Van Skoik and Jiang created “Cyberguard,” an anti-cyberbullying model, for their final project in the School of Education’s IDE 632: Instructional Design and Development II course. This course requires students to develop an instructional design model and appropriate accompanying implementation documentation.

Particularly Vulnerable

Van Skoik’s and Jiang’s model proposes a process for educational institutions to follow that should help to reduce the number of cyberbullying incidents. Currently, it is under review with , with hopes to be published soon in the higher education technology journal and presented at its annual conference in November.

Having taught middle school for six years, and later working as an instructional technology specialist for a school district in South Carolina, Van Skoik saw both the effects of student cyberbullying play out daily in his classroom and how his district tracked students’ use of school-issued computers. His firsthand experience sparked the idea for the model.

“I think middle schoolers are particularly vulnerable as far as emotional intelligence, behavior modification and behavior management are concerned,” says Van Skoik, who believes the model’s interventions implemented at this age would help students learn as they grow. “Then by the time they’re in high school, which this data is from, there would be a reduction in cyberbullying cases.”

The pair used the (NYSED SSEC) incident data to identify the state high school with the highest number of self-reported cyberbullying cases in the state. That school—which the pair are not disclosing—was then used as the focus of their model. The school reported 39 cyberbullying incidents over the 2021-22 school year, which the pair says is a high figure compared to other schools’ average of 0.67 incidents per school.

Based on this data, the pair devised their model as steps school districts can follow to reduce incidents. The model, they say, acts as a positive feedback loop by raising awareness, identifying cyberbullying and preventing further cases. “The point of the model is the awareness of what cyberbullying is,” stresses Van Skoik, who says by bringing the issue to students’ attention, attitudes can be changed and good behavior reinforced as the process is evaluated each school quarter.

When Both Worlds Meet

found that teens use six cyberbullying behaviors: offensive name-calling (most reported), spreading false rumors, receiving explicit images, physical threats, harassment and having explicit images of them shared without their consent.

Online anonymity, 24/7 connectivity, lack of supervision and digital footprints—traces of online activity that can be used to provoke cyberbulling—are among the causes of electronic aggression that the pair identified. “If we can address those potential causes, J.J. and I believe the cases will come down,” Van Skoik says.

Regarding online anonymity, too often people can hide behind a screen, creating a persona that often says or does things a person would never do if face to face. “This model eliminates that possibility,” Van Skoik says. “It has to bridge the gap because the educational training program is the only thing that can happen when both worlds meet.” The model brings these two worlds—digital and real—together by emphasizing the importance of a holistic approach that combines data-driven interventions, educational training programs, and repetitive assessment.

The pair suggest interventions take place in both the digital and real worlds. First, they recommend schools develop an automatic monitoring system by installing software on devices the school loans out.

They note that monitoring is helpful to the entire school community and not only to students because teacher and administrator computers can be monitored to identify any incidents among staff as well. According to the Pew survey, three in 10 teens say school districts monitoring students’ social media activity for bullying or harassment would help.

Software can record and report suspected incidents of cyberbullying, and Jiang suggests AI also could be used in the monitoring program. “A lot of students hide bullying action in the cyberworld,” she says. “AI can recognize and also learn how to make a decision about if there is a risk of cyberbullying or not.”

For in-person intervention, the pair recommends schools collect feedback from students, staff and parents at the beginning of the school year to have a baseline assessment. This can include mental health evaluations when recommended.

Next, an educational training should be implemented during teachers’ professional development sessions, as well as for students and parents. Finally, an avenue to allow staff, students and parents to report incidents of cyberbullying should be created, and all interventions should be reviewed quarterly to track incidents, to see if there is progress or if the process needs to be refined.

Why We’re Not Learning

Both Van Skoik and Jiang strongly believe that in addition to use of monitoring software, schools must provide training and education about online social behavior. “School’s goal is to learn, that’s why we’re in this environment,” says Van Skoik, who often saw cyberbullying interrupt lessons in his classroom. “So, if we can’t learn, we have to find out why we’re not learning.”

Today, he says, society—and schools—are impacted by so many devices causing distractions, and in some cases, harm.

The educational training that the pair recommends can be offered in multiple ways, such as an online training, in-person session or a mixture of both. “The ultimate goal is for the educational training program to address the issue that there is a cyberbullying concern at the school, and—I think—it’s another way to create awareness,” Van Skoik says.

A final goal of Cyberguard is to create a culture of reporting online harassment. While software can help to identify suspected incidents—based on keywords, for example—avenues for self-reporting can also be implemented, either by having students, staff and parents complete a Google form or by encouraging students to raise concerns to guidance counselors and school staff.

“I hope this model can improve everyone’s awareness and help them develop skills on how to report cyberbullying,” Jiang says.

Ultimately, the Cyberguard model serves as a template for schools and, Jiang says, it will evolve after initial implementation. “In the first year, formative evaluations will be conducted every quarter to test our objective,” she says. If incidents of cyberbullying decline, the objective is met.

In year two, objectives can change, with a goal of seeing greater declines. Across years three to five, the pair will evaluate the model’s effectiveness by comparing the number of cases each year, hoping to see a stark decline.

“Our theory is that the prevalence of cyberbullying results from a lack of awareness, education and training,” Van Skoik say. “This is what instructional design tells us—it comes from a lack of knowledge, skills and attitudes.”

Story by Ashley Kang ’04, G’11 (a proud alumna of the M.S. in higher education program)

When she first started thinking about a career in design while in high school, her father suggested space architecture—a field that combines her love of both science and design—“and it clicked,” she says. Those interests brought her first to the University’s , where she earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture in 2023.

Doctoral student Andrea Hoe examines one of several compressed regolith cylinders she is testing.

Starting With SOURCE

Now, Hoe is a graduate research assistant in Assistant Professor�� Yeqing Wang’s in the . (ECS). She first contacted Wang in spring 2022 regarding her interest in research on lunar regolith, the dry, loose soil found on the Moon. Wang encouraged her to apply for an undergraduate research grant from the (SOURCE). She was awarded a grant, and, with Wang as her sponsor, began working in his lab that summer.

After Hoe completed her undergraduate degree, Wang encouraged her to pursue graduate studies at ECS, starting as a master’s student in the program. That allowed her to continue her work on lunar regolith composites.

Based on her excellent academic record and outstanding research experience, Wang says, he offered her a graduate research assistant position, a role that covers tuition, living expenses and insurance. The position was co-sponsored by Jensen Zhang, executive director of the Syracuse Center of Excellence and professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. In addition to researching lunar regolith composites, Hoe has collaborated with Zhang and Wang on developing metal-organic-framework materials and devices for air purification applications. In fall 2023, Wang encouraged Hoe to apply to pursue a doctoral degree.

The NASA award was presented for Hoe’s proposal, “,” with Wang serving as principal investigator. The recognition provides her with a prestigious designation as a NASA Space Technology graduate research fellow, Wang says.

Compression Testing

In her research, Hoe uses urea and carbon nanotube additives and integrates them into the lunar regolith material with an acidic solution, then compresses the composite cylinder that forms from the substances to test how varied compositions affect its strength. The lunar regolith and urea can be sourced on site in space, a factor that significantly reduces the payload required to transport the materials from Earth to space.

Soon, Hoe will add experiments that examine the impact of lunar freeze/thaw cycles on the composite and test mechanical strength to gauge fabrication ability. Ultimately, she wants to identify an optimum formulation of the composite that is sufficiently strong and remotely mixable so it can be extruded from 3D printers to form lunar habitats. NASA believes the technology will permit structures to be built in outer space for use by humans on the moon and Mars, Hoe says, and its Marshall Space Flight Center is conducting regolith research for that purpose. She also believes the push for space exploration now being made by several companies will create a need for the habitats.

Regolith material, like what is found on the Moon, is used in Yeqing Wang’s Composite Materials lab.

Hoe has already sketched some designs for those space pods, envisioning small, connected, 3D-printed modules. Her ideas are partially inspired by biomimicry and her work with School of Architecture Assistant Professor . Biomimicry design takes its cues from nature, such as the way ants or bees build colonies.

Two Perspectives

Hoe believes her dual perspectives and the expertise she is developing will be particularly appealing to employers in the future. “We see the architecture aspect, the engineering aspect and the commercialization aspect to space structures. What we don’t commonly see right now is an architect who also has an engineering degree. That’s where I hope to fit in and meet the industry—between the architectural side that considers design for human comfort and the engineering side that incorporates the practicality of how to fabricate the structures. I am hoping that by the time I’ve completed my doctorate there will be more opportunities for space architects, and NASA is definitely where I want to be,” she says.

Wang says the NASA award “provides an exciting opportunity to collaborate closely with our NASA partners on researching composite material systems for space habitation. It also acknowledges our talented graduate student for her pioneering research in lunar regolith composites and allows her to continue pursuing her dream of materials research for space habitation.”

Hoe prepares to test a compressed regolith cylinder to assess the strength of the material.

Out-of-the-Box Pursuits

The student researcher has a history of out-of-the-box pursuits and believes that motivation and persistence can pay off. She is accustomed to others thinking that her goals may be unattainable, but most people have a positive reaction to her research, she says.

