Polysomnography Program Coordinator Amber Allen presented, “The Rise of School Shootings … Could Sleep Play a Role?” at the American Association of Sleep Technologists (AAST) annual meeting, Sept. 29, in Indianapolis, Ind. Allen has also been asked by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) to serve on the subcommittee that is planning the sleep technologist track for the SLEEP 2019 conference. Allen is one of only three sleep technologists
nationwide asked to serve on the AASM committees. The other subcommittee members are all physicians. SLEEP 2019 is the largest sleep medicine conference in the United States.
Writing Center Manager Joan Reese’s short story, “Good Times” was published in Z Publications’ September Texas’ Emerging Writers: An Anthology of Fiction.
Governor Greg Abbott has appointed Sharon Malone, M.D., to the Advisory Council on Emergency Medical Services. The council recommends changes to the EMS/trauma system to ensure that the community receives comprehensive and efficient emergency care. Dr. Malone is the EMS Education Medical Director for the Collin College and Paris Junior College EMS Education Programs and the Medical Director for EMS services in Grayson, Lamar, Dallas, and Tarrant counties. Dr. Malone’s term extends through Jan. 1, 2024.
Members of the Collin Robotics Club assisted with the latest CoCo BEST (Collin County Boosting Engineering, Science & Technology) competition, in which high schools from around the area build robots to solve real-world problems. This year’s theme is “Save Our Oceans,” and robots were designed to collect ocean garbage. Club members served as referees in a field competition and judged the marketing presentations by each high school group on Oct. 13. The Collin Robotics Club also built a robot for demonstration purposes earlier in the month. Dr. Yiping Wang, Professor Jennifer Bergman,Nick Ellis, Brooke Higa, Roger Hsieh, Thao Cao and Cris Borias represented Collin College and encouraged high school students in STEM education.
Art Professor and Gallery Director Julie Shipp was the subject of a Q&A profile in the Frisco Enterprise newspaper, Oct. 12. Shipp was featured as the president of Frisco Arts, a community organization which advocates for art in the city, organizes art appreciation events and assists in the selection of public art. See the Frisco Enterprise article at http://starlocalmedia.com/friscoenterprise/news/julie-shipp-promotes-art-in-frisco-teaches-it-tostudents/article_d4baea06-cd95-11e8-a7be-537b21ad5505.html. Earlier in the month, a photo of Shipp and other members of Frisco Arts appeared in Frisco Style magazine alongside a profile of the organization.
Collin College Executive Vice President Dr. Brenda Kihl was elected to serve a two-year term as the secretary of the North Central Texas Workforce Development Board. Dr. Kihl has been a member of the board since 2014 and was recognized as Workforce Board Member of the Year in January of this year.
Dr. Sarah Fish, English Professor at the McKinney Campus, served as Assistant Company Manager for the Texas Shakespeare Festival this past summer.
History Professor Joe Jaynes presented the topic “Visiting Jimmy Carter’s Sunday School Class” at the McKinney Sunrise Rotary Club.
Associate Professor of English Brian Kamsoke was named as a semi-finalist for the 2018 Hudson Prize in Fiction for his short story “Between the Mile Markers.” www.blacklawrence.com/the-2018-hudson-prize-finalists-and-semi-finalists/
Professor of Speech Dr. Kerry Loinette is working on a book chapter titled “Using CPM to Understand (Im)permeable Boundaries: Stories of Adult Children of Alcoholics,” that was accepted for inclusion in an upcoming book titled, “Going Behind Closed Doors: Case Studies in Family Communication.” The book will be available in spring 2019.
Professor of English and Humanities Dr. Peggy Brown’s paper “Creative Writing Exercises: Oxygen for Composition” was accepted for the Trends in Teaching College Composition Conference.
