Showcase of Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

Physicians demonstrate an insufficiency in medical nutrition training, yet are expected to deliver nutrition counseling to patients with chronic disease. There is a clear understanding that unhealthy lifestyle behaviors (e.g. smoking, physical inactivity, poor diet) contribute to morbidity and mortality across the nation and worldwide. A preventable contribution to millions of deaths annually, which can be mitigated via brief nutrition and lifestyle counseling. Primary care is the ideal venue to deliver nutrition education and counseling, with a majority of all Americans regularly visiting their physician offices. With preventive medicine on the rise, is it imperative that a physician is proficient to have a sense of medical nutrition, to briefly counsel patients. This missing link, if fixed, will change the healthcare delivery system and overall patient outcomes for the better.

Approximation of stochastic differential equations (SDEs) with parametric noise plays an important role in a range of application areas, including engineering, mechanics, epidemiology, and neuroscience. A complete understanding of SDE theory with perturbed noise requires familiarity with advanced probability and stochastic processes. In this paper, we derive an asymptotic estimate of variance, and it is shown that numerical method gives a useful step toward solving SDEs with perturbed noise. Our goal is to diffuse the results to an audience not entirely familiar with functional notations or semi-group theory, but who might nonetheless be interested in the practical simulation of dynamical systems with fast noise or a slow manifold. In this article a matrix representation of a limit of variance for circular process is given. It is shown that the variance is asymptotically measured by the decrease in spectral energy in one step of a Markov chain. Then we apply this result to a stochastic differential equation with parametric noise (which arises in mathematical neuroscience) and demonstrate how the results can be used to analyze propagation of a signal in sound mechanism.

An increasing gap has been seen between the government food assistance programs and need. One program filling the deficit is Feeding America’s BackPack Program. The Backpack provides nutritious food to children to eat on the weekends when they may not have access to an adequate amount of food. This study evaluated the impact of the program on children’s food security, readiness to learn, and behavioral and mental health. A mixed methodology was utilized. Results showed improved food security and increased readiness to learn among participants. BackPack may be an effective program for meeting the gap in food assistance.

Creativity plays an important role in the advancement of all societies around the world, yet the role of cultural influences on creativity is still unclear. Following systems theory, activity theory, and ecocultural theory, semi-structured interviews with 30 renowned artists (writers, composers, and visual artists) from Cuba, Germany, and Russia were conducted to explore the complexity of the creative process and potential cultural differences. All interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using Consensual Qualitative Research methodology. The following 8 main domains resulted from the interviews: How I became an artist, What being an artist means to me, Creating as a cognitive process, Creating as an emotional process, Creating as a motivational process, Fostering factors of creativity, Hindering factors, and The role of culture in creating. Artists in the three countries similarly talked about creativity being a fluid process where ideas change, and elaborated on the role of intuition and the unconscious when creating art. Meaningful cross-cultural differences were seen among the artists of three cultural backgrounds in terms of attitudes about financial instability, in how they perceive themselves, in their art’s societal function, in the cognitive and in the emotional process of creating, and in terms of social connectedness. Results highlight a) the complexity of the creative process going beyond cognitive factors and including motivational, emotional, and sociocultural factors, and b) the cultural differences in the creative process. Results are beneficial for further developing a comprehensive theory of the creative process taking cultural differences into consideration.

What I am submitting is a 5-minute video of a commissioned "writing on water" installation completed at the University of Oxford, Oxford, England, on a park on the grounds of Oxford University.

Over the last five U.S. presidential election cycles, public concern about environmental issues has seemingly declined while concerns about national security and economic issues have remained steady or increased. These changes in public attitudes have been associated with decreased attention to environmental issues amongst policymakers, a situation that contrasts strongly with the 1970s when public concern about environmental issues was high and environmental legislation was a U.S. federal government priority. “Framing” has been pro-posed as a tool that environmental scientists could use to increase the relevancy of their research to U.S. society at-large, thereby helping to change public attitudes and influence policymaking. However, if done haphazardly, some framing efforts can actually have the opposite effect. To combat this weakness, environmental scientists should join with experts in psychology, decision science, and social science to create interdisciplinary teams that can effectively communicate with the public, positively affect public opinion, and make environmental science more relevant and meaningful to society at-large.

