Faculty Notes

Kira Bailey

Kira Bailey, department chair, neuroscience program director, and Endowed David O. Robbins Associate Professor of Psychology, published two peer-reviewed articles in The International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction and the Journal of Environmental Psychology. The first, "Bidirectional Longitudinal Associations Between Emotional Regulation, Perceived Stress, and Multiple Indices of Smartphone Use Among Young-Adult Women," was co-authored with Chris Modica, associate professor of psychology. In it, they examine the prospective associations between perceived stress, indices of smartphone use, and emotion regulation among young adult women. The second, "When Science Isn't Beautiful: Lab Aesthetics Impact Reaction Times and Reactive Cognitive Control," was co-authored with alumni Chandler Carr '24, Audrey Propp '24, and Kayla Saikaly '24. They explored the effect of decorating a lab space—through the addition of a rug, faux plants, artwork, and improved furniture—on participants' inhibitory control and emotional reactivity.

Josie Bair

Josie Bair, executive director of the OWL Program, had a very productive year. She published "Unlocking Poetry: A Classroom Strategy for Dialogue, Identity, and Interpretation" in the Ohio Journal of English Language Arts. The article explores instructional strategies that use poetry to spark classroom dialogue, support student identity development, and deepen interpretation. Bair shares practical approaches that help students engage with poems through discussion, reflection, and writing, demonstrating how poetry can create meaningful connections between personal experience and literary analysis. Bair and alumnus Matthew Berkal '91 presented "Remembering Ourselves: Integrating Poetry and Personal Narrative for Gifted Learners" at the Ohio Association for Gifted Children Fall Conference. Their session explored instructional strategies that use poetry and personal narrative to support identity development, dialogue, and interpretation among gifted students. Bair also presented "From Canvas to Composition: Using Art to Inspire Reading and Writing" at the Ohio Council of Teachers of English Language Arts (OCTELA) conference. Her session explored instructional strategies for integrating visual art into literacy instruction to enhance student engagement, critical thinking, and written expression. The presentation highlighted practical classroom approaches for using artwork as a catalyst for reading comprehension, discussion, and both creative and analytical writing activities.

Paul Dean

Paul Dean, department chair and professor of sociology and anthropology, wrote a new book titled Class Cultures and Social Mobility: The Hidden Strengths of Working-Class First-Generation Graduates. It's a topic near to Dean's heart, as he was the first in his family to attend college. The book tells the stories of upwardly mobile first-generation graduates who flipped the script and turned their working-class roots into a strength. This accessible and engaging book reveals how first-generation graduates overcame hardship while leveraging unique skills—their working-class cultural capital—in their college and professional careers. It demonstrates that there need not be a choice between economic success and maintaining authenticity to one's roots; it is possible to balance the competing demands of both class worlds. Relatedly, Dean gave a presentation, "Why We Celebrate First-Gen Students and Graduates," for the premier event of OWU's First-Gen Week and was interviewed on WDLR's "Off the Shelf" radio program/ podcast to discuss the book.

Lauren Hensley

Lauren Hensley, director of holistic advising, and Amy Collins '05 co-authored two publications centered on student success. Their article, "Defining Academic Success: How Health Sciences Undergraduates Describe Success in Terms of Performance and Mastery Orientations," was published in the Journal of Postsecondary Student Success. Their book chapter, "Promoting Academic Success By Fostering College Students' Self-Regulated Learning Skills," is featured in the Handbook on Postsecondary Student Success.

David Johnson

David Johnson, professor emeritus of botany and microbiology, published two companion articles on ecological transitions and long-distance bird dispersal of pantropical Bitterwood trees in Frontiers of Biogeography and Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. The studies involved field and museum research, DNAbased evolutionary reconstructions, and biogeographic modeling. Co-authors of both articles include Keegan Floyd '26, Greg Stull '10, and Nancy Murray, curator of the Jason Swallen Herbarium, and collaborators in France and Australia. Alumnus Keegan Floyd's research was funded by Dr. Bruce Roberts, adjunct professor of botany and microbiology, and the Jason Swallen Herbarium. In "Synchronous Miocene radiations and geographic-dependent diversification of pantropical Xylopia (Annonaceae)," the authors used the pantropical Xylopia (Annonaceae) genus to address the diversification of rain forest lineages over time, across different regions, and into novel non-rain forest habitats. In "Long-distance dispersals and ecological transitions underlie the biogeographic expansion of the pantropical magnoliid genus Xylopia (Annonaceae)," the authors examine how biogeographic and ecological transitions have shaped the genus's present-day distribution.

