Save the Date!     

The Salute to Faculty Excellence will be held this fall on Thursday, September 22 in the Hub Club at Apogee Stadium.  The reception will begin at 6:30 pm followed by the ceremony at 7:00 pm.  Come support faculty across campus who will honored for their excellence through awards and promotions.

Student Perceptions of Teaching                 

Student Perceptions of Teaching (SPOT) is the student evaluation system for UNT.  This spring semester, SPOT opens on April 18 and closes on May 1. The faculty portal can be located at https://unt.iasystem.org/faculty. Please encourage your students to participate in this important exercise. For more information, please visit the SPOT website, or email spot@unt.edu.

Open Access Symposium

UNT’s annual Open Access Symposium, featuring presentations and interactive sessions led by researchers and librarians based in the US, Canada, UK, and the Netherlands from various fields of study, begins the afternoon of Thursday, May 19, with a keynote by Dan Morgan (publisher of Collabra). The symposium will continue on Friday, May 20, with an opening keynote by J.E.C.V. Rooryck, a linguist who led the mass resignation of the editors of an Elsevier journal and has launched a new journal aimed at having a fair, sustainable publishing model. Parallel sessions will include presentations on sustaining open-access publishing, researcher perceptions, open data, and institutional open-access policies. The afternoon's featured speaker will be Brian Nosek, a psychologist who co-founded the Center for Open Science, which operates the Open Science Framework, and the closing speaker will be Lorraine Haricombe, vice provost and director of the University of Texas Libraries. Registration for the Open Access Symposium ends April 30!

Microaggressions Workshop                                

Faculty are cordially invited to attend a workshop led by Yolanda Niemann, called “Practicing Productive Responses to Microaggressions.” In this workshop, faculty will learn and practice effective responses to microaggressions that can also lead to productive conversations about race, gender, LGBT, and intersectionalities. This seminar, in the Gender Equity Matters series sponsored by a UNT mentoring grant, will be held on April 13 (Wednesday) 3:30-5:00 pm, in Gateway Room 132. Refreshments will be served.  

Faculty Focus

Doug Henry, Associate Professor of Anthropology, has a research expertise in culture and health. His recent research has focused on how emergency medical services (EMS) providers assess risk and prepare for Ebola or other biohazard emergencies. Dr. Henry’s earliest research was on refugees in Sierra Leone, West Africa. After those early investigations, he brought students to West Africa for 3-week field school internship experiences; some of these UNT interns then helped set up an Ebola regional response network and the first post-Ebola hospital in Sierra Leone for all of the people who experience complications after Ebola. Right now, Dr. Henry is organizing an ethnographic internship experience in Fiji for UNT students that is based on the Sierra Leone field school model; this summer course will include cultural experiences that engage with local community-based organizations and non-governmental organizations.

Marjorie Hayes, Associate Professor of Acting-Directing, just completed directing the UNT production of Stage Kiss by MacArthur Genius Award recipient, Sarah Ruhl. Professor Hayes is also a recipient of the 2015-2016 Scholarly and Creative Activity Award (SCA) and she will be using the award money to research women who compose for Broadway. Starting in the fall, she will be on development leave for a year in New York City to renew her acting and vocal pedagogy and continue her research and the development of a small-scale compilation musical featuring the music of these women composers. Before she leaves for New York, she will be playing the leading role in the regional premiere of the Tony Award nominated play, Mothers and Sons, written by Terrence McNally. The play will be produced by Uptown Players and will run June 3 through June 19 at the Kalita Humphreys Theater in Dallas.

 

Register by April 20th for a chance to win 2 tickets to the UNT Dance and Theatre production of Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor on Sunday, May 1 at 2 pm (click here).

And, congratulations to the winners of March's newsletter give-away of Latin Jazz Lab Band CDs: Kevin Hawkins and Harry Ellis!

Lecturer Spotlight

Jennifer Edwards, Ph.D., Lecturer in the Department of Kinesiology, Health Promotion and Recreation, has a background in public health, having worked at the Dallas County Health Department. Her passion and experience made her the top choice in leading her department through the development of a new major that will be starting in the fall of 2016: the Bachelor of Science in Public Health. Edwards describes the degree as “an emerging area with a need of a quarter of a million professionals in the field”.  In planning the degree, the department looked at other university programs, and industry standards, and considered north Texas needs and what would make their program competitive. The degree has a biological sciences track and a population studies track and students can also choose a minor to support their studies.  Graduates of the program could work in areas such as epidemiology or program administration in hospitals, non-profits, health departments, making a difference in the health of communities and populations at large.

Notable Accomplishments

Cynthia Mohr, Professor and Chair of Interior Design, has been named a Fellow by the Interior Design Educators Council, the professionally recognized association for interior design educators in North America.	Brenda Sims, Director of the University of North Texas’ New College at Frisco, has been selected as a Fellow in the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing for her contributions to the field of technical communication.	Nicole Smith, Associate Professor of English, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend Award to undertake her project, "A Christian Mannes: A Critical Edition.”

 

 

Important Dates
April 13	Microaggression workshop
April 14­–16	Wingspan Week
April 18	Session on international student/scholar visa status
April 20	Register for free tickets to Merry Wives of Windsor!
April 22	CLEAR Forum on Teaching and Learning
April 30	Registration deadline for the Open Access Symposium