Abstract: "The United States lags behind many Asian countries in engagement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). An unexplored factor in these country-level differences may be U.S.–Asia gaps in perceptions of the goal opportunities provided by STEM. Across four studies, U.S. students perceived fewer communal opportunities (working with/helping/relationships with others) in STEM than Asian students; this differential perception contributed to U.S.–Asia gaps in STEM interest. Perceptions of communal opportunities in STEM did not follow from a general orientation to perceive that all careers provided communal opportunities but from communal engagement in STEM. Perceptions about communal opportunities in STEM predicted STEM interest, and communal experience in STEM predicted STEM interest beyond quantity of STEM exposure. Experimentally highlighting the perceived communal opportunities in science closed the cultural gap in positivity toward a scientist career (Study 5). Perceptions of communal opportunities in STEM provide a new vantage point to improve U.S. engagement in STEM."

Geoscientists analyze and integrate spatial and temporal information at a range of scales to understand Earth processes. Despite this, the concept of scale is ill-defined and taught unevenly across the K-16 continuum. This literature review focuses on two meanings of scale: one as the magnitude of the extent of a dimension and the other as a relationship between objects or events. We review 42 papers from science education and discipline-based education research (DBER) literature on students’ conceptions related to one or both meanings of scale. Analysis of this prior work reveals a broader (though still limited) research base on domain general concepts of scale as a magnitude and scant research on scale as a relationship. Learners begin reasoning about spatial and temporal magnitudes categorically by working with scales based on standard units and nonmetric values, such as “body length.” Concepts of scale magnitudes outside human experience are nonlinear. Facility with fractions and proportional reasoning are positively associated with the ability to reason about scale as a relationship. Two constructs from the psychological literature, structure mapping and the category adjustment model, offer theoretical accounts for these findings. We borrow a typology from the psychological literature to frame common geoscience instructional models in the context of spatial and temporal scale and suggest how instructors might facilitate students’ reasoning about scale models. We identify a number of avenues for possible future research, including a critical need to understand how conceptual understanding of scale develops across the K-16 continuum.

“Lois and Fran’s Garden Adventure” is a new children’s book on the market, aimed to educate and encourage children to learn about gardening and the nutritional benefits of vegetables. Lois and Fran are two young girls who are excited to tour the reader around their mom's vegetable garden, exploring a wide variety of vegetables. While guiding the tour, the girls will discuss nutrition benefits from vegetables and explore the different types of animals that live in or near gardens. In this large-print paperback book, children will learn and be engaged as they explore their mom’s garden. At the end, children will get the opportunity to try some nutritious vegetable-focused snacks and dishes included in the healthy recipes section. This book also includes several pages of sticker-cutouts, which are available to use to reward your child as they try new vegetables! There are several pages of blank sticker-cutouts that allow parent and child to learn to draw some of their favorite vegetables that they eat. Hop along with Lois and Fran as they give you a tour of the garden!

Making Space for Knowing: A Capacious Approach to Comparative Epistemology is an intervention in mainstream Western epistemology, especially as it relates to theories of knowledge, knowing, and knowers. Through its focus on propositional knowledge, contemporary mainstream epistemology has narrowed the scope of the definition of “knowledge” to a point where it fails to accurately describe the structure of knowing and prevents a genuine understanding of “knowledge” across different contexts and cultures. By drawing on resources in analytic philosophy and hermeneutics, Aaron B. Creller outlines an approach to comparative epistemology that makes space for the particularity of non-Western approaches to knowing. It then further develops this model by engaging with classical Chinese philosophy and twentieth-century Chinese epistemologists, offering a set of best practices for comparative epistemology.

