Faculty Achievements
2020
November
Dr. Carolyn Martsberger, assistant professor of physics, has been awarded an NSF Ascend Faculty Fellowship. This four-year fellowship provides the training to support institutional transformation to create environments where diversity is encouraged and supported.
Martsberger, in collaboration with Dr. Katherine Steinmetz, associate professor of psychology, published the article “Investigating Fractal Dimension, Heart Rate Variability and Memory During Different Image Sequencing Regimes in Young Adults” in the journal Chaos. This article was published along with student co-authors David Aguillard ’19 (physics), Vanessa Zarubin ’18 (psychology) and Caroline Wilson ’20 (math).
Dr. Dave Pittman, professor of psychology, published the article “Behavioral and Neurophysiological Taste Responses to Sweet and Salt are Diminished in a Model of Subclinical Intestinal Inflammation” in the Nature Research journal Scientific Reports. This article was published along with student co-authors Tyler Nelson ’16 (biology, program in neuroscience) and Alexandra Brantly ’14 (psychology).
October
Dr. Kimberly Hall, assistant professor of English, authored “The Politics of Disclosure Activism in Social Media,” published in Modern Language Studies, Vol. 50, No. 1, (summer 2020).
Dr. Jeremy S. Morris, assistant professor of biology, along with Nala Rogers, Alan R. Rogers and David R. Carrier, had the article “Sexual Dimorphism in Skeletal Shape in Voles (Arvicolinae): Disparate Selection on Male Bodies and Female Heads” accepted for publication in the Journal of Mammalogy (August 2020). Additionally, he co-authored the article “Effects of Astrobiology Lectures on Knowledge and Attitudes about Science in Incarcerated Populations,” which was accepted for publication in Astrobiology (November 2020).
September
Dr. Deidra Coleman, assistant professor of mathematics, has been awarded a Mathematical Association of America National Research Experience for Undergraduates Program Grant. In addition, her research group had one of their papers accepted for publication in Integers 20: “The Periodicity of Nim-Sequences in Two-Element Subtraction Games.”
Dr. Rachel Grotheer, assistant professor of mathematics, had the following accepted for publication by the journal Inverse Problems and Imaging: “Stochastic greedy algorithms for multiple measurement vectors.”
Dr. Kirsten Krick-Aigner, professor of German, received a grant from the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies to present a paper on the panel “Age, Agency, and Agencies and the Migration of Austrian Children and Youth to the U.S.” at the October 2020 German Studies Association conference. She conducted research into the life of Jewish Austrian refugee Marianne Winter during her sabbatical and wrote "Marianne Selinger’s Journey from Vienna to the U.S.: How an Epistolary Friendship Led to Emigration and the Reshaping of Identity." Her shorter talk, now to be held at the virtual GSA conference, will be published as a longer research paper in the Botstiber Journal.
Dr. Anne B. Rodrick, professor of history, had a book review of Lawrence Goldman’s “Welfare and Social Policy in Britain since 1870: Essays in Honour of Jose Harris” appear on H-Albion in June.
Dr. Rachel Vanderhill, associate professor and chair of the Department of Government and International Affairs, had three publications in 2020: “Autocracy and Resistance in the Internet Age (Lynne Rienner Publishers, August 2020), “Iran and Its Neighbors: Military Assistance as Support for Authoritarianism,” in “Authoritarian Gravity Centers: A Cross-Regional Study of Authoritarian Promotion and Diffusion” (Routledge, July 2020), and “Between the Bear and the Dragon: Multivectorism in Kazakhstan as a Model Strategy for Secondary Powers,” International Affairs 96, No. 4 (July 2020).
Dr. Yongfang Zhang, associate professor of Chinese, wrote “The Understanding of Context in Performed Culture Approach and Context Design in a Non-Chinese Language Environment,” published in International Chinese Language Education, 2020.
April
Dr. Philip C. Dorroll's presentation “The Conception of Metaphysics in Maturidi: Justice” [Matüridi'de Metafizik Tasavvur: Adalet] was published in the edited volume Maturidi: In the Footsteps of Lost Enlightenment [Matüridi: Kayıp Aydınlanmanın İzinde], Ankara, 2020. Dorroll is an assistant professor of religion. The English version of the presentation can be found at here: https://www.academia.edu/42163160/Maturidi_s_Metaphysics_and_the_Concept_of_Justice.
