History major Marin Burke created a temporary exhibit for Old City Hall in downtown Tampa. As part of her internship at the Henry B. Plant Museum, Burke worked under the direction of Dr. Charles McGraw Groh, Associate Professor of History, and Susan Carter, Curator/Archivist of the Plant Museum, to master the stages of exhibit design. The exhibit, The Epicurians: The Tampa Bay Hotel’s Chefs, 1891-1920, uses original photographs and objects to explore the history of celebrity chefs and gourmet dining in grand hotels. The exhibit remains on display in the Mascotte Room of Old City Hall from November 2, 2021-January 11, 2022. Her contribution to the Henry B. Plant Museum’s programs will continue into the new year. During her semester-long internship, Burke conducted Spanish-language research in Cuban revolutionary newspapers in support of the museum’s main gallery exhibit for 2022, Stop the Presses! Fake News and the War of 1898.

Students from Part-Time Professor Jared Krukar’s Appellate Advocacy class presented their final mock oral arguments in the courtroom used by the Florida Second District Court of Appeal. Judge Rothstein Youakim (left) and Staff Attorney Amy Bhatt (right) joined Prof. Krukar (center) in judging the students and giving them a real-world look into appellate practice.

Senior seminars are held at the end of the semester as the culminating experience for mathematics majors. This fall semester students in Mathematics and Mathematical programming have been hard work in preparation for MAT 490 Senior Seminar's oral presentations. Each student under the direction of a faculty advisor were tasked with an in depth study on a topic. On December 8, students presented quite a range of topics drawn from both applied and theoretical mathematics.

Topic: RSA Encryption Algorithm

Researcher: Kei Riley

Advisor: Associate Professor, Brian Garman

Topic: Complex Proofs for Secondary Formulas

Researcher: Katie Diesing

Advisor: Associate Professor, Leslie Jones

Topic: An Application of the Fourier Transform in Infrared Spectroscopy

Researcher: Alynne Holmstrom

Advisor: Assistant Teaching Professor, Morgan McAnally

Topic: Fibonacci Sequences

Researcher: Allison Jones

Advisor: Associate Professor, Leslie Jones

Topic: An Overview of the Riemann Zeta Function

Researcher: Samantha Lundy

Advisor: Associate Professor, John Sumner

Psychology major Alley Rodriguez presented a poster at the National Academy of Neuropsychology virtual conference on December 9-10, 2021. Along with collaborators from PAR, inc., Alley's project focused on "Preliminary Development of an Embedded Measure of Effort on the Memory Module of the Neuropsychological Assessment Battery (NAB)". Alley is the recipient of a 2020 PAR Annual Scholarship, awarded to one Psychology major at the University of Tampa each year.

An interdisciplinary team of faculty consisting of Dr. Suzanne Ensmann, Dr. Lina Vasquez-Gomez,

Dr. Aimee Whiteside, and Dr. Ronda Sturgill conducted the Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Teaching and Learning study that explored the abrupt transition to emergency remote learning at UT. Students (n=711) across all colleges participated, and findings revealed an underlying paradigm shift in the move to emergency remote education whereby students became accountable for their learning and discovered connectivity and engagement through various technologies. Results relating to social presence were presented at the Online Learning Consortium and later published in the Online Learning Journal 25(3), 36-56 as Connections Before Curriculum: The Role of Social Presence During COVID-19 Emergency Remote Learning for Students.

On November 15, 2021, Dr. Enilda Romero-Hall served as an invited presenter to the Indiana University School of Education Dean’s Speaker Series. During the presentation Dr. Romero-Hall shared insights from her ongoing research (in collaboration with colleague Dr. Nadia Jaramillo Cherrez from Oregon State University Ecampus) on “Feminist Pedagogical Tenets for Online Teaching and Learning” with faculty and graduate students at Indiana University Bloomington.

Dr. Romero-Hall has also published a journal article titled "Navigating the Instructional Design Field as an Afro-Latinx Woman: A Feminist Autoethnography" in TechTrends. Writing this autoethnography was such a vulnerable experience. This paper, using a feminist autoethnographical approach, explores Dr. Romero-Hall’s personal experiences as an Afro-Latinx woman studying, teaching, and researching in the instructional design and technology (IDT) field. In this paper, Dr. Romero-Hall dissects intersectional feminism and its influence on her and, therefore, influence on her IDT teaching and scholarship.