Sarah Kaka

Sarah Kaka, associate professor and Endowed Ralph & Ella Schaaf Rodefer Chair in Education, was highly productive this past year. She was the lead editor for the newly published volume by Bloomsbury, "Teacher Educators as Scholar Citizens: Activism and Resistance in Uncertain Times." She and Jamie Deitz, assistant professor of education, co-authored "Building Brave Communities: How People Work Together For Change" in Social Studies Research in Practice. In it, they share a turn-key lesson for grades 3-4 that leverages three recent NCSS Notable Social Studies Trade Books to help students examine civic rights, responsibilities, and collective action while strengthening disciplinary literacy skills. Kaka published two articles engaging AI: "Bots and Beginners: A Comparative Study of AI- and PST-Generated Social Studies Lesson Plans" in the Journal of Social Studies Research and "Can ChatGPT Make Quality Social Studies Lesson Plans? The Answer Surprised Us" in Social Education. In the latter, they compare AI- and teacher-created lesson plans to show where generative tools like ChatGPT can support inquiry-based social studies instruction and where they fall short. She co-authored "Big Thinking for Little Learners: Making Social Studies Accessible with Micro-Inquiries" in Social Studies and the Young Learner and "Navigating 'Divisive' Issues in Social Studies Education: Practical Guidance for Teachers" in The Councilor: A National Journal of the Social Studies. Kaka also delivered numerous presentations at professional conferences: "Revolutionary Thinking: Exploring Historical Change Through Inquiry" at the Ohio Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference in Columbus, OH; "Empowering Teachers in Contentious Times: Building Communities of Practice," and "Putting Designerly Citizenship in the Driver's Seat" at the National Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.; "Teacher Educators as Scholar Citizens: Faculty Activism in Troubled Times," "Bots and beginners: A comparative study of AI- and PSTgenerated social studies lesson plans," and a workshop, "Making Inquiry Practical in Politically Contentious Times" at the College and University Faculty Association of the National Council for the Social Studies Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

Donald Lateiner

Donald Lateiner, John R. Wright professor emeritus of humanitiesclassics, published "Silence and Stillness in Heliodoros' Aithiopika" in Classical Philology. The article examines how female characters manipulate awkward situations to influence captors and kings to their advantage, focusing in particular on how they employ silence and stillness both as emotional responses and as strategies for evading unwanted outcomes.

Chris Modica

Chris Modica, associate professor of psychology, co-authored and published three peer-reviewed articles in Behavioral Sciences and Law, Journal of Family Psychology, and The International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction. The first, "Public Estimations and Attitudes Towards the Insanity Plea in the United States: A Replication of Seminal Studies From the 1980s," was co-authored with alumnus Charis Blake '23, who recently graduated from the University of Dundee in Scotland with a Master's in Psychology. They offer insights into why attitudes and estimations about the frequency and success of the insanity plea may have shifted over the past 40 years and how this knowledge can be useful to lawyers or psychologists when considering jury pools. The second, "Developing A Measure of The Dialectics of Parenting Adult Children As Sources of Intergenerational Ambivalence," introduces a new way to understand the mixed and sometimes conflicting feelings parents have about their adult children. Instead of focusing on emotional ups and downs, they examined situations in which parents hold beliefs or act in ways that seem to contradict each other. The last, "Bidirectional Longitudinal Associations Between Emotional Regulation, Perceived Stress, and Multiple Indices of Smartphone Use Among Young-Adult Women," was co-authored with Kira Bailey, Endowed David O. Robbins Associate Professor of Psychology. In the article, they examine prospective associations between perceived stress and indices of smartphone use, and emotion regulation among young adult women.

Shari Stone-Mediatore

Shari Stone-Mediatore, professor of philosophy, spoke about the need for fair and inclusive parole systems on a panel led by Project Sound Off and the MacArthur Justice Center's National Parole Transformation Project. She joined award-winning author Ben Austen, State Representative Kevin Olickal, and community activist Jasmine Smith in a discussion about a variety of social movements and legislation that aim to transform parole, and by extension, the system as a whole.

Chris Wolverton

Chris Wolverton, Endowed Albert M. Austin Professor of Natural Sciences, presented his research on gravity sensing and space crops to the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Biological and Physical Sciences in Space. He also co-authored "Angle Dependence as a Unifying Feature of Root Graviresponse Modules" in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. His co-authors included research partners from The University of Leeds and alumnus Iftekhar Showpnil '13.

Julide Yazar

Julide Yazar, Endowed James B. Heisler and Charles L. & Elizabeth Quaye Merwin Professor of Economics, presented a paper at the 28th Annual Workshop on Economics with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents (WEHIA) at Queen Mary University of London, England. The paper, "Estimating Fundamental News Innovations and Sentiment in Agent- Based Models Using Natural Language Processing of Market News," uses a large language model to extract daily price outlook scores from financial news and incorporates them as predictors of the fundamental component. Her conclusion is that news-informed specification significantly outperforms the standard random innovation model. In other words, using news in this way does a much better job of explaining stock movements than older models that assume stock returns arise from changes in fundamental value and herding-driven sentiment swings among traders.