Professional Notes: February 2020

02/28/2020

A round-up of awards, presentations, papers and the other professional achievements of SLU faculty, staff and students.

Faculty and Staff

Awards

(Right) Tim Nowak, executive director, World Trade Center St. Louis, and Hadi Alhorr, Ph.D., director of the Boeing Institute of International Business in the Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business, stand with the Emerson Gateway Globe Award for Business: Global Outreach Award that Alhorr accepted on the institute's behalf. Submitted photo

The Boeing Institute of International Business in the Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business was received the Emerson Gateway Globe Award for Business: Global Outreach Award, presented at the second annual Gateway Globe Ceremony hosted by the World Affairs Council of St. Louis. This event honors leaders who connect the St. Louis region to the world.

Hadi Alhorr, Ph.D., director at the Boeing Institute of International Business, was called on stage to accept this award.

“The Boeing Institute is proud of the diverse globally-focused events and activities that we present to our students and business community,” Alhorr told the crowd. “While it is an honor to be recognized for our global outreach, it is also a responsibility that we look forward to continue growing. In the coming years, we will progressively broaden the scope of international business in the St. Louis community and beyond.”

The awards ceremony was held on Dec. 5, 2019, at The Coronado.

Lecture and Presentations

Joanne Langan, Ph.D., RN, stands before the Bahams National Emergency Management Agency.

Joanne Langan, Ph.D., RN, stands before the Bahamas National Emergency Management Agency. Langan was in the country to give a talk to Bahamian nurses and health care officials. Submitted photo

Joanne Langan, Ph.D., RN, professor nursing in the Trudy Busch Valentine School of Nursing, spoke to nurses and health care officials in Nassau, Bahamas, about the International Council of Nurses Core Competencies in Disaster Nursing, Version 2.0. Langan and Lisa Conlon, Ph.D., of the University of Sydney, Australia, were both authors on the competencies, published in November 2019, and were co-presenters for two, two-day workshops from Monday, Feb. 17, through Thursday, Feb. 20.

SLU political scientist Nori Katagiri, Ph.D. (third from left) joins other scholars and officials from the Dutch Ministry of Defense at a working group in Amsterdam. Submitted photo

Nori Katagiri, Ph.D., of the Department of Political Science in the College of Arts and Sciences, gave a talk at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany on how terrorist leaders learn. Katagiri also delivered a speech earlier this at the Royal Dutch Defense Academy in the Netherlands on deterrence policy of Japan. The event put together a group of international security scholars sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Defense and included topics on nuclear strategy, cybersecurity and non-Western defense policies.

Benjamin Looker, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of American Studies, gave a lecture at Temple University in Philadelphia, “The Cultural Construction of Neighborhood: Cultural Studies Approaches to Urban Historical Research,” sponsored by the Temple History Department and the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History.

Carlos Segovia, Ph.D., of SLU-Madrid’s humanities and social sciences department, lectured for two weeks at the University of Ghent in Belgium and taught two master classes on the renewed study of animism against the backdrop of contemporary discussions on religion and ecology, delivering both an open lecture on animism’s fundamental components and a research seminar on animism, religion and the re-enchantment of the world. Segovia’s time at Ghent was by invitation of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Laicity (CIERL) of the Free University of Brussels (ULB) and the European Research Council (ERC).

Grants

Gina Yosten, Ph.D., assistant professor of pharmacology and physiology, is researching a noval approach to treat a potentially lethal condition, "Hypoglycemia Unawareness." SLU photo

Gina L.C. Yosten, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology in the School of Medicine, has been awarded a $110,000 grant to continue her search for a novel approach to treat a potentially fatal condition called “Hypoglycemia Unawareness.”

Yosten and her team have developed a novel animal model for the study of this condition and now are poised to develop new strategies and therapeutic approaches to prevent the morbidity and in some case mortality that accompany this condition. These studies grew out of Yosten’s ground-breaking discovery while a trainee in the laboratory of Willis K. Samson, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology and physiology, of a previously unknown, endogenous hormone, they named neuronostatin, and their identification of the receptor that communicates neuronostatin’s message in the pancreas.

This is the fourth external research grant awarded Yosten in the past 18 months, with funding already in place from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Helmsley Charitable Trust. Yosten is a 2010 graduate of the department’s doctoral program in pharmacology and physiology.