And though she began regolith design and testing in an engineering lab as an undergraduate, moving from an architectural focus to an engineering one has had its challenges, Hoe admits.

“It’s been a difficult transition from architecture to engineering since I’ve had to catch up on engineering requirements,” she says, though with her professor’s support and her passion for the work, she knows her goals are achievable. Her three engineering-oriented summer internships have provided learning experiences that have helped her understand how her strong design focus will assist her in engineering work, given current industry norms.

“I was able to demonstrate that an architecture background is useful in many projects and there were times engineering team members changed their opinions based on my contributions,” she says. “That’s why I encourage others to be passionate about something and to not give up on their dreams, even if others are not supportive.”

3MT provides participants with the chance to share details about their research and creative work in a compelling way—within a three-minute time limit. It was first developed by the University of Queensland in Australia and is now held at colleges and universities around the world.����

“3MT forces students to come up with ways to describe their research succinctly to non-specialists in a way that is not just comprehensible, but is also interesting and engaging. That’s a skill set that will pay off on the job market, and even beyond, as far as interacting with the media and others who can help disseminate your work and findings more broadly,” says Glenn Wright, executive director of career and professional development for the Graduate School, who runs the competition.��

Nimisha Thakur

This year’s top winner is , a Ph.D. student in anthropology, whose topic was “.” Thakur, a graduate research associate at the in the , won a 16-inch MacBook Pro M3 and a year membership in the Anthropological Association of America. Thakur also has the chance to represent Syracuse University in the regional 3MT competition hosted by the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools.����

Qingyang Liu

, a Ph.D. student in human development and family science, was named the “People’s Choice” winner by audience vote. Liu conducts research in the in��the . Her topic was “?” The prize was a set of Bose noise-cancelling headphones.����

Additional finalists were:����

• Caroline Barraco, master’s student in history, “Authenticity, Commodity and Empire in the Early Modern Spanish Relic Trade”��
• Yener Çağla Çimendereli, Ph.D. student in philosophy, “Nonnative Speaking and Linguistic Justice”��
• Nicholas Croce, Ph.D. student in social science, “America’s Forgotten Labor Colony Experiment”��
• Nardini Jhawar, Ph.D. student in clinical psychology, “Racial Reflections: Examining ADHD Help-Seeking Among Asian American College Students”��
• Matthew D. O’Leary, Ph.D. student in anthropology, “Entangled Frontiers: Capitalism and Artifacts of Power at Fort St. Frédéric”��
• Andrew Ridgeway, Ph.D. student in composition and cultural rhetoric, “Evil We Desire: Akrasia and Conspiracy Rhetoric”��
• Paul Sagoe, Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering, “From Joint Pain to Joy Gain: Delivering Drugs for Osteoarthritis Cure”’��
• Julia Zeh, Ph.D. student in biology, “From Baby Babbles to Masterful Melodies: Investigating Vocal Development in Humpback Whales”��

Judges were Sarah Hamersma, associate professor and director of doctoral studies in public administration and international affairs, and Chung-Chin Eugene Liu, assistant professor of economics, both of the Maxwell School; and Corey Williams, a Syracuse City School District employee and a Common Councilor for Syracuse’s Third District.

On , Bhan and her student fellows present their findings at the Lender Center symposium, “DeCoded Vision: Land, Bodies and AI in Syracuse,” from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Sheraton Syracuse University Hotel & Conference Center’s Comstock Room. The event is open to the campus community; is required.

The researchers will define AI and show how the technology transfers to industry, workforce training, community development policies and such everyday activities as police presence and the use of technology in social contexts. They will discuss how AI technologies are fueling the “Syracuse Surge,” a city- and regionwide initiative boosting technology education, tech-job training and new industries, and offer insights about their exploration.

Student fellows are ParKer Bryant, a Ph.D. student in literacy education, ; Aren Burnside, a Ph.D. student in anthropology, Maxwell School; Nadia Lyngdoh-Sommer ’25, a sociology major in the ; Cheryl Olanga ’25, a computer science major in the ; and Anna Terzaghi ’24, an international relations and anthropology major and a member of the in the College of Arts and Sciences.

In this SU News Q&A, Bhan previews key findings.

L. Hazel Jack

Jack was working in the airport advertising field after earning a bachelor’s degree in marketing management and advertising from Pace University. She was responsible for her company’s national sales conference, scheduled in New York City on Sept. 10 and 11 that year, and was at a printing facility in New Jersey when the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center occurred.

“It was this moment that got me thinking, ‘Is this really what I want to do? What’s my purpose?’” Jack recalls. Soon after, she began searching for more meaning within her selected field, ultimately leading to a job in marketing and communications for the City University of New York’s School of Professional Studies.

That ignited her passion for higher education, and she has since held various executive roles related to marketing, communications, special events, advancement and crisis management with Johns Hopkins University, Howard University and now Colgate University, where she currently serves as vice president and chief of staff to the president. She has continued to collect advanced degrees along the way, and in fall of 2017, began her pursuit of a Ph.D. from Syracuse to take her expertise to the highest possible level.

An Unexpected, But ‘Easy Choice’

Jack, a first-generation college student, says when she was choosing where to study as an undergraduate, she didn’t consider her current role in higher ed administration as a viable career path. “I didn’t even know this was a thing. I just assumed I would do some kind of corporate communications or advertising. I never anticipated getting this level of education,” she says of attaining an MBA in marketing and a master’s degree in higher education administration from Baruch College before moving on to a doctoral degree.

“I often feel like I shouldn’t be here,” Jack says. “When you read about education and who tends to persist and who does well, I don’t exactly fit that mold.” After deciding to attain a Ph.D., she applied to a handful of programs, including the one at the School of Education. She didn’t think she would be admitted. “When I did, I was like, ‘Well that’s an easy decision!’”

She immediately connected with the professors and coursework. “I took a course on organization and administration in higher education, which was immediately applicable to my role at Colgate—looking at various aspects of how different institutions of higher learning are structured and some of the nuances of hierarchies and governance, which was really helpful,” says Jack.

Beyond coursework, she has been grateful to connect with her peers in the program who also work in higher education, helping break down the siloes that can prevail within and across institutions.

DEIA In Theory and In Practice

Another favorite course of Jack’s was one she took with on race, representation and culture. “It instantly gave me language to put to experiences I’ve had that I couldn’t explain before,” Jack says. “We dove into the literature around identity and place within higher education. As a woman of color in higher ed, working mostly at predominantly white institutions, there was always this ‘outsider’ feeling, even as I progressed in my career. Reading literature that described that experience, I realized it was not just in my head; it was real. It helped me make sense of what I’ve experienced in the space and reassured me that I deserve to be in this space.”

Jack plays an integral role in diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) work at Colgate and through her association with several professional organizations—including One X League, Chief, the National Council of Negro Women and as a John Roberts Lewis Fellow with the Faith & Politics Institute. She finds herself continuously revisiting and integrating her School of Education coursework into her career and advocating for others in the space who may share her background.

“Right now there is so much conversation around DEIA and higher ed, especially with affirmative action being struck down,” Jack says. “A lot of the conversation hits very close to home, and it’s often taking place in spaces where I’m the only one or one of very few who have a similar experience to me. Considering multiple perspectives is more important now than ever as we’re dealing with such complex issues.”

Dissertation Research on the Visibility of Black Women Leaders

Jack’s doctoral dissertation explores how Black women college presidents have historically been covered by the press—a topic she selected years ago, but has a certain element of timeliness in the wake of recent high-profile resignations of female college presidents, including the departure of Claudine Gay from Harvard University.

Focusing on eight Black women who led higher education institutes of various types and sizes beginning in the late 1980s, Jack examined national, regional, local and student press coverage of their tenures. She completed a content and discourse analysis of what was written and how they were written about, resulting in three preliminary findings.

“Up until recently, and I’m talking within the last 20 years, these women were often described physically in the coverage. For example, ‘She had short cropped hair with a beautiful smile and wore a blue suit,’” Jack says. “How often do you see a man written about in these terms? Second, unless they had a controversy or were a ‘first’ of some sort, they weren’t written about at all. A lot of the presidents in the middle of my timeline were basically non-existent in terms of being covered. My third finding is this notion that [Black female presidents] have to be perfect in their role and act in an exemplary way at all times—there is no margin for error.”

Jack anticipates defending her dissertation by the end of the spring semester. She plans to continue in her role at Colgate and considers a future in teaching, but says she isn’t in a rush to make any big moves or firm plans: “I’ve been working full-time and studying part-time for the better part of the last 20 years,” she says. “Maybe it’s time for a break. Maybe it’s time to come home from work and take a walk for a change. I never would’ve expected that I would be here in the first place, so we’ll see what happens next.”

The��, in the (A&S), offers key grants and fellowships to graduate students that allow them to advance their projects and share their ideas beyond the walls of the University. Two such opportunities include����and��

“Advancing graduate student research is so important. As the work of this year’s dissertation fellows and public humanities grantees amply illustrates, graduate students are pushing the boundaries of their fields and advancing the humanities in new ways for the 21st century,” says��, director of the Humanities Center. “Their projects explore how we think about transnational and cross-cultural solidarity movements to address legacies of settler colonialism; how we experience and navigate linguistic interactions; how we think about visual, photographic and historical archives—and address absences within them; and how we can use photography and literature to foster a positive transformation in ourselves and wider communities. We invite the broader community to join us for conversation and engagement with these cutting-edge scholars this spring.”

