Faculty keep busy with publications, presentations

Faculty members have been busy creating, publishing, researching and presenting in areas ranging from literary fiction to cybersecurity.

Dr. Joshua Groffman, assistant professor of music, has been studying the soundscapes of the Hudson Valley. He presented his paper, “Sounding the Pre-human Landscape in New York's Hudson Valley” at the Global Prehumanisms Conference at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

This summer, he presented “Home is a Fire: Soundscapes of the Hudson River in the Age of Donald Trump” at the 2019 Conference on Communication and Environment at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Karen Bell, an instructor of English, won the John Guyon Literary Nonfiction Prize for her essay “The Body After” from the prestigious literary magazine Crab Orchard Review.

She has also had pieces accepted or published recently in the Little Patuxent Review, Lumina, Catamaran, Hotel Amerika and Verity La. Her essay “Past Pitch of Grief” appeared in The Louisville Review.

Dr. Shushan Zhao, assistant professor of computer information systems and technology, has been equally successful in publishing in the publishing world.

His article, “Viable Email Attacks and a Simple End-to-End Security Solution” appeared in the Indian Journal of Computer Science. An article he co-wrote, “An Add-on to End-to-End Secure Email Solution in Mobile Communications” appeared in the proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Mobile Multimedia Communications.

This spring, he co-published “Improvement on OTP Authentication and a Possession-based Authentication Framework” in the International Journal of Multimedia Intelligence and Security.

This summer, he will present his paper “Information Security in Networks and Communications” in Beijing and Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Dr. Jonathan Chitiyo, assistant professor of special education, has published an article titled “The relationship between school personnel's confidence with using the school-wide positive behavior intervention support model and its sustainability.” The paper is published in the Journal of Research in Special Education Needs.

In addition, he presented a pair of papers at the American Council on Rural Special Education conference in Alexandria, Va. The papers are titled “Challenges faced by rural teachers in using co-teaching” and “Examining the attributes of the school-wide positive behavior intervention support model that influence its sustainability.”

In a couple of weeks, he will present his paper, “The impact of child maltreatment on the psychological well-being and educational performance of students with or without disabilities” at the Division of International Special Education and Services in Montego Bay, Jamaica.

Dr. Nancy McCabe, professor of writing and director of the writing program, has some new publications. Her essay “Building the Cabin” was printed in the Watershed Review; she published work in the Southern Indiana Review, and her essay “The Inmost Cave” appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review. She also taught a workshop for the Creative Nonfiction Foundation in Pittsburgh. Her essay, “Ways to Tell a Story” was named to the Best American Essays 2018 list of notable essays.

Although she specializes in essays, she also recently had poems published in Spillway and Harpur Palate. Next month, she will present “Little House Lyricism: Lessons on Writing from Laura Ingalls Wilder” at the semi-annual conference of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Research and Legacy Association in Onalaska, Wisc.

Dr. Sarah Ruffell, assistant professor of biology, made a poster presentation, “Promoting and Sustaining Inclusivity through (Minor) Changes in Undergraduate Science Assessment,” at the Accelerating Systemic Change Network's Transforming Institutions conference in Pittsburgh.

Finally, Dr. Klaus Wuersig, associate professor of engineering, presented at the 11th International Symposium on Project Approaches in Engineering Education this month in Hammamet, Tunisia.