Online Newsletter for NSU Faculty & Staff
NSU University School’s Middle School Model United Nations team competed at the NIRAMUN Conference at NSU and took home top honors for their speaking, conflict resolution and position paper, “Combating Food Insecurity Amid Rising Natural Disasters.”
Learn more about NSU University School’s college preparatory program for students in preschool – grade 12 at www.uschool.nova.edu.
Posted 03/04/24
Students at the Anne Kolb Nature Center
Students in the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts are visiting local wilderness areas this winter and investigating the ways in which writing can help improve them.
The grant-funded special topics course, taught by Professor of Writing Claire Lutkewitte, Ph.D., is called “Writing in the Wilderness.” It tours locations in Broward County, including Anne Kolb Nature Center, Fern Forest Nature Center, Long Key Natural Area and Nature Center, and Tree Tops Park, allowing students to observe the ways writing can have an impact in these areas.
“My hope for this class is that students not only sharpen their writing skills but that they also learn writing matters to the preservation of wild places,” Lutkewitte said.
Guest speakers throughout the semester visit the class to discuss ways writing can help improve wilderness areas, and students complete writing projects, including proposals, informative texts and presentations.
For more information about Writing courses and the Writing minor offered through the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts, click here.
Posted 03/03/24
More than 150 students, educators and guests attended the student-organized Fischler Academy Teachers of Tomorrow Conference on Saturday, Jan. 13.
The event was organized by a committee of Fischler Academy students and led by the chair of the committee, Sean Stanton. It was the conference’s second year, evolving from a small event in a couple of classrooms in the Carl DeSantis Building to a much larger event in the Alan B. Levan I NSU Broward Center of Innovation.
The theme of the conference was “Technology and Equity in Education.” Topics focused on the ways technology, such as artificial intelligence, can strengthen teacher practice and improve outcomes for students.
The event featured nationally recognized speakers such as EdTech consultant and expert Dr. Monica Burns, educational consultant Ken Shelton and educator and digital learning pioneer Holly Clark.
Plans for the conference began months in advance, and Fischler Academy Director Luke Williams said the event was also made possible through the support and leadership of Dr. Jennifer Berne, the faculty adviser.
“She played a huge role in really guiding these students in a lot of ways with what this event would look like and helping to put some of those pieces together,” he said.
Williams also cited the support of Director of Special Projects Jessica Rodriguez, Department Chairs Carmen Session and Marcelo Castro, and Dean Kimberly Durham.
Posted 03/03/24
NSU students Rohalio Trigger, Simbarashe Mtasa, and Maria Asimopoulou at the Mission Munchies’ Trail Mix product launch.
Students in NSU’s Huizenga Business Innovation Academy in the H. Wayne Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship set out a couple of years ago on a mission dedicated to helping underserved people. They wanted to develop a product or service that could generate revenue they would then donate to a struggling community.
The students connected with South Florida resident Don Campion, owner of Banyan Air Service, an airline that flies to the Bahamas, the Caribbean and South America. Campion and his wife, Sueanne, are revitalizing a 100-bed hospital and a 300-student college of nursing in the rural town of Egbe, Nigeria, in southwest Africa. Campion was also inducted into the College of Business and Entrepreneurship’s Entrepreneur and Business Hall of Fame in 2021.
In collaboration with the Campions, the students created a peanut-based snack they could sell first on NSU’s campus, then market off-campus. After the students established their product’s manufacturing and packaging, Mission Munchies was born in September 2023.
The venture is committed to supporting the hospital revitalization project and economic growth in Egbe by donating 100 percent of its profits from its Nigerian-inspired product sales. Their efforts resulted in a $3,000 donation to the Egbe cause last December.
Heading up the project are:
“Just think, as the Mission Munchies snack grows and as students continue to innovate with other products the impact their class can make a world away,” Campion said. “As this product grows, students will be researching what product or service could be mentored at Egbe to employ villagers and bring a level of commerce to the town.”
