Faculty Notes

Robert Aslanian, Associate Professor of Chemistry, recently published two manuscripts in The Chemical Educator. A third manuscript, titled “Identification of an Unknown Diene in Eucalyptus Oil: A Modified Diels-Alder Experiment,” has been submitted. These manuscripts detail new laboratory procedures developed and used in the NJCU organic chemistry labs.

James Broderick, Professor of English was contracted by McFarland & CoPublishers to write a 100,000-word book on James Joyce, due August 2017 Broderick, the author of seven otherfiction and nonfiction books, is also reviewer with the subscription-based website BookBrowse.com.

Gerardo Castro, Professor of Art, was one of several artists to have work exhibited at Westfield State University’s Arno Maris Art Gallery. The show, Contemporary Directions: Niger to Afro Futurism, was held in honor of Black History Month.

Bruce Chadwick, Professor of History and the author of 29 books, had a new title hit stores in April. Law & Disorder: The Chaotic Birth of the NYPD (St. Martin’s Press, 2017) examines how rampant violence led to the founding of the first professional police force in New York City.

A noted historian, Chadwick covered crime for many years as a reporter for the New York Daily News. He regularly lectures on the history of crime and forensics all over the world.

Jacqueline Ellis, Women’s and Gender Studies Department Chair, and Ellen Gruber Garvey, Professor of English, co-edited the 25th anniversary issue of Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy. Ellis has served as the journal’s co-editor since its editorial headquarters moved from William Patterson University to NJCU in 2004.

Edvige Giunta, Professor of English, was interviewed by RAI Italia Community/l’altra Italia, which focuses on Italians abroad. The interview focused on her book, Embroidered Stories: Interpreting Women’s Domestic Needlework in the Italian Diaspora (University Press of Mississippi, 2015); teaching memoir (including her classes at NJCU); and her perspective as an immigrant.

In February, Associate Professor and Director of the Lee F. Hagan Africana Studies Center Will Guzmán signed a book contract with the University Press of Florida to edit the upcoming collection, The Black Power Movement in Florida. Guzmán also joined the editorial board of the International Journal of Africana Studies.

Joyce Yu-Jean Lee, Adjunct Professor of Art, had a solo show, Verti-Call, at the Center Art Gallery, Calvin College,Grand Rapids, Mich. Information about that show and other upcoming events may be found online at www.joyceyujeanlee.com.

Adele T. Macula, Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership, is the author of From the Classroom to the Test: How to Improve Student Performance on the Summative ELA Assessments (Maupin Press for Capstone Professional, 2016). Designed to aid educators for grades 3-8, the book provides information on how to adjust instruction to enhance reading comprehension and vocabulary development.

Adrian D. Martin, Assistant Professor of Elementary & Secondary Educationis the coauthor of Becoming-Teacher: A Rhizomatic Look at First-Year Teaching(Sense Publishers, 2017). The book examines the experiences of novice educators in urban environments.

Winifred McNeill, Professor of Art, had a solo exhibit at Moravian College’s Payne Gallery from November 17-December 16, 2016. The show, Sweet Silent Thought, featured McNeill’s drawings and sculptures. More recently, her work was featured in Learning to Fly: A Celebration of Flight and Exploration at the Walsh Gallery at Seton Hall University. The multidisciplinary exhibition, which commemorated several aviation milestones, ran from January 17-March 10, 2017.

Jennifer Musial, Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, authored “‘Work Off that Holiday Meal Ladies!’: Body Vigilance and Orthorexia in Yoga Spaces,” a chapter in Yoga, the Body, and Embodied Social Change: An Intersectional Feminist Analysis (Lexington Books, 2016). Also in 2016, she co-edited the journal Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture and Social Justice. Her writing has also been published in Feminist Teacher, Social Identities, and Sexualities. She serves as the managing editor for the new journal Race and Yoga out of the University of California, Berkeley.

Frederic Mynard, Associate Professor of Mathematics, co-authored the book Convergence Foundations of Topology, which was published by the World Scientific Publishing Company.

