JMU Research, Scholarship & Creative
Endeavors
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Greetings from the Shenandoah Valley!
Our congratulations to the 2019 graduating class of JMU Dukes! During a beautiful spring weekend in May, more than 3,000 undergraduates and 500 graduate students became James Madison University alumni, ready to tackle the many challenges facing our world. The 2019 undergraduate commencement ceremony included 113 Honors College graduates, and a keynote address by alumna Jennifer Morgan, President of SAP’s Cloud Business Group. Edna Reid, faculty in the JMU intelligence analysis program, delivered the Graduate School commencement address.
The Shenandoah Valley Technology Council hosted their annual awards gala – Tech Nite – on April 29th. The event recognized
eight award winners out of a total of 32 nominations
. JMU was represented in two of the awards – 1) Nick Swayne, executive director of 4-VA and JMU X-Labs received the Dr. John Noftsinger Leadership Award, presented by Shentel, and 2) a collaborative, public history project was chosen for the Innovation in Community Impact Award, presented by the College of Integrated Science and Engineering. From their website, “
Exploring Rockingham’s Past
is a collaborative project between James Madison University (the History Department and JMU Libraries) and the Rockingham County Circuit Courthouse that is making rare documents from Rockingham County’s storied past accessible to the public.”
JMU’s Institute for Innovation in Health & Human Services (IIHHS) hosted a Celebration of Community Dinner on May 1st. Numerous community members, organizations, and JMU faculty and staff were recognized for their efforts in support of the IIHHS mission, including interim director of sponsored programs pre-award, Tamara Hatch, and director of research development & promotion, Benjamin Delp.
Visit the IIHHS website
to learn about their many community-focused programs and activities.
Volume 4, Issue 3 UPDATE
: Rich Ingram (Department of Learning, Technology and Leadership Education) was invited to present "Empirical Consideration of Psychophysiological Correlates of Frontal Asymmetry in Learning" during a Featured Research Session at the 2019 Association for Educational Communications & Technology (AECT) International Convention in Las Vegas (to be held in October).
Office of Research & Scholarship
James Madison University
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Robin Crowder (Department of Learning, Technology, and Leadership Education) received a $125,000 award to coordinate and assist with arrangements for professional development events for approximately 165 educators at six different Virginia is for Learners Innovation Network institutes. This effort is sponsored through a partnership of the Virginia Department of Education, the Virginia School Consortium for Learning (VaSCL), and JMU.
Timothy LaPira (Department of Political Science) received a $10,500 award to measure changes in congressional staffers’ behavior over time and assess the impact of real-world political events and Democracy Fund-led professional development interventions in congressional systems and processes.
Christie Liu (JMU Libraries) and Elizabeth Johnson (Department of Geology and Environmental Science) received a $16,145 award from Virginia’s Academic Library Consortium to create an interactive microscopy textbook with a guide for student learning activities for geoscience courses, including Petrology and other courses that use microscopes.
Robert McKown (School of Integrated Sciences) received a $65,442 award from TearSolutions, Inc. to determine if quantitation of tear lacritin levels is a feasible marker for clinical diagnosis of Sjogren’s Syndrome and if topical application of lacritin can restore secretory and anti-inflammatory properties in patients suffering from Sjogren’s Syndrome.
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Art History Professor Receives National Gallery Fellowship
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John Ott, professor of art history, is currently
serving a two-month Paul Mellon Senior Fellowship
at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Awarded by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), Professor Ott was selected for this honor to develop his book –
Mixed Media: The Visual Cultures of Racial Integration, 1931-54
. A press release from the National Gallery of Art stated, “This project investigates black and white artists’ efforts towards racial integration, both in terms of imagery and within cultural institutions, from the infamous 1931 Scottsboro Boys trial until Brown v. Board’s 1954 desegregation of public schools.” Research & Scholarship reached out to Professor Ott in late May for an update on his fellowship, and Ott commented that he is conducting research at the Archives of American Art, the Library of Congress, and the National Archives on New Deal murals from across the country that feature integration—including one in downtown Harrisonburg. Joining Ott as Visiting Senior Fellows are faculty and researchers from Columbia University, Duke University, Harvard University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, University of Chicago, and the University of Oxford.
