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

Recent presentations, service, publications and honors include the following:

Presentations

Trevor A. Dawes, vice provost for libraries and museums and May Morris University Librarian was a panelist, along with Jee Davis from American University and Violeta Ilik from Adelphi University, at the 2023 Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Conference in Pittsburgh on March 16. The topic of the panel was “Academic Library Leaders Discuss Difficult Topics,” and the panelists provided practical advice on leading and facilitating difficult conversations in library settings.

Service

On Feb. 25, 2023, Fran O’Malley, director of the Delaware Center for Civics Education, supported students at the 32nd annual Delaware High School Mock Trial competition in Wilmington, Delaware. O’Malley founded the mock trial competition in 1991 and ran it for many years before helping to establish the Delaware Law Related Education Center Inc. (DELREC), to institutionalize the event and turn it over to members of the Delaware Bar Association (DBA) and Courts. This year students from 18 high schools around the state participated in the competition. At the event, O’Malley assisted in the scoring room, helping to tabulate scoring results for a quick turnaround time on each trial before transitioning to the next round of competition. Members of the DBA and Courts presided over the mock trials and judged performances. During the mock trials, students acted out a court case and debated at the highest level in courtrooms at the Leonard L. Williams Justice Center. This year, the mock trial participants included 217 students, 52 coaches and 118 Delaware Bench and Bar members, who all served as presiding or scoring judges. Every year, this simulated setting helps to provide students with an enriching and educational exercise that provides high school students with valuable learning experiences in law, public speaking, and critical thinking. O’Malley is a member of DELREC’s Board of Trustees. Next year Delaware will be hosting the national competition in Wilmington. The Delaware Center for Civics Education is a program of the University of Delaware’s Institute for Public Administration, a research and public service center in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration.

Publications

Kristen Poole, Ned B. Allen Professor of English, is the general editor of Routledge Resources Online - The Renaissance World currently available to the public, with a full launch schedule for summer 2023. Poole began working with Routledge in 2017 to create this large-scale digital platform that includes essays on the global Renaissance from scholars across the disciplinary spectrum, including UD faculty Meredith K. Ray, Elias Ahuja Professor of Italian; Mónica Domínguez Torres, professor of art history with a joint appointment in Latin American and Iberian studies; and Julian Yates, H. Fletcher Brown Professor of English, among experts drawn from other institutions. “‘Renaissance’ is itself a fraught term, as is the very question of how, or even whether, to divide the past into discrete eras. Our authors do not hold a monolithic notion of ‘Renaissance’ as a clearly defined time or movement. This resource invites a fresh take on the period by emphasizing its movement and intersection—the travel of people, ideas and objects,” Poole says.

Honors

Thomas H. Epps, III and LaShanda Korley have been elected as fellows of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the society’s highest grade of membership. Nominated by their peers and elected by the Board of Directors, AIChE fellows must have significant chemical engineering experience (generally 25 years), have demonstrated significant service to the profession and have been a member of AIChE for at least 10 years. Epps is the Allan abd Myra Ferguson Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He is a leader in nanostructured polymers and biobased materials research who serves as the director of UD’s Center for Hybrid, Active and Responsive Materials (CHARM) and co-director of the Center for Plastics Innovation (CPI) and the director of the Center for Research in Soft matter and Polymers (CRiSP). Korley is a Distinguished Professor in the departments of Materials Science and Engineering and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Her group takes inspiration from nature to design new polymers using innovative molecular-level design strategies and manufacturing approaches. She is the director of the CPI, co-director of CHARM and the associate director of CRiSP.

The University of Delaware Emergency Care Unit (UDECU), the volunteer, student-run ambulance serving UD and the Newark community, received two honors at the annual National Collegiate Emergency Medical Services Foundation (NCEMSF) conference, held Feb. 24-26 in Boston. With 39 members, UDECU had the second-highest number of delegates at the conference attended by 100-plus collegiate EMS organizations. UD was one of nine colleges and universities recognized as “Striving for Excellence in Campus EMS.” This recognition is based on assessment of quality factors in EMS operations with honorees held up as examples to other campus EMS organizations. UDECU also received the award for "2023 Collegiate EMS Week Celebration of the Year."

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