Kudos - Summer 2023
Awards & Honors
Dr. Jeanne Hamming, professor of English and associate dean of the College, was awarded a grant from the Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) as one of the collaborators on the ACS Women’s Leadership Institute funded by the Mellon Foundation Diversity and Inclusion Initiative. During summer 2023, colleagues from Centenary, Rhodes College, and Southwestern University will invite up to 16 participants to explore strategies for developing and communicating an authentic and inclusive leadership style for current and aspiring women leaders at ACS schools.
Dr. Terrie Johnson, assistant professor of education, was chosen as a reviewer for the summer 2023 special issue of the Teacher Educators’ Journal published by the Virginia Association of Colleges and Teacher Educators. The journal aims to stimulate discussion and reflection about issues related to teacher education.
Conference Presentations & Lectures
Dr. Jessica Alexander, associate professor of psychology, presented “Capturing vocal fry: Understanding the acoustic and perceptual differences in elicited and naturally produced vocal fry” at the 2022 meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. The research, conducted with Centenary alumna Sarah T. Irons, was also published in the October 2022 issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America and is available at pubs.aip.org.
Dr. Andia Augustin-Billy, associate professor of French and Francophone Studies, presented “Reading Feminine Resilience in 19th-Century Louisiana Creole Literature” at the 54th annual Northeast Modern Language Association conference at the University of Buffalo in March 2023.
Dr. Amanda Donahoe, assistant professor of political science, presented a guest lecture in celebration of International Women’s Day for the School of Peace and Conflict Studies at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, in March 2023. The invited lecture, “Reproductive Rights in Post-Brexit, Post-Conflict Northern Ireland,” highlighted her recent research in this area.
Holly Grose, assistant director of stewardship and donor relations, and Ricki Rebollar, director of student involvement, presented “Collaboration is Key: Engaging Students Promotes Future Philanthropic Support” at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) conference in San Antonio, Texas, in April 2023.
Dr. Bellee Jones-Pierce, assistant professor of English, presented a critical essay entitled “’What happens if you touch the hind?’: Transformation and Touch in Richie Hofmann’s ‘Blue Anther’” at the Fifty-First Annual Meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America. The distinguishing feature of the SAA conference is its program of working research seminars. The conference year begins each June with the announcement of a new roster of the seminars and workshops in which its members’ collaborative engagements will take place. All seminars and workshops entail significant work completed and circulated in advance of the conference, where enrolled participants share and discuss research papers, common readings, performance exercises, digital projects, and other academic undertakings. Jones-Pierce produced her paper as part of a seminar titled “Contemporary Poets and Early Modernity.” Her registration for the seminar and travel to the conference were supported by professional development funds associated with the O. Delton Harrison Board of Regents Endowed Professorship in the Humanities and by extra professional development funds awarded to junior faculty through an application process.
The essay also appears in Issue 5 of Annulet: A Journal of Poetics.
Dr. Kathrine Weeks, associate professor of chemistry, gave a guest lecture at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, in April 2023. Weeks discussed the genetic and biochemical basis for familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), the clinical presentation of the disease, the biochemical mechanism behind effective treatments, and the long-term outcomes for FH patients.
Dr. Tom Ticich, professor of chemistry, accompanied senior students Cassie Halford and Bryn Jenkins to the American Chemical Society’s annual spring conference in Indianapolis in March 2023. Halford and Jenkins presented a poster detailing the Centenary Chemistry Club’s recent activities on campus and in the community.
Publications
Dr. Bellee Jones-Pierce, assistant professor of English, published “When Your Ex-Fiancé Calls” in the poetry journal phoebe 52.5 in May 2023. “When Your Ex-Fiancé Calls” was a finalist in phoebe’s spring 2023 contest.
The February 2023 edition of Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature featured Jones-Pierce’s essay juxtaposing John Milton’s “The Passion” with the concept of “narrative prosthesis” as proposed by David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder. “The essay also sets literary critical discomfort against both the discomfort inherent in poetry and the acts of interpretation I witness from day to day as my disabled son moves through the world,” wrote Jones-Pierce. “In the end, I make a case for a lyric prosthesis and argue, too, that disability poetics are at work even when a text is not obviously about disability.” Wordgathering is an open-access journal of disability poetry, literature, and the arts.
Dr. Rachel Johnson, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, has a forthcoming article in the Fall 2023 edition of Educational Practice and Theory. Along with Dr. Svjetlana Curcic of the University of Mississippi and Dr. Lori A. Wolff of Fordham University, Johnson co-authored “Collaboration Across Departments: The Effects of an Intervention to Improve Preservice Teachers’ Writing.” The article will appear in November 2023.
Dr. Chrissy Martin, assistant professor of English, published “When Mary From Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Told Jen She Smelled Like Hospital” and “Kaleidoscopic” in the online journal Defunct Mag in May 2023.
In April 2023, Martin published another Real Housewives of Salt Lake City-themed poem in the journal Drunk Monkeys, entitled “When the Other Women on the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Call Mary a Grandfather [redacted].”
Martin’s poems “Fourteen Day Follow-Up” and “Forty-Two Day Follow Up” appeared in the March 2023 edition of The Pinch. Her poems “What We Have to Ask Permission For,” “Pink,” and “Centerfolds” appeared in the March 2023 edition of Swamp Pink, a poetry publication previously known as Crazyhorse.
The 2023 Valentine’s Day issue of miniskirt magazine featured Martin’s poem “Date Night Overdue.”
Mark Miller, dean of students, was co-author for a chapter in the recently-released book Small and Mighty: Student Affairs at Small Colleges and Universities published by the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA). Miller co-authored “Working with What We Have: Reallocation and Realignment of Restrained Resources” with L.C. Potts and J.R. VanHecke from Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. The book was released in April 2023.