June 2022

Criminology and Criminal Justice major, Rachel Lane and graduate student, Flavia Mandatori were presenters at the 2022 Criminology Student Research Symposium organized and hosted by Dr. Cedric Michel on May 28. In Rachel's presentation "Was Elizabeth Holmes’ Theranos Fraud Case Exceptional?" she compares the Theranos case with 83 fraud cases committed between 2002 and 2009. In the presentation "The Impact of Economic Strain on Intimate Partner Violence in Same-Sex Relationships", Flavia examined the unique risk factors that same-sex intimate partner violence victims (IPV) have to cope with.

The CSR Symposium aims to promote and support the research conducted by criminal justice majors. It not only allows participants to present and discuss research, but it also offers the opportunity to receive feedback from experts that serves as an invaluable experience for future presentations.

On May 22, 2022, Dr. Cedric Michel, Associate Professor of Criminology, conducted the first-ever Alpha Phi Sigma induction ceremony in Plant Hall's Grand Salon. Twenty-nine new members were inducted into the Kappa Gamma Delta chapter at the University of Tampa! Alpha Phi Sigma is the only criminal justice honor society in the world that is fully accredited and nationally recognized. This organization prioritizes academic excellence, leadership, service, and unity. Parents and friends were in attendance to celebrate new members for the academic year 2021-2022. Congratulations to the newly inducted members!

Alpha Phi Sigma Inductees

Left to right: Dr. Ensmann, Alice DeCoteau, Kelsey Little, Amrita Bindra, Chloe Wimpfheimer,

Dr. Whiteside

An interdisciplinary team led by Chloe Wimpfheimer, Department of Criminology, and Christina Falletta,Department of Education, showcased results of the study exploring students’ satisfaction with a gamified social engagement discussion board at the CSSME Undergraduate Research Conference. Mentored by Dr. Ensmann and Dr. Whiteside, and funded by the 2021-2022 University of Tampa Research Innovation and Scholarly Excellence Award/Dana Foundation Grant, the rest of the research assistants included Amrita Bindra, Kelsey Little, and Alice DeCoteau. Findings suggest instructors may leverage Yellowdig to foster engagement, course satisfaction, and critical connections.

Students from Assistant Professor, Yvonne Franco's EDU 434 Teaching Elementary Science course were hosted by Karen Folsom, principal of the 365-acre preserve in Thonotosassa. The preserve not regularly open to the public is used to host teachers and students across Hillsborough county schools. There, the students learned how to teach elementary science in an informal, authentic classroom setting, as well as ways to facilitate note booking, as a scientist would in nature. Dr. Franco shares around a 10-year partnership with Nature's Classroom which she says "will now serve our graduates interested in taking their elementary students in the future!".

Front Row: Jillian Richarz, Alexander Valentonis, David Esposito, Ethan Olson, Brianna Lovett

Second Row: Logan Cappuccilli, Angelina Santana, Logan Walchshauser, Gina Datillo, Daniella Novakovic-Kaeber

Back Row: Marin Burke, Nicholas MacWhorter, Jacob McGaughey, Dr. Charles McGraw Groh, Brandon Leonard

As part of HIS 320 Museums, History Sites, and Archives, History majors served as docents on Friday, April 22, for the opening of a new exhibit at the Henry B. Plant Museum, Standing Room Only: Popular Culture in Gilded Age Tampa. Students worked with Dr. Charles McGraw Groh, Associate Professor of History, to research the theater performances that are represented in the exhibit by 1890s programs from the Tampa Bay Casino, displayed alongside cabinet cards, cigarette cards, and other ephemera from the period. The exhibit also features QR codes that can be used to access additional content, including performances by Musical Theater majors Katie Terres and Dylan Glover, as well as Dr. Rodney Shores, Lecturer, Department of Music. The exhibit, which remains on display through July, highlights how Henry Plant’s elaborate 2,000-seat theater played a central role in Tampa’s new civic identity, allowing a small city with large commercial ambitions to construct a cosmopolitan image. The exhibit opening on April 22 was a featured event in the City of Tampa’s Fourth Friday, and students answered questions from the public, including local curators and archivists. 

In March, history majors went to the Florida Holocaust Museum accompanied by Assistant Teaching Professor Kelly Palmer and Associate Professor Charles McGraw as part of HIS 260 The Holocaust and HIS 320 Museums, History Sites, and Archives. Students toured the permanent exhibit of Holocaust history and were able to engage with the traveling exhibit, “Dimensions in Testimony” on loan from the USC Shoah Foundation. The exhibit is an interactive experience with survivors available at only twelve museums internationally. Through the museum’s speakers bureau, the students in HIS 260 welcomed guest Marie Silverman who shared her childhood experience of concentration camp internment and rescue with the class.