Humanities Center Dissertation Fellowship Recipients

The Humanities Center Dissertation Fellowships are competitive one-year awards in the form of stipends that allow the awardees, who are in their final year of their doctoral programs, to focus on completing their dissertations and immersing fully in their research without the demands of teaching.

To be eligible, students must be completing dissertations in Ph.D. programs at A&S in English, philosophy, religion or writing. (.) Selected fellows benefit from a support system within the Humanities Center, camaraderie with one another and the opportunity to present their work to an interdisciplinary audience.

The Humanities Center will hold a virtual��, where this year’s cohort will engage in dialogue and Q&A about their respective projects on Friday, Feb. 16, at 10:30 a.m. To register, visit the .

Çağla Çimendereli,��Ph.D. candidate, philosophy

Çağla Çimendereli

Çağla Çimendereli’s dissertation,��, identifies a new aspect by adopting an existentialist approach to spoken language, shifting the focus from the goals of speaking to the act of speaking itself.

As a native of Turkey, when she came to the U.S. to earn a Ph.D., she started noticing that occasionally using a foreign language for basic communication and academic discussion was quite different from existing in a foreign language while trying to be a free and authentic person. After discussing her experience with other nonnative speakers at the University, she realized there was a common lack of understanding of the phenomenon.

Çimendereli noted that speaking a foreign language was often considered a privilege or additional power, and that linguistic norms and practices help determine what language is spoken, often oppressing nonnative speakers in ways that have been ignored. Her experiences led her to question how these two simultaneous modes in nonnative speaking can be reconciled, which became the focus of her dissertation.

“It seems clear to me that there are many people who experience agency-restrictiveness of nonnative speaking, but the traditional frameworks for understanding language speaking do not allow for open discussion,” says Çimendereli. “Exposing the structural/systemic aspects of these experiences helps those affected better understand that if they are feeling powerless and inauthentic, there are reasons, and that is not simply their own failure. I’m hoping to initiate a new way of discussing linguistic agency in philosophy, which I believe will better guide the linguistics justice debates in political theory, sociolinguistics and language education.”

Florencia Lauria,��Ph.D. candidate, English

Florencia Lauria

Florencia Lauria’s dissertation,��, puts Indigenous and Latinx studies in dialogue by examining border narratives in contemporary novels and films. Her research looks at reading borders as sites of profound tension for Latinx migration and Indigenous sovereignty and addresses materials that range from novels and fantasy and science fiction to historical archives and climatology reports.

The project examines settler colonial histories and environmental injustices in the Americas from Argentina to Canada. Her dissertation aims to refocus the conversations about Latinx and Indigenous contemporary literatures around borders that are not places for comradery and healing but instead unresolvable “unfriendliness” between contested positions. She poses what kind of shared political future is possible for migrant and Indigenous subjects given the turbulent landscapes in which they meet.

“Literature can highlight important inter- and intragroup relations, establishing common ground between different justice movements and providing avenues of collective resistance against colonial racial capitalist structures,” she says. “In some cases, it can also elude important differences between justice projects, such as land back campaigns or anti-deportation campaigns. My project is interested in challenging easy connection, which I argue do disservice to these relations in the long run. My hope is that by highlighting difference and non-equivalence, my work will contribute to more profound solidarities between justice projects.”

Humanities New York Public Humanities Grants Awardees

A joint initiative between the Humanities Center and the��, these competitive grants are awarded by Humanities New York (HNY) to support publicly engaged humanities projects that foster meaningful public partnerships and strengthen the role of the humanities across New York state communities.

Recipients of the Humanities New York Public Humanities grants also have the chance to take part in various networking events and workshops designed to develop greater skillsets and expertise. (.)

The Humanities Center will host a virtual��, where this year’s cohort will engage in dialogue and Q&A about their respective projects on Wednesday, April 10, at 10 a.m. To register, visit the .

Chelsea Bouldin,��University Fellow, Ph.D. candidate, School of Education

Chelsea Bouldin

Chelsea Bouldin, who was recently awarded an��Imagining America Publicly Active Graduate Education fellowship, was selected for a Humanities New York grant for her work, So be it; See to it: An Archiving Project.

Bouldin’s interest in this topic comes from her understanding that elitist, exclusionary institutions often house the archives of public figures whose insights offer potential frameworks for a fuller understanding of people’s histories, present and future—something particularly true for marginalized communities with less access to these institutions and whose histories have been disproportionately subject to being erased from mainstream education.

With this understanding, Bouldin has combined her work in archival research on Octavia E. Butler, one of the first African American female science fiction writers, with her commitment to public-oriented scholarship to explore how she could extend her project beyond academia to include public influence. Curating Butler’s work to form a Black women-centered community-based project in Syracuse, Bouldin aims to showcase how their respective histories in particular offer transformative tools to engage the present for those who have limited “windows and mirrors” to see themselves through literature.

“It is my deep hope that this project will impact my area of research by widening our consideration of archives as sites of epistemic resources and as a model of expansively ‘doing’ scholarship,” Bouldin says. “I also hope this exemplifies the ways that singular academic projects can be creatively shared in a multiplicity of iterations across difference. This project verbalizes imagination, which is critical to my area of research.”

Caroline Charles,��Ph.D. student, English/film and screen studies

Caroline Charles

Another Humanities New York grant was awarded to Caroline Charles for her project,��Family Pictures Syracuse/Turning the Lens Collective. Charles’ inspiration comes from research done for her dissertation,��Practices of Black Visual Archive in Film, which examines how Black filmmakers utilize archival materials inside their work, as well as from her work co-curating an archival exhibition,��A Love Supreme: Black Cultural Expression and Political Activism of the 1960s and 1970s, inside Syracuse University Libraries Special Collections Research Center.

As part of her dissertation research, she encountered the work of����and his own community engagement project, which encourages local communities to share stories through their family photographs. This motivated her to collaborate with The Family Pictures Institute, as well as students and staff at Syracuse University, to create a Syracuse community-based project around family photographs. A native of Syracuse, Charles hopes her work might inspire others to do a dissertation project, thesis or other form of scholarly research that involves the greater Syracuse community.

“The photographs we take, display in our homes or keep in family albums are sites for public memory—windows into stories that too often go unseen and underwritten,” she says. “My hope is that this project will allow participants to see the value in their own photo archives, and that will inspire the community to narrate the stories behind their photographs to ensure that our histories are not lost or overlooked. Finally, I hope that the project will be an opportunity to connect the community to our local archives and learn more about the services and resources they provide.”

Daniel Olson-Bang

“I look forward to offering more awareness about specific funding possibilities and supporting applications for fellowships and grants,” Olson-Bang says. “Receiving awards can have a significant impact on the lives and work of our graduate students and postdoctoral scholars and can result in important new research and creative work. I enjoy helping individuals when they are in their programs and in the long run, helping to elevate the research profile of Syracuse University.”

Students can make appointments with Olson-Bang via to receive advice on tailored searches and help to complete dissertation-level doctoral and postdoctoral funding applications.

“Many funding awards are narrowly defined, and the chances of success increase if the opportunity more closely fits a project,” says Glenn Wright, executive director of professional and career development at the Graduate School. “We want to make sure doctoral students are aware of and are applying for more focused opportunities. Some of these opportunities are quite generous, but even smaller awards help establish a track record as a successful grant and fellowship seeker,” he says.

Current opportunities for eligible Ph.D. students, including details and application deadlines, are available on the .

The CritQuant Research Forum meets in person and online in October 2023.

Critical Quantitative Theory seeks to disrupt the traditional dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative research methods, with the former typically assumed to be more rigorous and suited to “hard” sciences and the latter seen as more subjective and better suited for use with critical theoretical perspectives. By disrupting this dichotomy, CritQuant—sometimes called QuantCrit—seeks to use data and statistics in a more equitable way, arguing that by doing so, it might become a useful and more racially just method of examining social justice questions.

Introduced in a 2018 Race Ethnicity and Education journal article—“”—this method calls on education researchers to explore inequity by examining data sets and statistics through critical analytical frameworks, such as critical race theory (CRT), intersectionality and feminism.

At the School of Education, an interdisciplinary team of faculty and graduate students has been meeting twice a month—since spring 2023—as the Critical Quantitative Research Forum. Among its original members are , associate professor of reading and language arts; , associate professor of higher education; , associate professor of counseling and human services; , associate professor of quantitative research methodology; , associate professor of teaching and leadership; and doctoral student ParKer Bryant, a Lender Center for Social Justice Fellow.

Change and Possibility

“There is a primacy to quantitative data because it is seen as objective, so its findings have a privileged status,” says Professor Johnson. “Some people tend to trust quantitative data and see it as more valid than qualitative research methods, such as ethnographies, interviews or case studies.”

