Take a look at these highlights on Saint Leo University faculty accomplishments and contributions in teaching and learning.
Dr. Darin Bell, associate professor of chemistry, is now president of the Florida Academy of Sciences. The academy is the Florida affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and represents all disciplines of sciences, including social sciences and computational sciences. College students can be involved, as well. Bell succeeds Dr. Iain Duffy, associate professor of biology at Saint Leo, in serving the organization as president.
Dr. Sheri Bias, Dr. J. Adam Shoemaker, and Dr. Rafael Rosado-Ortiz, faculty members in the Tapia College of Business, contributed to a new text, Human Resources Management and Ethics: Responsibilities, Actions, Issues, and Experiences, from Information Age Publishing. Bias also was the co-editor of the text.
Marissa Glover, poet and English faculty member, had her first book published by Mercer University Press. Let Go of the Hands You Hold is Glover’s first full-length collection; individual poems by Glover have been published in a wide variety of journals and anthologies. She also is co-editor with Saint Leo faculty colleague John David Harding of the literary journal Orange Blossom Review, which is funded by the Florida College English Association.
Dr. Karin May, assistant professor of criminal justice, has expanded upon her work in teaching future law enforcement professionals about the crime of international sex trafficking. She contributed to a new edition of a textbook on the subject originally written by retired faculty member Leonard Territo, International Sex Trafficking of Women and Children: Understanding the Global Pandemic, Third Edition. May also appeared on a Facebook interview hosted by an Orlando nonprofit organization, Paving the Way Foundation, which creates anti-trafficking education and prevention programs for central Florida communities.
Dr. Lisa Rapp-McCall, a professor in the graduate social work program, was honored by the National Organization of Forensic Social Work (NOFSW), a professional group of 300 members nationwide. NOFSW named Rapp-McCall the recipient of its 2021 Sol Gothard Lifetime Achievement Award, which honors a late member who worked to protect abused children during his careers as a social worker and judge. The organization recognized Rapp-McCall for years of writing, teaching, and researching the topics of juvenile crime, child abuse, and human trafficking, among other acts of service.
Dr. Ebony Perez, chair of undergraduate social work, and a research colleague presented during a national virtual meeting in April, the Social Work, White Supremacy, and Racial Justice Symposium. Perez and her colleague spoke on “Envisioning an anti-racist profession: Social work’s quest for truth, reconciliation, and social justice.” They analyzed content from four professional journals in the field, along with text on the guiding principles of two prominent associations, to see what scholarship and professional guidance was available to help social workers and social work students develop anti-racist awareness, vocabulary, and effective professional behaviors.
Dr. Delmar Wright was elected president of the Virginia Association of Criminal Justice Educators. He served as co-conference coordinator of the first Virginia Association of Criminal Justice Educators conference, held virtually in November 2020. Wright, an associate professor of criminal justice, teaches for the Department of Graduate Studies in Public Safety Administration.
Dr. Jacob Aguilar, a mathematician and data scientist, and several co-researchers from a cross-disciplinary team, released their manuscript about an important and little-understood aspect of virus that causes COVID-19. The team used new modeling techniques to estimate the number of people who might become infected by someone already carrying the virus, but not yet showing any symptoms. This provides insight into how contagious the illness is, and that knowledge, in turn, helps regional officials make public-health decisions. Aguilar and his fellow researchers came to the conclusion that an asymptomatic carrier could infect an average of six other people or more, which is far more than a typical strain of the flu. Aguilar and his researchers released a manuscript describing their work on a respected scientific platform created for quick dissemination of research findings.
Dr. Melinda (Lin) Carver, an associate professor in the Graduate Education Department, co-wrote a book with colleague and adjunct instructor Lauren Pantoja, Reading Basics for All Teachers: Supporting All Learners. It was published in April 2020 by Rowman and Littlefield and provides K-12 teachers from all subject areas with ways to enhance their students’ reading and writing development. Carver and Pantoja wrote an earlier edition on this topic that was published in 2015. In the second edition, they have added new content and strategies for teachers to explore.
