The Academic Minute for 2015.12.21-12.25

Academic Minute from 12.14 – 12.18

Monday, December 21
Melissa Wooten – University of Massachusetts Amherst
Are Black Colleges Necessary?
Melissa E. Wooten is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She studies how the structure of race and racism influences organizational development.
Her book In the Face of Inequality: How Black Colleges Adapt (2015 SUNY Press) empirically examines how racism disadvantages organizational actors preventing them from gaining critical financial and political resources.

Tuesday, December 22
Jon Morris – University of Florida
Donald Trump’s Appeal
Morris joined the college faculty in 1984. He began his advertising career in 1968, and has worked for several agencies, including Nicholson-Morris, Doyle Dane Bernbach and Dancer Fitzgerald Sample. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Florida. His research has appeared in Journal of Advertising Research, Educational Technology, International Journal of Instructional Media, and in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Advertising and The Association for Consumer Research, among others.
The last several years, he has developed a model for analyzing emotional response to marketing communications.

Wednesday, December 23
Martin Edwards – Seton Hall University
US Views on the United Nations
Professor Martin S. Edwards, Director of the Center for United Nations and Global Governance Studies, joined the school in 2006. His expertise includes International Organizations and International Political Economy. Prior to joining Seton Hall, Dr. Edwards taught at Texas Tech University and at the University of Michigan. His research, which has been supported by the National Science Foundation, focuses on the surveillance role of the international economic organizations.
Edwards is a member of the New Rules for Global Finance Coalition. A frequent commentator on global events for regional and international media, Edwards has received numerous awards for his work as an advisor and a teacher. He is a recipient of the Salgo-Noren Teaching Award, and he has been a university nominee for the Carnegie Foundation / CASE U.S. Professor of the Year. He has blogged for Project Syndicate on international economic affairs.

Thursday, December 24
Amy Welsh – West Virginia University
Bobcat Populations
A winding path brought me to the field of conservation genetics and I have always enjoyed the journey. I grew up in Baltimore, MD and received my B.S. degree in Zoology and Psychology from the University of Maryland-College Park (1996). I then worked at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research looking at the effects of sleep deprivation on performance (1996-1999). I received my Masters of Forensic Science degree from The George Washington University (1999) and then worked at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (1999-2001), where I was introduced to genetics and its important applications. Ecology and zoology remained an important passion and I moved out west to pursue my Ph.D. in Ecology at UC-Davis (2006). The focus of my dissertation was the population genetics of lake sturgeon. I then moved to the shore of Lake Ontario and was an assistant professor at SUNY-Oswego (2006-2011). The journey has now brought me to wild and wonderful West Virginia, where I continue research on the genetics of fish and wildlife populations.

Friday, December 25
Brick Johnstone – University of Missouri
Negative Spiritual Beliefs
Johnstone recently returned from Oxford University, where he spent the summer studying the intersection of science and religion. Prior to his time at Oxford, Johnstone completed a nine-month fellowship at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey, where he explored religious experience and moral identity. Johnstone recently served as a contributing expert for a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, “Traumatic Brain Injury in the United States: Epidemiology and Rehabilitation,” which was presented to Congress.