2021 Faculty Merit Award Winners

Dr. Shantanu (Shaan) Bhatt is the Biology department advising coordinator, who assigns students to advisors within the department and schedules workshops each semester to advise freshman and transfer students about program basics and the mechanical aspects of registration. He hosts separate workshops for sophomores, juniors and seniors to discuss opportunities with internships, academic year and summer scholar research, study abroad, and selection of concentrations within the Biology major. He pays special attention to transfer students and students who change majors into Biology, to help them stay on track given the highly sequenced nature of the program requirements.

Shaan worked with IT to develop a departmental advising Canvas site to serve as a repository for notices about summer jobs, internship opportunities, permanent jobs for graduates, and other opportunities. Shaan’s availability and willingness to talk with students about their career aspirations and how they are doing - not just academically but in any area - makes him respected and well-liked by the students. Shaan is also involved with the SJU Sigma Xi chapter, and has helped students with writing short summer research grant proposals to the chapter. His work touches every biology undergraduate in positive ways.

Amy Lipton has been an outstanding advisor for students in the Finance and Undecided Business majors for the past several years. One of Amy’s great strengths as an advisor is her work with incoming freshmen and transfer students during their transition to SJU. She has developed Excel course plans for each student to complete so they can gain a better understanding of their four-year academic plan and maintain an active role in the advising and curriculum planning processes. Amy has always done a great job of infusing technology into her work with advisees and her web resources were used as a model for faculty advisors as we shifted advising operations online last spring. Her advisees are always well informed about upcoming course registration information as well as Co-op and internships opportunities within their major. We are very fortunate to have Amy Lipton as a faculty advisor in the Haub School.

Dr. Nene Okunna advises students in the undergraduate program in Health Studies and the graduate program in Health Administration. She serves as the advisor to over 100 students and provides exemplary, attentive advising to each. Dr. Okunna is attentive to students’ diverse experiences as students of color, adult learners, working professionals and international students. She has also been an assuring and reliable source of support for students during the stressful and challenging pandemic experiences. As one colleague noted, “Dr. Okunna is a stable confidante in unstable times.” Dr. Okunna mentors students to pursue careers in public health, nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, physicians assistants, pharmacy, and health administration. Undergraduate students pursuing these graduate level programs frequently request individualized letters of recommendation to support their graduate program applications. Dr. Okunna is attentive to these requests—constructing numerous personalized letters each semester. She also supports graduate students in navigating the online and on ground programs, including revising advising materials for graduate students, creating a graduate student handbook, and developing a predictable course sequence for scheduling that suits graduate student needs. Her changes have increased the students support and rigor of the programs.

It is impossible to summarize the breadth and depth of service that Dr. Elaine Shenk has engaged in over her years at SJU. This service includes multiple stints on the executive committees of the Faculty Senate and College of Arts and Sciences, faculty facilitator for an immersion program in Guatemala, advisory boards for the Latin and Latinx Studies program and Faith-Justice Institute, and head of both the Linguistics and Spanish programs.

Rather than a comprehensive list of all her service to the university, this citation will focus on how Elaine does this service. What is truly remarkable about Elaine is that her generous and compassionate spirit is evident no matter the service that she is engaged in. To conclude (from her nomination letter), “she inspires colleagues, taking on each position wholeheartedly and acting as a model of combining service and one’s convictions. Her service grows from her dedication to the University’s mission, particularly as seen in her work on summer immersion programs and with Faith-Justice…The university is a better place because of her work.”

We are delighted to celebrate the teaching talents of Dr. Nancy Fox. Dr. Fox teaches creative and topical courses, all emphasizing critical thinking, respectful dialogue, a clear connection to our Jesuit mission of social justice, and always with cura personalis incorporated. In addition to GEP introductory and upper-level courses, Dr. Fox has taught Honors, Service Learning, Faith-Justice, First Year Seminar, and Writing Intensive courses. Most recently, she taught “Electionomics: The Economics of the 2020 Elections.” She has also piloted Supplement Instruction in ECN 101. In addition, Dr. Fox was the first to teach an Honors section of introductory Economics, which was received with high praise from our Honors students. Dr. Fox is the only member of the Department of Economics to teach in the Service-Learning program. Her faculty colleagues are united in their praise of Dr. Fox’s teaching methodology, highlighting her thoughtful selection of materials, ability to engage all students in discussion and listening, encouraging them to fine-tune arguments and debate in respectful fashion with their fellow students. Dr. Fox has excelled in her teaching online during the pandemic. A student highlights that “Even though this class was 100% virtual, Dr. Fox created an environment that was very much like a classroom. We had consistently high-quality discussion based on the subject matter, we started class off checking in on how everyone was doing / what was going on around campus, and she was available to stay after class and chat with students, either about the course material, advising, or anything else we wanted. She encouraged us to challenge each other and our own political standing, and to find facts rather than narrative to support our claims.” Dr. Fox’s high quality teaching has been sustained admirably over many years, embracing our Jesuit mission of social justice.

