and to form one-on-one relationships with them,” Tisdale said. “Even after going through such trying experiences, they are strong and look forward to putting themselves back into the business world.”

Tisdale, a communication and business administration double major from Dallas, is one of ten Delta Sigma Pi members who regularly meets with women from the shelter. A few volunteers from Trinity social fraternities and sororities have also volunteered with Life Launch.

Suarez says the program is an invaluable learning tool for students and faculty alike, who learn simply from being around people who have not had the privileges they have and who have endured far worse home lives.

The April 26 concert, titled “Celebration of Women’s Voices,” took place in the Ruth Taylor Recital Hall.

It featured musical and dance performances, dramatic dialogues, poetry, and artwork. A voluntary donation at the door benefited Family Violence Prevention Services to help end the cycle of violence.

Works / BUSINESS & SOCIAL SCIENCES

SAMMYE JOHNSON / Communication published “The Reel World: Women’s Film Portrayals as Reflectors of Journalistic Practices and Social Mores” in The Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture Journal, 2015. She also presented “Representation of the Lesbian Journalist as Sleuth: Navigating Identity” at the Popular and American Association Convention in Philadelphia in November 2015 and two papers, “Visualizing the Journalist of the Future” and “Magazine Audiences: Modifying Content to Reach Baby Boomers and Millennials,” at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Convention in San Francisco in August 2015.

AMER KAISSI / Health Care Administration published “Healthcare Retail Clinics: Current Perspectives” in Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Health, 2016, Vol. 3. Kaissi also published “Dealing with the Challenges of Healthcare Reform: American Hospital Systems Strive to Improve Access & Value through Retail Clinics” in Managing Change-From Health Policy to Practice in 2015. He presented “U.S. health care managers’ perceptions of good and poor quality: A grounded taxonomy of quality based on evidence from episodes of care” at the Organizational Behavior in Health Care Conference in Cardiff, Wales, in April 2016.

DOMINIK KALISCH / Finance & Decision Sciences along with Steffen Braun and Alanus von Radecki published “A Holistic Approach to Understand Urban Complexity: A Case Study Analysis of New York City” in Transactions on Large-Scale Data-and Knowledge-Centered Systems. In a separate chapter of the same book, Kalisch published “Real-Time Data Collection and Processing of Utility Customer’s Power Usage for Improved Demand” with Shawyun Sariri, Volker Schwarzer, Michael Angelo, and Reza

Ghorbani. Kalisch also chaired the Big Data and Technology for Complex Urban Systems Symposium at the Hawaii International Conference on System Science.

PATRICK KEATING / Communication published “Film Noir and the Culture of Electric Light” in Film History, 2015, Vol. 27, and “A Homeless Ghost: The Moving Camera and its Analogies” in Transition: A Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, 2016, Vol. 2.

LAURIE MCGARRY KLOSE / Education published “Ethical Eddie (Responding to risk in athletics)” in The Texas School Psychologist, 2016, Vol. 28, Issue 4, and “Ethical Eddie (Sources of professional information),” 2015, Vol. 28, Issue 3. Furthermore, McGarry Klose and D. Boccio presented a session titled “Using professional skills to prevent and resist administrative pressure” at the National Association of School Psychologists’ 2016 annual convention.

VICKY LIU / Business Administration presented “Working with creative leaders: Exploring the relationship between supervisors’ and subordinates’ creativity” at the Second HR Division International Conference in Sydney, Australia, in February 2016.

ZHAOXI (JOSIE) LIU / Communication published “Toward Omnipresent Journalism: A Case Study of the Real-Time Coverage of the San Antonio Spurs 2014 NBA Championship Game” in the multimedia edition of #ISOJ, the official research journal of the International Symposium on Online Journalism, 2016, Vol. 6. She also published a novel, Metro Newspaper Journalists in China: The Aspiration-Frustration-Reconciliation Framework, that explores how journalists at metropolitan papers in southwestern China give meaning to their work and

how these meanings are shaped by the specific social environment in which the journalists operate.