Dr. Patty O’Grady was invited by the CEO of Character.org to contribute a video presentation to the National Forum. Character.org is a worldwide network that empowers people of all ages to practice and model ethical core values that shape our hearts, minds, and choices.

Dr. Patty O’Grady has also received congratulations and recognition from her publisher, W. W. Norton and Company, NYC, on her 5,075th mention in the academic literature including 429 mentions in highly influential publications.

Associate Professor of Political Science, William Myers gave a talk at the University of Innsbruck (Austria) on Friday December 3 titled "(Mis)managing COVID-19: Federalism in the United States" where he documented how federal-state dysfunction fueled by partisanship prevented an effective and coordinated response to the ongoing pandemic.

Dr. Myers had a co-authored publication accepted at Political Behavior (top-ranked subfield journal and #12/182 in political science) with colleagues at Georgia State University and the University of Connecticut titled, "Carriers of the Creed: Examining Democrats’ Commitment to Egalitarianism as Principle and Policy". They demonstrated that the combination of political sophistication and commitment to equality leads self-identified Democrats to support policies that benefit groups other than their own including African-Americans, gays and lesbians, and the poor.

Assistant Professor of Cognitive Psychology, Benjamin Marsh's article, Memory for diverse faces in a racially attentive context has been published in Cognitive Research: Principle and Implications, vol. 6. This study manipulates attention to race in two ways: by presenting participants a diverse array of faces that vary in racial ambiguity and by having participants identify the race of each face studied. These two experiments assessed how racial ambiguity and racial salience moderates the cross-race effect (CRE).

Dr. Marsh's journal article has also been featured on iMotions' website and Linked in page.

Dr. Pina Holway co-authored an article with Dr. Karin L. Brewster and Dr. Kathryn Harker Tillman of Florida State University titled, "Timing of First Sexual Experience with a Same-Sex Partner: A Life Course Approach" published in the journal of Archives of Sexual Behavior. This study aims to provide a representative benchmark against which non-population-based samples can be evaluated and is accomplished by (1) describing the occurrence of first SESSP (Sexual experience with same sex partners) by sexual identity and gender and (2) assessing variation in the timing of first SESSP across birth cohorts and by individual characteristics. This article highlights the complicated nature of LGB sexual experiences, and calls for greater effort to ensure that LGB individuals are represented in national surveys designed to provide data on sexual and reproductive health.

On October 27th, over 60 criminology and criminal justice students and faculty attended an exclusive screening of Untouchable, a documentary following the experiences of victims of sexual offenses and sex offenders in the community and the criminal justice system. After the screening, the audience was joined by the documentary’s director, David Feige, who shared his experience with creating the documentary and held a question and answer session.

LEARN MORE AND WATCH THE TRAILER

http://www.untouchablefilm.com (Click link)

On Wednesday, October 27, AKD and Sociology Club co-hosted a virtual event: Applied Sociology Practice Experience Panel. Applied Sociology Majors, Christina Pasca, Isabella Ruiz, Stefanie Theodoropoulos, Alumnae (B.A. '21) Kaytlan Rouse, and (B.A. '21) Erin Shea discussed and answered questions about their SOC480 experience.

On December 9, Adjunct Professor, David Krahl met with over 100 of his intro to Sociology students all wearing a Sociology t-shirt to have their photos taken in front of Plant Hall. This high turnout of students participating in this photo session is one of the many ways, part-time Instructor, David Krahl keeps his students engaged in thinking about Sociology!

We can all agree that the Applied Sociology program has had quite a year! They were named Chapter of the Year by Alpha Kappa Delta, the International Sociology Honors Society thanks to Dr. Pina Holway's efforts. The student team took first place in the student problem-solving competition at the National Association for Applied and Clinical Sociology meetings in October, and they also hosted several Zoom workshops with experts in Applied Sociology from all over the U.S. this semester, as well as UT Sociology alumni.

If you have an upcoming event that you would like advertised in the newsletter, please send your event information to Sasha Cunillera at scunillera@ut.edu