Scholarship and Recognition - Dr. Adrian Van Rythoven, Department of EGGS

 

 

Adrian Van Rythoven, assistant professor of environmental, geographical, and geological sciences, has his article, “Ultramafic xenoliths from the 1.15 Ga Certac kimberlite, eastern Superior Craton, [bloomu.us5.list-manage.com]” published in the The Canadian Mineralogist (2020) 58 (2): 267-286. Co-authors are Daniel Schulze and Donald Davis. Kimberlite is a type of volcanic rock originating from depths of more than 100 miles within the Earth. It is best known for bringing up crystals of diamond, but also contains useful, otherwise inaccessible, samples of other types mantle rock (xenoliths). Examining these xenoliths allows for us to learn about deep Earth processes. Age-dating the kimberlite allows us to construct the history of those processes that have built the Earth over time.

Retrieved from Onward at BU 8/13/2020

Bloomsburg University Nursing Faculty Member Named Fellow by American Academy of Nursing

Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania nursing department faculty member Kimberly Ann Olszewski has been named a 2020 Fellow by the American Academy of Nursing (Academy). 

Olszewski is one of 230 distinguished nurse leaders from around the globe, and one of just 10 individuals from Pennsylvania, to join the 2020 class. The inductees will be recognized for their significant contributions to health and health care at the Academy’s annual Transforming Health, Driving Policy Conference, taking place virtually Oct. 29-31. 

An associate professor of nursing, Olszewski holds the Breiner Family Endowed Professorship for Nursing at BU, a five-year presidential appointment she received in 2018. She serves as graduate program coordinator, and the nurse practitioner and doctorate in nursing practice program director. 

Olszewski is an American Nurses Credentialing Center board certified adult nurse practitioner and a Certified Occupational Health Nurse Specialist and Case Manager from the American Board of Occupational Health Nurses (AAOHN). In addition, she is director of client and provider services and Nurse Practitioner at DISA Global Solutions Inc. (formerly Mid-State Occupational Health Services Inc.). 

In 2007, she received Fellowship distinction from the AAOHN. Olszewski also serves on the AAOHN board of directors as president-elect and previously served as president of the Northeast Association of Occupational Health Nurses and the Pennsylvania Association of Occupational Health Nurses. She has presented at the local, state, regional and national levels of the association over the past 10 years on numerous topics, including DOT certification, marketing OHNs, fatigue management, healthy people 2020, social media integration, and diagnostic updates.

The Academy is currently comprised of more than 2,700 nursing leaders who are experts in policy, research, administration, practice, and academia who champion health and wellness, locally and globally. 

Through a competitive, rigorous application process, a committee of elected Fellows review hundreds of applications and select new Fellows based on their contributions to advance the public’s health. Induction into the Academy is a significant milestone in a nurse leader’s career in which their accomplishments are honored by their colleagues within the profession. The newest Fellows represent 39 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. territory of Guam, as well as 13 countries.  

Retrieved from Bloomsburg University website 8.11.2020

Scholarship and Recognition - Dr. Matthew Polinski, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry

Matthew Polinski, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, had a recent publication (published June 23, 2020) in the American Chemical Society journal Inorganic Chemistry which features three chemistry and biochemistry alumni as co-authors (Kristi Brittain ’17, Todd Poe ’18, and Natasha Brenner ’20) and collaborators from Creighton and Florida State University. The paper is titled "Trivalent f-Element Squarates, Squarate-Oxalates, and Cationic Materials, and the Determination of the Nine-Coordinate Ionic Radius of Cf(III)."  In this work, they prepared new materials containing the radioactive elements, Americium and Californium, the latter of which is the last element on the Periodic Table for which bulk/large scale chemistry can be performed. They were also able to calculate, for the first time ever, the ionic radius of Cf(III) in a nine-coordinate environment. This publication was made possible by our recent acquisition of the Bruker D8 Quest single crystal x-ray diffractometer.


Retrieved from the Week Ahead 7/20/2020

Pamela Smith Named ASHA Fellow

Pamela Smith, Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders, has been recognized as a 2020 recipient of  Fellowship of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Smith has distinguished herself as an outstanding member of the speech pathology profession and was nominated in the areas of Clinical Education and Academic Teaching, Service to ASHA, and Service to and Leadership Positions in State Speech-Language-Hearing Associations and/or Other Related Local, Regional, National or International Professional Organizations (not ASHA).

The status of Fellow is retained for life and is one of the highest honors this professional organization can bestow. It recognizes professional or scientific achievement and is given to a member who has shown outstanding contribution to the professions-contributions that are significant and would be so regarded within and beyond one's community or state.