DAVID MACPHERSON / Economics along with Campbell McConnell and Stanley Brue published Contemporary Labor Economics: the 11th edition in 2016. Macpherson, with Roger Spencer / Economics, published an e-book, Lives of the Laureates: the Sixth Edition of Twenty-Three Nobel Economists, in 2015. He presented “Has the Affordable Care Act Caused a Shift to Part-Time Work?” at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta in June 2015 and “The Affordable Care Act and the Growth of Involuntary Part-Time Employment,” at the Allied Social Science Association Meetings in January 2016. Moreover, Macpherson, along with Barry Hirsch, published “Union Membership and Earnings Data Book: Compilations from the Current Population Survey” for the Bureau of National Affairs in 2016.

JENNIFER MATHEWS / Sociology & Anthropology wrote “A Tale of Two Projects: Comparative Findings of the CRAS and Yalahau Projects” in The Maya of the Cochuah Region: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspective on the Northern Maya Lowlands. Mathews gave a keynote lecture to over 1,100 students on “Anthropological Collaboration: Archeology and Native Americans” for the 20th Annual Conference of the Model United Nations at Trinity University in January 2016.

ALFRED MONTOYA / Sociology & Anthropology co-edited “Death, Memory and the Human in the Internet Era,” the special issue of Mortality: Promoting the Interdisciplinary Study of Death and Dying, Vol. 20, Issue 4. He co-wrote the introduction to the journal, “Remembering, not Forgetting Professor Michael C. Kearl,” / Sociology & Anthropology and published “Digital Relics of the MAGAZINE.TRINITY.EDU/IMPACT IMPACT

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Saints of Affliction: HIV/AIDS, Digital Images and the Neoliberalization of Health Humanitarianism in Contemporary Vietnam.” Montoya also wrote and presented “The Force of Absent Things: HIV/AIDS, PEPFAR Vietnam, and the Afterlife of Aid” at the Homo Sapiens, Mortality and the Internet in Contemporary Asia Conference held at the National University of Singapore in March 2016. He was awarded a CIEE Faculty Development Seminar Grant and an ASIANetwork Freeman Student-Faculty Fellows Grant for Summer 2015. With the Freeman Grant, Montoya took four Trinity students to Vietnam for fieldwork on the effects of declining international funding for HIV/AIDS prevention and control.

PETER O’BRIEN / Political Science published The Muslim Question in Europe: Political Controversies and Public Philosophies in 2016. O’Brien also published “Postmodern Politics: Manipulating Images of Islam in Contemporary Europe” in Muhammad in the Digital Age in 2015.

MARIA PAGANELLI / Economics co-authored “Are Self-Made Men Made Equally? An Experimental Test of Impartial Redistribution and Perceptions of Self-Determination” with David Chanvanne and Kevin McCabe in the Nordic Journal of Political Economy in 2015. Paganelli published “Adam Smith and the History of Economic Thought: the Case of Banking,” edited

by Ryan Hanley, in Adam Smith: a Princeton Guide in 2016. Edited by Paul Lewis and Robert Garnett Routledge, Paganelli published “Banks and Cooperation in Adam Smith” in Commerce and Community in 2015. Paganelli was also invited to present “More Commerce, More Wars: Adam Smith and David Hume on the Effects of Economic Development on Warfare” with Reinhard Schumacher at the Colloquium on Market Institutions & Economic Processes at New York University 38

IMPACT 2015-2016

in 2016. Further, Paganelli was invited to present “Recent Engagements with Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment” at the Université du Québec à Montréal in 2015 and “Can there be an Impartial History in Adam Smith’s work?” at Princeton Theological Seminar with the Center for the Studies of Scottish Enlightenment in 2015.

Since 2014, Paganelli has served as an editorial board member for the Review of the History of Economic Theory and Methodology. She has also served as an editorial board member for History of Political Economy since 2013 and will serve until 2019. Since 2012, she has served as the associate editor for the Southern Economic Journal and as book review editor for the Journal of the History of Economic Thought.

