Excellence at Work: Honors and Publications
Faculty and Staff Honors and Publications
Honors
Two lawyers on the YSU faculty were recently appointed to statewide leadership positions. Atty. Ron Slipski, lecturer in the departments of Politics and International Relations and Criminal Justice and Forensic Science, was elected to a three-year term on the Board of Governors of the Ohio State Bar Association, which represents more than 26,000 members of the bench and the bar of Ohio. Slipski has served on the OSBA’s Council of Delegates and is the recipient of OSBA’s Weir Award for Ethics and Professionalism. Slipski earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in History from 
YSU and a Juris Doctor from the University of Akron. And, the Supreme Court of Ohio has appointed Atty. Patricia Wagner, associate professor of Criminal Justice and Forensic Science, to the Commission on Continuing Legal Education. She serves as an Ohio attorney representing the Seventh Court of Appeals (Mahoning, Columbiana, Carroll, Jefferson, Harrison, Belmont, Noble and Monroe counties) through 2022. Wagner holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and a Juris Doctor from Northwestern University.
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Feng "George" Yu, associate professor, Computer Science and Information Systems, is one of the authors of a research paper that won the best paper award at the peer-reviewed 28th International Conference on Software Engineering and Data Engineering in San Diego. Yu, who presented the paper at the conference, authored the paper with David S. Wilson, one of Yu’s master students who graduated from YSU in fall 2018, and Wen-Chi Hou, professor of Computer Science at Southern Illinois University. The paper, “Scalable Correlated Sampling for Join Query Estimations on Big Data,” focuses on a new big data technique that processes complex queries instantly and produces accurate estimations. The research is supported by the Cushwa Shearing Graduate Fellowship, University Research Council Grant, Research Professorship Award at YSU and an Amazon Research and Education Grant.
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Lori Greenawalt, senior academic coach, and Tara D. Sydney, academic coach, in the YSU Center for Student Progress, were awarded Level 2 Certification as part of the National College Learning Center Association's Learning Center Leadership Certification Program. They now hold the designation of "Certified Learning Center Professional - Level 2." The purpose of the certification is to give learning assistance professionals standards by which to foster growth and development in the field of learning assistance.
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The Maturation of Advanced Manufacturing for Low-Cost Sustainment program received the 2019 Defense Manufacturing Technology Achievement Award under the project category of Readiness Improvement. Among the YSU STEM faculty involved in the project are Brett Conner, Darrell Wallace, Eric MacDonald, Jason Walker, Jeremy Knight, Brian Vuksanovich and Cory Brozina. MAMLS was selected through a competitive process by the Joint Defense Manufacturing Technology Principals.
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Lucas Hardy, associate professor of English and director of English graduate studies, was the Society of Early Americanists Scholar of the Month for October 2019. A Q&A interview was published on the Society’s website. The Society promotes the exchange of ideas among scholars who study American literature and culture to 1830 and is comprised of more than 500 members worldwide. Hardy has presented his research at numerous SEA conferences and has published essays with several SEA affiliate journals. He joined the YSU English faculty in 2012, after receiving a Ph.D. from the University at Albany, SUNY.
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Nancy Landgraff, right, chair and professor of Physical Therapy, receives the Great Rivers Affiliate Legacy Leadership Award 2019 from Tracy Behnke, executive director of the American Heart Association. The award recognizes individual leadership in the AHA. Landgraff has been a volunteer and leader for the AHA since 2001, serving on the board of directors (2007-2016 and currently), including chair, 2011-2013.
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Publications
“Counseling termination and new beginnings” is the title of an article co-authored by Victoria Kress, professor of Counseling, and published in Counseling Today. Kress has published a number of journal articles on counseling termination and further addresses the topic in her textbooks, Counseling Children and Adolescents and Treating Those With Mental Disorders.
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Isam Amin and Alan Jacobs, professors of Geological and Environmental Sciences, and graduate student Nana Acheampong, published a peer-reviewed article in the International Journal of Ecological Economics and Statistics. The article is titled “Correlation between the Rates and Mortality of Ischemic Heart Disease and Magnesium Concentrations in Ohio Drinking Water.” They compiled the data on drinking water quality and the incidence of heart disease from Acheampong’s master’s thesis research.