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Faculty Present Research at the Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine Annual Summit
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Pictured above: Patrice Ludwig, assistant professor of biology. Right Photo: Jon Miles, professor of integrated science and technology
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The Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine recently published a report of the 2018 Securing Prosperity in the Coastal Zone summit. Held in Richmond in November, JMU faculty members Jon Miles (School of Integrated Sciences), Carol Nash (School of Integrated Sciences), and Patrice Ludwig (Department of Biology) presented poster displays of research activities taking place in the coastal zone of Virginia. A primary goal of the summit was to “provide opportunities for attendees to begin meaningful dialogues on assets, stressors, and opportunities related to coastal prosperity.”
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JMU Center Engages Women and Girls
in Wellness Activities
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Founded in 2004, the Morrison Bruce Center works to enhance the well-being of girls and women through the promotion of an active and healthy lifestyle. Led by Kinesiology faculty members Liz Edwards and Sarah Carson Sackett, women of all ages are eligible to participate in a range of fitness activities in non-competitive environments. For the central Shenandoah Valley region, access to a resource like Morrison Bruce is critical, as the Center seeks to combat and overcome the low participation rates, societal norms, and low level of opportunities for women to engage in wellness activities, which are amplified in rural areas.
Read our feature on the Morrison Bruce Center
to learn about their programs and research activities.
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Girls participating in the Morrison Bruce Center’s Girls Have H.E.A.R.T. program outside of Waterman Elementary.
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Education Professor Publishes Article Exploring Text Difficulty and Comprehension
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Sarah Lupo, assistant professor of early, elementary and reading education,
published “An Exploration of Text Difficulty and Knowledge Support on Adolescents’ Comprehension”
with co-authors from Michigan State, UVA, Southern California, and SUNY Buffalo. Published in
Reading Research Quarterly
, the article seeks to “determine whether easy or challenging versions of texts, when accompanied by different types of instructional support, improved adolescents’ reading comprehension, particularly for students with below-average reading comprehension.” Upon collection of experimental data and analysis, the authors stated, “The results suggest that most students, even if struggling with comprehension, can read challenging versions of texts when accompanied by instructional support.”
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Faculty Q&A - Writing, Rhetoric and Technical Communication (WRTC)
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Cathryn Molloy, an associate professor of writing, rhetoric and technical communication (WRTC), sat down with JMU communications associate Hannah Robinson for a conversation about her research, which focuses on the rhetoric of health and medicine, and specifically addresses “ways that stigmatized patients consciously and subconsciously use rhetoric to rebuild their credibility after being unfairly doubted due to demographic factors.” A current research project of Molloy’s is
Rhetorical Ethos in Health and Medicine: Patient Credibility, Stigma, and Misdiagnosis
, which advances a “burgeoning body of narrative work on patient mistreatment in mainstream U.S. health and medical contexts; [the research] extends and challenges this area of inquiry by avoiding critiquing healthcare providers and focusing, instead, on patients’ empowering rhetorical moves for undermining biases in clinical settings.” Through her teaching and scholarship, Molloy employs personal narrative methods to “create space for silenced voices to be heard.”
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Management Faculty Publishes in Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior
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Interim department head and associate professor of management, Laura Leduc, co-authored a paper in the
Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior
. Published with Murray R. Barrick from Texas A&M, “
Selection for Fit
” examines “how and why people who are well matched to their organization experience optimal psychological reactions and performance.” Leduc teaches classes on human resource management and her primary research interest focuses on “understanding how individual differences, such as personality and values, impact a variety of workplace outcomes (for example, motivation, performance, citizenship behaviors, deviant behaviors, leadership, and ethical decision-making)."
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JMU Hosts Conference on Integrity, Civility and Grace
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In April, JMU’s Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures hosted its seventeenth annual conference –
Integrity, Civility and Grace: Yesterday’s Virtues?
Collaborating with faculty representing departments in the College of Arts and Letters, the College of Education, the College of Visual and Performing Arts, the College of Health and Behavioral Studies, and the College of Integrated Science and Engineering, both students and faculty approached the virtues of integrity, civility and grace from the unique lenses of a variety of disciplines. Also on display during the two-day event was interdisciplinary research connecting the social and natural sciences, law enforcement, medicine, visual arts, literature, and pop culture. The conference focus was inspired by Virginia’s Speaker of the House of Delegates, Kirk Cox (‘79), who urged his colleagues to practice integrity, civility and grace in service to the Commonwealth after a recent election.
View the conference proceedings
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House of Delegates Speaker, Kirk Cox (‘79), discusses “
Bridging the Divide
” to find common ground in the Virginia General Assembly.
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