One reason for this paradigm, explains Johnson, is that in qualitative research, the researcher is the “instrument” that gathers data, through an interview or by analyzing texts “as opposed to a quantitative instrument, such as a survey that is analyzed by software.” Thus, the quantitative researcher is assumed to be impartial and their experiences or beliefs irrelevant. That assumption has sometimes cloaked biased research and conclusions, as with the widely criticized 1994 study .

“If quantitative research is the privileged approach, then it needs to be transformed if we are going to work toward equity,” Johnson says. “We can’t put all the work of addressing critical equity questions on qualitative researchers, so how can we use statistics to tell the story of social justice, point out inequities and put forward ideas of change and possibility that illuminate and address structural inequalities? I’ve been thinking about this since I was a grad student.”

A Challenging Space

As a current doctoral student, Bryant is researching the impact of academic language on creative thought. It’s a topic traditionally suited to qualitative methods, such as interviews, surveys and ethnography, she says. However, she became interested in CritQuant “because I wanted to explore my research question thoroughly. I’m already familiar with qualitative research, but I want to understand quantitative methods such as linear and advanced statistical models. There’s no reason not to know quantitative models.”

The research forum is collegial, Bryant observes. “What I tell my friends is that faculty really want to be there, so it feels as if you are having high intellectual conversation among colleagues. It’s a challenging space.”

Bryant was invited by the faculty members to join an internal grant project that continues the forum’s work.

“How Can Educational Inequities Caused by Racial Wealth Gap Be Reduced? A Critical Quantitative Analysis of Individual, Home, and School” is using quantitative methods to examine whether individual or institutional-level factors have a greater influence on “the mediated relationships among socioeconomic status, opportunity to learn and students’ learning outcomes.”

“This study aims to contribute to advancing quantitative methods in educational research using the CritQuant framework based on critical race theory and intersectionality,” writes principal investigator Jang. “We believe that educational scholars would benefit from our work in considering CritQuant as a racially just method.”

Peeling Back Assumptions

Given her scholarly work focuses on the effects of campus climate on the sense of belonging of students of color in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, Johnson is well-situated to critique the quantitative vs. qualitative dichotomy.

The reason why qualitative research is appropriate for answering questions of social justice is that “it can tap into communities the way that other research can’t, by asking about lived experiences or centering marginalized and minoritized voices,” she says.

Conversely, quantitative research is seen as not amenable to social justice work because statistics can be used to advance and explain non-equitable conclusions, as in “The Bell Curve.” “The history and restrictions of quantitative methods are seen as having limited value in an equity agenda. Folks like myself, trained in quantitative methods, are trying to figure out ways to use statistical research methods within critical frameworks such as CRT.”

One technique to make quantitative research more equity-minded—“positionality”—dispenses with the idea that the researcher is impartial. “CritQuant forces researchers to position themselves in the research and asks them to consider their biases and subjectivity,” Johnson says. “Research questions arise from somewhere, after all.”

Johnson says her research interests often return her to when she was director of minority student affairs at Worcester (Massachusetts) Polytechnic Institute, supporting Black, Latinx and Indigenous students. “That experience created lots of questions for me, and I often think back to the challenges my students had,” Johnson says.

“My experiences as a Black woman working at primarily white institutions frames where I’m coming from in my research, and CritQuant makes me reckon with that,” Johnson says. “Qualitative researchers are expected to do this work, so why aren’t quantitative researchers expected to do the same? We encourage our doctoral students to write out their positionality in their research design, in order to peel back assumptions of unbias and objectivity.”

Structures and Systems

Another technique is embedded in the CritQuant forum’s grant project and speaks directly to why the method has the power to transform educational research.

“Quantitative research often can situate deficits on the people being studied, whereas CritQuant research can be used to examine structures,” says Johnson. “In other words, we’ve spent a lot of time trying to fix the student, but critical quantitative research has the power to examine whether outcome differences might be environmental or institutional. Maybe we don’t need to fix the student but instead look at fixing the structures and systems.”

As education graduate students ask more questions about how to integrate CritQuant into their research topics, the research forum is becoming a space where faculty can share their own experiences and challenges, such as how to use quantitative methods with subject groups that are small in number or how to incentivize participation ethically.

“I research groups that are already minoritized on campuses,” Johnson says, “so when researching campus climate, I have to be able to overcome survey fatigue and build relationships in order to ask questions about racism and sexism. There is an extra labor required on the part of the researcher.”

Johnson sums up the work of the research forum as enacting the “critical” part of Critical Quantitative Theory. “It’s exciting to engage with faculty and graduate students in an informal way to sort that out.”

The has added a new . The program uniquely combines mathematical modeling, computer programming, data science and business analytics to solve significant problems in a variety of domains. “We train students to be professionals in the field of operations research and system analytics and this is a program in which students look at systems, optimize them and make sure systems work as efficiently as possible,” says electrical engineering and computer science Professor Natarajan Gautam. “Students will also get a chance to work on real-world problems.”

Gautam says graduates will have skills that are in high demand by technology companies. He describes it as an applied operations research program with computer science and artificial intelligence elements. “This program is housed in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, but the courses go across Syracuse University. There are courses in mechanical engineering, civil engineering and in the other programs on our campus,” says Gautam. “This is a wonderful place if you are excited about doing operations research and want to tie it to management and information technology.”

The new program is designed for students who have an undergraduate degree in any STEM field. A variety of electives are offered that will allow students to tailor the program to their interests. “You are not going to be seeing anything you saw as part of an undergraduate program during this master’s degree and it will take you to the next level. It will make students valuable in the workforce,” says Gautam.

If you are interested in applying,����in the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

The group will work with , assistant professor of magazine, news and digital journalism (MND) in the , who last spring was��named

Student fellows will conduct research, analyze data and present findings related to how American media coverage of the war on terror affected U.S. policymaking and later impacted Muslim individuals and communities. They will also learn oral history methods to conduct trauma-informed interviews with individuals and in communities affected by war-on-terror policies; examine resistance projects and movements contributing to U.S. policymaking; and collaborate with Husain’s research partner, , associate professor of criminality, law and justice at the University of Illinois – Chicago College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, to publish findings.

Kendall Phillips, Lender Center interim director, announced the following as 2023-25 student fellows:

Mohammad Ebad Athar

Mohammad Ebad Athar

Athar is a Ph.D. candidate in history and a graduate research associate in the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs South Asia Center in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

Athar’s dissertation examines the global impact of the post-9/11 period for the South Asian diaspora in the United States and the Persian Gulf. In drawing connections between those regions, Athar hopes to illustrate how South Asian identity has been securitized across transnational borders and how South Asian political activism has resisted that framework.

Olivia Boyer

Olivia Boyer

Boyer is a second-year MND major in the Newhouse School with a minor in South Asian studies in A&S.

Boyer has been involved in several on-campus publications, including The Daily Orange and University Girl. She has served since January as a research assistant for Husain, analyzing news media coverage of the war on terror and its impact. The Akron, Ohio, native’s interests include civic engagement, social justice, storytelling and fashion.

Azadeh Ghanizadeh

Azadeh Ghanizadeh

Ghanizadeh is a Ph.D. candidate in writing studies, rhetoric and composition in A&S. Her dissertation focuses on media representations of refugees in the United States through film, public service announcements and United Nations celebrity endorsements. Her work challenges prevailing assumptions about multiculturalism and migration by examining how American media portray forced migration and how those portrayals affect public policy.

Ghanizadeh holds degrees from the University of Oregon and Oregon State University. She has taught courses in critical thinking and composition, introductory and intermediate college writing and Middle East studies at Oregon State, Syracuse and Colgate Universities.

Mary Hanrahan

Mary Hanrahan

Hanrahan is a communication and rhetorical studies master’s student in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. She researches how structures of power are articulated through cultural texts and how texts mutate, enforce or disrupt systems of privilege and oppression.

She is interested in narrative reclamation and communications from communities experiencing surveillance and containment. She also investigates Islamophobic biases in the news media, their impact on marginalized groups and how affected communities work around the consequences of those biases.

Tia Poquette

Tia Poquette

Poquette is a third-year policy studies major in the Maxwell School and College of Arts and Sciences with double minors in architecture in the School of Architecture and sociology in the Maxwell School. Poquette is interested in urban policy, sustainability, social justice and criminal justice. She has interned with the nonprofit Hudson Yards Hell’s Kitchen Alliance and Youth Public History Institute. Her work there focused on community building and the history of prisons and policing, as well as their contemporary connections. She serves as a teaching assistant for Introduction to Public Policy Analysis.

Lender Center student fellows work on projects for two years, receive a $2,000 fellowship and will present their work at the 2025 Lender Symposium.

The Lender Center will soon issue a call for proposals for faculty fellowships for the 2024-26 term, according to Phillips. The announcement is timed for early December, and the expected deadline for applications to be submitted is April 18, 2024. Established in 2018, the Lender Center for Social Justice hosts research projects, activities and programming, including multidisciplinary conversations related to issues of social justice and collaborations with other University units, to promote a robust dialogue about issues of justice, equity and inclusion.

Ionah M. Elaine Scully

Holding a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and certificates of advanced study in conflict resolution from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and in women’s and gender studies from the College of Arts and Sciences, Scully’s research involves storytelling, Indigenous methodologies, land pedagogy and Two Spirit critiques.

