Bobby

Susan Bobby, assis­tant pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish, is the author and edi­tor of “Fairy Tales Reimag­ined: Essays on New Retellings,” (McFar­land and Com­pany, Inc., 2009). The book takes a fresh look at reimag­ined fairy tales of the late 20th and early 21st cen­turies. It explores the social, polit­i­cal and cul­tural truths of our age with insight, intel­li­gence and com­plex­ity. Bobby includes 16 essays from both best-selling and lesser-known writ­ers who apply a vari­ety of the­o­ret­i­cal per­spec­tives, includ­ing post­mod­ernism, psy­cho­analy­sis, Marx­ism, fem­i­nism and gen­der studies.

Before Bobby could begin work on the book, she put a call out to lit­er­ary schol­ars who spe­cial­ize in writ­ing con­tem­po­rary fairy tales. “I didn’t want to deal with fairy tales from ear­lier peri­ods and cer­tainly didn’t want any­thing Dis­ney related; it had to be lit­er­ary in nature,” she said. Accord­ing to Bobby, most of the essays in the book range from the 1980s to the present. Once every­one was on board and Bobby com­pleted a pro­posal for the project, a pub­lish­ing com­pany from North Car­olina was so inter­ested in her topic that within 48 hours, a deal had been struck to write the book.

Bobby says the audi­ence for her book is pri­mar­ily those who are study­ing in the lit­er­ary field. “These are going to be pro­fes­sors and schol­ars of fairy tale stud­ies who need the mate­r­ial, but a major­ity will be col­lege stu­dents who want to learn more about best-selling and lesser-known con­tem­po­rary fairy tale writ­ers,” she added. When asked which one out of the 16 essays in the book is her favorite, she said, “Helen Pili­novsky. It’s the essay that strikes me as the most beau­ti­fully writ­ten and she tends to be more of a cre­ative writer than an ana­lyt­i­cal one.”

Noted writer and critic Kate Bern­heimer calls Bobby’s book “a col­lec­tion that can be seen to con­tribute not only to the very impor­tant liv­ing his­tory and inter­pre­ta­tion of con­tem­po­rary fairy tales – so nascent and now – but to a con­ver­sa­tion about what con­sti­tutes a ’fairy tale,’ that mon­u­men­tal type of art we so know and love.” Bobby was also excited to learn about a recent five-star review from Amazon.com. “I was so thrilled with the cri­tique of the book. The online review says that this is pre­cisely the book that stu­dents need,” she said.

At Wes­ley Col­lege, Bobby teaches clas­sic and con­tem­po­rary fairy tales and ado­les­cent lit­er­a­ture. She received both her bach­e­lor of arts degree and master’s degree in Eng­lish from Millersville Uni­ver­sity in Millersville, Penn­syl­va­nia. She cur­rently resides in Fel­ton, Delaware with her husband.

Alli­son

Dr. Bruce E. Alli­son, pro­fes­sor of envi­ron­men­tal stud­ies, has been reap­pointed by Gov­er­nor Markell to serve three years on the Com­mu­nity Involve­ment Advi­sory Coun­cil (CIAC). Alli­son was first appointed to the statewide Coun­cil in June 2006 by Gov­er­nor Min­ner. The leg­is­la­tion signed by Gov­er­nor Min­ner charged the CIAC to deal with inter­ac­tions between the Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources and Envi­ron­men­tal Con­trol (DNREC) and local com­mu­ni­ties. The Coun­cil and the com­mu­nity ombuds­man work to increase the flow of infor­ma­tion between com­mu­ni­ties and DNREC, increase com­mu­nity par­tic­i­pa­tion, and facil­i­tate dia­logue among all stake­hold­ers dur­ing the envi­ron­men­tal deci­sion mak­ing process. The CIAC reviews com­mu­nity envi­ron­men­tal restora­tion pro­pos­als, and they also take a proac­tive approach to assist­ing Delaware com­mu­ni­ties with envi­ron­men­tal issues.

Loft­house

Dr. Lynn Loft­house, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of speech com­mu­ni­ca­tions, recently had a paper accepted for the 2009 con­fer­ence of the Inter­na­tional Acad­emy of Lin­guis­tics, Behav­ioral and Social Sci­ence. The paper is enti­tled “Likely unin­tended cul­tural impacts result­ing from fail­ing to hold finan­cially irre­spon­si­ble U.S. bor­row­ers account­able for their actions.” She also was asked to mod­er­ate a panel dis­cus­sion at the con­fer­ence held Novem­ber 11–14 in Orlando, Florida.