NSU students Amanda, Marlyn, Maria and Alma cook some of the Mission Munchies ingredients.
Mission Munchies is a trail mix made of peanuts, raisins, banana chips, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, chocolate and Kuli Kuli, a West African snack. The students buy their products from a trusted wholesaler and mix them altogether. They make their Kuli Kuli from scratch using peanuts, ginger, cinnamon, sugar and salt.
Don Campion, CEO of Banyan Air Service, hosts Huizenga Business Innovation Academy students Maria Asimopoulou and Nicholas Wiseman at the Egbe Medical Mission Gala.
The project has had its ups and downs, Asimopoulou said.
“Some of the successes are seeing our donations making an impact on people’s lives,” she said. “Some of the challenges are manufacturing in high demand and bringing customers to the company.”
With the support of Jose Brache, assistant professor and academic director of the Huizenga Business Innovation Academy, College of Business and Entrepreneurship, Dean Andrew Rosman and Campion, the students say they’ve learned the importance of shared goals and objectives as well as the power of collaboration.
Social entrepreneurship endeavors such as Mission Munchies address social and environmental challenges through innovative and sustainable business models, Brache said. They’re increasingly relevant in our economy because they combine the efficiency of free markets with a social purpose that is “Best for Our World,” consistent with the mantra of NSU’s business college.
“In going through the experience of running a business that has a social purpose, our students develop their business vision, leadership, creativity and capacity to take initiative in the contexts of high uncertainty,” he said. “And while they further polish these significant entrepreneurial competencies, they develop an awareness on their own with the potential to make a contribution to humanity.”
Posted 02/20/24
Janine Morris, Ph.D., and Eric Mason, Ph.D.
NSU Writing & Communication Center (WCC) faculty coordinators Janine Morris, Ph.D., and Eric Mason, Ph.D., have wrapped up the last of a series of workshops to help faculty in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences (HCAS) who are planning to apply for promotion in 2024. Morris and Mason are associate professors in the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts.
The workshops are one example of how the center serves faculty. They were designed to be an accessible and inspiring opportunity to support faculty as they wrote pieces of their dossier, including a reflective narrative, summary of accomplishments and curriculum vitae. Halmos Dean Holly Lynn Baumgartner, Ph.D., and Charles Zelden, Ph.D., Halmos promotion and sabbatical committee chair, spoke at the workshops about best practices and common pitfalls.
“The HCAS Promotion Workshop series has been a positive way to increase faculty preparedness for the application, understanding of the expectations for review and successful completion of the process, thereby achieving promotion,” Baumgartner said. “The WCC has been instrumental in organizing the myriad pieces that make for a strong dossier. It was important to me to be one of those pieces and inform faculty of what I look for in their materials.”
Students and faculty can come to the WCC to get help on their professional journeys, receiving feedback on their job search documents, professional portfolios and more. To learn more about the NSU Writing and Communication Center, visit nova.edu/wcc
Posted 02/18/24
Nicole Perry
NSU’s B.A. in Theatre program and the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts hosted Certified Intimacy Director and Coordinator Nicole Perry for a workshop with the cast and crew of the theater production “Gruesome Playground Injuries” last Jan. 20.
During the workshop, titled “Protecting the Performance: Boundary and Closure Practices for Cast and Crew,” Perry taught students, faculty and staff supportive practices they can implement during rehearsals and performances.
“How do we create a space where everyone is respected?” Assistant Professor of Theatre Alex Alvarez asked. “Very often in a hierarchical structure, people silence themselves, because they don’t want to be perceived as sensitive or difficult. By providing this workshop, we’re reminding students, faculty and staff that each of us is a full human being even at work, that ‘no’ is a complete sentence and that we can tell people when they’ve crossed a boundary. It’s empowering to us all.”
Learn more about Arts events here.
Posted 02/18/24
David Kilroy, Ph.D.