Service to the Field

Whitney Postman, Ph.D., of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders in the Doisy College of Health Sciences, received a Certificate of Appreciation from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association recognizing her dedication to the society’s Special Interest Group on Cultural and Linguistic Diversity. Postman has served on the group’s Professional Development Committee for three years.

Students

Retreats

Students from the Micah Program gathered for their 2020 "Faith in Action" Retreat at Cedar Creek in New Haven, Missouri. Submitted photo

Students, faculty and staff members in the Micah Program attended the 2020 “Faith in Action” Retreat from Friday, Feb. 7, through Sunday, Feb. 9, at Cedar Creek in New Haven, Missouri. The student-led retreat included small and large group reflection on social justice, related talks given by Micah seniors, practice of self-care for those serving in the greater community, interfaith prayer and reflection, music and singing and community-building activities.

Learn more about the Micah Program here.

Publications

Mary Maxfield, a doctoral candidate in the Department of American Studies, published an article, “Harmed or Harmful: The Discourse of Trigger Warnings, Trauma, and Shelter,” in Frontier: A Journal of Women Studies, 40, no 3 (2019): 63-89.

Symposia

The Learning Communities Program hosted its second annual Learning Community Symposium for Scholarly and Creative Work on Monday, Feb. 10, in the Saint Louis room in the Busch Student Center.

The LC Symposium provides undergraduate students a unique opportunity to exhibit and share examples of their significant reach and creativity with the university community. In addition to the student presenters, more than 100 students visited the event to support and learn from their current and alumni LC peers on a myriad of topics.

Presentations were evaluated for original/applied research, learning community or societal relevance, contribution to the Jesuit mission and identity, and clarity, coherence, creativity and aesthetics in four categories. Three top projects were selected as prize winners.

Scholarly and Creative Works

Beatrice Beirne, Ashley Keller, Lauren Tubbe, Matthew Brueggert, Sanjott Singh, Lilly Adams, Ava Gagner and Savannah Seyer, OneWorld Magazine, Fall 2019 Volume “Generational Disconnect, Reconnect.”
Brittany Pace, “Antibiotic Production by Soil-Dwelling Microorganisms.”
Carter Voss, “Women Who Are You?”
Emma Nehring, “Analysis of Angiogenesis in Tissue Engineered Skeletal Muscle with Varying Myogenic Proportions.”
Kelly Gruenwald, “Diploma Made of Dollars.”
Kiara Hardmon, “Tackling Community Challenges Through Youth-Led Participatory Action Research.”
Lexxy Ahn, “Racial Disparity in Medicare Hospice Benefits.”
Molly Cibula, “A Life Changed: The Lived Experience of a Teenage Burn Survivor.”

First place for Scholarly and Creative Work

Nehring was awarded first place for her research that was conducted at the University of Texas San Antonio on current therapies for muscle defects caused by disease and trauma that present several challenges and limitations.

Second place for Scholarly and Creative Work

Gruenwald was awarded second place for her art project that speaks to the link between education and wealth. Gruenwald created a graduation cap and gown covered in paper money to showcase the cost of higher education.

Third place for Scholarly and Creative Work

Beirne and the authors of OneWorld Magazine were awarded third place for their work with the magazine.

For more information about the Learning Community Program at SLU, visit or contact the program.

Conferences and Presentations

Student Lauren Groszek (left) presented a poster at the 2020 Combined Sections Meeting with her mentor, Kim Levenhagen, DPT, of the Department of Physical Therapy and Athletic Training, at the American Physical Therapy Association's Combined Section Meeting. Submitted photo

Student Lauren Groszek presented at the American Physical Therapy Association's Combined Section Meeting in Denver. Groszek presented a poster at the 2020 Combined Sections Meeting with her mentor, Kim Levenhagen, DPT, of the Department of Physical Therapy and Athletic Training. The poster showcased Groszek’s capstone research about kinesiotaping for shoulder pathologies.

Public Humanities

Mary Maxfield, a doctoral candidate in the Department of American Studies, led a panel discussion at the Missouri History Museum about the 2019 documentary All We’ve Got: Lesbian Communities and the Importance of Place.