On Sept. 28, 120 music students from the Dallas arts magnet Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts visited the Collin College Plano Campus Department of Music for an exciting day featuring presentations by Collin faculty, staff and students. The students were taken through the admissions and music advising processes, shown new music technology featuring do-it yourself tools available in the Collin MakerSpaces, allowed to perform their own music through the college’s state-of-the-art live sound array while simultaneously being recorded and mixed in Collin’s recording studio, and had panel discussions hosted by Collin music majors on a variety of topics related to college life and being a music major. Between sessions and during lunch, the students perused information tables hosted by Collin Visual Arts, Dance, Theatre, Music, Photography and Communication Design departments. The lunch hour also featured music performed by Collin jazz students which turned into a spontaneous jam session with the high school students. Organizers pointed to the college’s strategic priority of increasing outreach and creating streamlined pathways to Collin College by strengthening partnerships with high schools in the service region.
Karrie Newby, a Health Professions department faculty member, successfully defended her doctoral dissertation titled “Male Adolescent Drop Out from Figure Skating in the U.S.: Perceptions of Factors and Solutions” in September. Newby has been awarded the degree of Doctor of Psychology in Sport and Performance.
Collin College Alumna Melanie Meek has been admitted to the Texas Woman’s University Honors Scholar Program and awarded the Honors Program Scholarship from that university. This scholarship provides substantial tuition and fee support each year for four full years. It is one of the 10 most selective programs in the state. In a letter from TWU to the college announcing the Honors Scholars Program admission, Dr. Michael Schueth, an English professor at Collin College, was named by Meek as someone “who made a real difference” to her success.
Capital One and Collin College hosted a Career Corner during the Plano Families First Career Fair, Oct. 6. Plano Mayor Harry LaRosiliere, who spearheaded the event, said the mission of the fair was to strengthen hard-working Plano families. The Plano Campus State Farm® Career Center assisted by offering job seekers advice on how to create a résumé and develop a LinkedIn profile, participate in mock interviews, and obtain a free LinkedIn photo shot by a professional photographer.
Professor of Foreign Languages Dulce de Castro presented twice this summer. The first was “The Power of Silence: Exploring the Pedagogical Affordances of Wordless Graphic Novels and Silent Short Films,” at the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese Conference in Salamanca, Spain in June. The second was “L’Exploitation pédagogique des bandes dessinées sans paroles et des courts métrages muets,” at the annual convention of the American Association of Teachers of French in Martinique in July.
Leah Beck, Professor of Developmental Math, was selected as a Project ACCCESS fellow through the AMATYC fellowship program. The goal of Project ACCCESS is to increase knowledge of instruction and research in developmental mathematics. North Texas Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) held its annual cyber security conference at the Plano Campus on Oct. 5, with approximately 500 attendees. Sessions and classes covered security operations, hardware and software, and security careers.
Dr. Michael Latham, Professor of Economics and Director of the Honors Institute at the Plano Campus, is working on a National Science Foundation grant project titled, “Promoting Adoption of Team Based Learning Pedagogy in College Economics Classes.” The project consists of a team of economics faculty at two-year and four-year institutions creating a library of application exercises for principles courses.
Betsy Brody, Government Professor, was elected Vice President of the Fulbright Dallas Board of Directors in September. The Plano Campus Constitution Day included comment boards, pocket constitutions and popcorn in the atrium. About 200 students attended. The evening program included guest speaker Dr. James Morone, Professor of Political Science at Brown University, with about 100 people in attendance.
Government Professors Tyler Young, Will Geisler, and Tiffany Cartwright hosted Wendy Davis, former Texas legislator, gubernatorial candidate, and founder of Deeds Not Words, for a talk at the McKinney Campus as a Constitution Day event, Sept. 17. The event was attended by more than 100 students and staff members.
The McKinney Campus debate watching party for the Oct. 16 U.S. Senate debate between Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke was attended by 181 students, including a large group of Melissa High School students who are enrolled in the college’s online GOVT 2305 dual credit classes. Officials from the Democrat and Republican parties manned tables and talked to students, many of whom stayed after the event to discuss the ideas presented in the debate.