Scully adds this fellowship to their New York Public Humanities Grant (2021), University of California Davis’ Publicly Active Graduate Education (PAGE) fellowship (2019) and Syracuse University’s LGBT Resource Center Social Justice Award (2016), as well as awards for excellence in teaching, activism, writing, scholarship and land-based education initiatives. Scully also is a professional dancer and dance instructor who has been one of the most sought-after teachers and performers in Upstate New York.

A member of the University’s (IGD), a theory and practice-based initiative of social justice education, Scully has created an Indigenized IGD course—offered in community, school and higher-education settings—that employs land, Two Spirit and other Indigenous pedagogies to create generative dialogue and communities of care and learning across difference.

Scully teaches foundations of education, gender studies, and Native studies, describing their teaching philosophy as publicly engaged, activist, and holistic. In their courses, they encourage multi-sensory learning, the mitigation of classroom hierarchies, and addressing equity issues to move learning toward antiracist ends.

About Ionah Scully’s Doctoral Thesis

Scully’s dissertation—”Nehiyaw Two Spirit Creation Stories: Re-mapping Home, Desire, and Indigenous Education Through the Body”—brings together Two Spirit (Native 2SLGBTQIA+) people of Michel First Nation (MFN) to dialogue about Nehiyaw (Cree) creation stories and subsequently recreate—or re-map—their own creation stories as Two Spirit (2S) people to understand how these stories can support Indigenous and decolonizing educational practices.

For more on Scully’s dissertation, visit the .

Stemming from intense astrophysical events like exploding stars, neutrinos are notoriously tricky to pin down and detect since they rarely interact with other particles.

Neutrinos can come from many sources, but Benevides Rodrigues studies the ones that come out of nuclear reactions and those that are made in particle accelerators.

Whenever a neutrino is formed, it comes in three different types: electron, muon and tau (this is where the vanilla, chocolate and strawberry analogy comes into play). But unlike those ice cream flavors, which exist in one primary flavor, neutrinos can change as they travel through space.

Starting with an internship with Fermilab, the country’s renowned particle physics and accelerator laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, Benevides Rodrigues’ research has concentrated on studying how neutrinos interact and why they change from one state as they travel.

After successfully defending her physics dissertation, Benevides Rodrigues, a Ph.D. candidate in in the , has been selected as marshal for Syracuse University’s 2023 Commencement.

Ohana Benevides Rodrigues G’22

“It is such an honor to be recognized,” Benevides Rodrigues says. “It’s special because I do physics in an unconventional way. Most physicists are very mathematically driven and always start with formulas and equations. I start with the opposite end. I have to think about what is going on in a given system and only then I put together the formula in a kind of intuitive way.”

The Universitywide honor recognizes outstanding academic achievement, inspired research, campus and community involvement and��Orange spirit and pride. Benevides Rodrigues will lead the graduate student procession and walk the stage during Commencement.

“The Graduate School congratulates Ohana on her excellent academic achievements and innovative, distinctive research. She has been a dedicated, hardworking doctoral student and accomplished scholar. We look forward to her representation of the Graduate School at Commencement and wish her all the best in her future career path,” says .

Currently a postdoctoral senior research associate at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Benevides Rodrigues plans on pursuing a permanent position in the field of reactor neutrinos and MeV-scale neutrino physics.

Benevides Rodrigues currently works on three different experiments. One is located near a research reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, observing and studying how the neutrinos coming out of the high flux isotope reactor change when arriving at the facility’s detector. She’s also involved in a project called Mobile Anti-Neutrino Demonstrator, developing a detector that could be used as an extra tool for nuclear safeguards and surveillance. Lastly, she uses the MicroBooNE detector at Fermilab to search for MeV-scale neutrinos coming from the neutrinos at the main injector beam.

“When I was growing up, my dad was a lawyer who eventually became a judge. I always wanted to follow my dad’s footsteps, so I wanted to go to law school and become a prosecutor. I always had a sense of justice and I think I still have that sense of justice. I consider myself an activist in many ways, including the research I’m currently doing,” Benevides Rodrigues says.

Ohana Benevides Rodrigues G’22 prepares the anode plane assembly, a major component of the short-baseline near detector, for installation at Fermilab.

It’s a career path that got off to an inauspicious start. Growing up in Petropolis, a city in Brazil north of Rio de Janeiro, Benevides Rodrigues initially struggled with math since her school didn’t have a math teacher. Eventually, a high school physics teacher helped her realize her potential.

While her math skills weren’t on the same level as her classmates, Benevides Rodrigues enjoyed an advantage over her peers: Rather than memorizing formulas and equations and relying on math to solve problems, Benevides Rodrigues employed a more intuitive approach to physics.

“I love thinking about physics that way, of looking at systems and trying to figure out what was going on there by observing and looking out for patterns and behaviors. Eventually I understood I could use math to describe those patterns and behaviors, but that’s not the only way you can think of physics,” Benevides Rodrigues says.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in physics from the State University of Campinas in Brazil, Benevides Rodrigues was drawn to Syracuse University for her doctoral degree. She credits her advisors, especially , her graduate school advisor, and , associate teaching professor of physics, for inspiring and motivating her to press forward with her research.

“I was lucky to have great mentors around me that supported me through my failures,” Benevides Rodrigues says. “I’m a people-driven person who connects with people and science requires that. Science is a game where we’re supposed to fail all the time. You come up with a hypothesis and you test it. It doesn’t work and you try again. That’s rule 101 of science. You just keep doing it until you get it right, so having people supporting you throughout the failures is essential,” Benevides Rodrigues says.

Lei Wang

Champion Presenter

The 2023 Syracuse University Three-Minute Thesis champion is Lei Wang, a doctoral student in the instructional design, development and evaluation program in the School of Education. She presented “Decision-Making Matters: A Learning Resources Tool to Prompt Deeper Learning” at the 3MT finals on March 3 in Bird Library.

Wang spoke about an innovative tool she developed to address a significant gap in the field of instructional design. She paired the tool with a systematic and comprehensive study evaluating the features of learning resources that prompt deeper learning. The term “deeper learning” goes beyond rote memorization of facts. Through thorough and in-depth understanding of content, it helps students transfer and apply knowledge to tackle new problems from multiple perspectives.

The competition provided Wang the opportunity to share her research with a wider audience while building confidence in her public-speaking abilities, she says. “As an international student from China, winning this has been an incredible achievement. The recognition has given me a newfound confidence in my abilities and strengthened my resolve to continue pursuing excellence in my field.”

Wang’s grand prize is a 16-inch MacBook Pro M1 computer. She also received a one-year membership in the American Educational Research Association. She will represent Syracuse University in the Northeast Association of Graduate Schools’ 3MT competition in April.

‘People’s Choice’

Yousr Dhaouadi

Attendees at the 3MT finals selected as “people’s choice” winner Yousr Dhaouadi, a chemical engineering doctoral student in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, who discussed “Controlling Bacterial Stress Tolerance with Light.” Her research seeks to understand bacterial persister cells that reside within biofilms. Persister cells are linked to resilience of chronic infections against antibiotics and to the rise of antimicrobial resistance.

Dhaouadi says that being selected for the people’s choice award “is an incredible honor for me. Communicating research on drug-tolerant bacteria can be quite challenging. Condensing intricate scientific concepts and technical terms into a three-minute summary requires contemplating the overarching objective of our research. I am delighted that the message I conveyed resonated with the audience. I am grateful for the recognition and am motivated to continue my research to develop effective tools to help combat the global rise in drug tolerance and resistance.”��Her prize is a ReMarkable 2 tablet.

Additional Participants

Also participating in the competition were:

• Çağla Çimendereli, Ph.D. student, philosophy: “Being Yourself Behind Different Words”
• Joy Nyokabi Karinge, master’s student, Pan-African Studies: “Mercenaries of History: Migrating Archives, Controlling Narratives in African Studies”
• Jooyoung Kim, Ph.D. student, economics: “How Do Same-Sex Couples Affect Central Cities?”
• Mary Theresa Pagán, Ph.D. student, sociology: “The Elephant in the Room Has an Octopus Head: COVID-19 and Older Adults”
• Durgesh Ranjan, Ph.D. student, mechanical and aerospace engineering: “Hydrophobicity of Novel Carbon-Based Surface in Extreme Conditions”
• Andrew Ridgeway, Ph.D. student, composition and cultural rhetoric: “Bad Rhetoric: Analyzing Conspiracy Theories on Social Media”
• Magan Denae Straight, Ph.D. student, teaching and curriculum: “Our Lives Together, Artifacts of Siblinghood: A Visual Narrative Inquiry with Three Autistic Adults and Their Siblings”
• Joonsik Yoon, Ph.D. student, social science: “Transnational Imagination: Generational Ties, Filial Piety and Caregiving Across Borders Among Korean American Migrant Families”

Glenn Wright, executive director of career and professional development at the Graduate School, moderated the competition. Judges included Amanda Brown, associate professor of languages, literatures and linguistics in the College of Arts and Sciences; Adam Cucchiara, doctoral student in public administration and international affairs in the Maxwell School and the 2022 3MT champion; and Aaron Mohammed, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, with a joint appointment in the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

The Three Minute Thesis competition was founded at the University of Queensland to celebrate graduate student research. The first competition was held in 2008. It grew in popularity and today takes place at more than 900 universities across more than 85 countries worldwide and in both virtual and in-person formats.