We are pleased to recognize George Latella from the Food Marketing program for his excellent contributions to Saint Joseph’s University. George has been a fixture at Saint Joseph’s for almost 30 years—as a graduate student, adjunct professor, and most recently, in a full-time visiting instructor capacity. George has made substantial contributions to the Haub School of Business during his time here by teaching a wide range of courses from freshman seminars to the capstone Food Marketing course to core courses in the Executive Food Marketing Master’s program. George runs our Food Marketing Ambassador Program where he takes our students to trade shows where they can apply what they have learned in the classroom, and see theoretical concepts come to life. A hallmark of Professor Latella’s teaching is his emphasis on experiential learning. Grounding his courses in real world experiences and case studies, George prepares his students for the job market and to be successful in their careers We thank George for his passion for teaching at Saint Joseph’s University and for inspiring our students with a love for food marketing for almost 30 years. Congratulations, George!

For his exceptional commitment to teaching and to his students, Dennis McNally, S.J., professor of art in the College of Arts and Sciences, who posthumously received the 2020 Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching, is being recognized again with this teaching award. . Fr. McNally exemplified cura personalis. Caring deeply that each student was learning, he experimented with many kinds of pedagogical strategies. He was deft at coaxing from the students the most salient features of the artwork, guiding them on a path of discovery. In studio classes, his students analyzed each other’s works, creating a community of artists, including Fr. McNally, learning together. In his long career at Saint Joseph’s, he developed and taught new courses in ceramics, figurative sculpture, art and architectural history, and art education, and revised existing courses to address the University’s curricular changes. He also taught study abroad classes in five cities and traveled on service immersion trips with students to Tijuana and Appalachia. Students flocked to his classes, worked hard, discovered that they could do things they did not think they could, and gave his courses rave reviews. To quote just two: “Fr. McNally created an environment where I was intrigued to learn,” and “Fr. McNally and the class played a huge role in building up my confidence in my own creativity.”

We are delighted to celebrate the teaching talents of Dr. Jodi Mindell. Dr. Mindell is an exceptional teacher whose contributions to the Department of Psychology curriculum have been exemplary. An engaging and rigorous teacher in the classroom, she has taught and mentored undergraduate and graduate students for over 30 years. She also received the Mary A. Carskadon Outstanding Educator Award from the Sleep Research Society, for her educational endeavors for colleagues, trainees and the public. Dr. Mindell’s highly prolific research program has enabled her to supervise students’ honors projects and independent undergraduate and graduate research. During the past four years, her students have been co-authors on five peer reviewed manuscripts and seventeen national/international conference presentations. The most recent of these papers was the recipient of 2020 Diane J. Willis Award for Outstanding Article in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology, in recognition of its potential for enduring impact on the field of pediatric psychology. Commensurate with her excellent mentoring, her students have been very successful post-graduation, enrolling in doctoral programs at Penn State, Temple University, Lehigh University, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, and Widener University. Dr. Mindell advises 25 to 30 undergraduate Psychology majors and mentors four graduate students each year. Her graduate students are always among the first to complete their program requirements and theses. Her teaching is not only pedagogically sound and engaging, but also emphasizes inclusion and diversity. Integrated into her courses are topics such as racial and other minority differences: racial health disparities and inequities across all topics in PSY 653 and disparities and cross-cultural differences in PSY 491. She hosts a diverse group of guest speakers in her classes to speak about gender, racial, and sexual orientation. In her excellent teaching, Dr. Mindell’s service to her department and to her university is unique and exceptional.

Dr. Kaitlin Moran is first of all an extremely accomplished teacher. In her classes, she establishes a strong cooperative learning environment, which helps her encourage her students to meet their responsibilities in their joint academic endeavor. Although the readings in all of her courses are both varied and rigorous, she develops a wonderful rapport with her students, many of whom idolize her. (Student comments describe her with such adjectives as insightful, incredible and phenomenal.)