History majors Nicholas MacWhorter, Mariella Melidis, and Alexander Valentonis presented research from their Capstone papers for a panel titled "Power and Resistance Colonial Representations of Culture, Religion, and Politics" at the annual meeting of Florida Conference of Historians on February 26, 2022. Dr. Elizabeth Littell-Lamb, Associate Professor of History participated as a discussant, and Assistant Teaching Professor, Kelly Palmer served as the chair for the panel.

Presenters and Topics

Steadfast Faith: Chinese Christian and Western Missionary Perspectives in the Boxer Rebellion

Presenter: Nicholas McWhorter

The Lie of a Civilizing Mission: British Superiority and Imperial Expansion in India

Presenter: Mariella Melidis

The National Identity of Rhodesia: Colonialism and Contradiction

Presenter: Alexander Valentonis

The UT Mathematics department held its Senior Seminar in Plant Hall's Grand Salon on Tuesday, April 26. Math students presented a variety of research performed under the direction of a faculty mentor and exhibited their work to peers, faculty, and staff.

Topics and Presenters

Estimation of On Campus Arrests Using a Zero Inflated Model

Presenter: Julia Benedetti

Elliptic Curve Cryptography

Presenter: Matthew Bromley

A Visual Exploration of Olympic Data with Python

Presenter: Alexandra Hyatali

Strange, yet Practical World of Fractional Calculus

Presenter: Sean Knapp

The Use of Cryptography on Blockchain

Presenter: Ruth Elizabeth Nhet

Examining Racial and Ethnic Differences in Condom Use Using Logistic Regression

Presenter: Morgan Pelletier

Using Entropy and Information Theory for Optimal Wordle Play

Presenter: Benjamin Russel

Analysis of Life Insurance Claims

Presenter: Noah Segal

Artificial Neural Networks

Presenter: Julian Shniter

Markov Chain Monte Carlo Implementation: Capabilities and Future Opportunities

Presenter: Blake Williams

Pictured left to right: Kaitlyn Anderson, Alyssa Bernal, Isabelle Kalway, Caitlin Richardson (Chapter President (2022-2023), Sean Cauthen.

The Iota chapter of Pi Mu Epsilon National Mathematics Honor Society admitted ten new members on Tuesday, April 26, 2022. Congratulations on being recognized for your excellence in mathematics and scholarly development!

Pi Mu Epsilon Inductees

Kaitlyn Anderson

Alyssa Bernal

Sean Cauthen

Kayla Diaz

Marissa Feminella

Isabelle Kalway

Hely Ng Lin

Julia Piper

Hope Pohlman

Caitlin Richardson

Amelia Gaudio presented the paper "Abortion Laws around the World, 1945-2020" at the Florida Political Science Association Annual Conference in Daytona Beach, FL on March 26, 2022. In the paper, co-authored with Dr. Ryan M. Welch (Political Science and International Studies), they present data collected as a result of an Undergraduate Research and Inquiry Grant. The data contain information on the extent to which women (do not) have access to abortion for every country in the world on a yearly basis. They show that, while abortion laws have liberalized over time, that trend has slowed recently, and varies greatly between countries.

Audra Connell and Tiffany Tapanes, both Political Science majors, have been working on a research project with Associate Professor Liv Coleman on the political economy of the phosphate business in Florida. On Thursday, February 10, they went to Edward Medard Conservation Park in Hillsborough County to look at a reclaimed phosphate mine from the 1960s that has some odd topographical features that expose tree roots as a result of its mining past.

With support from the Office of Undergraduate Research and Inquiry, three Political Science majors and one Spanish major with a minor in Latin American Studies were able to present research at the 2022 Latin American Latinx Studies Symposium at Rollins College in April. Katherine Strauss presented her paper, How Does Access to Education Affect Economic Development? Maggie Swartz, who appeared on the same panel, introduced her research, How do Varying Levels of Education in Latin America Impact the Wealth Disparity? In the following session, Lydia Ferguson presented, What is the Relationship between Race and Employment in Latin America? Lastly, James Fiorenza presented, Idiosyncrasy of the State and God: An Analysis on Religiosity and Ideology in Latin America. The students’ research originated in Dr. Denis Rey’s fall 2021 course, Political Economy of Latin America, and was further developed during an independent study the subsequent semester. 

Psychology majors Leah Maher, Emily Simon, as well as UT Alumnae Nia Dyson '21, Ashley Ruehle '22, Lauren Sass '22, and Ashley Myers '22 were able to present research at the 68th annual conference for SEPA in South Carolina in March with support from the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship 2021 grant, 2021-2022 Undergraduate Research Inquiry grant and CSSME's Office of the Dean.

