FACULTY & STAFF NOTES
ART THERAPY
and adjunct faculty member Lisa Thomas at
the American Art Therapy Association conference.
Faculty in the art therapy specialization program received the 2022 Rawley Silver Research Award from the American Art Therapy Association at the organization’s conference in November. Annette Vaccaro, Ed.D., associate professor and coordinator of the master’s degree program in clinical mental health counseling with art therapy specialization; Daniel Summer, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology, and Traci Bitondo, Ph.D., and Natashia Collins, adjunct art therapy lecturers, were awarded a grant, which they are using to create a professional disposition scale to identify the personal qualities that assure good client care.
In addition, Vaccaro, Bitondo, adjunct art therapy lecturer Lisa Thomas and art therapy alumna Karen Rosen presented a half-day course on “Creative Online and Digital Strategies and Interventions in Counseling Art Therapy” at the same conference.
Bitondo received the Nancy Schoebel Distinguished Legislative Service Award from the American Art Therapy Association at the conference.
Thomas Ling, Ph.D., former associate dean in the School of Psychology and Counseling and current adjunct, presented two papers at the conference with graduate students Brianna Hughes, Courtney Eannone and Kira Jones. One was titled. “Do we see you? Investigating diversity representation in art therapy literature,” and the other was titled “The DRAWs Note: Comprehensive and standardized documentation of art therapy.”
Lena Campagna, Ph.D., assistant professor and chair in the Criminal Justice and Sociology Department, and a colleague have received the Borchard Foundation Center on Law & Aging 2023 Academic Research Grant Award for their research “Reentering Society: Elderly support post-release & successful community-based aging.” Their research focuses on building support services for formerly incarcerated seniors reentering society from prison. The foundation helps to improve the quality of life for older adults including the poor or those who are isolated due to disability, language, culture, lack of education or other reasons.
John Chorazy, adjunct lecturer in the English Department, had his poem “Professional Development” selected for publication in the New Jersey English Journal.
Jeffrey Egnatovich, Ed.D., director of graduate studies and program coordinator for healthcare administration, successfully defended his doctoral research in higher education leadership. His research topic was “The Perceived Necessity by Paramedics and Paramedic Employers.” Earning his doctoral degree, he now holds four degrees from Caldwell University, the first student ever to achieve that milestone. From Caldwell he also earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, a Master of Business Administration and a Bachelor of
Science in Nursing. “Since starting my relationship at Caldwell 18 years ago, I have met and worked with many dedicated and talented faculty and staff members who make Caldwell University a fantastic place to work and study. These attributes explain why I continued my studies at Caldwell and became one of many who have received three degrees from Caldwell University, and now, the first to receive four degrees.”
Henrietta Genfi, Ph.D., associate dean of the Academic Success Center, successfully defended her doctoral research on “Beyond Academic Advising: The Influence of Mental Health Disclosure on Academic Advising Practices” and earned her doctoral degree in educational leadership from Caldwell.
Jaz Graf, adjunct lecturer in art, was awarded the West Bay View Foundation Fellowship at Dieu Donné, a hand papermaking institution in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her work will culminate in a public exhibition in spring 2023. Graf’s article describing how her Thai ancestry manifests itself in creative projects is featured in the peer-reviewed journal Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, published by Brill.
Crystal Lopez, assistant dean of residence life and conduct, was selected as an expert in residence by the Mid-Atlantic Association of College and University Housing Officers for its 50th anniversary conference held in October in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Experts in residence mentored professionals and graduate students and offered attendees one-on-one consultations during the conference. Their experience provided support and expertise in the field of housing and residence life. Lopez had one-on-one consultations with over 20 professionals of
all levels. She provided career guidance, networking opportunities and best practices in problem-solving for everyday work in the field. She said the experience “enhanced my own professional development by creating and mentoring others; it was an experience of a lifetime, and I was so grateful for the opportunity.”
Michael Mahadeen, adjunct instructor of music, was the music copyist for the Disney+ holiday special “The Hip Hop Nutcracker.” He created and engraved a new, critical edition of the full, original ballet score, exclusively for use by Disney. He then advised on the classical needs of the work and assisted in the creation of a new orchestral recording of the piece. Mahadeen shared with his Caldwell students the experience of working on this piece and collaborating with some of the preeminent names in hip hop dance, rap, and music production and emphasized the connection between classical music and contemporary music. Sharing his experience with “The Nutcracker” allowed Mahadeen to illustrate this point and to help students find the common threads between the music of old and the music they listen to today.
Mary Ann Miller, Ph.D., professor of English, was recently selected for the executive committee of Delta Epsilon Sigma, a national honor society for students at Catholic colleges and universities. The committee met in St. Petersburg, Florida, Jan 3-5, 2023, to decide the winners of the annual DES essay contest and plan other DES business, including scholarship opportunities for its student members.
Edith Ries, Ph.D. and Joanne Jasmine, Ph.D., professors of education, and Juliann Meletta, Ph.D., assistant professor of education, presented at the National Council for the Social Studies annual conference in Philadelphia on “Global Literature and Primary Source Documents: A Thematic Approach.”
Lily Tsoi, assistant professor in the School of Psychology and Counseling, wrote an article titled “The promises and pitfalls of functional magnetic resonance imaging hyperscanning for social interaction research,” which was published in Social and Personality Psychology Compass in October.
Vlad Veksler, Ph.D., assistant professor of computer science, was the co-editor of a recent issue of Wiley’s Topics in Cognitive Science. He co-authored two articles in the journal: “Cognition-Inspired Artificial Intelligence” and “Symbolic Deep Networks: A Psychologically Inspired Lightweight and Efficient Approach to Deep Learning.” Explaining the work, Veksler said, “Just as chemical engineering requires a fundamental understanding of chemistry, artificial intelligence engineering could benefit from a fundamental understanding of natural intelligence, and the study of human and animal cognition.”
