A University of St. Thomas shuttle bus on a snowy day. Mark Brown/University of St. Thomas

Professional Notes: April 1

Steven Jorissen, College of Arts and Sciences Chemistry Department and member of the Faculty Learning Community for Sustainability, was invited by the Minnesota House Climate Action Caucus to present and testify during their Higher Education focus hearing on Jan. 24, 2020. He consulted with Maria Dahmus, Sustainable Communities Partnership (SCP) director and Office of Sustainability Initiatives, and put together a short presentation on St. Thomas' SCP program.

Trent Brager, education and social sciences librarian, published the chapter, “Finding Expertise in Your Own Backyard: Creating Communities of Practice to Support Learning about the Framework” in The Information Literacy Framework: Case Studies of Successful Implementation with colleagues from St. Catherine University and the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Adam Kay, College of Arts and Sciences Biology Department, along with two former St. Thomas students and an artist, published the research, "Transitional Ecology: embedding ecological experiments into temporary urban public art." The project that the students, Dr. Kay and the artist delivered was a temporary installation to improve an unused parking lot in St. Paul while the future park is being planned and developed.

Joe Myre and Jason Sawin, College of Arts and Sciences Computer and Information Sciences Department, is proud to announce a publication in the Database Systems for Advanced Applications 2020 conference in Jeju, South Korea. The paper presents strategies that improve the efficiency to gather information from a database, utilizing graphics processing units and preprocessing metadata. The team also includes two St. Thomas undergraduate students, Brandon Tran and Brennan Schaffner, and Dr. David Chiu from the University of Puget Sound. The research will be presented in South Korea on May 21-24.

Shersten Johnson, College of Arts and Sciences Music Department, is the author of “Music analysis and accessibility in the music theory classroom” in The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy (2020) edited by Leigh VanHandel.

John Martens, College of Arts and Sciences Theology Department, co-edited a book with Dr. Kristine Henriksen Garroway titled, "Children and Methods: Listening To and Learning From Children in the Biblical World," Brill’s Series in Jewish Studies, Vol. 67 (February 2020). Martens brings together an interdisciplinary collection of essays addressing children in the Hebrew Bible. Erika Zabinski '15 served as copy editor and indexer.

Michael Hollerich, College of Arts and Sciences Theology Department, published "Total War and Limited Government: The German Catholic Debate at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age," in Vassilios Paipais, ed., Theology and World Politics: Metaphysics, Genealogies, Political Theologies (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2020), 237-263.

Mark Neuzil, College of Arts and Sciences Communication and Journalism Department, is a co-author with Michigan State University colleagues Eric Freedman and Bruno Takahashi of "Western Press Coverage of Environmental Controversies in the Caucasus: Filling the News and Information Gap?" The Caucasus Journal of Social Sciences, 11:1, 87-103.