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Faculty Research, Publications and Presentations

Winter 2024

Ramapo College’s talented and diverse faculty are well regarded in their fields and during 2023, several faculty members were honored with awards, while many others wrote, presented and contributed their scholarly and creative work in their disciplines and the world.

Awards

Associate Professor of Communication Arts (Applied Communications) Satarupa Dasgupta received the Activism and Social Justice Pedagogy Award from the Activism and Social Justice Division of the National Communication Association (NCA). She is also only one of only four recipients of the 2023 Organization of Feminist Research on Gender and Communication Grant for her project on the intersectionality of stigma and its impact on healthcare seeking behavior among brothel-based and transient sex workers in India.

RCNJ Professor Satarupa Dasgupta headshot
RCNJ Professor Yolanda del Amo

Associate Professor of Art, Photography and Digital Media Yolanda del Amo was awarded a 2023 Artist Grant from the New York State Council for the Arts and sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts for her project “Team.” “Team” is an ambitious photographic art project that will explore through a series of images the relationship between education, economics and entertainment in American society.

Professor of Mathematics James Gillespie was shortlisted as one of three finalists for the Australian Math Society’s Mahoney- Neumann-Room Prize, which is awarded for outstanding contributions to the Society’s research publications, for his 2018 article, “AC-Gorenstein rings and their stable module categories,” published in the Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society, Volume 107, Issue 2. 

RCNJ Professor James Gillespie
RCNJ Assistant Professor Indya Jackson

Assistant Professor of African American Literature Indya Jackson was awarded a teaching fellowship by the Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium (DEFCon) to develop two digital humanities projects at Ramapo College.

Associate Professor of Music (Production) Zach Layton was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship for the composition of “All That is Seen and Unseen,” an opera generated using AI with collaborators Lauren Petty and Shaun Irons with Amelia Watkins, soprano.

RCNJ Associate Professor of Music (Production) Zach Layton

Faculty Research, Publications, and Presentations

Accomplishments reported from January – August 2023, with thanks to the Office of the Provost.

