With the approval by the Board of Trustees at its meeting on Thursday, January 28, 2021, the offices of the President and Provost announced the granting of tenure and/or promotion to professors at UT, including 3 professors in CSSME.

CSSME students presented their research at the Virtual 2021 Florida Undergraduate Research Conference (FURC) that was held on February 26 and 27.

Psychology minors Danusia Mryczko and Tina Brown presented "Busyness and Cognition in Undergraduate Students." Mryczko and Brown were mentored by Assistant Professor of Psychology Sara Festini.

Nursing and applied sociology major Corinne Fanta and nursing major Katherine Justus presented "The Long Term Physical and Psychological Consequences of Sex Trafficking on Women in Florida."

Education Professor/TESOL Coordinator Tony Erben's edited book 45 Years SSTESOL: A Chronicle of ESOL Advocacy, Research and Practice in Florida was published through Sunshine State TESOL Press. In 2018, the Sunshine State TESOL of Florida (SSTESOL) celebrated its 45th anniversary. For 45 years, SSTESOL has led the nation in research, pedagogy and advocacy for English Language Learners. The aim of this book is to highlight work in ESOL education that has been carried out in Florida. Thirty-five scholars and educators from around the state authored 14 chapters covering everything from working with students with interrupted schooling, building home-school connections, applying the latest technologies in an era of remote learning, building capacity for bilingual education, advocating for English language learners and approaches that facilitate literacy development.

As Vice President of the SSTESOL, Erben coordinated SSTESOL's first ever virtual state conference that was held on November 14, 2020. With over 550 participants, 32 exhibitors and 16 concurrent Zoom strands, each with 9 consecutive sessions, the conference was a complete success. Forty five UT education majors from EDU 312 and LIN 217 attended the conference and three freshmen from LIN 217, Isabella Haight, Lorissa Gotsch and Brooke Bergrin, will have their conference reflections published in the Spring issue of the SSTESOL Journal. In October, SSTESOL will hold a hybrid conference with the face-to-face component being held in Tampa.

On February 20, faculty and students from the UT history department participated in the "Expressions of Resistance and Power Through Culture, Religion and Politics" session at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Florida Conference of Historians. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year's meeting was held virtually.

Professor of Instruction I Kelly Palmer served as chair of the session and Associate Professor Elizabeth Littell-Lamb served as discussant.

Associate Professor Spencer Segalla presented "The Soul of Decolonization: The Agadir Earthquake, Architecture, and Moroccan Identity since 1960."

Senior history majors Ryan Erwin and Sydney Gilison presented the research they conducted with guidance from a history faculty member during Fall 2020 HIS 400 History Capstone Research Seminar. Erwin presented "Breaking the Hegemony: World Fairs and Exhibitions, the Establishment of British Dominance in the West." Gilison presented "The Right to Death: The Effect of British Attitudes Toward Traditional Indian Culture and the Practice of Sati in Colonial India."

The following political science and international studies alumni have been accepted to graduate programs.

Cheyenne Lee ('20) has been accepted into the Ph.D. programs for political science at both the University of Texas-Austin and the University of Maryland. She is currently deciding which program to join in Fall 2021.

Hunter Marshall-House ('20) has been accepted into a Master's program at King's College, London beginning in Fall 2021.

Alexandra Stinson ('20) has been accepted into Michigan State University's Ph.D. program for political science and will be starting the program in Fall 2021. Additionally, she will be part of the inaugural cohort for the Michigan State Interdisciplinary Training in Education and Social Science (MITTENSS) Fellowship, which applies social science knowledge and research methods to education policy problems and implementation.

January 28, 2021 commemorated the birth of José Martí, Cuban hero of independence, journalist, and poet, and the Center for José Martí Studies Affiliate (CJMSA) at The University of Tampa celebrated by hosting a three-day virtual conference, Envisaging José Martí in 2021: History, Culture and Education. Associate Professor Denis Rey (Political Science and International Studies) and Professor James Lopez (Language and Linguistics), who co-direct the center, teamed up with Associate Professor Kenya Dworkin (Hispanic Studies and Translation) at Carnegie Mellon University, and Associate Professor Lisa Nalbone, (Modern Languages and Literature) at University of Central Florida, to organize the biannual event. This year’s inaugural meeting showcased the work of many of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Scholars who participated in the 2019 NEH summer institute, José Martí and the Immigrant Communities of Florida in Cuban Independence and the Dawn of the American Century, also hosted by CJMSA and the University of Tampa.

Congratulations to Assistant Professor of Psychology Benjamin Marsh and junior psychology major Ashley Myers for being awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) grant. During the summer 2021 session, Marsh and Myers will work on two experiments. The first experiment investigates how bilinguals’ languages can be preferentially associated with the concepts of one culture over another and how this relationship can have subtle effects on behavior. In the experiment's procedure, Bilingual Latino participants and monolingual White participants were first prompted to identify whether a string of letters formed a word (Spanish or English) or not. After responding to a letter string, participants were presented with three faces simultaneously to study wherein the left-hand and right-hand faces were either White or Latino. During the experiment, participants eye movements are tracked. The expectation was that responding to Spanish words would facilitate more visual fixations to Latino faces than White faces in Bilingual Latino participants, but not monolingual White participants.

The second experiment tests whether memory accuracy for narrative details is influenced by cultural expectations. Participants were given a narrative to read that involves a few mild confrontations that could be interpreted as racially tinged under certain circumstances. The narrative also contains pictures to represent four narrative characters. After reading the narrative, memory accuracy for event details and character faces was measured by a multiple-choice test. It is expected that memory errors will be associated with the race of the story's protagonist and the race of the participant. Lastly, participants will be more likely to incorrectly remember faces of characters in the story when they are faces of a race different from their own.