Highlander Highlights: Week of April 29, 2024
Every two weeks, Highlander Highlights shares with readers some of the extraordinary research and accomplishments happening on and off campus through the tireless work and curiosity of our students and faculty.
COSD graduate student wins first place in research competition
Emily Moore, a second-year graduate student in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders (COSD), won first place in the Communication Disorders Foundation student research competition on March 26 at the Speech-Language-Hearing Association of Virginia (SHAV) annual conference in Richmond, Virginia.
“It was such an honor to receive this award,” said Moore, who is graduating in May. “I have been working on this project for about a year and a half, so it was exciting to see it come together on the poster and be able to share it with others in my field.”
Moore’s research poster, “Preparing Speech-Language Pathologists for Early Intervention: An Exploration of Practice-Based Interprofessional Education,” was based on her master’s thesis.
A group of 22 professional judges representing university, medical, educational, clinical and private practice speech-language pathologists and audiologists declared Moore’s the winner among 40 poster submissions from across Virginia and Washington, D.C.
In addition to Radford, students from Gallaudet University, George Washington University, Hampton University, James Madison University, Longwood University, Old Dominion University and Virginia Commonwealth University presented their work and took part in the poster competition at the annual conference.
“Practice-based IPE programs are less common than other formats like case studies, so this was an awesome research opportunity to learn more about collaboration in a real early intervention practice setting,” explained Moore, who received a B.S.Ed. in Speech Communication Disorders with a second major in cognitive science from the University of Virginia in 2022.
COSD Professor Corey Cassidy mentored Moore and served as her thesis advisor.
Inspiring research on display
More than 400 students presented their original research over the course of a week during the university’s 33rd Annual Student Engagement Forum.
The annual event gave students an opportunity to share and engage in conversations about their work through oral and poster presentations on a variety of topics. This year, topics ranged from meditation to genetic genealogy and the future of solving crimes to measuring wind speeds on the Arctic sea ice.
Ian Koeppen (left) and Kiara Bartoli presented their research on “Climate Growth Response of Liriodendron tulipifera at Selu Conservancy” at the 33rd Annual Student Engagement Forum.
“I am continually inspired by our students, who have a seemingly infinite supply of curiosity that leads them to chase new knowledge both across campus and around the globe, with students conducting research in Malawi, Normandy, the northernmost reaches of Alaska and many more locations,” said Joe Wirgau, director of the Office of Undergraduate Research and Scholarship (OURS).
Freshman Kiara Bartoli and sophomore Ian Koeppen worked on a project with Professor of Geospatial Science Stockton Maxwell examining “Climate Growth Response of Liriodendron tulipifera at Selu Conservancy.”
The group cored tulip poplar trees and measured the ring boundaries to determine their age, then correlated their data with the area’s temperature and precipitation data to examine tree growth.
“It was so amazing,” said Bartoli, a Research Rookies student from Charleston, West Virginia. “Just to have the opportunity to be able to do this my first year at Radford has been so beneficial to me. It’s made me a better speaker. It’s helped my work ethic, and it has given me different ways to explore things I’m passionate about. I’m learning so many skills.”
Koeppen said doing research during the spring semester and participating in the Student Engagement Forum “has been so much fun. At first, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into,” he said with a chuckle. “But, now that I’ve done it, I’m definitely interested in doing more research.”
Van Noy takes to the river for his latest book
Professor of English Rick Van Noy has a new book publishing soon – May 15, to be exact.
“Borne by the River: Canoeing the Delaware from Headwaters to Home” chronicles the author’s 200-mile canoe trip on the Delaware River, along with his dog, Sully, a Catahoula mix, to Van Noy’s childhood home, a little upstream from Trenton, New Jersey.
“’Borne by the River’ reckons with the way that rivers braid into one’s own life – thrilling rapids, eddying pauses, and life-changing rifts and falls,” explained the book’s publisher, Cornell University Press. “Van Noy rediscovers and shares how river journeys can scatter anxieties, wash away regrets, and recreate the spirit in its free-flowing currents.”
In the book, the publisher notes, Van Noy combines memoir, natural and local history “and engaging reportage of his encounters with other paddlers and river enthusiasts, including members of the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania. Van Noy reveals deep and shifting layers of environmental, historical, cultural, and personal significance of the Delaware.”
Van Noy had previously paddled sections of the Delaware, but never the whole thing continuously.
“I felt a deep connection to it, having grown up beside it,” he said. “In 2019, I incurred an injury to my neck, like the kind you get from whiplash, though I didn’t know how. This led to a tear in my internal carotid artery and subsequently, a stroke and helicopter ride. It took a while to recover, but after an event like that, you begin to think about the limited time you have left, and what you might like to do. The river trip was there and calling.”
Van Noy will read a selection from “Borne by the River,” his fourth book, at the Radford Public Library at 7 p.m. on May 16.
Another first place for research, this time for an economics professor
Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics Seife Dendir is the winner of a prestigious research award.
The professor’s article, “Intergenerational Education Mobility in Sub-Saharan Africa,” was selected as a winner for the 2023 IPUMS Research Awards. IPUMS provides census and survey data from around the world.
“We received many outstanding submissions, and the Award Committee agreed that your article was the best contribution in the category of published research using IPUMS International data,” the organization wrote to Dendir when informing him of the honor.
The paper uses census data from 22 countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), which is available through IPUMS International. Dendir applied the intergenerational correlation method to investigate the relationship between parents’ and children’s educational attainment across six cohorts born between the mid-1950s and early 1990s.
“The paper demonstrates the power of census data from IPUMS International for cross-national and cross-temporal analysis,” IPUMS said. “This paper is significant in its examination of developing countries that have not been studied extensively compared to their developing counterparts, and more particularly in SSA, from which very little educational mobility evidence comes.”
The IPUMS Research Awards honor outstanding research using data available from the organization to advance or deepen society’s understanding of social and demographic processes. “We look for papers that use innovative approaches, comparative analyses and showcase the power of the IPUMS data collections,” IPUMS said. Cash prizes are awarded for best published work and best graduate student work, published or unpublished, in eight categories.
Leading the discussion on law enforcement
Criminal Justice Assistant Professor Stacey Clifton has been chosen to moderate the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce May 2024 panel discussion on law enforcement.
The panel will be made up of local enforcement agencies in Montgomery County, including the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office and Blacksburg, Christiansburg and Virginia Tech police departments.
Clifton will guide the panelists in a discussion concerning various law enforcement topics, she said, “such as community partnerships, current challenges facing law enforcement, officer health and well-being, collaborations among law enforcement agencies and advancements in policing training.”