JULIE PERSELLIN / Accounting and Mike Wilkins / Accounting published “Internal Control Opinion Shopping and Audit Market Competition” in the March 2016 issue of The Accounting Review, the No. 1 journal in accounting. The paper was the subject of feature stories in Accounting Today, Accounting Web, Compliance Week, and The Wall Street Journal.

RICHARD SALVUCCI / Economics was inducted as a corresponding member of the Academia Mexicana de la Historia (Mexican Academy of History) for his substantial contribution to Mexican history.

PATRICK D. SHAY / Health Care Administration along with colleagues Amer Kaissi / Health Care Administration and Christina Roscoe* published “Healthcare reform, hospital systems, and convenient care strategies” in the Journal of Healthcare Management, 2016, Vol. 61, Issue 2. Shay and SSF Mick published “Clustered and distinct: A taxonomy of local multihospital systems” in Health Care Management Science in 2016. The duo also published “Accountable care organiza-

tions and transaction cost economics” in Medical Care Research and Review in 2016. Additionally, Shay published and presented “A multi-theoretical approach to examining local multihospital system forms” at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and “Lightning labs: Catching innovation in a bottle” at the AUPHA 2015 Annual Meeting in Miami.

HEATHER HAYNES SMITH / Education supports teachers at The Winston School of San Antonio with action research on social skills instruction in their classrooms. Haynes Smith serves on the Medical Scientific Advisory Committee at Winston. Additionally, Haynes Smith presented a session titled “Encouraging Student/Faculty Relationships in Educator Preparation” with A. Sanchez* at the Texas Council for Exceptional Children conference in June 2016.

DAVID SPENER / Sociology & Anthropology published We Shall Not Be Moved/No nos moverán: a Biography of a Song of Struggle. He also wrote “Un canto en movimiento: ‘No nos moverán’ en Estados Unidos, España y Chile en los siglos XIX y XX” in the Latin American journal Historia Critica.

MARY STEFL / Health Care Administration and the Department of Health Care Administration, in collaboration with the Centene Corporation of St. Louis, Mo., sponsored “Health Care 2016 and Beyond,” the REACH Symposium hosted at Trinity University.

AMY STONE / Sociology & Anthropology received funding from the National Geographic Society for her research on gay and lesbian festival life in four cities, including San Antonio.

Stone co-edited the book Out of the Closet, Into the Archive: Researching Sexual Histories, published in Decem-

Works / BUSINESS & SOCIAL SCIENCES

SHARING THE EDUCATIONAL WEALTH More than one-and-a-half million curricular units downloaded from Trinity’s Digital Commons

by Susie P. Gonzalez

What education professor Laura Allen started in 2005 to help new teachers after graduation is now empowering teachers worldwide.

Units developed during the Summer Curriculum Writing Institute (SCWI) at Trinity University have been downloaded by more than 12,000 schools and institutions in 214 countries, including the United States—in large numbers by the North Carolina Research and Education Network, and the Georgia, Indiana, and Kentucky departments of education—as well as in Australia, the Philippines, and India.

More than 1.5 million curricular units have been downloaded—at no charge—from Trinity’s Digital Commons for teachers. “That’s impact,” said Laura Allen, professor of education and coordinator for the annual SCWI event.

The curriculum writing sessions began in 2005 as a way to help teachers fresh from Trinity classrooms succeed in their public school classrooms with upto-date content and plans. When the inaugural SCWI ended, Allen asked the staff at Trinity’s Coates Library to post the units online for easy digital access. “We wanted to show a quality model,” Allen said. Almost immediately, educators and school systems without Trinity connections learned of the tool and began accessing teaching units.

About five or six years ago, the Cambridge Public School system in Boston wanted to use the curricular units but first wanted to make sure that they could legally do so. That concern led Trinity to pursue a creative commons license that now holds more than 360 units—known as Understanding by Design—for grades K-12 for a large range of subjects.

Jane Costanza, associate professor and head of Resource Management and Discovery at the Coates Library, said she views the Understanding by Design collection as a service to the campus and to interested educators.