Researcher and Paper Presentation

Marsh, B.U., Dyson, Nia., Packard, R., & Simon, E. (2022). Contact and categorization: Intercultural dynamics reflected in the cross-race effect. 

Researchers and Poster Presentations

Dyson, N., Packard, R., Maher, L., & Marsh, B.U. (2022). Poorer memory for racially non-prototypical faces grouped with prototypical faces.

Myers, A., Sass, L., Simon, E., & Marsh, B.U. (2022). Protagonist’s Race Affects How a Narrative is Remembered.

Packard, R., Ruehle, A., Grishko G., & Marsh, B.U. (2022). Racially-Ambiguous Latino Faces Recognized Better When Not Categorized as Latino.

Sass, L., Dyson, N., Ruehle, A., Grishko, G., & Marsh, B.U. (2022) Gender more effective cross-race effect mitigator than commonly tested ingroups.



Left to right: Emily Davis and Joshua Campbell, class of ‘22, reveal their interactive training solution to Tim Ensmann, alumni ‘15, Director, Client Development & Operations at Collective[i].

Tim Ensmann, alumni ‘15, Director, Client Development & Operations at Collective[i], UT IDT alumni ‘22 Joshua Campbell and Emily Davis, Dr. Suzanne Ensmann.

Left to right: Dr. Radoslaw T. Biernacki, Dr. Suzanne Ensmann, Tolulope Alo, Farida H. Hassan, Drew Martin, Caroline Reilly, Porscha Alonzo, Jamie Lea, Morgan Culp, Dr. Santiago Echeverry

Photo: UT IDT scholar, Tolulope Alo and Penni Eggers, Clinical Education Manager at Echo Healthcare, IDT alumni of 2019.

Dr. Suzanne Ensmann connected her Trends and Issues class with internal and external opportunities to field trips for scholars in the IDT MS program to experience VR, XR, and AR technologies being applied in the field. Dr. Santiago Echeverry, ​​Associate Professor, Film, Animation and New Media offered his students’ showcase of presentations of the technologies while Penni Eggers, Clinical Education Manager at Echo Healthcare, IDT alumni of 2019 welcomed us into their facility creating immersive classrooms used to train learners to effectively grasp concepts emotionally beyond cognition with a sense of realism.

Part-time Professor Michelle Frankich was the keynote speaker at the 3rd Annual Building Capacity for Nursing and Midwifery Leadership in Africa Conference held by St. Paul's University in partnership with the MBF Center for Global Nursing Development in Kenya. She delivered a presentation titled "Blended Learning Course Design for Nursing Education" that focused on providing individuals with access to quality online education and skill-building to design courses that are effective for nursing students. In summarizing her overall experience, Dr. Frankich remarks, "what an exciting way to impact global nursing by sharing Instructional Design and Distance Learning techniques to the world!".

During the conference, Dr. Frankich spoke with KBC about St. Paul's newest e-learning program designed to help nursing degree students communicate with doctors in the U.S. As one of the program sponsors she calls it a system that bridges the gap and brings people together, allowing individuals to access higher education. It has already been implemented in nine of their partner schools, impacting over 2500 nursing students in Kenya and Malawi! (View the full segment here).

Assistant Teaching Professor Abhilash Kancharla's article "An Adaptive Blockchain-Based Decentralized Network Computing for Trustworthy Industrial Informatics Systems" is currently under review by the IEEE International Conference on Industrial Informatics.

Dr. Kancharla has also submitted an article titled "K-queue Variable Bulk Arrival and Static Bulk Service Model for Distributed Decentralized Chain (DDC) and Performance" that is under review in the Journal of Blockchain: Research and Applications.

On March 18, 2022, Dr. Charles McGraw Groh, Associate Professor of History, served as the inaugural speaker for the Susan Vasiloff Carter Lecture Series. The new series is supported by an endowment to the Henry B. Plant Museum. Groh’s talk, “The Rocking-Chair Report: War Stories from the Tampa Bay Hotel,” marked the opening of the museum’s new exhibit Stop the Presses! Fake News and the War of 1898. Groh serves as guest curator of the exhibit, which unpacks popular myths about the role of yellow journalism in the Spanish-Cuban-American War. The exhibit remains on display through December 23, 2022. 

Part-time Professor Nicolè Ford's article "Russia's Ancestral Lands' and Putin's Justification to Invade Ukraine" was published in the Defense Post and she was interviewed on CTV Canada about the war in Ukraine. In March, Ford was invited to speak as part of a panel discussion on the war in Ukraine titled "Understanding What's Happening and Why" at the University of Illinois Springfield.

