University community reports honors, presentations, publications

For the Record provides information about recent professional activities of University of Delaware faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Recent honors, presentations and publications include the following:

Honors

Lexis Kambour, an Honors Program student who is majoring in fashion merchandising and minoring in journalism, is one of 25 graduate and undergraduate students nationwide who have been named Ray Greenly Scholarship semifinalists by the National Retail Federation Foundation. The semifinalists are in the running to be named finalists and to be potential recipients of either a $10,000 or a $25,000 scholarship.

The five finalists will be recognized and the top recipient announced in front of thousands of their peers, retail executives and industry leaders at the Shop.org Digital Summit in Philadelphia in October.

The Ray Greenly Scholarship provides financial support to students pursuing a degree in fields most relevant to the rapidly growing careers in digital retail such as engineering, communications, marketing, business, e-commerce and economics.

“The retail industry is especially unique when it comes to careers in the digital arena, giving passionate individuals the opportunity to make a difference in the future of innovation in ways no other industry can,” said Ellen Davis, NRF Foundation executive director and NRF senior vice president. “These students have a long list of qualities that we think will make them leaders wherever they may end up. We are incredibly excited to recognize their hard work and know we’ll see great things from all of them.”

As part of the application process, each recipient was required to submit a case study project in addition to two essays on their career aspirations and retail innovations. The case study allowed the students to showcase their ideas on how retailers can improve their omnichannel strategies.

Presentations

Erik T. Thostenson, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and affiliated faculty of UD’s Center for Composite Materials, gave an invited plenary address at MATCOMP’15 in Madrid, Spain, on July 7. MATCOMP’15 is the ninth National Congress on Composite Materials (XI Congreso Nacional de Materiales Compuestos MATCOMP’15) of Spain. Thostenson’s plenary address was titled, “Carbon Nanotube Multi-scale Hybrid Composites: Smart Sensing Capabilities in Structural Applications” and highlighted his pioneering research in utilizing carbon nanotubes as in situ sensors for detecting damage in advanced composites and for use in structural health monitoring.

Tiffany Saulter, affiliate assistant librarian, Manuscripts and Archives Department, University of Delaware Library, presented a poster session titled “Forever Jung: Linking Comics Characters and Archetypes across Time” at the annual colloquium organized by Wayne State University’s student chapter of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance on April 24 in Detroit. The poster was co-authored by Heidi Tebbe from North Carolina State University, Elin Jacobs from Indiana University, Jacob Shelby from Iowa State University and Rachel O’Connor from Indiana University.

Publications

Philip Goldstein, professor emeritus of English, University of Delaware-Wilmington, and Patsy Schweickart of Purdue University have co-edited a special issue of Reception, the journal of the Reception Study Society. The issue examines reception and cultural diversity.

White House internship

Christopher Merken of Radnor, Pennsylvania, a UD junior with a major in political science and international relations, is a 2015 White House summer intern. Merken, with minors in global studies, legal studies and political communication, is among 150 students or recent graduates selected nationwide for the highly competitive program. White House interns work in 16 departments and, in addition to performing a variety of job-related tasks, they attend weekly events such as a speaker series with senior staff members and take part in service projects at schools and nonprofit organizations in Washington.

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

EngineeringFor the Record, July 10, 2015