David Kilroy, Ph.D., faculty and chair of the Department of Humanities and Politics in the Halmos College of Arts and Humanities and the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Center, discussed “Irish Neutrality and American Foreign Policy” as the featured speaker for Tír na mBláth, the Southeast Florida branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, in Delray Beach last November. The organization supports the culture, linguistic history and music of Ireland.
Kilroy’s research and teaching interests include U.S. political and cultural engagement in the world, U.S. foreign policy and issues of domestic American cultural and political identity, and U.S. engagement in West Africa, the Caribbean and Ireland.
Posted 02/18/24
Several of NSU’s online programs moved up in this year’s U.S. News & World Report rankings.
The Master’s in Information Technology program jumped 14 spots to rank 27th out of 92 programs surveyed. The Master’s in Nursing program ranks 86th out of 186 programs surveyed across the nation.
Other programs climbed in the Best Online Program rankings:
An early adopter of online education, NSU has had programs annually recognized as among the nation’s best by U.S. News & World Report. Programs are evaluated on factors such as services and technologies, student engagement, and faculty credentials.
Find out more on the 2024 rankings.
Posted 02/18/24
NSU Audiology team: Catherine Regan and Alexis Sullivan, second-year student Katelyn Jacobsen and Professor Jackie Davie, Ph.D.
NSU Audiology students were invited to take part in the Florida State University Communication Science and Disorders’ 10th annual service trip, titled
“Help Guatemala Hear.”
The team, including fourth-year students Catherine Regan and Alexis Sullivan, second-year student Katelyn Jacobsen and Professor Jackie Davie, Ph.D., spent the last week in January in Sololá, Guatemala. The trip involved conducting hearing evaluations, examining outer and middle ear health, cleaning ear canals and fitting hearing aids.
The team assessed 211 patients, including several who were referred for further medical evaluation. Forty-six repeat and 134 new users of hearing aids were given amplification devices donated by Signia and ReSound Hearing Aid, while other supplies were funded by private sponsors. The team gave more than 50 Aquaphor creams and 25 Eucerin shampoos to two individuals suffering from harlequin ichthyosis, a genetic skin disorder.
The doctoral students said they appreciated the opportunity to mentor undergraduate students. The team noted how grateful many of the people were for their help.
Posted 02/18/24
A fundamental challenge to marine biodiversity protection is the relatively poor and patchy understanding of the diversity and distribution of marine life, making it more difficult to strategically designate protective measures and assess their success.
The marine environment presents unique challenges: the world ocean is vast, much of it is distant from human populations, its life is often hidden from view and sampling presents formidable logistical difficulties. As a result, observations of ocean life are a fraction of those on land and are especially sparse in the water column and deep sea. These ecosystems have been the subject of an internationally recognized program led by researchers at Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Center (HCAS).
The program, titled “DEEPEND” (www.deependconsortium.org), is led by Professor Tracey Sutton, who was among 28 scientists, economists and marine policy experts worldwide who were invited to assess the U.S. national strategy for marine biodiversity protection. Sutton participated in a series of dialogues and workshops over the past three years, the results of which were recently published.
In this paper, published in One Earth, the task force that included Sutton proposed a scientific framework to assess the distribution and abundance of marine biodiversity in U.S. waters inside and outside existing protections and applied it to waters from the near coast to the borders of the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (200 miles offshore).
Why This Matters
Marine biodiversity globally is in crisis. Climate change, overfishing, habitat destruction and other extractive industries are causing species losses at an alarming rate. Increasingly, scientists, managers and governments are taking steps to protect marine life. But it requires a network of protected areas that are ecologically representative, foster connectivity between habitats and consider the dynamic nature of coastal and marine habitats.
The framework is the basis by which managers and communities can ground regional and local actions with knowledge of marine biodiversity distribution. It’s crucial to fulfilling the president’s commitment to protect 30% of land and waters by 2030, implementing the White House Ocean Climate Action and National Ocean Biodiversity Strategy. It can inform existing mandates that involve area-based management, from the National Marine Sanctuaries Act to the Marine Mammal Protection and the Endangered Species Act.
Posted 02/04/24