LAS Trailblazers

Spring 2022 

Faculty Awarded Tenure & Promotion

• Dr. James Agbodzakey (2021-22): Associate Professor of Public Leadership (Promoted to Full Professor effective 09/01/2022)
• Dr. Saif Al-Sultan (2021-2022): Assoicate Professor of Information Technology
• Dr. Donna Hamilton (2020-21): Associate Professor of Biology
• Dr. Julie Siddique (2020-21): Associate Professor of Criminal Justice

Faculty Appointed to New Rank 2021-2022

• Mohammadmehdi Eslamieh- Lecturer of Biology
• Cristina Gonzalez- Lecturer of Spanish
• Scott Grimes- Lecturer of Chemistry
• Shelby Miller- Lecturer of Linguistics
• Mr. Gabe Otteson- Lecturer of Communication & Technology
• Dr. Corron Sanders- Lecturer of Public Health
• Dr. Jonathan Villarreal- Assistant Professor of Mass Communication

New Faculty 2021-2022

• Muhammad Adeel: Visiting Assistant Professor of Information Technology
• Roberto Gallardo: Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice
• Ian Grigsby: Lecturer of Mathematics
• Matthew Harrison: Lecturer of Psychology
• Nicholas Lorusso: Assistant Professor of Biology
• Paige Northern: Lecturer of Psychology
• Heekyeong Park: Assistant Professor of Psychology

GRANTS AWARDED

• Donna Hamilton: Co-Pi on 5-year, $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to increase participation of minority students in STEM.
• Eric Coleman: Co-Pi on National Institute of Justice (NIJ) grant with The National Police Foundation, and CPI on Body Worn Cameras, $150,000.

PROFESSIONAL RECOGNITIONS

• Saif Al-Sultan: External reviewer for the undergraduate Computer Science Program at the Southern Arkansas University.
• Syeda Jesmin: Served as Book Editor for the peer-reviewed journal Sustainable Communities Review (SRC, link scrjournal.org; Served on the Reviewer panel for Social Sciences and Humanities grants, 2021.
• Muhammed Yousufuddin: Outstanding service to students’ award, University of North Texas at Dallas Student Engagement Department & the Office of Experiential Learning.
• Glenda Balas: Elected as Secretary-Treasurer and member of the Executive Committee for the Broadcast Education Association, a premiere international media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. Dr. Balas currently serves BEA as a member of the Board of Directors, Chair of the Research Committee, member of the Diversity & Inclusion Taskforce, and District Representative of District 5 (an 8- state region that includes the state of Texas).
• Jesseca Lightbourne: Reappointed to the City of Dallas’ Housing Finance Committee Board, Chair of new nonprofit: Joppy Momma’s Farm in Dallas, TX; City of Dallas’ Comprehensive Land Use Committee (CPC), member; City of Dallas’ Comprehensive Land Use Committee (CPC), member.

Selected Faculty Peer-Reviewed Publications:

• James Agbodzakey- Kumah-Abiwu, F, Agbodzakey, J.K, & Darkwa S. K. (2021). Historical Perspectives of Policymaking and Administration in Africa (book chapter) in Routledge Handbook of Public Policy in Africa edited by Gedion Onyango. Routledge, an imprint of Taylor and Francis Books Ltd.
• Agbodzakey, JK., Ogolla, K., DeMatteo, K., &  Hawkins, C. (2021). Collaborative Governance without  Hierarchy: The Case of South Dallas Project, Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and  Governance, edited by Ali Farazmand, Springer.
• Agbodzakey, J.K., Shumway, K. & Houston, M. (2021). Social Entrepreneurship Education as a Viable Approach to Building Resilient Communities, Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance, edited by Ali Farazmand, Springer.
• James Agbodzakey & Steven Arxer- Section editors, Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy and Governance. Springer International Publishing.
• Eric Coleman & Steven Arxer- Coleman, J. E., & Arxer, S. L. (2021). Methodological Reflections of Research in a Service Organization. In Jung Min Choi and John W. Murphy, Community-Based Service Delivery: Theory and Implementation. New York: Routledge.
• Noureen Khan- Khan N. A, Khan A. S., Waste Number of Space- Efficient Knot Mosaics for Prime Knots with mosaic number 6, JP Journal of Geometry and Topology (JGAT) JP-18-000101, (accepted), August 2021.
• Khan N. A., Khan A. S., Coloring Invariants of Virtual Knots and Links, JP Journal of Geometry and Topology (JGAT), Volume 26 (1), 75-90, 2021. -Patterson M., Tynes J., Tynes A., Khan N. (2021) Urban Agriculture and Public Policy. Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance (Springer).

