Faculty Notes

Andy Busch

Andy Busch, associate professor of health and human kinetics, Chris Modica, associate professor of psychology, and Emily Sheridan '23, published the article "The Effect of Yoga on Anxiety, Attention and Social-Emotional Symptoms in Preschool Children: A Pilot Quasi-Experimental Study," in Child Psychiatry & Human Development, August 2023. The study evaluated the effectiveness of a short yoga session on behavioral and cognitive outcomes in preschool children. Findings indicated that a short yoga session improved the children's measures of anxiety, socialemotional behavior, and attention.

Busch also lectured at the Prague School of Rehabilitation and Manual Medicine workshop in Prague, Czech Republic, discussing several of the research articles he coauthored with many therapists trained in utilizing dynamic neuromuscular stabilization principles. This research analyzed diaphragm motion in healthy individuals during various postural-respiratory situations and helped further our understanding of the diaphragm's role in postural stability. The findings support the hypothesis that weightlifting, coupled with voluntary contraction of the abdominal muscles, results in greater intra-abdominal pressure and provides a beneficial stimulus for the diaphragm as a therapeutic approach in posturalrespiratory training programs for chronic nonspecific low back pain.

Amy Butcher

Amy Butcher, associate professor of English and director of creative writing, was the featured writer and instructor of the 13th annual Tutka Bay Writers Retreat at Tutka Bay Lodge outside of Homer, AK, in September. This retreat blends craft talks, in-class writing, readings, and discussion with unstructured time for writers to experience the immersive natural environment or concentrate further on writing. While in Alaska, she also hosted readings at The Writer's Block Bookstore in Anchorage and Pioneer Commons at the Kachemak Bay Campus in Homer. Previous Tutka Bay Writers Retreat instructors have included Louise Erdrich and Luis Urrea. This summer, Butcher taught for the 11th year as writing faculty with the Sitka Fine Arts Camp—a nonprofit arts education organization that serves 1,000 K-12 students annually. This year, she worked alongside two OWU students (Emily McCullough '24 and Jason Tannenbaum '24) and six alumni (Steph DeSoto '21, Fiona Hansen '22, Elizabeth Mushaben '23, Jamison Neal '23, Emma Neeper '21, and Millie Rocco '23). Butcher also was a featured presenter at the 36th annual Casper College Literary Festival in Casper, WY, and was the invited writer for the Rufus & Louise Reiberg Reading Series at IUPUI, where she gave a reading and hosted a workshop for students.

Butcher's most recent book, Mothertrucker, was released in German translation (translated by Dietlind Falk and published by HarperCollins) this spring and in Chinese translation (translated by Ruijie Ren and published by Chinese press Folio) this summer. She also presented on the process of writing Mothertrucker as an adult enrichment lecturer aboard the seven Majestic Princess' Voyage of the Glaciers cruises through the Inside Passage of Alaska as part of their North to Alaska series.

Krystal Cashen

Krystal Cashen, assistant professor of psychology, coauthored the article "Perspectives of Youth with LGBTQ+ Parents: Feelings of Openness and Acceptance Towards Others, Oneself, and Family," published in Journal of Adolescent Research, advance online publication May 2023. The article examines the perspectives of youth with LGBTQ+ parents on how their family experiences shape how they think about themselves, others, and their families. Kay Simon '15 is a coauthor on the paper.

Nick Dietrich

Nick Dietrich, assistant professor of data analytics, and Brianna DeMuth '23 coauthored the article "Explaining Support for Human Rights Actions: Experimentally Studying Democracy and Personal Authoritarianism" in Democracy and Security, published online August 2023. The article presents data from a survey experiment conducted during Ohio Wesleyan's 2021 Summer Science Research Program. This experiment studied how pre-existing views about authority shape public support for international intervention during humanitarian crises. The project was made possible with funds from Shadman Zafar '94 to support data-driven research with students in the data analytics program.

Michael Flamm

Michael Flamm, professor of history, delivered the annual Joseph and Edith Vogel Lecture on OWU at War: Charles Leighton and the Memphis Belle. For more on the celebrated bomber's navigator Charles Leighton, see Flamm's article. At the ceremony, President Rock Jones presented the diploma to Leighton's grandchildren. Flamm also co-taught a Fulbright seminar in Argentina and continued to serve on the Finance and Advancement committees of the Executive Board of the Organization of American Historians.

David Johnson

David Johnson, professor emeritus of botany and microbiology, and Nancy Murray, curator of the Jason Swallen Herbarium at OWU, oversaw an international team of 32 researchers who produced Flora of Thailand 16 (1): Annonaceae, published in 2022 by the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, Bangkok. The book is the first-ever account of nearly 300 species of the pawpaw family occurring in Thailand, part of a project to describe Thailand's 12,000 plant species, begun in the 1960s and nearing completion.

Sarah Kaka

Sarah Kaka, associate professor of education, was lead author for the article "A Steep Hill to Climb: Lessons from Professional Development on Inquiry Creation," published in Social Studies Research and Practice, Sep. 2023. She also presented two papers in April at the prestigious American Educational Research Association's annual meeting in Chicago. The first was "'I Have Never Wanted to Quit More as a Teacher': How 'Divisive Issues' Legislation Impacts Teachers," and the second was "These Laws Allege that We Can't Be Trusted: The Culture Wars and the Teaching Profession." Finally, she was interviewed as an expert on divisive issues legislation and featured on two episodes of the TeachLab podcast as part of their series Teacher Speech and the New Divide. The first episode is "Understanding Divisive Concepts Laws," and the second is episode 4, "Teacher Autonomy."