Loft­house has been appointed chair of the Feline Pavil­ion Project at the Kent County SPCA. The SPCA is endeav­or­ing to con­struct a new build­ing strictly to house cats in a more community-oriented envi­ron­ment and with sep­a­rate med­ical and sur­gi­cal facil­i­ties for cats sep­a­rate from dogs. Presently, the SPCA is look­ing at plans for build­ings that are also environmentally-friendly.

Kash­mar

Dr. Richard Kash­mar, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of chem­istry and physics, gave a pre­sen­ta­tion enti­tled “Descrip­tion of an Alter­na­tive Freshman-Sophomore Chem­istry Sequence and an Analy­sis of Stu­dent Per­for­mance” at two national meet­ings. He gave an oral pre­sen­ta­tion at the chem­i­cal edu­ca­tion con­fer­ence ChemEd2009 at Rad­ford Uni­ver­sity in Vir­ginia on August 4 and did a poster pre­sen­ta­tion at a Divi­sion of Chem­i­cal Edu­ca­tion meet­ing at the 238th National Meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety in Wash­ing­ton D.C. on August 16. Kash­mar dis­cussed the cur­rent fresh-man-sophomore chem­istry sequence used at Wes­ley Col­lege and included sta­tis­ti­cal research com­par­ing stu­dent grade per­for­mance in some lower-level sci­ence major courses in the cur­rent sequence with that of the pre­vi­ous sequence. He reported that con­fer­ence par­tic­i­pants expressed inter­est in the details of the course sequence as well as the results pre­sented. One of Kashmar’s pri­mary edu­ca­tional inter­ests is the teach­ing of fresh­man chem­istry for sci­ence majors, espe­cially vari­a­tions in course sequenc­ing and course con­tent and how other instruc­tors and insti­tu­tions han­dle this type of course.

Bun­yaratavej

Dr. Krai­wi­nee (Nok) Bun­yaratavej, assis­tant pro­fes­sor of busi­ness admin­is­tra­tion, pre­sented a paper enti­tled “Ser­vices Nearshoring: An Empir­i­cal Per­spec­tive on Loca­tion Deter­mi­nants” at the Insti­tute for Oper­a­tions Research and the Man­age­ment Sci­ences Annual Meet­ing held Octo­ber 11–14 in San Diego, Cal­i­for­nia. She pre­vi­ously vis­ited San Diego this sum­mer to attend the Acad­emy of Inter­na­tional Busi­ness Annual Meet­ing since her paper enti­tled “Cul­tural Aspects of Off­shoring of Ser­vices” had been accepted for pre­sen­ta­tion there. These two papers are part of her research stream on off­shoring of ser­vices that she has been work­ing on with her col­leagues Dr. Eugene Hahn of Sal­is­bury Uni­ver­sity and Dr. Jonathan Doh of Vil­lanova University.

Gib­son

Dr. Jef­frey Gib­son, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish, devel­oped, pro­posed and chaired a panel enti­tled “Graphic Nar­ra­tive: Inno­va­tion & Adap­ta­tion” for the 40th Annual Con­ven­tion of the North­east­ern Mod­ern Lan­guage Asso­ci­a­tion. The panel fea­tured schol­ars from across the United States and Canada, each of whom focused on the­o­ret­i­cal and ped­a­gog­i­cal issues that arise when authors and artists adapt clas­sic lit­er­a­ture into graphic nar­ra­tive or when graphic nar­ra­tive is adapted into film. On the whole, the panel served as a tes­ta­ment to this hybrid genre’s grow­ing influ­ence on lit­er­ary and pop­u­lar culture.

Gib­son also con­ducted an edi­to­r­ial review of “Writ­ing Mat­ters: a Hand­book for Writ­ing and Research,” which was recently pub­lished by McGraw-Hill. The hand­book was authored by Rebecca Moore Howard and focuses on get­ting col­lege stu­dents to under­stand and accept respon­si­bil­ity for their own writ­ing and to respect writ­ing and ideas found within their aca­d­e­mic sources.

In addi­tion, Gib­son pub­lished an arti­cle of lit­er­ary crit­i­cism on the fic­tion of con­tem­po­rary British writer A.S. Byatt. His essay enti­tled “ ‘And the Princess, Telling the Story’: A. S. Byatt’s Self-Reflexive Fairy Sto­ries” was pub­lished August 4 in the col­lec­tion “Fairy Tales Reimag­ined: Essays on New Retellings,” edited by fel­low Lit­er­a­ture and Lan­guages Depart­ment col­league Susan Bobby. As the lead essay in the sec­tion “Rewrit­ing Nar­ra­tive Forms,” Gibson’s essay ana­lyzes metafic­tion, inter­tex­tu­al­ity and post­mod­ernism in Byatt’s fairy sto­ries by tying them to her more sig­nif­i­cant his­tor­i­cal fic­tion works. His essay brings to light the com­plex­ity of her shorter works while tying them to the larger tra­di­tion of fem­i­nist lit­er­a­ture and the evo­lu­tion of sto­ry­telling as an art form. Gib­son teaches Byatt’s works in his course on the Con­tem­po­rary British Novel. This pub­li­ca­tion allows his stu­dents to see first­hand the con­nec­tion between the selec­tions they study in class and orig­i­nal pub­lished lit­er­ary crit­i­cism on such works.