“We implemented the Digital Commons to capture and preserve the intellectual output of Trinity scholarship,” Costanza said. “It’s really gratifying for us to provide a ‘home’ for these once hidden materials – to not only make these materials discoverable to a global audience, but also to effectively store and preserve them.”

At the bottom of the Understanding by Design web page is a map that shows which units are being downloaded and by whom. The authors—in most

MAT students and area teachers participate in the Summer Curriculum Writing Institute at Coates Library in the summer of 2016.

cases, alumni from Trinity’s education program—are notified how many people are accessing their work. In some months, there are more than 40,000 downloads, with the total number reaching and surpassing one million this summer.

Allen said 40 to 45 teachers attend the SCWI every summer and almost all share their curricular units with colleagues at their grade level in their home school because “they don’t have time to design it, and it’s well done. That’s additional impact on the teaching community that is not tracked through the Trinity downloads.”

Allen added, “Our mission is helping teachers. This kind of work is exactly what we are supposed to be doing, and because we are doing it, people are getting this material. It’s helping people all over the world.”

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ber 2015, for which she was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award.

EUGENIO DANTE SUAREZ / Finance & Decision Sciences and Dan Walz / Finance & Decision Sciences published “The Perfect withdrawal amount: A Methodology for creating retirement account distribution strategies” for the December 2016 issue of Financial Services Review.

Suarez presented “On the Evolution of Agency and How to Comprehensively Model it” at the 25th Granada Seminar, Physics Meets the Social Sciences, at the University of Granada. Suarez also presented “TAR vs. STAR Mean Reversion: A Method for Discerning Between Market Efficiency and Integration in the Market for Cross-Listed Stocks” at the 27th European Conference on Operational Research at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. Additionally, Suarez has worked within the Department of Finance and Decision Sciences to revamp Life Launch, a job-skills program designed to give women a chance to get back on the job market after leaving abusive relationships. In the four session program women are taught basic tools that can help in the process of finding work, such as how to present oneself in an interview, basic computer skills, how to write and build a resume, and personal finance.

The inaugural edition of Nidaba, an interdisciplinary journal that seeks to provide a platform for new approaches to the Middle East for scholars, policy makers, and the public, was dedicated to the late Mary Ann Tétreault / Political Science, the Una Chapman Cox Distinguished Professor of International Affairs Emerita at Trinity.

Published in May 2016 by faculty at Lund University in Sweden, the jour-

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nal noted that Tétreault devoted much of her academic career to the study of the Middle East and was known as a supportive colleague, generous mentor, and inspirational intellectual before she died in November 2015.

JACOB TINGLE ’95 / Business Administration published a case study, “A community landmark run out of business,” for the 2015 issue of Sport Management Review and presented “NIRSA Championship Series Volunteerism: The Impact on Professional Development” at the NIRSA national conference for collegiate recreation leaders in Orlando, Fla.

MIKE WILKINS / Accounting gave an invited presentation titled, “Rigor and Innovation in Archival Auditing Research” at the Doctoral Student Consortium at the 2016 American Accounting Association Auditing section meeting and served as one of three members of the section’s Notable Contribution to Auditing Literature Committee. Wilkins wrote a grant proposal funded by PricewaterhouseCoopers to overhaul the data analytics components of the accounting department’s curriculum, and he has accepted an appointment as one of three national academic members of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Assurance Research Advisory Group (ARAG).

DELI YANG / Business Administration published “Knowledge-based International New Ventures: Market Expansion and Intellectual Property Strategies” in the Studies in the Science of Science, Vol. 36. Yang also presented “Is it Worth the Global Vendetta?

Investigating the Patent Litigations between Apple and Samsung, and their Firm Performance,” at the Technology

Management Division of the Informs International Conference in Hawaii and presented “From International New Ventures to MNCs: Crossing the Chasm Effect on Internationalization,” at the International Association for Chinese Management Research conference in Hangzhou, China.