Renee Gould, assistant professor at the Daniel A. Cannon Memorial Library, was the co-author with two former Saint Leo colleagues of a case study about working with library-database products to meet the real-world needs of visually impaired patrons. Gould and recently retired library colleague Jacalyn Bryan, associate professor, along with alumna Brittany Leigh ’12, who until recently worked with the Office of Accessibility Services, described their work in the spring issue of the journal, Florida Libraries. Libraries with printed and electronic holdings rely on software from third-party vendors for day-to-day needs. Such resources and tools provide students and staff the means to retrieve and read books, journals, newspapers, and magazine articles. As it turns out, while many of these products may be legally compliant with regulations meant to ensure access for the visually impaired, they can still be hard to navigate and use successfully. The team described approaches adopted to remedy the situation at Saint Leo, possible steps for future exploration, and possible starting points for other libraries. 
Poet and faculty member Gianna Russo was named the City of Tampa’s first Wordsmith and will steer new projects meant to encourage creativity and expression, such as holding writing workshops in city neighborhoods. She recently edited a collection of poems inspired by regionally well-known photographs from Tampa and other spots in Florida produced by Tampa’s leading commercial photographic firm from 1917 to early 1960, the Burgert Brothers Inc. Chasing Light includes many images that capture 20th-century central Florida, from its cigar trade, to its diverse communities, agriculture, and natural surroundings. Russo contributed the forward and a poem, in addition to serving as editor. Other Saint Leo faculty and academic administrators with contributions in Chasing Light are part-time English instructor Amanda Forrester; English instructor Marissa McLargin (published as Marissa Glover); and professor and outreach librarian Carol Ann Moon. There are 48 contributors in all. The volume was published in February as a large-format paperback by the independent YellowJacket Press in collaboration with the Tampa-Hillsborough County Library and library supporters. Russo is an assistant professor of English and creative writing.
Dr. Zachary Smith, assistant professor of economics and finance, and a co-author, had a macroeconomic study published in April in the Pacific Economic Review. Their study examined the interplay between fintech—financial technologies including access to cellular phone and Internet applications and cryptocurrencies—and the policies normally employed by governments’ central banks to raise or lower interest rates, control inflation, and support overall economic growth. Their research study was based on 18 years of data from 30 nations with advanced economies (including the United States). In general, when people have access to mobile and internet technology, more money circulates throughout the economy. But the presence of cryptocurrencies—as they are substitutes from the currencies issued by governments—reduces the demand for money to spread through the economies. As the use of cryptocurrencies widens then, the authors suggested, central banks will have to consider updating their traditional policies to account for cryptocurrency-based transactions. Otherwise, the policies will become outdated and less effective in keeping economies running smoothly, Smith and his co-author said.
Historical research by Dr. Karen Hannel of the College of Arts and Sciences and her husband, Dr. Eric Hannel, an adjunct instructor with Saint Leo, prompted the state of Florida to approve the placement of an official marker to note that a vibrant township once existed north of University Campus in the 1800s. The town of Chipco was a trading post established by white settlers and was named for a Seminole chief who actually lived nearby, but separately, with some members of his tribe for a time after the mid-1850s. The white town grew to have a nearby railway link, lumber-planing mill, grist mill, school, and post office, along with farms. The Pasco County (FL) town reached the peak of its commercial prominence in the 1880s, but disappeared by 1909 after a series of economic reversals. Chief Chipco and his band had long since moved to a different locale in mid-Florida, and the chief died in 1881 at more than 100 years of age, according to a newspaper account. The Hannels continue to research this settlement, as its trajectory illustrates so much about the racial interactions, intermittent wars, and economic developments of 19th-century Florida.
Dr. Iain Duffy, a microbiologist and member of the science faculty at University Campus, is president of the Florida Academy of Sciences and is now in the second year of a two-year term. The academy is comprised of scholars from the life sciences, physical sciences, social sciences, computer and mathematical sciences, and science teaching, and publishes a quarterly journal.
Dr. Leon Mohan and Dr. Deneˊ Williamson of the Tapia College of Business were published in late 2019 in the International Journal of Sport, Exercise and Physical Education with their article “Youth Sport Participation as a Result of Social Identity Theory.” The article describes survey research conducted in a South Florida city with youths involved with sports through various community organizations. In particular, the researchers zeroed in on children ages 9 to 13, who were primarily African American and Hispanic, to see what role social factors played in getting and keeping the youths involved in sports. The short-term objective was to help associations find influences that can be maintained to get and keep children physically active. Sports that parents and guardians were familiar with, sports played by famous athletes, and sports played by friends and peers were motivating influences. The business professors included work by undergraduate student John-Paul West in their research and publication.