Dr. Natalie S. Grinnell's article “‘[H]e, which can no pité know’: Murdered Children in the Confessio Amantis” has been accepted for publication in Investigo: Interdisciplinary Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and is expected to be published this summer. Grinnell is Reeves Family Professor of Humanities/ English.
Dr. Kimberly A. Hall's article “Public Penitence: Facebook and the Performance of Apology” appears in Social Media + Society, vol. 6, no. 2. 2020. Hall is an assistant professor of English.
March
Dr. William DeMars, professor of government and international affairs, has been awarded a Visiting International Professor Fellowship by the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) Research School in Bochum, Germany, to collaborate with his co-author, Dr. Dennis Dijkzeul, on researching international NGOs with RUB doctoral dissertation students and colleagues. This VIP fellowship provides a grant of 5,000 € to fund three visits to RUB over two years. The first visit was during the first week of March.
Wofford College has been awarded National Security Agency funding of $82,889 for the eighth STARTALK Chinese Language and Culture Summer Program. This three-week program (June 8-26) is free of charge for 40 middle school and high school students from Spartanburg and Greenville as well as anyone who can arrange his/her own room and board. Yongfang Zhang, associate professor of Chinese, is the principal investigator of the grant. She has been invited to serve STARTALK Central as a team leader for a second year. Rebecca Parrish, grant specialist in the Office of the Provost, and Michelle Smith, controller, assisted with the proposal application and grant management.
Dr. Jeremy Morris, assistant professor of biology, co-authored “Musculoskeletal mass and shape are correlated with competitive ability in male house mice (Mus musculus),” which appeared in the Journal of Experimental Biology (February 2020). It can be found here: https://jeb.biologists.org/content/223/3/jeb213389.
Dr. Britton W. Newman, associate professor of Spanish, and Beate Brunow published “A Developmental Model of Intercultural Competence: Scaffolding the Shift from Culture-Specific to Culture-General” in Diversity and Decolonization in German Studies. (Eds. Regine Criser and Ervin Malakaj. New York: Pal-grave-MacMillan, 2020. 139-56.)
Dr. Matt Cathey, associate professor of mathematics, was awarded the master of science degree from Texas A&M University in December. He majored in statistics with emphases in biostatistics and applied statistics.
February
Dr. Laura H. Barbas Rhoden, professor of Spanish, was elected co-president (2020-1) of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, a 1,500+ member professional organization dedicated to inspiring and promoting work in the environmental humanities. She also has a new publication, “Gendering EcoHispanisms: Knowledge, Gender, and Place in a Pluricultural Latin America.” (Hispanic Ecocriticism, edited by José Manuel Marrero, Peter Lang, 2019, pp. 69-92.)
Dr. Tracy J. Revels, professor of history, has two new publications: 1) “‘A Benevolent or Malevolent Agency’: Beryl Stapleton and Laura Lyons in The Hound of the Baskervilles.” (Essay in Resa Haile and Tamara R. Bowers, eds., Villains, Victims, and Violets: Agency and Feminism in the Original Sherlock Holmes Canon.) 2) “Dreams and Nightmares: Central Florida and the Opening of Walt Disney World” in the Journal of Florida Studies, Vol. 1, Issue 8, 2019. (http://www.journaloffloridastudies.org/files/vol0108/Revels-Dreams-Nightmares-WDW.pdf)
Jenny Bem, associate professor of accounting, was named by Impact America to its 2020 Hall of Fame for “creating lasting impact in our community” thanks to her dedication in building the SaveFirst program. She was this year’s honoree for the Carolinas.
Dr. Jeremy S. Morris, associate professor of biology, along with Jenna Link, James C. Martin and David R. Carrier, published “Sexual dimorphism in human arm power and force: implications for sexual selection on fighting ability” in the Journal of Experimental Biology (January 2020). The article also was highlighted in the journal’s “Inside JEB” feature.