DIANA YOUNG / Finance & Decision Sciences presented “Understanding How Healthcare Organizations Use Social Media: An Exploratory Study of Facebook Posts” at the Americas Conference on Information Systems in 2015 in Puerto Rico.

SHAGE ZHANG / Finance & Decision Sciences published “Institutional arrangements and debt financing” in Research in International Business and Finance, 2016, Vol. 36. Zhang and Kan Chen published “What’s news in exchange rate dynamics: A DSGE approach” in Economics Letters, 2015, Vol. 134. Zhang and Mieszko Mazur published “Diversification discount over the long run: New perspectives” in Finance Research Letters, 2015, Vol. 15.

Fresh Perspectives to old challenges trinity urban studies program making a difference on the east side words by Susie P. Gonzalez photos by Anh-Viet Dinh ’15

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neighborhood on San Antonio’s East Side had suffered from neglect and was plagued by an ever-growing litany of seemingly insurmountable problems: crime, gangs, an old public housing project, and a high school dropout rate that was higher than elsewhere in the city. Transformative changes needed to be made to overcome years of disinvestment.

In December 2012 the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) decided to alter the course of the 3.5-square-mile East Side neighborhood that included the Wheatley Courts public housing project. As of May 31, HUD had invested nearly $30 million in the area. The neighborhood received only one of four Choice Neighborhood implementation grants in the nation that year, and Trinity University’s Urban Studies program helped it become reality.

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According to the 2015 impact report, the CNI promotes a comprehensive approach to transforming distressed areas of concentrated poverty into viable and sustained mixed-income neighborhoods by linking housing improvements with a wider variety of public services, including schools, public transit and employment opportunities.

The Choice Neighborhood showcases HUD’s newest model of subsidized housing: raze an older public housing development and replace it with a mixed-income property while reinvesting in surrounding neighborhoods and supporting residents in transition. Christine Drennon, sociology professor and director of urban studies at Trinity, said the urban studies program took part in the initial grant writing efforts in partnership with SAHA and has continued as a research partner, annually conducting an impact assessment.

When the grant was announced, the San Antonio Housing Authority (SAHA) was chosen to administer it but would need help from city and county governments, nonprofit agencies, and even private sector companies to turn things around.

SAHA reached out once more to Drennon, and an academic partnership was born. In the spring

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of 2016, she taught a class of 12 students who visited with homeowners, schools, public safety officers, businesses, and agencies to learn how the Choice Neighborhood has been impacted to date.

The class gathered data and anecdotes to help Drennon produce the 2015 Choice Neighborhood Impact Assessment for SAHA as a touchpoint for the project’s progress.

To do this, Drennon divided the class into five subgroups to analyze the topics of education, economic development, public safety, residential life, and community development. Students put in long hours conducting interviews, taking pictures, reading reports, examining crime and real estate data, trying to fathom why San Antonio’s eastside neighborhoods had been so neglected and what it would take to improve the quality of life there.

SAHA benefits from [Trinity students’] creativity and fresh perspectives to old challenges, and these young people are being exposed to actual, onthe-ground approaches to urban issues that confront every community around the nation.

- HUD Secretary Julián Castro

HUD Secretary Julián Castro, also a former mayor of San Antonio, expressed support for the student involvement in the project. “These students are gaining real-world experience that takes the Ivory Tower concept and turns it on its head,” Castro said. “This engagement increases their connection to the surrounding community while offering mutual benefits. SAHA benefits from their creativity and fresh perspectives to old challenges, and these young people are being exposed to actual, on-the-ground approaches to urban issues that confront every community around the nation.”

In the summer, two of Drennon’s students, Aroosa Ajani ’18 and Beth Legg ’18, condensed student reports to contribute to the 2015 Choice impact assessment for SAHA. It detailed the progress of the investment’s impact on neigh-

borhood and public housing residents and on people’s daily lives.

Ajani, a double major in business analytics and technology and urban studies from Houston, said she was surprised at the range of answers when the students asked whether former Wheatley Courts residents were interested in moving back to the neighborhood. “We got [answers from] so many people [who were] excited and hopeful for the new development but were still wary of public housing,” Ajani said, adding that the emphasis on community development aided her understanding of how the socio-economic climate of a space is just as important as the space itself.