Exposure as a musical artist, performer, and educator is absolutely essential to growth, professional development, and outreach capabilities of today’s professional musician. Next to live performance, attracting exposure to yourself in the form of technology – specifically video and audio representations of musical compositions and events – are at the forefront of what is necessary to promote new music publications, build your resume, recruit students, reach audiences, connect with composers, and to gain credibility and visibility as an artist and educator. The accessibility of online video and audio recordings is the main method through which today’s student consumes, studies, shares, and discovers music within recreation and academia. If a new musical composition is to become available as a publication, an HD video and/or audio example is expected as a supplemental example to accompany the sheet music, often resulting in embedded videos as part of music publication websites. Thus, a professional HD representation is necessary. In the spring of 2017, Dr. Andrea Venet was awarded a UNF Technology Grant which resulted in the purchase of a high-definition 4K sony camcorder on behalf of the percussion department at the school of music. All of the publications and videos submitted are a result of collaboration between Dr. Andrea Venet and UNF music students from the percussion, music technology, and string departments, utilizing the 4K camera to document creative activity lead by Venet. The contents of this faculty showcase submission include five recent projects done between May 2017 and May 2018 which involve Dr. Andrea Venet and students from the UNF school of music. These videos showcase performances of new compositions, publications and live performances in a high-definition format. The first video collection, Solo Suite BWV1011/995 for solo marimba, is a recording project done as a result of research done, and lectures given around the country by Dr. Venet entitled Affekt and Execution: Historical Performance Practice and Contemporary Techniques for Performing Bach on Marimba. The second video, Kibo is a recording project done of Venet’s new composition for solo snare drum and mallet quartet. Performed by Dr. Venet and her UNF percussion students, the piece was published in October of 2017 through Tapspace. The third video, Faded Lines, is another new composition for percussion duo, which was also recently published by Tapspace in October of 2017. The fifth video submission, LIgNEouS I, by Andy Akiho, is a live performance given from Venet’s faculty recital in February of 2018. A challenging collaboration of new chamber music between different instrumental genres, this piece was recorded with the 4K camera and involved intense preparation by Dr. Venet and dedicated members of the UNF string department. The final video submission is a high-definition recording project done of Venet’s arrangement of Nannou, composed by electronic pop musician Aphex Twin. Video edits and audio recording session was lead by UNF Music Technology student Thomas Lewis. This arrangement is published by Keyboard Percussion Publications (www.MostlyMarimba.com).

In the summer of 2017, the Departments of History and Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work, took 23 UNF students to Spain to study pilgrimage. During three weeks abroad, students traveled the entire length of the Camino Francés, from its traditional starting point in the French Basque town of St. Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela — ending the journey in Finisterre on the Atlantic Coast of Spain. Students walked the final 70 miles from Sarria to the shrine of St. James, traversing the stunning Galician countryside and retracing the steps of more than a millennium of pilgrims. Today, thousands of pilgrims continue to stream to Santiago to touch the putative relics of the Apostle. This classroom in motion, provides a remarkable opportunity to study both medieval and modern pilgrimage practices, while experiencing the cultures of northern Spain. Through photographs and student quotes this work highlights the students’ transformational experiences. In addition, it draws on student-conducted interviews and mapping projects to illuminate the continued impact of pilgrimage in modern Spain.

At the turn of the twentieth century, electricity emerged as a metaphor for modernity. Writers from Mark Twain to Ralph Ellison grappled with the idea of electricity as both life force (illumination) and death spark (electrocution). The idea that electrification created exclusively modern experiences took hold of Americans' imaginations, whether they welcomed or feared its adoption. In Power Lines, Jennifer Lieberman examines the apparently incompatible notions of electricity that coexisted in the American imagination, tracing how electricity became a common (though multifarious) symbol for modern life. Lieberman examines a series of moments of technical change when electricity accrued new social meanings, plotting both power lines and the power of narrative lines in American life and literature. While discussing the social construction of electrical systems, she offers a new interpretation of Twain's use of electricity as an organizing metaphor in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, describes the rhetoric surrounding the invention of electric execution, analyzes Charlotte Perkins Gilman's call for human connection in her utopian writing and in her little-known Human Work, considers the theme of electrical interconnection in Jack London's work, and shows how Ralph Ellison and Louis Mumford continued the literary tradition of electrical metaphor. Electrical power was a distinctive concept in American literary, cultural, and technological histories. For this reason, narratives about electricity were particularly evocative. Bridging the realistic and the romantic, the historical and the fantastic, these stories guide us to ask new questions about our enduring fascination with electricity and all it came to represent.