Retrieved from the Week Ahead 7/20/2020

Bloomsburg University chapter of Beta Beta Beta named nation's Outstanding Chapter

The Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania chapter of Beta Beta Beta (Tri-Beta), the national biological honor society, was awarded the Lloyd M. Bertholf Award as the nation's Outstanding Chapter for the 2018-19 academic year. The group is advised by faculty members Abby Hare-Harris and Cynthia Surmacz.

Beta Beta Beta is a national honor society established in 1922 with over 430 chapters across the United States. The mission of Tri-Beta is to stimulate scholarship, disseminate scientific knowledge, and promote biological research.

The Bertholf Committee bases the award upon four criteria: member activity in conducting and publishing research, participation in district and national conventions and other scientific meetings, chapter programming and activities, and orderly record-keeping and communication with the national office. Only activities of the preceding year are considered. The application considers the number of members in each chapter thus allowing both large and small chapters to win the award. The BU chapter has more than 60 student members and 14 faculty members.
Activities of BU's chapter included hosting a regional scientific conference for area colleges and universities, holding mock interviews for students applying to graduate and professional schools, and giving a reception for graduating seniors. Chapter members also supplied coffee and donuts during finals week, provided weekly tutoring sessions for students in introductory biology courses, donated to both a national and local research scholarship, and sponsored a BU student to attend a national scientific conference. It also held activities for residents at a nursing home, held biology trivia contests, helped Girls Scouts earn science badges, and provided biology-related activities for children at BU's Sibling and Children's Weekend.


retrieved from The Week Ahead 7/6/2020

A love of the sea...and students

 When Cynthia Venn teaches a class about the world’s oceans… she’s teaching from direct experience.  Venn joined BU’s Department of Environmental, Geographical and Geological Sciences, as the oceanographer in 1996. She had already established herself as an in-demand oceanographer for research trips at sea in the summers and a go-to adjunct professor to teach oceanography in Pennsylvania. And she had a strong set of sea legs through research trips to the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Arabian Sea and Antarctic Ocean.
“I love working on ships, and love traveling,” says Venn. The soft-spoken Texan became interested in the ocean as child by reading books about the famous French explorer Jacques Cousteau and his research vessel the Calypso.
“In college, I thought I wanted to pursue marine biology, so the summer after my junior year I took a summer field course in oceanography,” says Venn. “It was in the Virgin Islands, and when you take a course where your labs involve boating and snorkeling around Caribbean coral reefs, trust me — you are pretty much going to be hooked on oceanography.”
Oceanography is inherently interdisciplinary … encompassing the physical geography, geology, chemistry, and biology of the ocean. And there’s still lots to discover says Venn.
“We know more about the surface of the moon than the bottom for the ocean. Every time I go to oceanography conferences, there’s always surprises. Hydrothermal vents were discovered only in the 1970s and that’s turned biology on its head. We have animals live at the boundary of oxygen and no oxygen. There are microbes that live in temperatures of 400 degrees Celsius, or four times the boiling point of water. When I was in grad school, we believed that it there was no oxygen, there was no life and if you boiled water, it killed microbes.”
“After I finished the two year teaching stint at Millersville State College, I decided I wanted to teach in a university for a living.” says Venn, who will retire this summer after 24 years at BU. “I never thought I was going to be a teacher but I loved it. So I went to the University of Pittsburgh to get my doctorate — in geology because both oceanography and geology are cyclical but usually not on the same cycles. During my time as a grad student, if I got a chance to do or teach Oceanography, I did it. So while I was a graduate student, I also rattled around as an oceanographer for hire, going on a number of research cruises, and taught as an adjunct in Pennsylvania.
“When I saw the position at BU, my mother said the ad read like my resume. They were looking for someone that could teach Oceanography and Geology, with experience teaching field courses and who could develop a course in Aqueous Geochemistry. I had worked for a chemical oceanographer for years. I had experience teaching in the field, particularly at Wallops Island in Virginia.”
Most importantly to Venn — BU’s Department of Environmental Geological and Geographic Sciences was a good fit personally.  “When I got here, everybody seemed to get along really well.”
At BU, Venn’s mission has been to get her students hooked on research. She’s been a driving force behind the department’s summer geology field course trips that have taken students to California, Nevada and Utah. Students in her Aqueous Geochemistry course all do course-embedded research. In addition, she has directed a number of students in independent research.
“Everybody in Aqueous Geochemistry gets a research project,” says Venn. “That’s part of the deal, they have to present at the end of semester. I’ve had about 70 students present at regional, national and even international meetings. Several students have told me the fact that they’d performed and presented their research is what got them the jobs.”
One of those “oceanographer for hire” trips had a major impact on Venn’s own career. “My first trip in the tropical Pacific in 1993 introduced me to two of my great obsessions — café lattes and gooseneck barnacles.”
“I was on the ship to collect and analyze samples for chlorophyll. When the instruments came up, they were covered with these creatures that looked like clams on a flexible neck. Fascinating. It turned out that a network of 77 buoys across the tropical Pacific would be completely in place the next year. The research group putting the buoys out saw them as ocean instruments being fouled by very irritating barnacles they had to scrape off and throw in the ocean. I saw the buoys as ocean instruments taking valuable data while they were acting as settling plates for delightful creatures whose distribution was little understood. I asked the buoy folks: “Can I go to sea with you if I scrape barnacles, and if I scrape them off, can I keep them please?”
“That’s how ten consecutive years of barnacle sampling began. Because I wasn’t going to be able to be on the ship longer that the first one-month leg of a three-month cruise, I enlisted a former student to go with me and continue on to Samoa when I returned to teach. After that, I enlisted almost 50 students to sea to collect them on subsequent cruises.” Venn jokes, “you get lots of volunteers when you tell them ‘First, I have to fly you to Hawaii to meet the ship.’”
Venn’s knowledge of barnacles was put to the test in 2013, when she was contacted by a forensics investigator in Australia. “She needed to know how fast they grow because there were a bunch of them attached to a dead body, and she was trying to determine how long the body had been floating in the ocean. We worked together and published a paper, and I entered into my most recent research endeavor: Barnacle CSI.”
After retirement, the adventure will continue, though the grading will not. “We’re going to travel a lot. We have a boat in California and we plan to be able to spend more time sailing around Southern California and Santa Catalina and the Channel Islands….maybe even go down to Baja, California. In December, we hope to fly to Chile to see the total solar eclipse and then go fly fishing in Patagonia.”
“I’ve loved teaching in a university setting since the beginning. What I’ve really loved about being at Bloomsburg is not just the camaraderie with the great students and the wonderful faculty,” says Venn. “I loved being in one place long enough to see students progress from where they were as freshmen and watching them develop a collection of knowledge and skills to where they are ready to graduate.”