The humanities are pivotal to examining historical trajectories, understanding the pressing issues of our times and forging a more just world. As the next generation of scholars, graduate students are at the forefront of identifying and pursuing new questions in their research.

Each year, the����awards highly competitive����and����to support outstanding graduate students as they advance humanities research.

Three doctoral students in English and one in history have received fellowships and grants as part of the Humanities Center’s signature focus on enhancing research support and building scholarly community.

“We are so pleased to support cutting-edge graduate researchers at the Humanities Center,” says Vivian May, director of both the Humanities Center and��. “This year, the Dissertation Fellows’ timely projects each use interdisciplinary approaches to literature to illuminate heretofore under-theorized lived experiences and histories. The Humanities New York grant awardees’ projects advance our understanding of race and place, through poetry and writing as well as civil rights and school desegregation.”

Humanities Center Dissertation Fellowships

:

El-Eid

El-Eid is a doctoral candidate in English with a concentration in 20th- and 21st-century transnational American literatures and cultures. A first-generation Lebanese American Druze woman, El-Eid lives in the United States, but identifies Beirut as home. Her dissertation expands and reshapes critical scholarship across literary, trauma and memory studies by centering on the often invisibilized Druze, a transnational ethnoreligious group with origins in the Arab world. Her interdisciplinary work transects literature, film, online culture and self-conducted oral interviews with Druze people with a focus on the implications of the group’s belief in reincarnation. El-Eid’s examination of Druze and Druze reincarnation draws new lines of connection between these multiple fields of thought.

“My dissertation employs methodologies from trauma, memory and transnational anti-racist feminist studies to examine literature, media and personal accounts of the Druze community, in particular their central religious and cultural beliefs in reincarnation,” El-Eid says. “By amplifying and examining testimonies from this understudied and undertheorized group, my dissertation interrogates established relations of power in terms of whose stories are (un)heard, and illuminates how highlighting invisibilized voices is not just additive in critical scholarship but is transformative.”

:��Ecologies of Writing

Cooper

A doctoral candidate in English, Cooper is focusing on a project designed to generate humanities-based responses to environment, nature and place within the context of climate change. Much of her current work revolves around the��, where students, ages 7 to 15, from community centers within the City of Syracuse participate in youth-focused weekly writing workshops. The program encourages students to express their environmental experiences and understanding through reading, creative writing and scientific inquiry.

A highlight of the group’s activities was a recent visit from poet��, who shared her work with these budding writers. The students, in turn, wrote and shared responses to what they heard.

“I am always so amazed with what these young students come up with,” says Cooper of the touching poems students wrote across different levels of experiences and interests. “The event couldn’t have gone better, as students had the opportunity to engage with .”

Cooper’s work will continue with Write Out during the Spring 2023 semester, along with plans to create a public art installation that reflects the students’ writing.

: A Children’s Story: School Desegregation in Syracuse, NY, 1960-1970

Terry-Elliott

A doctoral student in history in the , Terry-Elliott is working on a project illuminating the experiences of children and teachers during the period of school desegregation in Syracuse from 1960-1970. These participants are contributing to American history by giving their stories to future generations. The project is part of her larger examination of the Black Arts and Black Power movements of this era, particularly as questions of Black education have yet to be fully explored in these contexts.

Terry-Elliott has a special connection to this project, as she is not only a graduate of the Syracuse City School District but also taught there for 10 years. She hopes the oral histories she collects will be a starting point to contribute to a larger archival space about the history of African Americans in the City of Syracuse—containing not only her work but that of others.

“That is the ultimate goal,” she says. “Oral histories are a valuable medium of understanding the past and must be valued before we don’t have our elders to tell their stories first-hand anymore. This award has positioned me to be able to ask for help in furthering my research.”

Terry-Elliott is currently co-curating “” in collaboration with the Libraries’ staff. The exhibition is on display Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., on the sixth floor of Bird Library.

Graduate students working on dissertations or projects can apply for support from the��, in the form of competitive dissertation fellowships and����Public Humanities Graduate Project awards.

Dissertation fellowships are one-year stipends that allow awardees to focus on finishing their writing without the demands of teaching, while also receiving research funds while in residence.

Public Humanities Graduate Projects, a joint initiative between the Humanities Center and the��, are grants offered by����to support emerging scholars as they engage members of the public or partner with community groups in New York State on initiatives related to equity and social justice.

The Lender Center will use the three-year grant to address what the foundation calls a persistent crisis that continues to undermine social and economic opportunities for underserved and underrepresented communities throughout the United States. The projects will include new research on the topic, discussions among social justice leaders to gain added insights on the issue, and new data-collection and evidence-gathering activities to illustrate the racial wealth gap’s impacts.

The grant includes four key focus areas:

• The Lender Center will coordinate an “Addressing the Racial Wealth Gap Working Group” that partners with the University’s to organize thought leadership discussions. The panel discussions will promote collaboration between Syracuse University faculty and national social justice leaders. Discussions are planned to be held in New York City, Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Los Angeles.
• The University will hire diverse postdoctoral researchers having pertinent and lived experience with the issue to examine fundamental questions regarding the gap and its impact on diverse communities, families and individuals.
• Annual research grants will be available for faculty fellows selected in coordination with the University’s Office of Research to conduct research investigations related to the gap.
• The Lender Center will partner with other leading voices on the subject to increase awareness of and amplify discussions around planned actions and potential solutions.

The work will include mapping the social dynamics of racial wealth disparity, charting perceptions of social justice and uncovering patterns that can serve as a foundation for ongoing work. Projects will be managed by leadership from the Lender Center and the Social Differences, Social Justice research cluster, which will include Kira Reed, associate professor of management in the Whitman School of Management, who also co-leads the Social Differences/Social Justice research cluster, and Gretchen Purser, associate professor of sociology in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and Lender Center co-director, alongside James Rolling, professor of arts education in the School of Education. They will support researchers, coordinate convening activities and manage the release of scholarly publications, articles, reports and presentations.

“The Lender Center is grateful for the partnership with ��MetLife Foundation as we work together to further uncover systemic issues contributing to the racial wealth gap in the United States,” says , associate provost for strategic initiatives in the Office of Academic Affairs, who oversees the work of the Lender Center. “Together, we aim to find scalable solutions that reduce inequities, provide access to opportunity and enable historically marginalized communities to ultimately build better economic futures.”

Mike Zarcone, head of Corporate Affairs for MetLife and chairman of MetLife Foundation, says, “Transforming our diversity, equity and inclusion commitments into meaningful action is a top priority for both MetLife and MetLife Foundation. MetLife Foundation’s partnership with the University and Lender Center is directly aligned with our strategy to help drive economic mobility by addressing the needs of underserved and underrepresented communities. There’s strength in numbers, and by working together with the University and other national leaders, we have an even greater opportunity to further reduce the racial wealth gap.”

Community conversations, like this one on labor and economic impact in October, are regularly held by the Lender Center for Social Justice. (Photo by Angela Ryan)

Vice Chancellor, Provost and Chief Academic Officer views the existing cooperation between the University and the surrounding community as a perfect backdrop for the projects.

“Our research resources, our connection to the community, and the strong University and Lender Center commitments to social justice, as well as diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, provide an excellent foundation for this work,” Ritter says. “The MetLife Foundation’s generous funding of these projects will help propel the University forward as an evidence-based, field-focused research leader with the goal of finding additional ways to address the racial wealth gap across the country.”

Research materials produced, including scholarly articles and presentations, plus results of data collection and evidence-gathering activities, will be shared through the MetLife Foundation and Lender Center annual events. The information will also be posted on the and circulated by both the University and the MetLife Foundation.

Highest Poverty

Haddix believes that the University is ideally suited to lead new scholarly examinations and to initiate both local community and national leadership engagement in the social justice space. She points out that the City of Syracuse has one of the in the United States and that new data shows Syracuse has the highest child poverty rate in the nation among cities of more than 100,000 people. In addition, individual researchers in the arts and humanities from several University schools have already been studying the impact of economic disparities of those from historically marginalized communities through social, economic and public health lenses and via the University’s Social Differences/Social Justice research cluster.

The Lender Center aspires to foster proactive, innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to issues related to social justice, equity and inclusion. MetLife Foundation is committed to driving inclusive economic mobility for underserved and underrepresented communities around the world through collaboration with nonprofit organizations and grants aligned to three strategic focus areas: economic inclusion, financial health and resilient communities. Since 1976, MetLife Foundation has contributed more than $900 million to strengthen communities where MetLife has a presence.

We caught up with Thalma Orado, a first-year Ph.D. student in Assistant Professor Era Jain’s drug delivery lab, and Yikang Xu, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in Professor Dacheng Ren’s biofilm engineering lab. Orado (bioengineering) and Xu (biomedical and chemical engineering) in the College of Engineering and Computer Science offer insights about why they chose Syracuse University, what’s best about graduate student life here, their research work and their career plans.

