Professional Notes: End-of-Academic-Year Edition

05/17/2021

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

Faculty and Staff

The new 2021-22 Chaifetz Fellow recipients of the Fellowship for the upcoming academic year have been announced. The newest Chaifetz Fellow, and recipient of a $2,500 grant, is Vincent Casaregola, Ph.D., who runs SLU’s Film Studies Program. He is also a professor of English.

Casaregola will be creating a course called “Film Narratives: The Entrepreneur as Hero” in the English Department as his Fellows project. He is the 42nd Chaifetz Fellow at SLU. He will be joining nine veteran Chaifetz Fellows who will be financially supported with $1,000 grants to help them to extend or renew their efforts around the following entrepreneurship education related projects. 

The veteran fellows are:

• Patricia Bagsby, Ph.D. (Management) is adapting and integrating a commercial simulation into the Family Business course with the support of the simulation’s author and a local family business owner.
• Sridhar Condoor, Ph.D. (Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering) is creating a SCAMPER (Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, Reverse) presentation and activity that can be used to teach entrepreneurial mindset and design thinking in MENG 2000.
• Dannielle Joy Davis, Ph.D. (Higher Education) is having students enrolled in the Leadership in Higher Education course partner with the entrepreneurial organization Every.Black to create entrepreneurship training materials.
• Steven Howard, Ph.D. (Health Management & Policy) is underwriting key informant interviews for classes and research on entrepreneurship in health care.
• Srikanth Gururajan, Ph.D. (Aerospace Engineering) is evolving SLUDronES (Student Led, University Based Drone Entrepreneurship at SLU) to serve as a Research, Development and Service hub for drones and UAV based efforts.
• Whitney Linsenmeyer, Ph.D. (Nutrition & Dietetics) will be continuing the “Doubledown Project” where DIET5350 students create ways to double a starting cash stake ($50, $100 or $200) during the eight-week summer term.
• Mike Markee, DPT (Physical Therapy & Athletic Training) will support a wellness program for an in-person elevator pitch competition judged by local clinicians.
• Scott Sell, Ph.D. (Biomedical Engineering) is expanding his work with STEM faculty who teach foundational courses for engineering students to integrate concepts of entrepreneurship in their courses.
• Jintong Tang, Ph.D. (Management) is using the funds to reimburse the travel cost for two to three entrepreneurs from outside St. Louis who will present in entrepreneurship classes.

Terri Rebmann, Ph.D., and other researchers recently published the article "Availability and crisis standards of care for personal protective equipment during fall 2020 of the COVID-19 pandemic: A national study by the APIC COVID-19 task force" in the American Journal of Infection Control. The study found that healthcare facilities have better access to PPE now compared to last spring, but that's primarily because so many facilities are extending the use, reusing and/or decontaminating respirators between use.

An op-ed co-authored by a team of faculty and staff from the Management Department in the Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business ran May 6 in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The piece was led by Jerome Katz, Ph.D., the Robert H. Brockhaus Chair of Entrepreneurship.

Other authors included:

• David Kaplan, Ph.D., department chair and professor of marketing;
• Laurel Boone, J.D.
• Rob Boyle, Ph.D.
• Tassos Kaburakis, J.D., Ph.D.
• Fred Niederman, Ph.D., the Shaughnessy endowed professor of management; 
• Elouise Mintz, Ph.D.
• Mike Shaner, Ph.D.
• Jintong Tang, Ph.D.  
• Christopher Thomas, Ph.D.
• Vincent Volpe, J.D.
• Noni Zaharia, Ph.D.
• Patricia Bagsby, Ph.D.
• Toschia M. Hogan, Ph.D.
• Suzy Hartmann and
• Patricia McQueen.

Anthony Breitbach Ph.D. and Ginge Kettenbach Ph.D. (Physical Therapy and Athletic Training) collaborated with colleagues from Virginia Commonwealth University, University of New England and LSU Health Sciences Center – New Orleans to publish a paper "An exploratory, cross-sectional and multi-institutional study using three instruments to examine student perceptions of interprofessional education" in the Journal of Interprofessional Care about the effectiveness of Interprofessional Education.

