UB’s faculty are keeping busy during this time of pandemic, social distancing, and zoom classes. Here are a few of the new projects, books, and presentations our hard-working professors have been engaged in recently.
Dr. Kadir Akyuz, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, has just published a blog article on the Alteryx Use Cases page, titled “Weighting Survey Data and Linear Regression Analysis — Weighted Least Squares with Alteryx.” It illustrates the process of weighting survey data and conducting a linear regression-weighted least squares analysis with Alteryx. Dr. Akyuz adopts the data collected in a research study that examines the impact of Syrian refugees on fear of crime in Turkey. His 18 years of law enforcement experience with the Turkish National Police and his work experience peacekeeping in Kosovo and Liberia with the United Nations have informed his criminal justice courses here at UB and his research interests in crime, political violence, terrorism, and policing.
Dr. David W. Kraft, Professor of Mathematics and Physics, and UB alumnus Issa Debabneh presented a joint paper entitled An Idealized Scenario for Energy Generation by Nuclear Fusion at the fall 2020 meeting of the New England Section of the American Physical Society. This work is now being readied for publication. Issa Debabneh graduated from UB, summa cum laude, with a major in Mathematics and subsequently received an MS from the UB School of Education with certification in secondary education. He now teaches in Brookfield, CT and continues to collaborate with Prof. Kraft.
Eric D. Lehman, Associate Professor of English, has published his 20th book, and his 3rd book of fiction. 9 Lupine Road: A Supernatural Tale on the Tracks of Kerouac is his first full-length novel. It follows rookie FBI Agent Dominic Wood as he tracks his father Rupert on a three-decade journey of homelessness and obsession, and investigates the dark mysteries of the American psyche. Here at UB Lehman teaches many of this novels’ themes in classes on Jack Kerouac, Science Fiction, the Literature of Travel and Adventure, and the American Dream.
Frank Martignetti, Assistant Professor of Music, has a chapter in a forthcoming book from Oxford University Press: Sociological Thinking in Music Education: International Intersections. This book presents sociological views of music practices and pedagogies from a variety of places around the globe including Brazil, Venezuela, South Africa, and Palestine as well as Germany, indigenous Canada, and the United States. Martignetti’s chapter, “A Perfect Mix? Navigating Choice and Scarcity in a New York City Music Program,” uses Giddens’ “conceptual dichotomy of agency and structure,” and students’ words to illuminate the way individual students’ school music education views and choices were shaped by the systems and policies implemented in the ambitious New York City school “choice” reforms enacted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein from 2000 to 2010.
Amy Nawrocki, Associate Professor of English, will present at the 2021 North East Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Conference on March 18, 2021 at a panel on Illness Medicine, and Literature: The Significance of Storytelling in Healthcare Settings. In her talk, titled “Finding the Right Words: Merging Medicine with the Arts,” she will draw upon her experiences as a poet, professor, and patient and offer insights about how literary thinking and creative expression can encourage better communication between patients and practitioners. The presentation will show how storytelling elements, like point of view, characterization, and rising action, and poetic elements like metaphor, diction and syntax, can bring clarity to the fragmented nature of medical documents and give health care workers a means to better process their experiences. Nawrocki has taught this topic to her students at UB in her class Health and Medicine as Themes in Literature.