Thalma Orado

Why did you choose Syracuse for your graduate studies?
I came here from Kenya when my husband entered the master’s program in African American studies. He finished in 2021 and now works in Syracuse. He introduced me to someone who suggested that with my background in biochemistry I should apply to the doctoral program. My mother is a professor of science ed—she earned a Ph.D. at Syracuse in 2014, and it’s always been my interest to pursue science. The sciences are what produce solutions to problems in this world.

What’s the best thing about your graduate school experience so far?
My advisor [Era Jain]! She is very supportive and understanding. I’m very busy as a Ph.D. student, researcher, teaching assistant, wife and mother to two young children. At some point I was overwhelmed and almost gave up. My advisor told me, “We are not giving up, we are pursuing this [degree] through to the end.” It’s very clear she’s not giving up on me. So, if she’s not ready to quit, then who am I to quit? It’s good to have advisors and mentors; they help shape us and encourage us our doctoral journeys.

What is your research about?
My project examines factors that create pain and inflammation in such diseases as osteoarthritis. Cells produce an abundance of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in osteoarthritis, which causes pain and inflammation. But with a specific hydrogel created in Olga Makhlynet’s chemistry lab, we can leverage the ROS�� chemicals and help alleviate the inflammation. We are studying how the hydrogel behaves with the chosen drug. Once the drug is in the hydrogel, it can stay in the knee joint longer, and that’s important. With increases in the aging population, something like this can make a big difference to people all around the world.

What is your advice for other graduate students?
Graduate school and all it entails can be a lot to bear, so acknowledging what’s stressing you is important. The next step is finding resources to help support you. Being open to other people about what you’re experiencing allows them to help you along the way. It’s difficult to do it alone but it’s amazing how much you can accomplish in life if you put your mind to it. In Swahili we have a saying, “Once you put the water in for a bath, you have to take the bath, because you’ve already [invested] the water.” So, don’t be afraid to commit. If you feel you have a calling or a passion, go for it and figure out the rest as you go along. You just have to be brave in life, I guess.

Yikang Xu

Why did you decide on Syracuse for your doctoral program?
I was at Ohio State looking at schools for graduate research, and the Syracuse University website and biomedical and chemical engineering program interested me. I was offered a generous tuition scholarship after I applied for the master’s program, and I thought, if they want me, I’m here! And after a semester here, my principal investigator invited me to transfer to the Ph.D. program. I’m really glad that I took that opportunity.

What’s been the best thing about your graduate school experience?
The Syracuse Biomaterials Institute [now called the Syracuse Biomaterials Innovation Facility] is really good. There are common spaces for different departments and colleagues from completely different fields there, and always someone to bounce an idea off. The clashing of the minds when you have people of different backgrounds coming at a project from different angles is especially helpful. That helps me by ensuring that I don’t feel overly confident. It helps me realize there are things I don’t know and there are always things you can learn from other people.

What is your research project?
We have engineered a wireless electrochemical biosensor system that provides rapid antibiotic susceptibility testing. It provides fast and potentially low-cost testing for antimicrobial resistance.

The project is working out pretty well, and that’s good, since we went into it not knowing if it was going to work. The direction for my initial project was for me and my principal investigator to take a shot in the dark—buy the equipment then see if the experiment works. I’ve spent most of my three years here polishing my idea, optimizing my system and making the results better and better. Now, I have a very sensitive working system and my journal article is drafted and ready to go out soon. After all these years, the work is paying off.

What is your advice for other graduate students?
Learn to think critically; it’s a skill everyone eventually has to learn. You need to do that long-term because a solution could be hidden anywhere. There is competition among people working toward the same goals, so you have to be more thorough to come out on top in what you want to achieve.

I’ve seen colleagues who have worked on a project for two to three years with seemingly discouraging results, but very rarely did they give up. You have to overcome your fear because even if the hypothesis is refuted, you have to work to prove that, too. As a scientist, you want to find out the truth. If your solution doesn’t work well, no one wants that, but you just have to start over, you have to start again on something else.

��

Vice President for Research Duncan Brown. Photo by Marilyn Hesler

As the new vice president for research, Duncan Brown steps into a role in which he will orchestrate, support and enable the research, scholarship and creative activities that are central to the mission of the University. He notes that these activities form the ideas that society needs now and in the future.

“It is a critical moment to bring our research and scholarship to bear on both local and global challenges. We need the humanities, public communications and creative arts to help address the problems society is facing,” he says. “We need the fields of science and engineering to address the environmental challenges we’re facing. We need people in the social sciences to address an aging population and food production and distribution. We need people from policy and law to address the policies and legal underpinnings of the technologies we are creating and the framework of society. And at Syracuse University we can bring together experts in these and other areas to address society’s greater challenges.”

Brown’s role is to lead the and its component units. That includes providing support to the University’s centers and institutes; advocating for advancements in infrastructure to support the University’s broad range of basic and applied research and creative activities; and empowering our faculty in their scholarly excellence.

Operationally, he helps to support over $100 million in external funding and supervises the work of the , , , and the (SOURCE). He reports to Vice Chancellor, Provost and Chief Academic Officer .

An internationally recognized leader in gravitational-wave astronomy and astrophysics, Brown joined the University in 2007 as an assistant professor in the in the College of Arts and Sciences. Since 2015, he has served as the , a role that he will continue to fill as an active researcher while serving as vice president for research.

In this Q&A, Brown provides insight into his vision for the Office of Research and how he intends to support faculty, students and staff to strengthen and grow research activities across the University community.

Justice Roberts said the leak was “a singular and egregious breach,” and a “betrayal of the confidences of the Court.”

“To the extent this betrayal of the confidences of the Court was intended to undermine the integrity of our operations, it will not succeed,” Chief Justice Roberts said in a statement. “The work of the Court will not be affected in any way.”

But two researchers say that these sorts of leaks from the Supreme Court aren’t the issue.�� It is the content of the decisions.

, a PhD candidate in political science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School, and , an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Purdue University, wrote the paper (currently under peer review) “.”

“The thread through our research is that it is the outcome of the case, not the leaked material, that will influence how the public views the court,” said Carrington. “If the leak harms the institution, it is because it overturns a popular decision not because it was leaked in advance.”

The paper, “Plugging the Pipe” directly addresses the Dobbs leak as well as other historical leaks such as Dred Scott deliberations and questionable extrajudicial activities taken by the justices, like Justice Fortas’s support for the Vietnam War.

From the paper:

“The data we present here offer no evidence that legitimacy (measured as diffuse support, support for court curbing, and felt obligation) is harmed by leaks, even if those leaks reveal information that the public views as unbecoming of Supreme Court justices. Contrary to some expectations in existing theories, we also find that the Court’s legitimacy is not enhanced by leaks. Instead, it seems that legitimacy afforded to the Court is unaffected.”

“Our research suggests that what matters is not whether the information is obtained via leaks or official channels but instead the substance of that information. In other words, it is the content that people respond to, not the manner by which the information made it to press. These findings have clear implications for the current public controversy surrounding the leak of the draft opinion in Dobbs: the public will react to that decision-based in large part on policy agreement with the Court’s decision to overturn Roe. Any impact the Politico story has on the Supreme Court’s legitimacy is not because of the leak per se but because of the content contained within the leak.”

To schedule an interview with the researchers, please contact Ellen James Mbuqe, executive director of media relations at Syracuse University, at��ejmbuqe@syr.edu, or 412-496-0551.

September 22
Sage on the Stage: Research Methods

Conducting original research serves as a cornerstone of graduate studies. At the same time, many students are developing their teaching skills. As you transition your academic pursuits into a professional path, learn about key skills needed to successfully develop both your research and CV. The session will delve into as well as some of the Libraries’ other resources to support graduate students as researchers, instructors, and students.

October 20
Wellness, Online and In Real Life

We’re all bombarded with a constant stream of disconcerting news and other information. Now more than ever, it’s important to be aware of what’s going on in the world, but we need to make sure that the information we consume is empowering rather than overpowering us. Join us to learn tips and strategies for developing and maintaining a healthy “information diet” and learn about other resources to achieve optimal wellness.

November 16
Meet Mendeley and Zotero, Citation Management Software for Beginners

Join us for a virtual hands-on introduction to using and citation management software to organize citations in your academic writing.

For questions or further information about any of the workshops, contact at grcolosi@syr.edu.

In April 2017, a landslide in Mocoa, Colombia, ripped through a local town, killing more than 300 people. Nicolás Pérez-Consuegra grew up about 570 miles north in Santander, Colombia, and was shocked as he watched the devastation on television.

Nicolas Pérez-Consuegra, left, and Professor Gregory Hoke standing in front of a waterfall in the Caqueta Canyon.

At that time, he was an undergraduate intern at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. As a budding geologist raised hiking the tropical mountains of Colombia, he wondered, what causes greater erosion in some areas of the mountains than in others? And, is it tectonic forces–where Earth’s tectonic plates slide against one another leading to the formation of steep mountains–or high precipitation rates that play a more important role in causing erosion within that region?

