People & Places: May 2019


Fifteen Allegheny psychology students participated in the 47th Annual Western Pennsylvania Undergraduate Psychology Conference (WPUPC) held at Chatham University on April 6, 2019. They are (with their faculty advisors listed in parentheses):

  • Austin Shaffer, Jonathan Davidson, Samuel Walgenbach (Lauren Paulson)
  • Gabby Griffin-Maya (Allison Connell Pensky)
  • Elijah Morsha-Taylor (Patricia Rutledge)
  • Liam McKersie, Michelle Mota Paulino, Stephanie Wilczynski, Jade Allen, Riley Sawyer (Monali Chowdhury)
  • Marisol Loza, Faith Riegel (Aimee Knupsky)
  • Anastasia Anthony, Stephanie Wilczynski, Kristopher Smeal (Lydia Eckstein)

Best of the Journals in Rhetoric and Composition 2018Associate Professor of English and Director of Writing Alexis Hart has been invited to be a seminar leader for Everett Community College’s two-year faculty development project, “Collective Memory and the Transformative Power of the Humanities,” funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Hart will lead a seminar session on student veterans, writing, and collective memory. Hart’s co-written article, “Veterans in the Writing Classroom: Three Programmatic Approaches to Facilitate the Transition from the Military to Higher Education,” was selected for and published in Best of the Journals in Rhetoric and Composition 2018, recently released by Parlor Press. This collection “represents the result of a nationwide conversation—beginning with journal editors, but expanding to teachers, scholars and workers across the discipline of Rhetoric and Composition—to select essays that showcase the innovative and transformative work now being published in the field’s independent journals.”

Assistant Professor of English Aline Lo presented a paper titled “Honoring the Fugitivity of Hmong American Literature” at the annual conference of the Association for Asian American Studies. She was also invited to give a talk at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she spoke about her co-authored piece on Hmong American literature.

Professor of French and International Studies Laura Reeck contributed an article on Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania to “Transnational Maghrebi Cinema,” a special issue of Expressions maghrébines. In “Thinking about Documentary with Kaouther Ben Hania,” Reeck situates Ben Hania as part of a new generation of women documentarists who have seized newfound cinematic liberties in post-revolution Tunisia.

Associate Director of the IDEAS Center Angelica Perez-Johnston graduated with her Doctorate in Public Administration on May 11, 2019, from West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation focused on holistic approaches to interventions to support underserved student populations to increase persistence and retention at small private liberal arts institutions.

Elisia Wright at Posters on the Hill
Elisia Wright ’21 and Assistant Professor of Computer Science Janyl Jumadinova presented their collaborative work done with David Boughton of Pennsylvania Sea Grant on “Underwater Robotic Smart-Sensing System for Water Quality Testing” at the 23rd Annual Posters on the Hill event. Only 60 students from over 350 submissions were selected to present their work at this event sponsored by the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR). They will also present the preliminary results of their research project at the upcoming 32nd International Conference of the Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society this May. The inspiration for the project was found during David Boughton’s and Janyl Jumadinova’s participation in the Crawford Central School District STEM partnership last summer, an effort facilitated by Associate Professor of Biology Lisa Whitenack.

Emily Smith ’19 will travel to Brazil in February 2020 after receiving a Fulbright award to serve as an English teaching assistant at a Brazilian university. Smith, a Spanish and international studies double major, is one of about 2,100 U.S. citizens who will study, conduct research, and teach abroad for the 2019–2020 academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. Recipients of Fulbright awards are selected on the basis of academic and professional achievement, as well as their record of service and leadership potential in their respective fields.

As part of the Global Citizens Scholars Program, Smith received funding to do an independent study abroad program in the fall of 2017 in Valparaíso, Chile, during her junior year. She also had the opportunity to attend a conference in June 2018 in Pune, India, with Professor Laura Reeck. In January 2019, Smith joined the Global Citizens Scholars Program for a week-long trip to the U.S.-Mexican border to learn about some of the pressing issues regarding border security and spent a day in Nogales, Mexico.