Saint Leo University faculty are transforming the lives of students and making significant contributions to their fields of study. Take a look at some of the most recent accomplishments from our faculty.
Christina Cazanave, director of internships and instructor for the Undergraduate Social Work Program, was appointed legislative chair for the NASW-Florida Chapter. In this five-year, statewide leadership position, Cazanave works closely with NASW-FL lobbyists to develop legislative proposals, collaborates with the chapter board to set legislative priorities, tracks bills relevant to social work practice, prepares testimony on critical bills, assists members in communicating issues to their elected officials, and builds relationships with other supportive organizations.
This role allows Cazanave to support Florida social workers, lobby for social justice and equitable policies, and mobilize the profession in Florida to engage in voter and civic engagement. This work includes creating a statewide voter engagement toolkit and leading the charge in voter activities across Florida.
Cazanave has served as co-chair for the Social Work Programs’ LEAD Day committee and as chair of the university’s Why Vote? campaign. Additionally, she demonstrated her passion for civic engagement by conducting workshops, conference presentations, and discussions on civic engagement and expanding advocacy within the social work practice.
Dr. Passard Dean, interim dean of the Tapia College of Business, was appointed to the Institute of Management Accountants Committee on Ethics (IMA® CoE).
“The purpose of the IMA Committee on Ethics is to encourage IMA members, their organizations, and other individuals to adopt, promote, and execute superior business practices consistent with IMA’s mission in management accounting and finance and its Statement of Ethical Professional Practice by advocating the highest ethical principles,” according to the IMA.
“The objectives of the Committee on Ethics are to advance these principles by regularly contributing meaningful insights, perspectives, opinions, and analysis to ethical issues, activities, publications, and networking opportunities, as well as membership compliance, brought before or identified by the committee.”
Dr. Stephen Okey, associate professor of philosophy, theology, and religion, contributed to a story for The History Channel on the history of exorcisms. Written by Dr. Elizabeth Yuko, a bioethicist and journalist, the story examined the centuries-long practices of expelling evil, and it was published and posted just in time for Halloween.
“According to Okey, the term ‘exorcism’ is most commonly associated with Christianity, especially Catholicism, partly because of the numerous explicit references to Jesus casting out spirits in the Gospels,” the story stated. “In 2017, Pope Francis told priests that they ‘should not hesitate’ to call on a Vatican-trained exorcist should they need one.”
Dr. Matthew Tapie and Rabbi David Maayan, director and assistant director of the university’s Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies, will work with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Vatican, and other organizations to host a conference on the newly opened archives from the Pontificate of Pope Pius XII. The conference, New Documents from the Pontificate of Pope Pius XII and their Meaning for Jewish-Christian Relations: A Dialogue Between Historians and Theologians, will be held at the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome in October.
Dr. Jacci White, professor of mathematics in the School of Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Data Science (CARDS), received the prestigious Mathematical Association of America’s (MAA) National Meritorious Service Award in 2022.
The award was established by the MAA Board of Governors in 1983 and is given once every five years to one recipient in each section — Saint Leo is in the Florida Section. It is awarded in recognition of extraordinary service to the MAA and the section.
“White is known for her dedicated teaching, providing student-centered education, and implementation of innovative teaching techniques,” the MAA noted. “At FL-MAA meetings, she often can be found surrounded by students who give presentations, participating in student competitions, and giving talks.”
For her distinguished teaching, White previously was awarded the 2007 MAA Florida Section Teaching Award.
Dr. Tammy Lowery Zacchilli, professor of psychology, was elected as the Southeastern regional vice president of Psi Chi, the international honor society in psychology, beginning in July 2022.
Psi Chi has more than 800,000 members and is one of the largest honor societies in the United States. Zacchilli works with chapters in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, U.S. Virgin Islands, Virginia, and West Virginia. In this role, she coordinates Psi Chi programming at the Southeastern Psychological Association Conference. She also serves on committees, reviews for awards, and serves as a liaison between the southeastern chapters and the Psi Chi Board of Directors.
Zacchilli has served as the Psi Chi faculty advisor at Saint Leo University since 2010 and has served as an associate editor to the Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research since 2017. She also was the 2015 recipient of the Psi Chi Faculty Advisor Award for the Southeastern Region and has recently served as a psychology expert on WTVT, FOX 13, several times.