Craig A. Boyd, Ph.D. (School for Professional Studies) recently published a new book (co-authored with Kevin Timpe), The Virtues: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2021.

Grant Kaplan, Ph.D., (Theology) was interviewed on the website “Blog on Fire” about René Girard. 

Liz Chiarello, Ph.D. (Sociology) wrote a guest commentary which ran April 16 in the Columbia Missourian on a statewide prescription drug monitoring program.

Maria Teresa Tersigni-Tarrant, Ph.D. (Pathology) was re-elected as president of the American Board of Forensic Anthropology (ABFA). She was first elected president of the national board in 2019. The ABFA is the only professional certification body for forensic anthropologists. Certification with the ABFA is the highest level of professional certification in forensic anthropology.

Anthony Breitbach Ph.D. (Physical Therapy and Athletic Training) was named to represent the Association of Schools Advancing Health Professions (ASAHP) on the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) Core Competencies Revision Working Group, a team of interprofessional education and collaborative practice experts across IPEC's 21 member associations. 

Judy Geczi (Research & Instruction Librarian at Pius Library) received a presidential citation from the Special Libraries Association (April 2021) for her service during the pandemic on the 2020 Annual Conference Advisory Council. 

Paul Lynch, Ph.D. (English) has been appointed the incoming Georgia K. Johnston Professor in the Department of English. During the two-year term of this professorship, Lynch will be working on a book manuscript. Tentatively titled “Exercises of Desire,” the book argues for the pervasive operations of rhetoric within the dynamics of both mimetic desire and spiritual exercises, both religious and otherwise. The project aims to bring together discourses in rhetoric, mimetic theory, theology, philosophy, and spirituality studies to argue for the essential religious nature of rhetoric. The Johnston Professorship was named in honor of our late colleague, Dr. Georgia K. Johnston, who passed away in 2017 after a long struggle with cancer.

Ann Hayes, Ph.D. (Physical Therapy and Athletic Training) served on the work group in developing APTA Acute Care’s recently released Amputation and Limb Difference Curricular Guideline. 

Chris Sebelski, Ph.D., and Oluwatoyosi (Olu) Owoeye, Ph.D., (Physical Therapy and Athletic Training) secured internal funding through the Irma Ruebling Endowed Research Fund to advance their research/scholarship agendas. The one-year awards will support pilot work for future studies that impact the science and practice of physical therapy.

Ethel Frese, DPT, and Kim Levenhagen, DPT, (Physical Therapy and Athletic Training) as well as alumna Dr. Traci Norris, were part of the leadership team for the Adult Vital Sign Interpretation in Acute Care Guide. 

Students

Caroline Lipic (Physical Therapy) was accepted to the Acute Care Physical Therapy Residency at Baylor Scott & White Health.

Alexis Ardovitch (Physical Therapy) was accepted to The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill year-long orthopedic residency program starting in August.

Three SLU undergraduate students have been selected for the Summer 2021 cohort of the DeNardo Neuroscience Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows (NeuroSURF) Program.

• Shalmali Mirajkar, BS Neuroscience Program, will be working with Dr. Jill Waring, Department of Psychology.
• Casey Nichols, BS Biomedical Engineering Program, will be working with Dr. Gina Yosten, Department of Pharmacology and Physiological Sciences.
• Laasyapriya Sarva, BS Neuroscience Program, will be working with Dr. Sergey Korolev, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

The 10-week summer undergraduate research program is designed for Saint Louis University students with a committed interest in cutting-edge research in many disciplines of neuroscience. The work that is done by students and their research mentors will not only support the student’s educational goals toward research but will be shared with the scientific community by presentation at conferences and through publications. This program is funded through the DeNardo Education and Research Foundation. 

SLU Athletic Training students were recently recognized. Kate Perko was honored for Excellence in Professional Service. Maddie Bozych was recognized for Clinical Excellence.