• Nicholas Lorusso- Lorusso, N. S., & Shumskaya, M. (2020). Online laboratory exercise on   computational biology: Phylogenetic analyses and protein modeling based on SARS‐CoV‐2 data during COVID‐19 remote instruction. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, 48(5), 526-527

• Gemmellaro M, Villata J, Hamilton G, Lorusso N.S. (2021). First record of the secondary                    screwworm fly, Cochliomyia macellaria (Fabricius) (Diptera: Calliphoridae) in Northern New              Jersey. Bull. N.J. Acad. Sci., 62(1), 16-19. [In press]
• Shelby Miller- Miller, Shelby. (2021). “ADA Compliance and Teaching Linguistics Online,” Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America: Scholarly Teaching in the Age of COVID and Beyond. Vol 6, Special Issue.
• Sura Rath-"Rumour, Gossip, and Loneliness: the Nautch-Girl and her Other in The Romance of a Nautch Girl and The Woman in the Bazaar,” Sahitya, peer-reviewed journal of the Comparative Literature Association of India ISSN: 2249-6416 (online). 2020. (with Arnapurna Rath, IIT-Gandhinagar)-Review, Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor, Alison Arant and Jordan Cofer (eds). Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2020, In Flannery O’Connor Review (19: 89-92) 2021.
• Muhammed Yousufuddin- M. R. Bhandari, A. K. Herath, S. Rasapalli, M. Yousufuddin, and C. J. Lovely. “Total synthesis of the nagelamides-synthetic studies towards the reported structure of nagelamide d and nagelamide e framework”, J. Org. Chem., 12971, (2020).

• Daley, J. M. Goncalves, C. M. Holinej, S. Lira, D. E. Muniz, A. I. Santiago, N. Sukran, T. R. Cundari, and M. Yousufuddin, “Synthesis, crystal structures, and DFT calculations of tungsten (IV) and tungsten (VI) phosphino polyhydrides” by C. C. Carter, B. R. Allen, D. V. Bui, D. A., Inorg. Chim. Acta.  (2020) (seven UNTD undergraduate student co-authors)

• M. P. Paudyal, M. Wang, J. H. Siitonen, Y. Hu. M. Yousufuddin, H. C. Shen, J. R. Falck, L. Kurti,    “Intramolecular N–Me and N–H aminoetherification for the synthesis of N-unprotected 3-amino-O- heterocycles” Org. & Biom. Chem., 557, (2021).

Student News and Accomplishments:

• Malik Childs- First student selected for the Joint Admission Medical Program (JAMP).
• Nayeli Lopez, Sergio Rocha, Christina J. Thomas, Kevin Falcon, Joanna Robledo, Muhammed Yousufuddin- Published paper in the Journal of Chemical Crystallography.
• Theresa Tumminia- featured on NBC news for the Oak Cliff Veggie Project
• Brittany Stubblefield-Engram and Michael Davison- presented their research at the Southwest Popular and American Culture Conference, Albuquerque, NM. These presentations were born out of projects in ENGL 2347: Hip Hop Rhetoric (Fall 2021) at UNTD, taught by Dr. Robert Tinajero, Assistant Professor of English. Their participation was funded by the Department of Languages, Linguistics & Rhetoric. Brittany’s Presentation: “All these N——- is My Sons: A Discussion of Black Mothers and Motherhood in Hip Hop”. Michael’s Presentation: “Starting Somewhere: Hip Hop Rhetoric and It’s Role in Mindset Transformation and Policing Reformation”.

WHAT’S NEW IN LAS:

New Academic Programs:

During the 2020-21 Academic Year, faculty in the School of Liberal Arts & Sciences developed two baccalaureate programs and several minors.

• A Bachelor of Arts in Justice & Social Policy and a Bachelor of Arts in Applied English. Minors were created in Rhetoric & Writing Studies, Applied Linguistics and Geographic Information.
• A Justice and Social Policy degree from UNT Dallas gives students an affordable path to rewarding careers in criminal justice agencies, as well as social and community organizations working in the emerging areas of social equality and justice reform.
• The Applied English program offers students a unique opportunity to study the English language from an interdisciplinary perspective centered on Linguistics, Rhetoric, and Writing. The program is designed for students interested in pursuing a career in a number of fields connected to the study of language such as Education, Publishing, Language Services, Advertising, Speech and Hearing Science, Language Documentation, Communication, and Information Technology.

New and Revised Departments

Effective Fall 2021, the School of Liberal Arts & Sciences has reorganized several departments to better serve our students, build programmatic synergies and effectively use our resources.

• The Sociology program merged with Criminal Justice to create the Department of Criminal Justice & Sociology, thus cementing the already close curricular and personnel links among the two programs.
• With Sociology’s move, the Psychology program became a standalone Department of Psychology.
• The Department of Life and Health Sciences was split into the Departments of Natural Sciences and Department of Public Health in order to maximize the unique curricular & academic identity of these two departments.
• Finally, the Department of World Languages & Linguistics was renamed the Department of Languages, Linguistics and Rhetoric to better reflect the disciplines and programs housed in the department.

WHAT’S GOING ON IN LAS:

LAS Critical Issues Forum

The School of Liberal Arts and Sciences recently established The Critical Issues Forum. This bi-annual series will provide an opportunity to explore important topics such as public health, climate change, democracy, economic development, cybersecurity, culture, criminal justice reform, and many others. The first Forum, “Contextualizing Vaccination: A Dialogue on COVID-19 and Implications for Public Health,” was held Thursday, November 11th, 2021. The second forum on the issue of Immigration was held, April 14th, 2022 featuring community leaders, such as Mr. Domingo Garcia, National President of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), and university faculty and students.

LAS Homecoming Alumni Reception

On October 30th, 2021, LAS hosted a reception for our alumni to celebrate UNTD’s Homecoming. Over 20 alumni from across the LAS programs enjoyed a wonderful brunch, beautiful views of our campus and getting together with friends, faculty and former colleagues! We wish to thank Provost Stewart, as well as the faculty and alumni who made the occasion so special!