Dr. Ford appeared on The Morning Joe with Gary Kasparov in April to discuss the most recent analysis on Ukraine. She spoke with La Presse, a French-Canadian publication, about Ukraine and Putin's new strategy to secure lands in Moldova and Donbas as well as NEWTRAL, a Spanish news outlet, about Slovakia's elections and what they might signify for Europe's future.

Associate Professor Anthony LaRose received the 2021 David Marx Outstanding Article award for his article "C.S.I: Colombia: Testing the Concept of the C.S.I Effect In Latin America" published in the National Social Science Association Journal. The University of Tampa Advising Committee also honored him with the 2021-2022 Outstanding Faculty Advisor award.

Dr. LaRose delivered a presentation at the National Social Science Association Conference in Las Vegas in March. His presentation "Towards the implementation of a New Regulation on the Exclusionary Rule in Mexico. What Mexicans can Learn from the American and Canadian Experiences" compares the exclusionary rule regulations in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

Dr. LaRose co-authored the paper “No Preocupes Amigo: The Exclusionary Rule Does Not Mean All Criminals Go Free” with Dr. Paola De La Rosa from the National Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi, Mexico which is currently being reviewed.

Denis Rey, associate professor of political science and international studies, and co-director of the Center for José Martí Studies Affiliate (CJMSA), delivered a presentation through Zoom hosted by the University of Quebec at Montreal’s Institute for International Studies and Center for Integration and Globalization Studies. The presentation focused on the work that the CJMSA has embarked upon recovering, digitizing, and rendering searchable the newspapers published by the Cuban émigré communities of Florida and New York during the latter part of the nineteenth century. With the support of internal RISE grants, the CJMSA has recovered over 1000 issues of more than 75 different newspapers. This ongoing effort seeks to provide a better understanding of Cuban immigrant revolutionary life and the transnationalism behind the war for Cuban independence.

Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies, Ryan M. Welch was invited to participate on a panel titled "Human Rights and International Law in the Ukraine Conflict" at University of Illinois, Springfield on May  19, 2022. The moderated panel, consisted of three subject matter experts to help a general audience understand which rights violations have occurred in the conflict, and which legal and political tools are available to hold violators accountable.

On Saturday, May 7th UT honored graduating candidates at its 154th commencement in two separate ceremonies at the Expo Hall at the Florida State Fairgrounds. Between the two ceremonies, there were 1,488 bachelor’s degree candidates and 225 master’s degree candidates — 1,713 in all. Congratulations to the newest graduates of 2022!

The University of Tampa's College of Social Sciences, Mathematics and Education held its 15th annual Undergraduate Research Conference in Plant Hall's Fletcher Lounge on Wednesday, April 27. UT Students from all academic disciplines/majors presented a wide range of research that may have been performed as part of a course, an honors thesis, an OURI-funded project, or an independent project conducted under the guidance of a faculty mentor.

For the first time in over two years, 51 student researchers attended in person, giving students the opportunity to discuss their study and gain a firsthand look at the research of other presenters. CSSME faculty members judged the quality of the research presented by students. The following presentations were awarded prizes: 

1st Place Poster

Presenter: Martin Stavro (Political Science and International Studies)

Mentor: Ryan Welch, Ph.D

Topic: Do Not Resist: How Police Militarization Increased Repression’s Likelihood Across 98 Countries

2nd Place Poster

Presenters: Madelyn Sandone, Benjamin Conness and Jenna Santer (Psychology)

Mentor: Sarah Orban, Ph.D

Topic: Apathy in ADHD: Predictors of Boredom in College Students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

On Tuesday, April 26, Dr. Hunter O'Hara, Dr. Terry Parssinen, and Dr. Emilio Toro were celebrated during a retirement reception hosted by the College of Social Sciences, Mathematics and Education in Plant Hall's Music Room. After a combined 92 years of service at UT, faculty and staff gathered to say farewell. Thank you for all of your hard work and dedication to our college, university, and students over the years!

The Computer Science (CS) Department completed its first year with students enrolled in UT's new BS in Computer Science! Students experienced an immersive and engaging freshman computing

curriculum called The Science of Computing, in which they used a credit card-sized Raspberry Pi

computer connected to a circuit-building platform to build and develop sensor-based software.

This two-course sequence allows students to learn the fundamentals of computing through an engaging, projects-based experience that utilizes sensor-based circuits as a way to connect abstract computing concepts to the real-world environment.

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

• Jun 30–Final Registration and Payment Summer 2nd

            6 weeks

• Jul 02–Classes end for Summer 1st 6 weeks
• Jul 04–No Classes(Holiday for 4th of July ).
• Jul 05–Classes begin for Summer 2nd  6-week classes
• Jul 07–Deadline to add/drop Summer 2nd 6-week classes with 100% tuition credit
• Jul 08–Monday classes meet to make up for the 4th of July Holiday