The Academic Minute for 2023.10.23-2023.10.27

The Academic Minute from 10.23 – 10.27

Monday
Dawn Biehler – University of Maryland Baltimore County
Learning From Central Park’s History
Dawn Biehler is Associate Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies, and Affiliate Faculty in Gender, Women’s, + Sexuality Studies, at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is author of Pests in the City: Flies, Bed bugs, Cockroaches, and Rats, published in 2013 by University of Washington Press. She is currently writing up findings from two major projects; one is a six-year collaborative study of environmental injustice and mosquito ecology in West Baltimore. The other is a historical geography of the ways diverse humans and non-human animals shaped New York’s Central Park, tentatively titled Animated Landscapes: Struggles for Public Space in a More-Than-Human Park.

Tuesday
Marian Reven – West Virginia University
Aromatherapy and Substance Abuse Disorder
Dr. Marnie Reven has a M.S in Nursing from Walden University and a PhD in Nursing from West Virginia University. Dr. Reven has over 400 hours of aromatherapy-focused education and serves as the chair of the Alliance of International (AIA) Research committee and on the AIA general and executive boards. Dr. Reven is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Education at WVU and a Registered Aromatherapist in the United States. Dr. Reven has presented her work on aromatherapy research around the world at conferences, symposiums, and interviews. Her work to improve the reporting quality of aromatic research led to the creation of the Aromatic Research Quality Appraisal Taskforce (ARQAT pronounced R-cot in 2021 and the TREATS (Transparent Reporting for Essential Oil and Aroma Therapeutic Studies) checklist in 2022. Peer-reviewed publications about these efforts are in process.

Wednesday
Janet Bednarek – University of Dayton
There is No Place Like Home – at the Airport?
Dr. Janet R. Bednarek is a professor of history and former executive director of the Urban History Association. Before coming to the University of Dayton, she worked for three years as a historian with the United States Air Force at Bolling AFB, the Pentagon and Wright-Patterson AFB. Since coming to UD in 1992, she has combined her original professional training as an urban historian with her on-the-job training as an aviation historian. She has written two books on the history of airports in the United States, examining them as pieces of the urban transportation infrastructure with a focus on the relationship between airports and city planning. She is currently working on a history of Dayton, Ohio. She teaches courses in urban and aviation history.

Thursday
Riley Post – University of Iowa
Can Little Ponds Fight Big Floods
Riley Post, P.E. is a PhD Candidate and Graduate Research Fellow in Civil Engineering within the Iowa Flood Center at the University of Iowa. His doctoral research centers on quantifying uncertainty in hydrologic systems (i.e., uncertainty in the collection of radar rainfall data, rainfall forecasts, hydrologic models, and the operation of hydrologic systems) to tackle water related problems facing society. His dissertation is focused on the optimization of distributed reservoir networks for stream flow reduction in the face of these sources of uncertainty. His work is funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF-GRFP), the University of Iowa Graduate College Post-Comprehensive Fellowship, and the Douglas A. Wallace Fellowship.

Friday
Chiara Camponeschi – York University
Turning Moments of Crisis into Moments of Care
Dr. Chiara Camponeschi is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research. As an interdisciplinary scholar, her work is situated at the intersections of climate action, community engagement and care, and documents how the principles of wellbeing, solidarity, and collective healing can provide a blueprint for building ‘integrative resilience’ in ways that are more equitable, inclusive, and just. Dr. Camponeschi is also the founder of Enabling City, an international organization devoted to stimulating new imaginaries for transformative social change. She is the author of two popular publications, Enabling City Volumes 1 & 2, that are available in 5 languages, and has spoken at events such as the White House GreenGov Symposium and the inaugural South by Southwest Eco conference in Austin, Texas.