    Anisfield School of Business
    • Professor of Management Rikki Abzug presented “Reducing Inequalities and the Changing Demographics of Hospital Boards 1931-2021 in Six U.S. Cities” at the European Academic of Management 2023 Annual Conference in Dublin, Ireland in June 2023. Additionally, she presented “If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em! A Demonstration Project for Using ChatGPT to Generate Tailored Organizational Behavior Classroom Exercises” at the 2023 International Management and Organizational Behavior Teaching Society conference in Scotland in July 2023.
    • Professor of Marketing Christina Chung presented “Consumer Innovativeness in Adopting Electric Vehicles: A Study of Gender Differences in Japan” at the Global Marketing Conference in Seoul, South Korea in July 2023.
    • Associate Professor of Economics Tim Haase and Professor of Economics Alex Olbrecht were named the managing editor and editor of the Journal of Business & Economic Studies, the peer-reviewed academic journal of the Northeast Business and Economics Association.
    • Associate Professor of Accounting Changhee Lee had her article, “Bold Recommendation, Analyst Coverage and Stock Return,” accepted for publication in the Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance.
    • Associate Professor of Management Tammi Redd, presented “Outsmarting AI: Assignments and Exams that Minimize the Risk of Plagiarism” at the Management and Organizational Behavior Teaching Society annual conference in Jacksonville, Fla. in June 2023.
    • Associate Professor of Management Nikhil Varma delivered an invited masterclass in “Blockchain for the Supply Chain” for the Council of Industries in India.
    School of Contemporary Arts
    • Assistant Professor of Theater (Costume Design) Austin Blake Conlee has been designing productions across the country at Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Sierra Repertory Theatre and Cumberland Playhouse. He recently designed a gown made entirely of fresh florals that was displayed at Hudson Yards in Manhattan for the 2023 “Fleurs De Villes” Exhibit. In February 2024, Professor Conlee’s digital costume renderings will be featured in an upcoming textbook “Digital Painting and Rendering for Theatrical Design” by Jen Gillette.
    • In August 2023, there was a workshop production of (Orestes) “The Son” in North Adams, Mass. This production is a new performance installation written and directed by Professor of Theater History and Criticism Peter A. Campbell. Collaborators included Ramapo Theater Program alumni L.J. Hickmon ’16, Samantha Simone ’15 and Nick Walsh ’15.
    • Associate Professor of Communication Arts (Applied Communications) Satarupa Dasgupta published an invited chapter titled, “The Importance of an Activism-centered Pedagogical Practice with a Focus on Intersectionality for Incorporating Diverse Epistemologies in our Research, Teaching and Learning” in the book “Health Communication for Social Justice – A Whole Person Activist Approach.”
    • In June 2023, Associate Professor of 3D Design and Animation Ann LePore was in residency at the Toronto Animated Image Society. Additionally, in October 2023, Professor LePore had her animation work exhibited during “A Taste of Synaesthesia,” an international synesthesia art exhibition and outdoor public projections in London presented by Nine Lyrae Productions and Creative London and curated by Krisz Losconci and Valeria Perboni.
    • Professor of Communication Arts David Oh spoke with Diverse Issues in Higher Education about his research on Asian American representation. In his interview, Oh touched upon the underrepresentation of Asians in film, TV and music, as well as how different populations view Korean media.
    • Professor of Music (Industry and Production) Ben Neill’s album “Prana Cantos” was released on Six Degrees Records in May 2023. Since then, he’s performed the music in: Seattle, Wash.; Tucson, Ariz.; Santa Cruz, Calif.; Rangely, Colo.; the Tank Center for Sonic Arts; and Manitoga/The Russel Wright Center for Art and Design. Additionally, Professor Neill performed with minimalist pioneer La Monte Young at his “Dream House” installation in Manhattan. In November 2023, he will be leading a performance of Young’s music at the Chicago Humanities Festival and premiering a new work based on the letters of his former collaborator David Wojnarowicz at the Eli Broad Museum in Los Angeles for their World AIDS Day event.
    • Associate Professor of Visual Arts (Drawing and Painting) Jackie Skrzynski was in the group exhibit “Visceral Bodies” at Gallery Aferro in Newark. The exhibition was curated by the artistic director and Ramapo alumnus, Juno Zago ’15. The exhibition was also favorably reviewed by Jeanne Brasile in The Newarker.
    School of Humanities and Global Studies
    • Professor of Literature Todd Barnes’ book, “Shakespearean Charity and the Perils of Redemptive Performance,” (Cambridge UP, 2020), was selected as one of ten books representing the year’s contribution to Shakespeare studies by Shakespeare Survey, a leading journal in the field.
    • The New Jersey Council for the Humanities awarded Dr. David Colman, associate professor of African American history, $15,000 for the community-based initiative, “Englewood Makes History,” which will collect and digitize archival materials related to the vibrant history of the City of Englewood.
    • On November 4-5, the 2023 U.S.-China-Taiwan Conference, organized by Professor of Political Science Dean Chen was held at Ramapo College. The conference invited international and U.S. scholars and think tank experts to present and discuss their research and policy analyses relating to the ongoing Taiwan Strait tensions, U.S. and Taiwan elections in 2024 and economic/security implications for the Indo-Pacific region.
    • Anthropology and International Studies adjunct Professor Neriko Doerr, along with collaborators from Japanese universities Kansai University, Ibaragi University, Osaka University, Kusan National University, Kanazawa University, Musashino University, National Taichung University of Science and Technology as well as a handful of U.S. institutions, received a prestigious grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Research Grant-In-Aid for Scientific Research, Type B for ¥15,400,000 (USD 116,000). In addition, Professor Doerr presented three talks at the American Association for Applied Linguistics in Portland, Ore. in March 2023:
      • “‘Neo-Immersion’ and ‘Neo-Test-Prep’ Pedagogies: Beyond the Standard and Unit-Thinking in Language.”
      • “Multiscalar Anti-War Musings of the 2010s: The Japanese TV Show Massan and Hiroaki Koide’s Fukushima-Hiroshima Connections.”
      • “Pedagogy beyond Standardization and beyond Unit Thinking: Theoretical Foundations” (「脱標準化、脱ユニット思考の教育法:理論的背景」)
    • Associate Professor of Africana Studies Karl Ellis Johnson was quoted in Ebony magazine’s op-ed titled, “Should We Continue to Celebrate Black History Month? A Call for ‘Black Resistance’.”
    • Professor of Literature Yvette Kisor read her paper, “Instances of the Bel Inconnu Tradition in Tolkien’s Legendarium,” at the 58th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in May 2023; published “We Could Do with a Bit More Queerness in These Parts: An Analysis of the Queer against the Peculiar, the Odd and the Strange in ‘The Lord of the Rings’” in the Journal of Tolkien Research in June 2023; and presented her paper “Queer Time and Space in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth” at the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds, England in July 2023.
    • Jacob Labendz, director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, was quoted on August 16, 2023 in The New York Times article by Zachary Small, “At Holocaust Museum in Fortnite, Superheroes and Atrocities Collide.”
    • The textbook, “Spanish for Health Care and Human Services: An Interdisciplinary Approach for Intermediate and Advanced Spanish,” co-authored by Professor of Spanish Natalia Santamaría Laorden has, in less than a year since its publication, been requested by 389 U.S. universities and adopted all over the country by universities such as the University of Colorado-Boulder, University of Pennsylvania, Northeastern University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Indiana University Bloomington and Villanova University, among many others. In addition, this summer Dr. Santamaría Laorden presented her research on both fin-de-siècle literature as well as language and pedagogy in the Observatorio Cervantes at Harvard University and University College Dublin. Later in June 2023, she was joined by Spanish and psychology double-major Caitlin Ford in her presentation of the Ramapo College Study Abroad Program in the Basque Country at the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese conference in Salamanca, Spain.
    • In August 2023, Associate Professor of Spanish Paula Straile-Costa presented a paper at the Annual Science Fiction Research Association conference at the University of Technology in Dresden, Germany entitled, “Disruptive Utopian Fantasies in Black and White: Miscegenation in W.E. B. Du Bois’s ‘The Comet’” (1920 U.S.A) and Manuel Zapata Olivella’s “‘Un Extraño Bajo Mi Piel’” (1967 Colombia).
    • Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Literature Hugh Sheehy’s story, “Above and Below,” appeared in the literary journal Socrates on the Beach, issue 9, and was noted by Bookforum in its September 5, 2023 daily roundup.
    • Associate Professor of History Stacie Taranto has been named an editor for TIME magazine’s latest collaboration, “TIME Made by History.” The magazine and history platform “Made by History” have come together to provide a space in which in-depth historical analyses of contemporary U.S. affairs and public discourse are delivered in a format tailored for the broader audience. She was recently quoted in the New York Magazine article, “The Revolt of the Other Mothers.”
    • Professor of Political Science Jeremy Teigen co-authored “See G.I. Jane Run: The Rise of Female Military Veteran Candidates for Congress” which appeared in American Politics Research. Using election data from the 2012–2020 U.S. Congressional elections, Professor Teigen and his co-authors found only limited evidence that military service wins more votes for candidates of either gender. Among Democrats, prior military service levels the playing field between male and female candidates, but veteran women only outperformed veteran men in 2018. Additionally, Dr. Teigen served as the co-chair of the 73rd Annual Student Conference on U.S. Affairs (SCUSA) at West Point, where law and society major Hannah Scroggins and finance major Matthew Wisneski participated as the Ramapo student delegates.
    • Professor Ira Spar contributed to a Live Science article on the likelihood of Noah’s flood.
    School of Social Science and Human Services
    • Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Naseem Choudhury and Can Özger ‘20 published, “Wikipedia and Shostakovich Meets Goya: Elaborative Narration and Music Enhance Affect Derived from Art,” in Empirical Studies of the Arts.
    • Professor of Psychology Virginia Gonsalves-Domond published, “Promoting Cross-Cultural Psychology Research in the Caribbean: Best Practices in Intersectionality” in the Athens Journal of Social Sciences.
    • Assistant Professor of Law and Society and Director of the Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG) Center David Gurney co-authored an article in Forensic Science International entitled, “The Need for Standards and Certification in Investigative Genetic Genealogy and a Notice of Action.” He also published “Investigative Genetic Genealogy and the First Amendment Right to Noninterference with Receipt” in First Amendment Law Review and co-authored an article for the Harvard Law Blog regarding privacy laws and their unintended consequences for IGG.
