Faculty, staff announce recent presentations, publications, service

10:18 a.m., Feb. 10, 2012--For the Record provides information about recent professional activities of University of Delaware faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Recent presentations, publications and service include the following:

Campus Stories

From graduates, faculty

As it neared time for the processional to open the University of Delaware Commencement ceremonies, graduating students and faculty members shared their feelings about what the event means to them.

Doctoral hooding

It was a day of triumph, cheers and collective relief as more than 160 students from 21 nations participated in the University of Delaware's Doctoral Hooding Convocation held Friday morning on The Green.

• Doctoral hooding
• Old Swedes
• Summer SAT, ACT prep
• 'Opus 13' pre-sale

Presentations

Alice Ba, director of Asian studies and associate professor of political science and international relations, gave a presentation on Southeast Asia’s strategic dilemmas and relations with China and the United States at the Italian Naval War College in Venice, Italy, Feb. 2.

Marvin Williams, assistive technology specialist at the Center for Disabilities Studies' Delaware Assistive Technology Initiative, spoke about new technologies at the January meeting of the Delaware Speech-Hearing-Language Association in a presentation called "iPads and Beyond!"

Publications

Lindsay H. Hoffman, assistant professor of communication, wrote an article "When the World Outside Gets Inside Your Head: The Effects of Media Context on Perceptions of Public Opinion" for Communication Research. The article examined how local newspapers can affect citizens’ perceptions of public opinion depending on the content found in those news articles about a presidential election as well as how often citizens talk about politics. Hoffman also was co-author with Carroll .J. Glynn and Michael E. Huge of an article "All the News That’s Fit to Post: A Profile of News Use on Social Networking Sites," Computers in Human Behavior, 28, 113-119. The article found that while news use is still a minor component of overall social network site activity, younger people, women and those with lower life satisfaction were more likely to report getting news on sites like Facebook.

Laura Eisenman, associate professor in the School of Education and principal investigator for the Transition and Postsecondary Programs for Students with Intellectual Disabilities (TPSID) demonstration grant at the Center for Disabilities Studies, contributed a chapter to the Handbook of Adolescent Transition Education for Youth with Disabilities, published in December 2011. The chapter is called "Social Skills, Supports and Networks in Adolescent Transition Education." Eisenman, who is also the coordinator of the disabilities studies minor at UD, wrote the chapter with former CDS staff member Sarah Celestin.

Service

Karen Zalewski, a project coordinator in the health and wellness unit at the Center for Disabilities Studies, has been appointed as an Act Early Ambassador for the Act Early Ambassadors project, which is designed to develop a network of state-level experts to improve early identification practices. It is a collaborative effort on behalf of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD), the Health Resources and Services Administration's (HRSA) Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) and the Association of University Centers on Disabilities (AUCD). As an Act Early Ambassador, Zalewski will serve as a state liaison to the Act Early Initiative, which seeks to increase awareness activities and improvement of early identification practices.

To submit information to be included in For the Record, write to ud-ocm@udel.edu.