Adjunct Professor of Photography Joan Pamboukes’s site-specific installation, “Beneath Such Dreamy Moments”, is on display at The Wall, Paul Robeson Campus Center, Rutgers University through July 31, 2017. Informed and inspired by Newark Museum’s historic Ballantine House, Pamboukes’s work investigates the effects of media and interactivity in our society.

Kathleen Rennie, Co-Chair, Professional Security Studies Department, was published in Public Relations Tactics, in January. The article, “Students Get Additional Tools To Stand Out When They Start Out,” was co-written with Tina McCorkindale. Rennie also recently spoke at the Public Relations Society of America’s (PRSA) Educator’s Academy “Super Saturday” Conference to present her research findings.

Adjunct Professor Krystal Sital’s personal essay “When Immigration Agents Came Knocking,” was published in the December 2, 2016 issue of The New York Times Magazine. Her memoir, The Secrets Women Kept: A Caribbean FamilyMemoir, will be published by W.W. Norton in January 2018.

Political Science Department Chair Louise Stanton authored Chapter 5 in the book, Rethinking Security in the Twenty-First Century: A Reader (Edwin Daniel Jacob, ed., Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). The chapter is titled “A New Frontier in U.S. National Security Policy-Making: State and Local Governments”

In Want of Weiner’s Wisdom

Lois Weiner, Professor of Elementary and Secondary Education, was recently invited to New York City to advise the staff of Comptroller Scott Stringer on ways to improve the city’s public school system. She was recommended to Stringer’s chief of staff by Matthew Goldstein, CUNY’s chancellor.

This recommendation was a bit of a surprise to Weiner for one simple reason: “I had never met Matthew Goldstein,” she says.

But Weiner’s reputation precedes her. A prolific writer and noted policy expert, her pedagogical philosophy for grades K-12 has been widely disseminated in academic papers, journals, and books. She has been invited to speak around the country and around the world. She is also the founder of NJCU’s Urban Education and Teacher Unionism Policy Project, an organization dedicated to promot-ing dialogue among scholars and activists about controversial, complex issues in urban schools (www.njcu.edu/academics/urban-education-and-teacher-unionism-policy-proj…). Her book, Urban Teaching: The Essentials (Teachers College Press, 2016), co-written with Daniel Jerome, is now in its third printing.

Therefore, it is not entirely surprising that NYC might want to reach across the Hudson River to pick the NJCU professor’s brain.

In a frank and far-reaching discussion, Weiner outlined several paths to improving the inner city academic system. One point of particular importance, she notes, is implement protections for whistle blowers.

“There needs to be a system in place that encourages faculty to identify and report legal and ethical abuses without repercussion,” she explains. “That’s the only way to eliminate graft in the school system.”

In addition to education matters, Weiner also frequently writes about social politics. One recent article on this subject, “A Wasted Opportunity,” was published in Jacobin on January 18. Co-written with Michael Hirsh, Saulo Colón, and Murray Schneider, the story posits why Hillary Clinton didn’t receive—or deserve—the support of organized labor.

Christopher Versace, Professor, School of Business, is the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Tematica Research and the editor of Tematica Investing, a subscription newsletter. He has been ranked an All Star Analyst by Zacks Investment Research and is a contributor to Forbes Magazine and Business Insider. His recent analysis on Italy’s referendum in Business Insider made such an impression it led to a mention in Italy’s own finance publication, Milano Finanza.

Melanie Vote, Adjunct Professor of Art, had a solo exhibition at Hionis Gallery in New York City. Titled Overgrowth, the show featured four oil paintings and a mixed media instillation. The exhibit was lauded in Quantum Art Review, The Huffington Post, and other publications.

More recently, Vote was selected to be the artist-in-residence at the Grand, Canyon from June 5-17, 2017. Housed in a rustic cabin on the remote North Rim. Vote will “live and work in the canyon, painting and collecting images of its iconic, rugged beauty” to inspire future studio works.

David Weiss, Director of the NJCU School of and Director of the NJCU School of Business Institute for Dispute Resolution, was recently published on Mediate.com. His article, “A Collaborative Process to Resolve International Business Disputes: Mediation Policy as a Global Business Model,” was co-written with Christiane Rosenbaum.