The sculptural forms are both a physical and metaphorical reference to a machine’s component relationships. I am interested in how these objects imply a working relationship between entities in a mechanical system. For instance, a solitary gear appears to be a relic of some machine from the past. What machine? You might ask. What was its purpose? Why is it no longer in use? What did the other mating gear look like? It is my hope that my pieces will generate a point of reflection for viewers, to ask themselves about their relationships with friends, family, community and their environment. This idea of reflecting upon a relic alludes to the idea of a legacy, and will hopefully give the viewer a chance to consider his or her own legacy. The process used to create the sculptural forms and ceremonial objects employs wood firing an iron bearing clay to a temperature of 2200 degrees Fahrenheit, and then maintaining that temperature for a minimum of six hours in order to build up ash deposits. The pieces develop dramatic markings of sintered ash that references the low point of the ember building and burning cycle. After the temperature has been maintained for at least six hours, the cooling happens in an active process where too much wood is introduced into the kiln to cause incomplete combustion. This atmosphere is maintained with rhythmic stoking of the kiln until the temperature falls to 1500 degrees. The surfaces created by the use of this technique look like objects that have been unearthed at an archaeological dig.

From Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/Remember-Explorer-Ben-Catherine-Veitch/dp/1682972062 Join intrepid, but forgetful, Explorer Ben who sets off on a big adventure through jungle, caves and deserts on different methods of transport...but keeps he forgetting things along the way. Can you help Ben try to remember the items? Learn memorisation tricks along the way and see what you can help Ben remember! A fun memory game adventure full of new memory tips to learn!

The perception of the immigrant as criminal or deviant has a long history in the U.S., with many groups having been associated with perceived increases in crime and other social problems, although data suggest this is not necessarily the case. This text examines the relationship between immigration and crime by presenting key issues from both historical and current perspectives, including the links between immigration rates and crime rates, nativity and crime, and the social construction of the criminal immigrant. It is a key collection for students in immigration courses, scholars and researchers in diverse disciplines, and policy-makers dealing with immigration and border security.

A bold challenge to rethink the ways we view sex work and documentary film

The turn of the twenty-first century has witnessed an eruption of nonfiction films on sex work. The first book to examine a cross-section of this diverse and transnational body of work, Sexography confronts the ethical questions raised by ethnographic documentary and interviews with sexually marginalized subjects. Nicholas de Villiers argues that carnal and cultural knowledge are inextricably entangled in ethnographic sex work documentaries. De Villiers offers a reading of cinema as a technology of truth and advances a theory of confessional and counterconfessional performance by the interviewed subject who must negotiate both loaded questions and stigma. He pays special attention to the tactical negotiation of power in these films and how cultural and geopolitical shifts have affected sex work and sex workers. Throughout, Sexography analyzes the films of a range of non–sex-worker filmmakers, including Jennie Livingston, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Shohini Ghosh, and Cui Zi’en, as well as films produced by sex workers. In addition, it identifies important parallels and intersections between queer and sex worker rights activist movements and their documentary historiography. De Villiers ultimately demonstrates how commercial sex is intertwined with culture and power. He advocates shifting our approach from scrutinizing the motives of those who sell sex to examining the motives and roles of the filmmakers and transnational audiences creating and consuming films about sex work.