Dr. Daniel DuBois, assistant professor of history, is serving as the 2022-2023 president of the Florida Conference of Historians. The organization is dedicated to promoting scholarship and collegiality among historians teaching history in Florida’s colleges and universities. In February, Saint Leo University hosted the group’s 2022 annual meeting at University Campus. The conference featured panel and individual presentations on a wide variety of topics from state, national, and international history. Additionally, DuBois was recently selected as one of only 20 participants from hundreds who applied nationally for a weeklong summer workshop on teaching American Civil War history, led by Dr. Gary W. Gallagher, author and professor emeritus at the University of Virginia.
Dr. Kathryn Duncan, professor of English, is the author of Jane Austen and the Buddha: Teachers of Enlightenment, a work of literary criticism recently released by McFarland Books. Duncan was inspired by a realization that the popular English novelist Jane Austen and the religious teacher and thinker had ideas in common about human nature and happiness. Duncan became a faculty member in the English Department in 2001.
Dr. Phillip Neely Jr., director of the Doctor of Criminal Justice program, recently published a book entitled, When the Watcher Becomes the Watched: The New Policing. Released by Paramount Publisher, the book delves into how technology, such as the cameras worn by police officers, has fared at law enforcement agencies and examines if its use has been effective. Prior to becoming a faculty member at Saint Leo, Neely worked in law enforcement for 21 years, serving in progressively responsible leadership and field positions at local agencies.
Dr. Matthew Tapie, associate professor of theology and director of the Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies, is co-editing a new series at The Catholic University of America Press, entitled Judaism and Catholic Theology. The Judaism and Catholic Theology series aims to further Catholic theological reflection on Judaism and the Jewish people for scholars, the lay faithful, and interreligious leaders. The first of several books in the new series was published in February 2022. Additionally, Tapie is co-editing a collection of 14 essays on the challenges of theological dialogue for the Catholic University of America Press. The essays were originally presented at the Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies’ online symposium in 2021.
Gianna Russo, assistant professor of English and creative writing, recently published a new book of poetry entitled, All I See is Your Glinting: 90 Days in the Pandemic. The book features poems and photographs that document each day of the last quarter of 2020 during the pandemic, capturing the small and meaningful moments of daily life. The book is available through Madville Publishing. Russo, who was named the inaugural Wordsmith of the city of Tampa in 2020, will wrap up her work in the role at the end of 2022.
Dr. Moneque Walker-Pickett, professor of criminal justice, was selected as one of 38 American Council on Education (ACE) Fellows for the 2020-2021 class. The ACE program is the longest-running leadership development program in the United States and offers participants interactive learning opportunities and visits to campuses and other higher education-related organizations. Walker-Pickett joins other ACE fellows from institutions such as Georgetown University, Purdue University, Ohio State University, the U.S. Air Force Academy, and more.
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.
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.
The first cohort began in July 2016 with a weeklong inaugural residency held at University Campus. Students come to university campus for an intensive week of study each summer, then return home to do the bulk of their work. The low-residency degree requires 36 graduate credit hours taken over the course of four semesters and two summer residencies; at the third and final residency, students submit a master’s thesis, a book-length collection of creative work in their chosen genre of study. Saint Leo offers tracks of study in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.
The weeklong summer residencies also bring luminaries in the creative fields to University Campus for intimate workshops and discussions. The July 2018 roster of visiting writers is headed by award-winning author Adam Johnson (at right), whose book Fortune Smiles won the 2015 National Book Award; his 2012 novel The Orphan Master’s Son, a fictional account of the personal and political in North Korea, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Poet and memoirist Beth Ann Fennelly, poet Carmen Gimenez Smith, and novelist Tom Franklin also will be featured visitors.
Program director Steve Kistulentz, associate professor of English and creative writing, is the author of two previous books of poetry, but this spring releases his debut novel Panorama, published in March by Little, Brown & Company. Robert Olen Butler, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, calls Panorama “a remarkable literary work, rare in its ability to be both thematically complex and a compelling read. Steve Kistulentz remarkably transforms our TV culture’s participatory tragedy into a deep meditation on human connectedness. This is a stunning debut by an important new writer.”
Poet Anne Barngrover joined the Saint Leo faculty in 2017 and will also release a new book this spring, the poetry collection Brazen Creature, an editor’s choice selection in the University of Akron Press Series in Poetry. Erin Belieu, an award-winning poet and director of the graduate creative writing program at Florida State University, called Brazen Creature, “a terrific collection by a strong, smart, feminist voice.”
Fiction writer Patrick Crerand will have his debut collection of stories, The Paper Life They Lead, published in 2018 by Arc Pair Press. The book will collect some of Crerand’s noteworthy stories, which have previously appeared in such magazines as McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Conjunctions, New Orleans Review, Ninth Letter, Indiana Review, and Cimarron Review.