The Academic Minute from 10.17 – 10.21
Monday, October 17th
Jack Bauer – University of Dayton
How Stories Foster Flourishing
Jack J. Bauer, PhD, is Professor of Psychology and past Raymond A. Roesch Endowed Chair in the Social Sciences at the University of Dayton. His book, The Transformative Self: Personal Growth, Narrative Identity, and the Good Life (Oxford University Press, 2021), explores how personal and cultural narratives foster (and thwart) human flourishing for the self and others. He is also co-editor of the book Transcending Self-Interest: Psychological Explorations of the Quiet Ego (American Psychological Association Books, 2008). He has served as co-editor of the Journal of Happiness Studies and associate editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Before graduate school he was the editor of a newspaper in northern Michigan.
Tuesday, October 18th
Subramanian Ramakrishnan – University of Dayton
Models to Combat Epidemics
Subramanian (Subbu) Ramakrishnan (SOOB-rah-mahn-yan RAHMA-krish-nan) obtained his B.Tech. (Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala, India), M.Sc. (University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada), MSE (Johns Hopkins University) and Ph.D. (Rutgers University – New Brunswick), all in Mechanical Engineering. Following post-doctoral stints (Univ. of Maryland and Univ. of Cincinnati), he was a research assistant professor in the Center for Nonlinear Dynamics and Control, Villanova University. He joined the University of Minnesota Duluth as an assistant professor in fall 2014 and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in fall 2020. He currently is an associate professor in the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering, University of Dayton. Subbu’s research interests are in the areas of nonlinear, stochastic dynamics and control with applications in areas including robotics, dynamics of nanoelectromechanical systems, energy localization and epidemiological modeling. He is an author or co-author of more than 50 peer-reviewed research publications and his research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Army Research Office. He has advised multiple graduate student theses and mentored several undergraduate research projects. He serves as a proposal review panelist for the NSF and also as an associate editor for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Dynamic Systems and Control Conferences, the ASME/IEEE American Control Conferences, and the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) Modeling, Estimation and Control Conferences. He also serves as a reviewer for multiple journals.
Wednesday, October 19th
Minnita Daniel-Cox – University of Dayton
Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Artist Legacy
Dr. Minnita Daniel-Cox attended Bowling Green State University, where she received a Bachelor of Music in Music Performance, and the University of Michigan, where she earned both her Master of Music and her Doctorate of Musical Arts degrees.
In 2014 Dr. Daniel-Cox established the Dunbar Music Archive and has presented her research for the National Association of Teachers of Singing, the National Opera Association, College Music Society, Society for American Music, National Association for Music Education, International Society for Music Education , Song Collaborators Consortia, Ohio Music Education Association, and the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives. She has performed Dunbar Archive repertoire recitals in venues across the United States including the University of Michigan, Bowling Green State University, University of Puget Sound, Ohio Northern University, Central Michigan University, Detroit Musicians Association, Taylor University, and Hanover University with a recital tour in Stara Zagora, Haskovo, and Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Dr. Daniel-Cox has received over 350k in funding for her Dunbar work, including two National Endowment for the Humanities grants and a Mellon Foundation grant for the Dunbar Project.
Dr. Daniel-Cox is an active member of the African American Art Song Alliance, National Association of Negro Musicians, National Association of Teachers of Singing, and is an alumna of the NATS Intern Program. She serves on the board of the NOA and is Co-Chair of the Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) Initiative for the National Opera Association.
Dr. Daniel-Cox regularly appears with the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, the Miami Valley Symphony Orchestra, and the Bach Society of Dayton. Recently, she has performed the roles of Anna Gomez in Menotti’s The Consul and Sister Rose in Dead Man Walking with Dayton Opera. She is regularly featured in broadcasts with for WDPR Discover Classical.
She is currently Associate Professor of Voice and Coordinator of the Voice Area at the University of Dayton, where she teaches applied lessons and music courses, serves as Artistic Director of the yearly musical/opera productions, coordinates the Dayton Opera Apprentice Program, and coordinates the Vocal Performance Institute, a summer program for high school-aged singers.
Thursday, October 20th
Partha Banerjee – University of Dayton
A New Dimension for Fingerprint Technology
Partha Banerjee is a professor of electro-optics and director of the Holography and Metamaterials Laboratory at the University of Dayton. A member of the International Order of Holoknights and a fellow of the Optical Society (OSA), the International Society of Optics and Photonics (SPIE) and the Institute of Physics (FInstP), Banerjee’s research interests include digital and dynamic holography, metamaterials, optical trapping and acousto-optics. He has published six textbooks, more than 140 journal papers and more than150 conference papers, and he has advised 30 doctoral and 15 master’s degree students. He is working with Penn State University and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to create a better fingerprint to help identify crime suspects, thanks to a two-year $300,000 grant from the department’s Criminal Investigations and Network Analysis Center.
Friday, October 21st
Shannen Dee Williams – University of Dayton
America’s Real Sister Act
Shannen Dee Williams is a historian of the African American experience with research and teaching specializations in women’s, religious, and Black freedom movement history. She is the author of Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle (Duke University Press, 2022), which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. The book provides the first full history of Black Catholic nuns in the United States.
Williams is a member of the executive council of the American Catholic Historical Association and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. She holds a B.A. with magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors from Agnes Scott College, a M.A. in Afro-American studies from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and a Ph.D. in History from Rutgers University.