    • Associate Professor of Social Science Emily Leskinen and Professor of Psychology Leah Warner published their co-authored article, “Words like Weapons: Labeling Women as Emotional During a Disagreement Negatively Affects the Perceived Legitimacy of Their Arguments,” in Psychology of Women Quarterly, Volume 46, Issue 4. In a series of three studies, they found that calling women “emotional” undermines them in conversational arguments. When stating equivalent points in a disagreement, if a person labels a woman as “emotional” during that disagreement, bystanders will perceive her arguments as less legitimate than when men are labeled “emotional” and also as compared to when an “emotional” label is not used. An article in Forbes cited this publication.
    • In July 2023, Professor of Clinical Psychology Jim Morley published an article on phenomenology in the Journal für Psychologie.
    • Assistant Professors of Social Work Dolly Sacristan and Colleen Martinez collaborated on a publication, “Using Clinical Simulation to Assess M.S.W. Students’ Engagement Skills,” in the Journal of Teaching in Social Work, using a pilot study with three Ramapo M.S.W. classes to explore the use of clinical simulations in teaching engagement skills. Additionally, Dr. Martinez’s play therapy work was published in the Professors at Play Playbook by Carnegie Mellon University ETC Press and also featured in a profile published by The Therapy Institute.
    • Professor of Teacher Education Eva Ogens published her book, “Social Context of Education: Past, Present, and Future Trends.”
    • Assistant Professor of Psychology Jessica Saunders was quoted in TIME magazine’s article on the issues related to eating disorders and medication like Ozempic. She was also featured in the August 2023 issue of Women’s Health on the girl dinner trend.
    School of Theoretical and Applied Science
    • During 2023, Assistant Professor of Computer Science Ali Al-Juboori published eight papers in ISI peer-reviewed journals, including Sustainability, IEEE Access and Computer Systems Science and Engineering. Additionally, Dr. Al-Juboori has coached five teams of three Ramapo students each for the 2023 International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) Greater New Regionals held in October 2023 at Columbia University. ICPC is the most prestigious annual, multi-tiered algorithmic programming contest among the world’s universities.
    • Professor of Environmental Science Stefan Becker published “The Impact of Changes in Steering Patterns on the Probability of Hurricanes Making Landfall in the New York City Area” in the International Journal of Climatology.
    • Professor of Physics Dana Buna and Lindsey Gray ‘18, who is currently finishing her Ph.D. at Wake Forest University, published their paper, “Incorporation of Stokes Shifting Dyes into a Si-based Photovoltaic Thermal System” by invitation in the Materials Research Society (MRS) Impact Issue in January 2023.
    • Associate Professor of Nursing Ann Marie Flatekval’s work using an augmented reality tee shirt to enhance health assessment skills is featured in a video on Nurse Educator. She also published these recent articles:
    • In February 2023, Dr. Flatekval presented at the 4th Annual Nurse Think for Nurse Educators conference in Florida on “Next Gen Learning: Fundamentals, NCLEX and Beyond: Implementation of a Mindfulness Bundle and its Impact on Perceived Stress Levels for Students in their First Semester in the Nursing Sequence.”
    • Professor of Nursing Donna Flynn became a Certified Dementia Practitioner through the National Council of Dementia Practitioners.
    • In July 2023, Assistant Professor of Microbiology Kokila Kota, co-authored two publications: “FEMS-Microbiology Ecology” (Oxford University Press) Manuscript ID: FEMSEC-23-06-0265; “Exoprotease Exploitation and Social Cheating in a Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Environmental Lysogenic Strain with a Non-Canonical Quorum Sensing System and Acta Scientific Microbiology” (ISSN: 2581-3226); “Comparison of Group Behaviors in the Wild Type Versus Mutant Strain of the Bacteria Pseudomonas Aeruginosa” which was co-authored with biology major Julia Munson.
    • Associate Professor of Mathematics Katarzyna Kowal co-directed the New Jersey Undergraduate Mathematics Competition at Kean University. Two teams of Ramapo students competed, and the team consisting of students Adrian Zaremba, Ryan Saldarriaga and Bibhu Bhatta won 6th place in the state in the team part of the competition, out of 23 teams. In addition, student Adrian Zaremba won 3rd place in the state in the individual part of the competition, out of 67 individuals.
    • Professor of Computer Science Amruth Kumar was invited to serve on the Education Board of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) through June 2024. He was also recognized as a Distinguished Contributor by Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society for his technical contributions to the profession. Most recently, in May 2023, his co-authored paper, “Fuzzy Logic++: Towards Developing Fuzzy Education Curricula Using ACM/IEEE/AAAI CS2023,” which was selected for best paper award at the 2023 North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio.
    • Assistant Professor of Biology Natalie Lemanski spoke about the importance of biodiversity in the environment in Entomology Today. The article brings awareness to Lemanski’s research published in Nature & Ecology Evolution in 2022.
    • Associate Professor of Engineering Physics Catalin Martin, Engineering Physics Lab Coordinator Ihor Sydoryk, Aashish Poudel ’21 and their collaborators had their article published and selected as the Editor’s Suggestion in Physical Review B (Phys. Rev. B 107, 165151, 2023), “Optical Conductivity and Vibrational Spectra of the Narrow-Gap Semiconductor FeGa3.” In addition, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $192K grant to Dr. Martin to study the magneto-optical properties of a new class of materials called Weyl semimetals.
    George T. Potter Library
    • Assessment and Instruction Librarian, Christina Connor, co-organized a statewide librarians meeting on assessing library research help services. She co-presented with Stockton librarian Eric Jeitner on managing expectations of patrons. In addition, she organized a statewide librarians summer 2023 workshop on assessment, instruction and user services in academic libraries.

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