D’Souza

Dr. Mal­colm J. D’Souza, pro­fes­sor of chem­istry, Ste­fan M. Hai­ley ’09 (B.S. Biol­ogy), Brian P. Mahon ’11 (B.S. Bio­log­i­cal Chem­istry) and Dr. Den­nis N. Kevill, dis­tin­guished research pro­fes­sor of chem­istry and bio­chem­istry at North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­sity, recently co-authored a poster enti­tled “Mech­a­nis­tic Trends Observed with Sulfur-for-Oxygen Sub­sti­tu­tion in Chlo­ro­for­mate Esters.” This poster was pre­sented and pub­lished in the Royal Soci­ety of Chem­istry, Fara­day Dis­cus­sion 145: Fron­tiers in Phys­i­cal Organic Chem­istry, Uni­ver­sity of Wales Insti­tute, Cardiff, United Kingdom.

D’Souza also attended the NASA Mid-Atlantic Regional Space Grant Con­sor­tia Meet­ing held Octo­ber 4–6 in Charleston, West Vir­ginia. Atten­dance to this con­fer­ence has now opened addi­tional internship/scholarship oppor­tu­ni­ties for Wesley’s sci­ence and math majors who have a GPA of 3.0 or greater.

D’Souza, Fumie Koyoshi ’08 (B.S. Biol­ogy) and Dr. Lynn M. Everett, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of biol­ogy, had a paper enti­tled “Struc­ture Activ­ity Rela­tion­ships (SARs) Using a Struc­turally Diverse Drug Data­base: Val­i­dat­ing Suc­cess of Pre­dic­tor Tools” pub­lished in the Novem­ber issue of the ref­er­eed e-journal, Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Reviews. This is Koyoshi’s sixth INBRE-supported under­grad­u­ate research pub­li­ca­tion under the direc­tion of D’Souza. This arti­cle describes a method­ol­ogy of using doc­u­mented prop­er­ties of 75 con­sumer drugs within a com­mer­cially avail­able Wes­ley Col­lege drug data­base to pre­dict a drug’s phar­ma­co­ki­netic or tox­i­co­log­i­cal prop­erty on the basis of chem­i­cal struc­ture. Ini­tial results of this project were pre­sented as a poster at the 235th Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety (ACS) National Meet­ing held April 6–8 in New Orleans, Louisiana and earned a Cer­tifi­cate of Recog­ni­tion from the Divi­sion of Chem­i­cal Edu­ca­tion (CHED)-Medicinal Chem­istry Section.

Along with Jeanette L. Miller, M.Ed., assis­tant direc­tor of the Delaware Biotech­nol­ogy Insti­tute, D’Souza pre­sented a poster enti­tled “Part­ner­ship model to launch bio­med­ical research at a small lib­eral arts col­lege,” at the 238th ACS National Meet­ing held August 16–20 in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. The poster, detail­ing the enor­mous achieve­ments of Wesley’s seven-year par­tic­i­pa­tion in the National Insti­tute of Health for Delaware’s Idea Net­works for Bio­med­ical Research Excel­lence (NIH-INBRE) pro­gram, was also one of 23 CHED papers (out of 452 papers pre­sented in that divi­sion) cho­sen to be show­cased for a sec­ond time dur­ing the ACS national conference’s SciMix event.

D’Souza was recently hon­ored by his alma mater, North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­sity (NIU), as one of the 50 Golden Anniver­sary Alumni Award recip­i­ents from NIU’s Col­lege of Lib­eral Arts and Sci­ences. The award rec­og­nizes indi­vid­u­als who have dis­tin­guished them­selves either in pro­fes­sional fields or through involve­ment in civic, cul­tural or char­i­ta­ble ser­vice. Selected from a pool of dis­tin­guished alumni span­ning the five decades of the col­lege, D’Souza was sur­prised to be cho­sen for this honor.

D’Souza was recently appointed codi­rec­tor for under­grad­u­ate research on a $17.4 mil­lion grant from NIH-INBRE. His research has resulted in 52 peer-reviewed arti­cles, $2.6 mil­lion in grants, one com­mer­cially avail­able phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal data­base, and over 150 national and inter­na­tional con­fer­ence presentations.