Equally noteworthy are her contributions to strengthening her department in the area of PK-4 education. She restructured four courses so as to include meaningful internship experiences in high-quality early childhood schools and centers, in the process fostering partnerships with many of these institutions. She joined an initiative to establish, jointly with Nanjing Normal University, a master’s program in early childhood education, and she quickly took the lead in all curricular matters in this endeavor. She was instrumental in adding a Childhood Studies major to the department curriculum. She led a major departmental effort to have the PK-4 program receive accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Dr. Moran, in sum, is a first-rate instructor who is dedicated to her students, to her department, and to her field. She has more than earned the recognition conferred by this award.

We are pleased to honor Dr. Eileen Sullivan of the Health Studies program with a faculty merit award in teaching. As the undergraduate Advising Coordinator for Interdisciplinary Health Service majors, Eileen is widely recognized for her commitment to advising. In the fall semester, she had no fewer than 115 advisees. Eileen is also recognized for her excellence in teaching—cultivating a classroom that is both challenging in the use of the Socratic method as well as welcoming. Eileen’s syllabi and course assignments reflect her commitment to inclusion and respect for all within the healthcare system and she works closely with her students to ensure that they model the behavior expected of health professionals. Eileen’s teaching has been characterized by her peers as “dynamic, interactive and creative” and her student evaluations support this assessment. Eileen is well-respected by her students for her commitment to their learning as well as the great lengths to which she goes to prepare them for careers in the health care industry and clinical programs We are grateful to Dr. Sullivan for her commitment to our students and excellence in teaching. Congratulations, Eileen!

Since arriving at Saint Joseph’s University in 2017, Dr. Balduccini has had seven peer-reviewed journal articles and conferences presentations (despite COVID-19). Focusing on formal languages and methodologies for representing complex kinds of knowledge and systems, he creates models of reasoning mechanisms for information processing, and algorithms that automate them. He leverages his fundamental research outcomes to study, formalize, and automate a variety of tasks, including modeling, verification, and mitigation of complex systems and cyber-physical systems, planning and problem-solving, modeling of human reasoning, especially as it occurs in everyday lives. In sum, his research promotes the collection, analysis, and verification of enormous amounts of data in ways that allow both scholars and managers to make sense of the flood of information that might otherwise overwhelm us.

Professor Hennes’ work represents an invaluable contribution to English-speaking audience’s understanding of the modern history of the Dominican Republic and life under the dictatorial Trujillo regime. Translation is a far more complicated task than it might appear at first glance; no two languages convey exactly the same meanings and nuances and the translator has the great challenge of preserving the original author or authors’ perceptions and perspectives while presenting those records in language that readers of another culture and time can grasp. Her critical edition of a crucial manuscript from the Dominican Republic sheds much-needed light on the lives of two iconic figures from the 1950s, the author Minou Tavárez Mirabal and her mother Minerva Mirabal, who are also now internationally renowned. They have become symbols of the struggle for freedom and of the resistance to violence against women around the world. Dr. Hennes’ translation and scholarly contextualization provide sorely needed access to this seminal text for English-speaking researchers as well as the English-speaking public at large.

Since arriving at Saint Joseph’s University in 2018, Dr. Keller has published several path-breaking articles in the area of language, as understood philosophically and logically.

A second strand of her research focuses on the limits of language and thought in speaking of and thinking about God, i.e., divine ineffability and divine incomprehensibility. Dr. Keller defends the thesis of divine ineffability by advancing a semantic theory explaining how we can communicate meaningfully about God even while our linguistic expressions fail to describe God’s intrinsic nature. She has also published two other more general papers: one in the highly ranked journal, Synthese, and the second co-authored and forthcoming in a collection edited by Oxford University Press, arguably the very best academic book publisher in philosophy. She has given four different presentations in 2019-2020, and has other works in progress for publication and presentations; finally, she referees for 13 different journals, which speaks highly to the regard in which other philosophers hold her. Both the quality and quantity of her research make her a worthy recipient of a research award.