Marty Kalb

Marty Kalb's "Curacao," which he painted in 2022, is an acrylic on canvas measuring 60 inches x 48 inches. His ocean paintings are about water meeting different elements in the natural environment, offering viewers a moment to contemplate the force and complexity of of the natural environment.

Marty Kalb, professor emeritus of fine art, received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for 2023. An exhibition of paintings from Kalb's Ocean Paintings, which were recognized by the OAC award, was held at OWU's Ross Art Museum in April and May. The show's 16 paintings, inspired by Kalb's original photographs, are images of water affected by tides, wind, and land; waves crashing against rocks; waves meeting cross currents; small eddies gliding smoothly over wide beaches; or the tide gently receding back to the sea. The catalog for the exhibition, made possible through funds from the Ohio Arts Council, includes illustrations of all the paintings, an essay by Kalb, and contributions from artists and museum professionals.

Kalb also gave two presentations to OWU's Institute of Lifelong Learning: one on the ways the memorialization of individuals or historical events has been reexamined, and one studying historical examples of artwork that depict images of tragedy.

Glenda Nieto-Cuebas

Glenda Nieto-Cuebas, associate professor of Spanish and George and Louise Peters Professor of World Languages and Cultures, published one article, two interviews, and a theatre review and delivered two conference presentations. The article, "Lope Enters with His Entourage: Metatheatricality in Ignacio Amestoy's Lope y sus Doroteas," was published in Symposium: A Quarterly Journal of Romance Languages, Vol. 77. No. 2, 2023. The article examines how Lope de Vega is brought to center stage as a character in the recent theater production Lope y sus Doroteas o cuando Lope quiere, written by Ignacio Amestoy and directed by Ainhoa Amestoy. This analysis delves into theatrical choices used in this production to craft the narrative and highlight Lope's obsessions and self-absolution through his relationship with his younger daughter.

Nieto-Cuebas published the interview "Reimaginando a Lope para el siglo XXI: Conversación con Ignacio Amestoy y Ainhoa Amestoy" in Comedia Performance: Journal of the Association for Hispanic Classical Theater, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2023. With Erin Cowling, she also published a two-part interview with Octavio Solis, one of the most prominent Latinx playwrights of our time. The interviews were published as "The Making of the Shiny Knight of Chicanos, a Conversation with Octavio Solis," in Howlround Theatre Commons. With Cowling, Nieto-Cuebas also coauthored the review "Fuente Ovejuna, by Lope de Vega, directed by Mariano de Paco Serrano, Teatro Círculo, Oct. 7-23, 2022," in Latin American Theatre Review, Spring 2023. Finally, she delivered the presentations Lope Enters with His Entourage: Metatheatricality in Lope y sus Doroteas, Apr. 21-22, at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference in Lexington; and Roundtable: Safe Spaces for Women in the Early Modern Hispanic World, Mar. 10, at Renaissance Society of America in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Shari Stone-Mediatore

Shari Stone-Mediatore, professor of philosophy, along with Karli Walsh '24 and Athena Vakaleris Knox '22, produced the booklet, "Who We Are: Stories from People Incarcerated in Illinois with Life Sentences." This collection of interviews with a preface by Stone-Mediatore was produced with funding from the Illinois Humanities Envisioning Justice Initiative. It has been distributed to Illinois lawmakers as well as people in Illinois prisons.

Chris Wolverton

Chris Wolverton, professor of biology and Albert M. Austin Professor in Natural Sciences, coauthored the article "Antigravitropic PIN Polarization Maintains Non-vertical Growth in Lateral Roots" in the very high-impact journal Nature Plants, 1-14, 2023. The research is part of a project he began more than 10 years ago that merged with Stefan Kepinski's world class lab at Leeds in England starting in 2014. He received a Thomas E. Wenzlau Grant for Faculty and Curricular Development to travel to Leeds during his sabbatical that year, and this is the result. Wolverton also published the article "Meta-Analysis of the Space Flight and Microgravity Response of the Arabidopsis Plant Transcriptome," in npj Microgravity 9, No. 1, March 2023. The article is a metaanalysis that grew out of work with the NASA GeneLab Plant Analysis Working Group.

Julide Yazar

Julide Yazar, associate professor of economics, and Bob Gitter, professor emeritus of economics, coauthored "Border Games: A Game Theoretic Model of Undocumented Immigration," which was published in Games 14, No. 5: 58. In the paper, they introduce a gametheoretic model of undocumented immigration with the aim of emphasizing the strategic interaction between the different forces affecting the issue. They show that the impact of unilateral actions, such as tightening border enforcement, are muted due to the strategic interplay. Yazar also presented her paper "A Novel Likelihood-free Bayesian Approach for Calibration of Agent-based Models Using Conditional Variational Autoencoders" at WEHIA 2023: Annual Workshop on Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents in June. In this paper, she presents a machine-learning-based approach to Bayesian parameter fitting to agent-based economic models that is scalable to models with high-dimensional parameter vectors.