Dr. Patri­cia Dwyer, Wesley’s vice pres­i­dent for aca­d­e­mic affairs, noted that D’Souza’s schol­arly achieve­ments, teach­ing excel­lence and work­ing with stu­dents in research have gained the col­lege national recog­ni­tion. “Dr. D’Souza’s per­sonal atten­tion to our stu­dents and his advo­cacy for grant fund­ing that sup­ports their under­grad­u­ate research show­case the dis­tinc­tive advan­tage of a Wes­ley Col­lege expe­ri­ence,” she remarked. Hav­ing been par­tic­u­larly effec­tive at involv­ing stu­dents in his research projects, D’Souza has men­tored over 50 under­grad­u­ates in the lab­o­ra­tory since 1992. In turn, his stu­dents reg­u­larly have received merit and recog­ni­tion awards at national con­fer­ences, been awarded sig­nif­i­cant schol­ar­ships and fel­low­ships, and been accepted in com­pet­i­tive grad­u­ate and pro­fes­sional school programs.

Walker

In June 2009 the Delaware Board of Nurs­ing elected Rebecca Walker, JD, MSN, vis­it­ing instruc­tor of nurs­ing, as the new pres­i­dent of the Board of Nurs­ing. Walker is a nurse attor­ney who has spent her legal career defend­ing nurses in Philadel­phia health care lit­i­ga­tion and her nurs­ing career prac­tic­ing in crit­i­cal care and emer­gency nurs­ing at Chris­tiana Care.  She is also a MSN grad­u­ate of Wes­ley College.

Mem­bers of the Delaware Board of Nurs­ing are appointed by the gov­er­nor. The Board is charged with the reg­u­la­tion and approval of nurs­ing licenses and the over­sight of nurs­ing edu­ca­tional pro­grams in Delaware. The Board also deter­mines the process of dis­ci­plin­ing those licensees who vio­late statu­tory stan­dards of care or the State of Delaware nurs­ing rules and reg­u­la­tions. Walker will serve as pres­i­dent of the Board of Nurs­ing until 2011.

Walker

Dr. Lucille Gam­bardella, pro­fes­sor and chair of the Depart­ment of Nurs­ing, was inducted into the Acad­emy of Nurs­ing Edu­ca­tion at cer­e­monies dur­ing the National League for Nurs­ing Edu­ca­tion Sum­mit on Sep­tem­ber 26 at the Mar­riott Hotel in Philadel­phia, Penn­syl­va­nia. Pres­i­dent and Mrs. John­ston and nurs­ing fac­ulty mem­ber Dr. Nancy Rubino attended the event. Selec­tion to the Acad­emy is com­pet­i­tive and has been awarded to only 86 nurse edu­ca­tors across the coun­try. Fel­lows are cho­sen based on con­tri­bu­tions to inno­v­a­tive teach­ing and learn­ing strate­gies, nurs­ing edu­ca­tion research, fac­ulty devel­op­ment, aca­d­e­mic lead­er­ship, pro­mo­tion of pub­lic pol­icy that advances nurs­ing edu­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tive edu­ca­tional prac­tice, and com­mu­nity part­ner­ships that sus­tain excel­lence in the field of nurs­ing education.

Cur­rently in her 26th year at Wes­ley, Gam­bardella is well known to the nurs­ing com­mu­nity in Delaware and beyond. Her con­tri­bu­tions to the inno­v­a­tive RN to MSN pro­gram at Wes­ley have made it one of the largest grad­u­ate pro­grams on cam­pus and a hall­mark of edu­ca­tional mobil­ity for those nurses who strive to reach the advanced level of nurs­ing prac­tice. Gam­bardella has pro­moted pub­lic pol­icy through her ser­vice as the for­mer pres­i­dent of the Delaware Board of Nurs­ing and the Delaware Nurses Asso­ci­a­tion, and she was instru­men­tal in the devel­op­ment of leg­is­lated advanced prac­tice pol­icy and rules and reg­u­la­tions in Delaware. She serves on sev­eral gov­ern­ing boards in and out of Delaware and she is licensed as an advanced prac­tice nurse in psychiatric/mental health nurs­ing with inde­pen­dent prac­tice and pre­scrip­tive authority.

Gam­bardella has pre­sented her clin­i­cal research both nation­ally and inter­na­tion­ally and is a fre­quent pre­sen­ter on nurse aca­d­e­mic lead­er­ship at con­fer­ences. She also has authored sev­eral arti­cles on nurse fac­ulty roles, psychiatric/ men­tal health nurs­ing and role devel­op­ment in nurs­ing edu­ca­tion. In addi­tion, she is the co-author of the “Hand­book for Stu­dents” that accom­pa­nies the Wilson/ Kneisl text on Psy­chi­atric Men­tal Health Nursing.