Kristi is an innovative photographer who is pushing the boundaries of her art to explore both the visual and textual records of World War II Baltic Persons Displaced Persons’ Camps in Germany. Her work has been tremendously ambitious, requiring both archival and artistic work. Her archival research led her to 16 camp sites to add the 10 already documented sites. Many are not on the map, so just locating them was a challenge that required archival research of old army bases, wartime diaries, and analyzing google map satellite views. She has then overlaid images of textual records onto these images to produce powerful, multi-layered images. Her work has been accepted for show at several prestigious galleries, has won the Sunny Art Prize in London and been included in the Top 50 Critical Mass Lucida, both of which get hundreds of entries. She is entering a new phase now, finding survivors and interviewing them in order to produce a book that crosses interdisciplinary boundaries in unprecedented ways. Her work invites both historians and artists to see one another’s work in new perspectives; we congratulate her on both her intellectual and aesthetic vision!

Dr. Tudor's research is focused on understanding the cellular and molecular basis of memory, using mice as a model for the human central nervous system. She examines the ways in which different diseases, genetic conditions, sleep deprivation and other behaviors affect the formation of long-term memories. Her work has significant implications for understanding memory formation and disruption in humans. Building on a solid history of publication, Dr. Tudor has had an outstanding year in terms of her scholarly work, co-authoring a peer-reviewed journal article, co-authoring an editorially-reviewed review article, and authoring or co-authoring three talks and four poster presentations at regional, national and international meetings. One conference was specifically aimed at "celebrating, amplifying and supporting Black voices in STEM," while another presentation Dr. Tudor co-authored (with Dr. Nelson here at SJU) was one of only 20 selected from nearly 800 abstracts submitted, for presentation at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, in Chicago. Moreover, she has been an editor, reviewer and grant recipient from the National Institute on Aging and National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation Program. Her research may lead to a better future for all of us, and we recognize her many accomplishments with this reward.

Professor Stephanie A. Tryce, JD exhibits an exceptional commitment to inclusive excellence as evidenced through her teaching, scholarship and service.

Let me note a few of Stephanie’s contributions:

• conducts research about athlete activism;
• created the Sport for Social Change speaker series;
• served on the 2020 Focus on Women committee;
• co-facilitated sessions at the 2020 & 2021 Days of Dialogue;
• infuses her courses with DEI topics & projects;
• member of the inaugural FYS 151 Inequality course pilot;
• teaches a DGNW-certified course -- Business of Sports; and,
• mentors students & colleagues about DEI.

It is with great pleasure that we recognize Stephanie’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion with this award.

This year’s recipient of the Faculty Merit Award for Justice is Dr. Janée Burkhalter, Associate Professor of Marketing. Dr. Burkhalter’s depth and breadth of dedication to the Jesuit ideals of Justice is witnessed throughout her teaching, research, service, and administrative contributions to SJU.

In her teaching, Dr. Burkhalter transforms each class into a dialogue with students that is both content driven and justice-oriented. SJU Executive MBA students extolled Dr. Burkhalter’s effectiveness in providing real-world examples of injustice and in leading students to reflect on their own unrecognized biases in several ways, including an experiential learning assignment, when she covered marketing in the team-taught Global Business course. For undergraduate students she has taught two service-learning courses and is the only Haub School of Business faculty member trained to offer an Inside-Out course.

An authority in new media and niche marketing, Dr. Burkhalter also uses technology very effectively in class, having been one of the very first instructors at SJU to integrate tools such as the iPad and in-class participant-centered smart-phone responses to enhance student engagement. She not only has examined intercultural competency (a very important driver of social justice) in her research, but has also been successful in using innovative technologies to exemplify its importance in the classroom. Furthermore, her calm and unassuming demeanor has naturally led students having difficulty adapting to SJU to seek her out for advice and support.

Beyond research and teaching, Dr. Burkhalter has been extensively involved in activities (and discussions) relating to issues of faith and justice at SJU. Through the years, her selfless and humble service is a testament to her dedication to our community. Among her many contributions to fostering the mission of a “faith that does justice”, Dr. Burkhalter has recruited and mentored new service-learning faculty members, facilitated the Multicultural Faculty Learning Community, chaired the President’s Council on Inclusion & Diversity, shared her research and worked to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion into The Faculty Handbook.

Respected and admired by colleagues and students throughout the campus, Dr. Burkhalter is adeptly skilled at collaboration and advocating for systemic change. Through her teaching, research, service and personhood, Dr. Burkhalter is an unwavering and steadfast advocate for social justice in the Ignatian tradition. Congratulations!