Faculty and staff awards, honors and publications

SUNY New Paltz congratulates faculty and staff on their notable awards, honors and publications.

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GERALD BENJAMIN (The Benjamin Center) has received a $19,000 grant from the City of Beacon, New York for a project titled “Beacon Charter Commission.”

JOHNNY COXUM (UPD) has been invited to lead a course in “Fair and Impartial Policing” for the New Paltz Police Department this December. Coxum, a Lieutenant with the University Police Department, completed a national training program in Fair and Impartial Policing earlier this year, and will now share his expertise with law enforcement officers in the greater New Paltz community.

MEGAN FERGUSON (Chemistry) is co-PI (along with Megan Nez of Wellesly College and PI Eileen Spain of Occidental College) on a project, titled “Quantitative AFM Investigations of Adhesion of a Planktonic Bacterial Predator to Biofilm Prey,” which has received a $83,280.00 grant from Occidental College.

SCOTT LEVINE (Geography) has received a $15,000 grant from The City College of New York – University Transportation Research Center for his project titled, “Simulation of Automated Vehicles’ Drive Cycles.” More information is available online.

SARA PASTI (Dorsky Museum) has received a $3,000 grant from Hudson River Valley Greenway / National Heritage Area for a project titled “Hudson Valley Visual Arts Collections Consortium.”

DAVID RICHARDSON (Biology) was the lead author of an article titled “Intra- and inter-annual variability in metabolism in an oligotrophic lake,” which appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Aquatic Sciences. Richardson worked with co-authors Cayelan Carey (Virginia Tech), Denise Bruesewitz (Colby College) and Kathleen Weathers (Cary Institute) to present results of one of the first analyses of long-term records of lake metabolism from Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire. The article can be viewed in its entirety by following this link.

RACHEL SOMERSTEIN (Digital Media & Journalism) has won a $6,000 publication grant from the American Academy of University Women to support the revision of an article on U.S. television news’s commemorations of the Berlin Wall.

KARLA VERMEULEN (Institute of Disaster Mental Health) has received an $82,328.00 grant from SUNY Albany for a Preparedness and Emergency Response Learning Center (PERLC) psychology first aid “Train the Trainer” Program.

LYDIA WILLOUGHBY (Sojourner Truth Library) coauthored a chapter in the recently published Critical Library Pedagogy Handbook (Association of College & Research Libraries, 2016), edited by Nicole Pagowsky and Kelly McElroy. Willoughby’s chapter, co-written with Kelly Blanchat of Yale University, is titled “Social Justify Your Lesson Plan: How to Use Social Media to Make Pop Culture Scholarly.” It addresses pedagogical practices for information literacy instruction in ways that are relevant to undergraduate research students.

REVA WOLF (Art History) gave an address titled “‘Your Brother, Paco’: Goya and Freemasonry” at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.