Millie Black, Political Science Professor, was accepted into the Leadership Wylie Class XV.
Geology Professor Patrick Gonsoulin-Getty recently published multiple papers. Along with several colleagues, Gonsoulin-Getty published “A standard protocol for documenting modern and fossil iconological data.” He also published “The fish trail Undichna from playa lake deposits of the Early Jurassic East Berlin Formation, Holyoke, Massachusetts” in Lucas, S.G., and Sullivan, R.M. (eds.), Fossil Record 6, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin; “Revision of the Early Jurassic arthropod trackways Camurichnus and Hamipes” in Boletín de la Sociedad Geológica Mexicana; and along with another author, “Aquatic insect trackways from Jurassic playa lakes: Reinterpretation of Lunulipes obscurus (Hitchcock,1865) based on neoichnological experiments” in Palaeodiversity.
Andy Galloway, Associate Professor of History was a finalist in the Lucky Strike Film Festival and won the Hollywood Forever Film Festival Best Documentary: Gold Award for his film “The Eviction” in September.
Steven Butler, Associate Professor of History, published an article, “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in North Central Texas,” and “Sidebar: Robert F. Kennedy in Dallas,” in Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, due out this fall.
Larry Stern, Sociology Professor, presented “Robert K. Merton: Sociologist, Social Critic, Public Intellectual, and the Ethic of Responsibility” at the 50th Annual Meeting of Cheiron: The international society for the history of behavioral & social sciences.
Professor of Economics Kaycee Washington has been elected to a three-year term as Co-Chair of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Economics Field of Study Committee.
Dr. Amanda Alad, Associate Professor of Anthropology, completed the article, “Fishing economies and ethnic specialization under the Inca,” for Oxford Handbook of the Incas, Oxford University Press, 2018.
Professor of Government Kimberly O’Neil graduated from Plano Citizens Academy in September.
Dr. Randy Kinnett, Professor of Music, presented the paper, “The Klan and Music in 1920s Dallas” at a semiannual meeting of the Southwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society, West Texas A&M University, Canyon in September.
Dr. Levi Bryant, Professor of Philosophy, recently published “Three Theses for an Ontology of Networks,” in Networked Humanities: Within and Without the University by Parlor Press.
Wylie Independent School District filmed Julie Boganwright performing respiratory tasks for a video to be shown at schools in WISD.
Student Alex Lopez received the Jimmy A. Young Memorial Scholarship from the American Respiratory Care Foundation. Lopez declined travel to receive the scholarship, but his name will be mentioned at the opening ceremony for the American Association for Respiratory Care Annual Convention this December in Las Vegas.
Chemistry Professor Amina El-Ashmawy authored, “Preparing for the 2019 International Year of the Periodic Table of Elements,” for publication in InChemistry magazine coming fall 2018, presented, “Pre-med to US Professor: My personal journey” at the 25th Biennial Conference on Chemical Education at Notre Dame University, and attended the 256th American Chemical Society National Meeting in Boston over the summer.
Marty Berryman, Kinesiology Professor and Head Tennis Coach, coordinated the 16th annual Special Olympics event created to teach tennis to Special Olympics participants. Coach Berryman recruited members from the varsity men’s and women’s teams, Collin College Lions, and local community to assist in the six-week program held in September and October on the Plano Campus.
Interim Associate Dean Kristen Streater was awarded a Named Faculty Scholarship and presented this honor at the Scholarship Awards Ceremony on Sept. 13.
Dean Mary Barnes-Tilley visited 85 classes at the Plano Campus during the first three weeks of the fall 2018 semester. The focus was to visit classes taken by first time in college and/or freshman students. This was an effort to welcome students to Collin College and to let them know about available support services and about all the resources available to help them achieve their goals.
Associate Registrar Samantha Dean successfully defended her dissertation, “College Preparedness: The Problem in North Texas” in front of a panel at The University of Texas at Dallas. Dean is pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Political Economy.