Southwestern Magazine | Spring 2022

Students Dane Parker ’22, Campbell Duffy ’22, Jaime Hotaling ’23, Harrison Jones ’23, Oskar Brian ’22, and Jessica Workman ’22 performed G.H.O.S.T. Unit: The Live Event on September 29 for the two respondents of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival and received three Meritorious Achievements for Innovative Theatre Practices, Outstanding Ensemble, and Support of New Work. Hotaling and Duffy were also nominated for the prestigious Irene Ryan Acting Award. G.H.O.S.T. Unit: The Live Event was directed by part-time Assistant Professor of Theatre CB Goodman and is part of Associate Professor of Theatre Sergio Costola ’s 2022–2023 faculty-student project. Assistant Professor of Anthropology Naomi Reed recently participated in WAIL , a community grief ritual performance commemorating the Sugar Land 95. She also presented on an invited panel discussion hosted by Diverse Works and the African American Library at the Gregory School titled “Unshackling History: Convict Leasing Camps in Sugar Land, TX.” Professor of Theatre Desiderio Roybal designed a 1930s scenic setting of a fictional KPNF radio station for Penfold Theatre in Austin. The audience experiences the arrival of a small company of virtuosic voice actors who performmultiple roles in the radio- cast of A Miracle on 34th Street using live Foley sound effects. The load-in and installation was assisted by Southwestern student Dusty Cutler ’25. Associate Professor of English Michael Saenger published an article titled “Shakespeare and Linguistic Change” in The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Shakespeare . Saenger also presented a talk titled “Addressing Challenges in the Humanities & Social Sciences: Toward a Better Understanding and Use of Key Terms in Combating BDS and Israel Delegitimization.” Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Rico Self won the 2021 Gerald R. Miller Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award from the National Communication Association for his work “Ties that Bind: Black Familyness and the Politics of Contingent Coalitions.” Professor of Spanish Laura Senio Blair presented a paper at the International Conference of Hispanic Women Filmmakers titled “Burying Ashes and Making Dust: Memorial Acts in the Latin American Road Movie.” The paper analyzed how Ecuadorian film director Tania Hermida subverts and decenters the tradi- tional (Hollywood) characteristics of road films to represent a Latin American and feminist perspective. Associate Professor of Business Debika Sihi published her co-authored paper “Implementing Big Data Analytics in Marketing Departments: Mixing Organic and Administered Approaches to Increase Data-Driven Decision Making” in Informatics . The paper examines different strategies utilized by marketing departments to become more data-driven in their decision making. Professor of Political Science Bob Snyder ’s paper titled “Ideology and Global Conflicts: Revolutionary Actors and Their Opposition to Liberalism” was published in the journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism . At the 2021 Lt Brain Trust, held virtually November 2–3, Assistant Professor of Kinesiology Jennifer Stokes presented “Using Google Tools to Enhance Student Engagement and Collaboration in Remote, Hybrid, or In-person Courses.” Stokes discussed how Google tools (e.g., Docs, Slides, Forms, and Jamboard) can be used in remote, hybrid, and in-person classes to engage students both during and outside of scheduled class time. She shared examples of how these tools were formatted for use as formative and summative assessments as well as interactive, collaborative activities, in addition to student feed- back and data on learning and retention. The Lt Brain Trust is an annual international conference for science educators, who are invited to showcase innovative educational practices. Senior computational mathematics major Emily Thompson ’22 presented “Using Neural Ordinary Differential Equations (NODEs) to Create Models of Complex Curves” at the 16th Annual Texas Undergraduate Mathematics Conference, held virtually October 30. The work is from her ongoing mathe- matics capstone project supervised by Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton . 15 SOUTHWESTERN