Dr. Matthew Tapie, theology faculty member and director of the Saint Leo University Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies, was invited in February by Spring Hill College in Alabama to deliver a talk on a particularly difficult point in Catholic and Jewish relations. Since 2018, Tapie has been speaking in academic settings and published in academic theological journals on the new controversy about the forced religious conversion of a young boy named Edgardo Mortaro in Bologna, Italy, in 1858. The child was being raised by a Jewish family, in accordance with their own faith, when the Catholic Church learned the boy secretly had been given a Catholic baptism when he was an infant and facing illness. A maid employed by the family performed the baptism without permission from or the knowledge of the baby’s parents. The woman presumably was leaning on her own Catholic teaching as motivation and feared for the soul of the baby if he did not recover. The boy was forcibly removed from his home on the order of Pope Pius IX when the Church eventually learned of this, and despite an international scandal, the church never backed down and instead raised the child.
Dr. Moneque Walker-Pickett, professor and associate chair of the undergraduate criminal justice program, was selected for a prestigious fellowship program in higher education. She is one of only 38 professionals to be included in the 2020-2021 American Council on Education Fellows Program. The objective of the program is to provide learning opportunities that condense years of practical higher education experience into a curriculum of a single year. Fellows receive strategic planning training, make numerous visits to other campuses, and take part in interactive sessions. Upon completion of the program, fellows return to their own campuses better equipped to address evolving challenges in higher education. Walker-Pickett joins a diverse fellowship class comprised of individuals from Georgetown University, Purdue University, the U.S. Air Force Academy, among other institutions. In addition to holding a doctorate in sociology, Walker-Pickett holds a law degree and worked previously as an attorney. She became a full-time member of the Saint Leo University faculty at University Campus in August 2012.
“My parents were attending Marquette University when they were asked to come to Tanzania to help start a Catholic college,” Lauren Boos said. “One of my dad’s past professors wrote him a postcard saying ‘We’re in Tanzania; why aren’t you?’ This was their invitation to come to Tanzania to help start the college, and they accepted it. They were engaged to be married at that time. So they graduated from Marquette, got married, and left days later for Tanzania.”
And yet that was not the worst of what Sister Helena and her peers in other areas of Tanzania and neighboring nations were fighting. Witchcraft practitioners and traffickers who still hold sway in more rural areas continue to perpetuate false notions that those with albinism have special powers—and may be ghosts, but are not really people—that can be tapped by harvesting their body parts. This fiction can lead some parents to abandon their children. Even worse, it encourages bounty hunters to abduct, mutilate, and even murder people with albinism and sell the victims’ biological parts. Limbs have been amputated in some cases.
Nick DeMarinis is a director of enterprise growth for WeWork, based in New York City. WeWork is an innovator in leasing commercial real estate space for the co-working needs of businesses, the creation of residential living communities, and other pursuits that contribute to forming communities. Prior to joining WeWork, he spent 12 years in the technology industry. He started his career with Yahoo and then spent the last eight years through 2018 with LinkedIn in various leadership roles across both North America and Asia Pacific. He was based in Hong Kong for a time and was responsible for operations there. He earned his bachelor’s from Saint Leo at University Campus in business administration with a specialization in management, and attained a master’s degree in international business from St. John’s University in Rome, Italy.
Dr. Heather Parker has offered this photo from her own family to illustrate ways that descendants can delve into their history through images. This photo shows Parker’s grandmother, Isabelle, on the left, and Isabelle’s sister Ruth on the right. They are both single young ladies in this photo. The cars in the background, as well as the purses, outfits, and hairstyles are clues that this was taken in the 1940s. And the fact that the young ladies are leaning against the tree informally rather than standing upright indicates the image was not taken by a parent or authority figure, but someone they were comfortable with and maybe out for a bit of fun.
Two recent grads from the Class of 2018 are not only twins, but they also graduated with the same major and held equivalent jobs as residence hall advisors. In another family connection, they are the sons of Sandy and Dr. Okey Igbonagwam, a Saint Leo assistant professor of computer information systems in Virginia.
When Sherryl Johnson-Tandy and her husband Erik Tandy walked across the commencement stage together on the evening of Friday, April 27, it was a little out of the ordinary. Sherryl, a corporal in the Pasco County (FL) Sheriff’s Office, completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in criminal justice. So she was grouped with the other adult learners receiving undergraduate degrees in the evening.