 -from bloomsburgu tumblr 6/7/20

Hummel Named Interim Dean of Science and Technology

Dr. Lynn Hummel

BLOOMSBURG—Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Diana Rogers-Adkinson has named Lynn Hummel ’02/’03M interim dean of the College of Science and Technology. Current dean Robert Aronstam is retiring in June after five years of service to the university.

Hummel has spent his career focusing on student success in educational technology. A BU alumnus, Hummel graduated as a dual major in elementary education and early childhood education in 2002 and earned his Master of Science in Instructional Technology in 2003. He earned a Doctor of Education degree in educational leadership and administration from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2012.

Hummel’s previous professional experience includes serving as assistant principal and assistant superintendent in the public school system and as an instructional technology specialist and cooperative education coordinator at a career and technology center.

Since joining BU in 2014, Hummel has served as associate professor, distance education coordinator, interim department chair, and faculty fellow for the College of Science and Technology. He is also a violinist in the University Community Orchestra.

“I am honored to serve as the interim dean of the College of Science and Technology as the search for a permanent dean progresses” said Hummel. “It humbles me to serve our current and future BU students in this capacity.”

“I believe Dr. Hummel’s experiences in educational technology will be a great support to the college given COVID-19,” said Rogers-Adkinson. “He has experiences in leadership in both P-12 and higher education as well. I am confident in his ability to continue to move the college forward during these difficult times.”

Hummel’s work in educational technology has always been student-centered in the pursuit of helping others learn and achieve their goals. He was a board member of the Education Consortium of the Upper Allegheny, which was responsible for the founding and establishment of the Northern Pennsylvania Regional College. He volunteers for the Pennsylvania Association for Educational Communications and Technology (PAECT) and serves as the representative to the International AECT organization. Through this role, Hummel is the co-founder of the Technology Education Research Symposium, which recently held its 4th annual event. He is also a member of the International Society for Technology in Education and frequently presents on current educational technology topics at their annual conferences.

Hummel lives in Bloomsburg with his wife Abigail. They enjoy birdwatching, walking, and bicycling around the community.


~from BU news release 5-26-20