To answer those questions would require a geological understanding of the evolution of the mountains in Colombia. During his undergraduate internship, Pérez-Consuegra studied the mountains near the towns of Sibundoy and Mocoa in the southern region of Colombia. There, he observed thick rainforests covering steep mountains and many landslide scars in the cliffs. There were also many landslides on the road, leading him to believe that the tension and release of pressure along tectonic faults was shaking the landscape and removing rocks from its surface and shedding it into the rivers.

Nicolas Pérez-Consuegra hammering into a rock outcrop to obtain a sample for thermochronology analyses from the mountains in the Putumayo region of Colombia.

To find out more about the forces at play that were shaping the steep terrain of that region, Pérez-Consuegra pursued a doctoral degree in the College of Arts and Sciences’ . He says the opportunity to develop his own research ideas was one of the key reasons he chose Syracuse University. Pérez-Consuegra led the study from start to finish, proposing the research questions, hypotheses and methodology, with help from his Ph.D. advisor Gregory Hoke, associate professor and associate chair of EES, and Paul Fitzgerald, professor and director of graduate studies in EES. He also obtained research grants and support from EES and a number of outside sources including a National Geographic Early Career Grant and more, which fully funded three field expeditions to Colombia and the analytical work on rock samples collected there.

Pérez-Consuegra’s study revealed that the highest erosion rates occur near the places that have the most tectonically active faults. While precipitation may act as a catalyst for erosion on the surface of the mountains, the main force at play are faults where rock is exhuming from deep below the Earth’s surface at faster rates.

Nicolas Pérez-Consuegra wading through water in the Caqueta Canyon, one of the locations where the team collected a rock sample.

“Tectonically active faults are causing uplift of the mountains surrounding Mocoa and are also making the landscape steeper,” Pérez-Consuegra says. “Steeper and taller mountains are more prone to have landslides. Rainfall, and specifically torrential rains, can trigger the landslides, but what sets the stage are the tectonic processes.”

Hoke says that while geomorphologists would like to think that rainfall rates can take over as the major influence on mountain formation, Pérez-Consuegra’s research proves that Earth’s internal deformation is the main factor.

“While prior work within a bullseye of high rainfall in Colombia’s Eastern Cordillera initially pointed towards a strong climate control on mountain growth, Nicolás’ work expanded the same types of observations to another precipitation hotspot over 250 miles away and found the rates at which rock is transported to the surface were dependent on fault activity, and not precipitation amount,” Hoke says.

Pérez-Consuegra, who will start a postdoctoral fellowship in environmental sciences at MIT in the fall, notes that geological knowledge is essential for predicting what areas in a tropical mountain range are more prone to have landslides, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and the catastrophic consequences that these events might have in the surrounding populations.

“It is important to invest in doing better geological mapping in tropical mountains, to better understand the spatial distribution and geometries of tectonically active faults,” Pérez-Consuegra says.

You can read more about Pérez-Consuegra’s research in the journal Tectonics: “.”

Laura Markley

She is also the force behind the blog , where she writes about the science of sustainability—including her own research—and shares insights on practical ways the common consumer can reduce waste.

The product of two sustainability-minded parents, Markley has been passionate about the environment from an early age. Upon taking a marine science course in high school, she fell in love with the study of water and water science. She went on to receive a B.S. in environmental earth science from Eastern Connecticut State University and a master’s in earth and environmental science at Lehigh University, where she studied the formation of iron minerals in soils as an indicator of paleo precipitation.

Driven by a perpetual thirst for knowledge (pun intended), Markley finished both of her prior degrees thinking about how much more she wanted to learn. “After completing my undergraduate degree, I felt like the more I learned, the more I learned that I don’t know anything,” she says. “I opted to do my master’s. That flew by and then I was like ‘I still don’t know anything!’ So that’s how I ended up here at Syracuse working on my Ph.D.”

When searching for a Ph.D. program, Markley knew she wanted to delve into more water-based research. She was attracted to the interdisciplinary opportunities offered by ECS’s and the at Syracuse University. Markley is co-advised by Charles Driscoll, University Professor of environmental systems and distinguished professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Andria Costello Staniec, department chair and associate professor in civil and environmental engineering.

“Laura is one of the most well-rounded and engaged graduate students that I’ve worked with,” says Staniec. “Her commitment to sustainability is evident both in her research as well as her broad public environmental education platform. In both of these areas, Laura has already proven herself as a leader and she is poised to have a large impact.”

Markley’s dissertation includes three unique projects that are connected by their relationship to the life cycle impacts of plastics.

Laura Markley (Please note, this image was taken prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and does not reflect current public health guidelines.)

First, she studies the effects of certain stress conditions—like being left in the car on a hot summer day or exposure to ultraviolet light—on disposable plastic water bottles. Using breast cancer cells, Markley is investigating if these conditions cause estrogenic chemicals to leach out of the bottle and into the water, and the potential impacts this has on human health.

For her second project, Markley is using survey data from a 2019 social media campaign called #FuturisticFebruary to examine the generation of waste at the household level and consumer perspectives on waste, sustainability and pollution issues.

The campaign encouraged participants to document all their non-perishable waste for one month. By analyzing participant data, Markley is learning more about not only the composition of waste at the household/individual level, but also how environmental attitudes and knowledge of environmental issues factor into the equation.

“The survey asks general questions about how participants view the sustainability of their waste and pollution issues, but also specific questions like ‘do you believe there are floating islands of plastic in the ocean?’” she says. “Looking at this data is helpful in understanding where we may need to improve our communication about certain scientific topics as it relates to sustainability.”

Markley currently spends the bulk of her time on her third project: researching the abundance, distribution and potential sources of microplastics in Onondaga and Skaneateles lakes. With funding from the New York State Water Research Institute at Cornell University through the U.S. Geological Survey and help from the Upstate Freshwater Institute, she collects grab, bucket and net samples seasonally from the two lakes to develop a profile of microplastic concentrations with space and time.

According to Markley, 20% of the annual inflow from the historically polluted Onondaga Lake is sourced from wastewater effluent (a common source of microplastics), with additional potential sources from street litter runoff from the surrounding urban areas and inputs from combined sewer overflow events. A study in contrast, Skaneateles Lake is relatively pristine and provides most of the drinking water for the City of Syracuse.

Markley conducts net sampling for her research into microplastics abundance in local lakes.

“Our preliminary results show it’s not only where we sample, but how we sample that changes what microplastics we collect. What we’ve seen is that microplastics can be very diverse in these ecosystems, occurring in all types of colors, shapes and form. Microfibers, which shed from textiles during laundering or during wear or use, are very common, but not yet well understood,” Markley says.

When she’s not in the lab, Markley works on , where she shares recent research, opines on the science of trash and documents her ongoing commitment to reduce her own waste. She started the blog in 2018 to address a proliferation of misinformation in the waste-free movement.

“I noticed there was a lot of bad information out there about going waste-free and about plastics in general,” she says. “I wanted to make that information more accessible to people and also provide the scientific citations to back it up.”

Markley’s fluency in communicating science to the layperson shines on her blog, which offers approachable and non-dogmatic strategies for reducing one’s own waste.

“Not everyone necessarily has the interest in or the access to the science, but they have a right to it,” she says. “I wanted to create a place where people could get the information and make their own decisions about their behaviors, rather than being told what to do.”

Markley also has a side hustle doing graphic design, another interest she’s had from a young age, having recently designed a plant-based, minimal waste cookbook called “Fetagetaboutit.”

“I’m a very visual learner so I’ve found it important to incorporate graphical elements when communicating science,” she says. “If I have to learn something by reading it, I’ll never learn it.”

In honor of Earth Day and Earth Month being celebrated in April, Markley offers her tips for anyone trying to reduce their waste at the individual or household level.

• Look at your food waste. Do an assessment of how much food and what types of things you’re throwing away and see if there are any opportunities to compost that waste. The breaking down of food in landfills is a huge source of methane, Markley says, yet food waste is an aspect of trash that often gets ignored.
• Plan your meals and grocery lists. Another tip for reducing food waste is to plot out your grocery list and meals for the week before heading to the store. Then you’ll have a plan for all the food you buy, ensuring none goes to waste.
• Conduct a waste audit. You can look at all your trash for the week and see what types of things you most often dispose of. Are you trashing lots of paper towels? Or tossing excess shipping containers and materials from online shopping? Having more awareness of how much waste you’re generating and the main sources of it can be a first step toward reducing, Markley says.
• Gradually replace disposable/single-use items. Markley advises focusing on small changes that you can make over time as you use up existing supplies. If you run out of paper coffee filters, you can buy a reusable one. Instead of buying more paper towels, invest in cloth napkins. When you run out of plastic water bottles, look into purchasing a reusable/refillable one that you can use every day.
• Shop secondhand. Whether you’re looking for a new furniture piece or to spice up your wardrobe, there are plenty of secondhand options out there to save you money and keep resources circulating. Shopping secondhand also allows you to tailor furniture or clothing to your needs—making them more unique to you!

Markley emphasizes the need for progress over perfection when it comes to reducing our carbon footprints. “People have a lot going on right now without someone telling them they need to make only one jar of waste per year or something crazy like that,” she says.