The highlight of the report was the planned opening of a new public housing development,

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William Miles ‘16 put in long hours at an East Side community garden, Gardopia.

The garden is seen as a crime prevention strategy for the neighborhood.

Sydney Wright ‘16 points to data for a report with Isabel Myjer ‘16. Both students worked on collecting data using GIS as part of the urban studies program.

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East Meadows, a 215-unit multifamily project which did open in the fall of 2016 as a replacement for the razed Wheatley Courts housing project. About 60 of the previous 661 residents returned to the neighborhood. During their field interviews, students said residents who were thinking of moving back wanted social service and health programs along with increased social interaction—in addition to a safer environment.

The report also pointed out that workforce training was offered, prompting more people to move from part-time to full-time employment, and 71 new businesses were opened in the Choice Neighborhood. Efforts continued to improve schools in the area and strengthen community pride. In classroom presentations, students noted that volunteers painted homes in need of a cosmetic touch-up and plans were being made for street improvements along with tree plantings and public art projects in keeping with the concept of art as a driver in neighborhood revitalization.

Although a sound foundation has been laid, the grant period is not over, and more field work is ahead. In their 2015 impact assessment report, the Trinity students listed 14 quality-of-life goals from a community plan that are designed to trigger continued physical and social development.

“Not a dream deferred, but reality that was only imagined previously,” they wrote.

Their site visits and field work throughout the semester were incredibly impactful. William Miles ’16 interned at SAHA as a requirement for his degree in urban studies and had worked with Drennon on this project before enrolling in the class. Looking at the area from the research perspective, he began to see it in a new way. Miles realized that neither problems nor solutions exist in isolation. The class, he said, “helped me to see how everything is connected.”

Miles, a San Antonio native who considered becoming a police officer, took his class assignment to heart. He was on the public safety subgroup and spent many days talking with cops walking the beat and with residents who live in fear. He was drawn to the concept of a community garden, and he helped establish a local nonprofit garden, Gardopia, at the corner of Nolan Street and New Braunfels Avenue as a way to engage residents and keep gang members out of the neighborhood.

Aroosa Ajani ’18 and Beth Legg ’18 helped develop the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI) 2015 impact assessment for SAHA.

Steven Lucke, CEO and head gardener at Gardopia, grew collard greens and cauliflower and encouraged nearby residents to adopt specific plants to cultivate. The presence of people, including Trinity students, tilling the ground and watering vegetables during the day curtailed some loiterers, Lucke said, adding, “Will has made a huge difference. He’s the MVP.” The class also taught Miles how data is constantly changing and is sometimes contradictory.

As an example, he recalled one weekend working in the community garden. “People were happy and feeling safe, the sun was shining, and all was good,” he said. “However, a couple weeks later after spate of gang-related shootings in the area, people were scared and much less optimistic. So the situation is very fluid when it comes to looking at community impacts from crime, which was a big takeaway from the class for me.”

As a result, Miles, who took a position as a grant coordinator at SAHA after graduating, said the class helped him to pursue quantitative and qualitative data from various points of view and to take into consideration related topics, such as how students fared in school or how business development did or did not occur.

Throughout the semester, Drennon urged students to look at data to support their findings and to examine “big themes” for their final report.

She urged them to look beyond the obvious and to ask hard questions. For example, when one of the students looking at educational aspects of the project reported encountering a young man who identified himself as a “troublemaker,” Drennon patiently said, “That’s insightful but not scientific.”

Some of the data was troubling. A known crime “hot spot” on Houston Street and New Braunfels Avenue was characterized by used drug paraphernalia, stray dogs, and overgrown weeds.

One resident described the area to students as a “war zone.” Students appeared hopeful when they discovered a “cold spot” – one with a low in-

cidence of crime – until it was pointed out that the area was covered with railroad tracks and nobody lives there.

