The Academic Minute for 2018.10.08-10.12 – Timely Topics Week

Academic Minute from 10.08 – 10.12

Monday, October 8th
Amy Bhatt – University of Maryland Baltimore County
Highly Skilled Immigrant Family Separation
Dr. Amy Bhatt is Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Language, Literacy and Culture Program and the Asian Studies Program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).  She received her PhD in Feminist Studies from the University of Washington in Seattle, WA.

Her research focuses on the effects of migration on gender and families, social reproduction, and South Asian community formation.  Her most recent book High-Tech Housewives: Indian IT Workers, Gendered Labor, and Transmigration(University of Washington Press, 2018) explores how ideas about gender and the family are transformed and reinforced through transnational and circulating migration, using the case of Indian H-1B and H-4 visa holders.

Tuesday, October 9th
Richard Cleveland – Georgia Southern University
Law Enforcement in Stressful Situations
Richard is assistant professor and program coordinator in the Counselor Education program at Georgia Southern University. Richard’s scholarly interests include mindfulness; survey psychometrics; client spirituality in counseling, and data-driven comprehensive school counseling programs.

Richard is currently directing the Mindfulness-Based Tactical Instruction (MBTI) research project representing secured funding for a multi-agency investigation into the role of mindfulness mitigating officers’ stress during tactical situations requiring use of force. The current project is a collaboration between university police, city police, county sheriff’s department, and Federal Training agencies.

Wednesday, October 10th
Frank Galgano – Villanova University
Environmental Security
Francis Galgano, PhD is an associate professor in Villanova University’s Department of Geography and the Environment. His primary areas of interest include geophysical processes, environmental change, environmental security, costal geography and military geography. Through his research, Dr. Galgano has identified climate change as a serious factor in global vulnerability to conflict.

Thursday, October 11th
F. Chris Curran – University of Maryland Baltimore County
School Resource Officers and Discipline
I am an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s (UMBC) School of Public Policy.  I conduct research on education policy with an emphasis on improving educational outcomes for underserved and disadvantaged youth.  My research interests include school discipline, early elementary education, and teacher labor markets.

Friday, October 12th
Aubrey Westfall – Wheaton College
The Politics of the Headscarf
Every one of my past and future project connects to a research agenda focused on issues relating to social justice, particularly minority politics and human rights. This description applies to my work on the politics of migration, women, cosmopolitanism and religious minorities. My research engages with quantitative and qualitative methodologies, including several years of fieldwork conducting interviews and focus groups in Europe and the United States. My research on migration policies has been supported by Fulbright and the European Commission.

I am a primary author of The Politics of the Headscarf in the United States, published in May 2018. The book investigates the social and political effects of the practice of Muslim-American women wearing the headscarf (hijab) in a non-Muslim state. My co-authors and I argue that women’s experiences with identity and boundary construction through their headcovering practices carry important political consequences that may well shed light on the future of the United States as a model of democratic pluralism.