The Academic Minute for 2017.5.22-5.26

Academic Minute from 5.22 – 5.26

Monday, May 22nd
Mary Bendel-Simso – McDaniel College
The New History of Detective Fiction
Mary M. Bendel-Simso is a Professor of English at McDaniel College, where she has taught since 1995. She is a Charles A. Boehlke, Jr., Engaged Faculty Fellow at McDaniel, as well as advisor of the college’s chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa national honor society and the Lambda Iota Tau literary honor society.

She has collaborated with LeRoy Lad Panek, Professor Emeritus of English at McDaniel College and a nationally recognized author and historian on detective fiction, in ongoing research and production related to the Westminster Detective Library, a web-based project designed to identify, catalog and publish online all short detective fiction published in the United States before 1891. She is the co-editor of “Early American Detective Stories: An Anthology” (McFarland, 2008) and co-author of “Essential Elements of the Detective Story, 1820-1891” (McFarland, 2017).

Tuesday, May 23rd
Gleb Tsipursky – The Ohio State University
Go With Your Gut
I am a historian of science working at the intersection of history, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. I research emotions, decision-making, meaning and purpose, agency and conformism, community, youth, social control, fun and leisure, and civic engagement in historical contexts, especially the Soviet Union. My publications have appeared in academic peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes in the United States, England, France, Germany, and Russia.

Wednesday, May 24th
Lynsey Romo – North Carolina State University
Thin Stigma
Dr. Lynsey K. Romo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at North Carolina State University. Her research examines how people communicate about uncomfortable issues, specifically pertaining to health and finances. Romo has explored what motivates people to disclose taboo topics (e.g., salary) or discreditable traits (e.g., abstaining from alcohol) and how individuals manage uncertainty surrounding their physical, social, and economic well-being. She also uncovers how couples can effectively motivate one another to engage in healthier eating and exercise behaviors and how people can communicatively manage interpersonal challenges to losing and maintaining weight.

At NC State, Dr. Romo teaches undergraduate and graduate health, theory, interpersonal, and qualitative research methods courses. Prior to joining NC State, Romo taught at the university level for three years and served as the communications director of a nonprofit committed to improving health and economic conditions for low-income individuals.

Thursday, May 25th
Jihyun Lee – University of New South Wales Sydney
Students Attitudes Towards Schooling
Jihyun is a survey methodologist, applied statistician, and educational psychologist. She is interested in national and international, large-scale assessments. Her main research area is developing methodology to increase psychometric properties and usability of survey instruments. She has developed numerous survey instruments for more than a decades of post-PhD professional services in the US, Singapore, South Korea, and Australia.

Substantively, she investigates theoretical and practical utility of education-related psychological constructs. In her research, a wide range of education-related psychological constructs are reviewed in relation to student achievement in various subject domains (reading, writing and mathematics). The constructs that Dr Lee has most extensively studied are interest, motivation, confidence, attitudes, self-belief, self-efficacy, and anxiety.

Her publications have been on the issues of whether students’ non-cognitive qualities have significant value addedness above and beyond what is expected from assessment results based on cognitive abilities; identification of best non-cognitive predictors of student achievement; validating theoretical frameworks for psychological structure of non-cognitive constructs; developing new methodologies for assessing non-cognitive constructs; improvement of psychometric properties of non-cognitive constructs; evaluating the best evidence to answer these questions in large-scale assessments and more broadly in cross-national assessments.

Friday, May 26th
Terri Erbacher – Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
Preventing Student Suicides
Dr. Erbacher is a clinical associate professor in the School Psychology Program at PCOM. A New England native, Terri moved to New York to pursue her B.A. degree from Hofstra University before relocating to Philadelphia to pursue both her M.Ed. and Ph.D. degrees in School Psychology from Temple University. As a Certified School Psychologist and Licensed Psychologist, Dr. Terri has worked for the Delaware County Intermediate Unit (DCIU) since 1999 and is delighted to have joined the PCOM faculty in 2007. Dr. Terri’s expertise focuses on counseling high school students, supervision of School Psychology Interns, and most notably, crisis prevention and intervention, grief and trauma, as well as assessment and management of suicide risk. Dr. Erbacher also conducts trauma evaluations for adjudicated youth in the juvenile court system.