Despite the ongoing quest for hard numbers and scientific data, the Trinity students were observant, providing some astute details: • Some attended a “Justice for All” neighborhood meeting designed to better understand the community’s fear of crime and need for open dialogue. Also in attendance were San Antonio’s mayor and police chief as well as the county’s district attorney.

“People who went to this were angry,” students reported.

• Other students interviewed a waitress who would not drive down Nolan Street because she feared gangs.

• Still other students met teenaged girls who described their community in three words: “Violence, drugs, prostitution.”

SAHA officials appreciated the efforts of the urban studies students. “What we love about them is they will work,” said Virginia Martinez, administrative assistant in the Office of Community and People Engagement for the Choice Neighborhood Initiative at SAHA. “They do not just say ‘go fix something.’ They become part of the community. They want to be part of the change. Their manpower shows it.”

The report was delivered in September to SAHA as rich information that will help the agency with further implementation of the grant.

Earlier in the year, David Nisivoccia, interim president and CEO of SAHA, said the student work is important because, “Never before in the history of SAHA have so many resources been focused on the same part of town.” He thanked the Trinity students for their work and encouraged them to pursue a career at the housing authority or related agencies. “We are always looking to the next generation to come up with fresh ideas.”

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The Trinity University Police Department promoted campus health and safety initiatives, including a demonstration with “drunk goggles.�

Works / STAFF

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.

SOPHIA ABBOT / The Collaborative

VEE DUBOSE / University Marketing

for Learning & Teaching was invited to facilitate two workshops, “Students as Partners in Teaching, Learning, and Assessment” and “Students as Partners in Curriculum Design and Pedagogic Consultancy,” at the inaugural MIIETL Summer Institute on “Students as Partners” at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario in May 2016.

& Communications won three awards from Graphic Design USA (GDUSA) for her designs for a nuclear policy and U.S.-Iran relationships poster, the “Tiger at Heart” alumni weekend save the date card, and the Cat Alliance | Trinity “nine years” t-shirt.

JEANNA BALREIRA ’08 / University Marketing & Communications and Stephanie Enoch / University Marketing & Communications spoke during the Higher Education Summit at DrupalCon New Orleans on “Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My! Herding Trinity Tigers’ custom websites back onto their EDU domain.”

EDWIN BLANTON / Office of Experiential Learning presented “The Impact of Short-Term International Volunteers on the Capacity Development of a School in the Caribbean” at the 60th annual Comparative and International Education Society in Vancouver, Canada, in March 2016.

JUSTIN DOTY / Admissions presented “Putting a Face on the Independent Educational Consultant” for the Texas Association for College Admission Counseling (TACAC) Conference in April 2016.

MELISSA FLOWERS / Residential Life and Jamie Thompson / Student Involvement received 2015 NASPA Gold Honoree for the Trinity University Student Life Divisional Assessment Team (D.A.T.).

SUSIE GONZALEZ / University Marketing & Communications has served since July 2015 as President of the San Antonio professional chapter of the Association for Women in Communications.

KATHERINE HEWITT / Wellness Services received her Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) certification in May 2016. This is a five year professional certification provided by the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing, Inc.

October 2015. With co-presenters from the College Board, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Hollis also presented “An Insider’s Look at U.S. Admissions Trends Impacting Students,” and with co-presenters from Texas Christian University, she presented “When the Cost Gets Too High—Financial Aid Study in the U.S.”

LISA JASINSKI / Academic Affairs published an article, “American Foundations and the Age of Global Philanthropy: How Brazil Fares in the Grants Race” in the 2015 issue of Educação and a chapter titled “Supporting and Enhancing Learning on Campus: Effective Pedagogy In and Outside the Classroom, Developing Students’ Metacognitive Awareness in International Service-Learning” in 2015.

She also presented at the 2015 Texas Higher Education symposium at UTSA on “Sheff Goes to College: Perceptions and Realities about College Access at the University of Connecticut” and at the 2016 south by Southwest Education (SXSWedu) on “Collaborative Empathy: Teaching for Learning.”