The Communities and Cultures of Peru describes the experience of Honors students during the spring semester study abroad of 2017. Students had the opportunity to visit several local communities along the Sacred Valley, in the area north of Cusco, Peru. While visiting these communities, they learned about their lives, economic and social situation. As part of this experience, students raised money in the United States and select a community project where to invest, in order to improve the community’s living conditions. We also partnered with Oceanside-Rotary Club in Jacksonville to raise additional funds for this project. This book describes the students’ adventures in Peru and presents some of the projects funded in earlier study abroad programs. The images, stories and student quotes in this book depict the experience abroad and highlight some of the most important events of the program. Across these pages, the reader will get in close contact with the different people of Peru, their culture, landscapes and heritage —and will be able to understand the emotions and experiences of UNF students visiting Peru for the first time.

A small group of interpreters was interviewed with regard to their view of learning ASL and becoming bicultural. A model of identity was then postulated based on Hegel’s dialectic (Wheat 2012) of thesis (presuppositions, stereotypes, or theories about ASL and the Deaf community), antithesis (conflicting experiences), and synthesis (new understanding and acceptance). Also utilized were various identity constructs from the literature on bilingualism/ biculturalism, which suggests that identity is ascribed or constructed in relation to others and constantly negotiated (Tropp et al. 1999). Evidence was found of a period of thesis or position, during which some interpreters had no presuppositions about Deaf people or ASL; some perhaps had a disability perspective. Next, they went through a process of antithesis or opposition, during which they discovered the complexities of ASL and Deaf culture and values that conflicted with their own. Here the participants described confronting the “hearing line” (Krentz 2007), society’s negative view of Deaf people; some of them may have developed a sense of bilingual fatigue (McCartney 2006; Schwenke 2011; Watson 1987). Finally, the participants arrived at a level of synthesis or composition, during which they had a more complex and nuanced understanding of their identity in relation to the Deaf community. At this level, they viewed Deaf people as a positive foil to the hearing world; for them, Deaf people modeled a collective and egalitarian approach to others and stimulated reflection on the meaning of diversity and inclusion.

Ute Land Religion in the American West, 1879–2009 is a narrative of American religion and how it intersected with land in the American West. Prior to 1881, Utes lived on the largest reservation in North America—twelve million acres of western Colorado. Brandi Denison takes a broad look at the Ute land dispossession and resistance to disenfranchisement by tracing the shifting cultural meaning of dirt, a physical thing, into land, an abstract idea. This shift was made possible through the development and deployment of an idealized American religion based on Enlightenment ideals of individualism, Victorian sensibilities about the female body, and an emerging respect for diversity and commitment to religious pluralism that was wholly dependent on a separation of economics from religion. As the narrative unfolds, Denison shows how Utes and their Anglo-American allies worked together to systematize a religion out of existing ceremonial practices, anthropological observations, and Euro-American ideals of nature. A variety of societies then used religious beliefs and practices to give meaning to the land, which in turn shaped inhabitants’ perception of an exclusive American religion. Ultimately, this movement from the tangible to the abstract demonstrates the development of a normative American religion, one that excludes minorities even as they are the source of the idealized expression.

What I am submitting is a 3-minute video of a commissioned "writing on water" installation, using drone footate, completed at the University of Georgia, Athens, GA, at Lake Herrick, November 2017.

From Website: This comprehensive volume brings together international experts involved in applying and developing understanding of Working Memory in the context of a variety of neurodevelopmental disorders, neurocognitive disorders, and depressive disorders. Each chapter provides a description of the disorder and investigates the Working Memory and related Executive Function deficits. It goes on to provide a neurological profile, before exploring the impact of the disorder in daily functions, the current debates related to this disorder, and the potential effects of medication and intervention. Through combining coverage of theoretical understanding, methods of assessment, and different evidence-based intervention programs, the book supports clinical assessment and management of poor Working Memory. It is essential reading for students in neurodevelopmental disorders, atypical development and developmental psychopathology as well as allied health professionals, clinicians and those working with children in education and healthcare settings.

|you| |me| Series of cast iron sculptures, prints and embossment.