KINDEL HOLLIS ’07 / Admissions presented at the Council of International Schools-EARCOS (East Asia Regional Council of Overseas Schools) Institute on Higher Education and Guidance in Bangkok, Thailand, in

*Trinity undergraduate/alumni researchers bolded Trinity faculty, staff, or student

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Works / STAFF

ERIC MALOOF / Admissions was awarded the T. Michael Maybury Award in November 2015 in recognition of his contributions to and achievements in international education. It is the highest award given globally by the Council of International School (CIS).

KATHARINE MARTIN / Student Involvement and Jamie Thompson / Student Involvement received third place in the Innovative Practice Poster category for “The Men Project” peer educator program.

BARBARA RAS / Trinity University Press received a $5,000 grant in poetry from the Artist Foundation of San Antonio. She has published poems in Granta, Five Points Plume, and Birmingham Poetry Review. Ras serves as a Visiting Poet at Georgia State University and at State University of West Georgia. She has also received a Fellowship from the Hermitage Artist Retreat.

RICHARD REAMS / Counseling Services presented a professional development workshop on “Taking LGBT-Affirmative Therapy to the Next Level” for 30 local psychologists in 2015. The workshop was hosted by the Bexar County Psychological Association.

RESIDENTIAL LIFE was awarded the NASPA Excellence Award Silver Winner in December 2015 for its innovative Game of Life Financial Literacy Initiative in the “Student Health, Wellness, and Related” category. NASPA also selected the initiative as the topic of a webinar, presented by Lyndsey Aguilar ’12 / Residential Life and Melissa Flowers / Residential Life .

The duo was selected by the Associa-

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tion of College and University Housing Officers – International (ACUHO-I) out of more than 360 applications to present a “30-Minute Quick Take” on the Game of Life Financial Literacy Initiative in June 2015.

PEGGY SUNDERMEYER / Academic Affairs was awarded the 2016 Holly J. Falk-Krzesinski Award by the National Organization of Research Development Professionals for service to the organization.

JAMIE THOMPSON ’05 / Student Involvement presented “Alumni Leader Qualitative Research Project” at the Association of Leadership Educators Annual Conference.

The TRINITY UNIVERSITY POLICE DEPARTMENT (TUPD) implemented an alcohol awareness project designed to raise awareness for our students about the dangers of excessive drinking, drunk driving, and their consequences. With assistance from several Texas Law Enforcement agencies, TUPD provided an alcohol driving simulator, drunk goggles (alcohol impaired simulation), brochures, and blood alcohol level charts. TUPD also implemented the Rape Aggression Defense (R.A.D.) project, a self-defense, credited-semester course for female Trinity students, staff, and faculty, taught by certified instructors.

During the month of April (Sexual Assault Awareness Month), TUPD raised awareness against sexual assault, beginning with making hundreds of teal ribbons that represent the importance of the month and distributed them, along with brochures, to the Trinity community. TUPD also invited a guest speaker to campus to speak to our students and community about this topic and its effect on survivors.

The UNIVERSITY VIDEO PRODUCTION TEAM won three Videographer awards, two awards of excellence for “This is Trinity Athletics: An Elite Network” and “Inspiring Learning,” and an award of distinction for “Do you think we just write a poem?”. The team also won two bronze Telly Awards for “Do you think we just write a poem?” and “This is Trinity University.”

The UNIVERSITY WEB TEAM won two gold awards from AVA Digital for their work on the redesigns of krtu. org and trinitytigers.com, one silver award from CASE District IV for the krtu.org redesign, and one bronze award from CASE District IV for the trinitytigers.com redesign.

To see students work through difficult topics continues to inspire me. The opportunity to be a part of their growth is the greatest blessing that any professor could have.

- Carey Latimore, History

One Trinity Place San Antonio, Texas 78212-7200 Change service requested.

I beam with pride when I observe faculty members engaged in important and groundbreaking research. Trinity professors are thought leaders shaping the discourse in their respective fields.

- Deneese Jones, Vice President for Academic Affairs