Dear Colleagues,

We’re a week from a much-needed break and the end of term will be swiftly upon us. Thanks for all your efforts so far this term. We won’t have a highlights e-mail next Friday (and really, would you read it if we did send one?!?), so please let me wish you each a restful and joyful Thanksgiving holiday. On to the highlights...

• At last weekend’s football game, two long-serving advisors were honored as Game Changers. Department of Mathematics and Statistics Administrative Assistant Brenda Wilkinson was recognized for her almost 30 years of helping M&S students with their schedules each semester to ensure they get the best possible future schedule. Also honored was College of Integrated Science and Engineering advisor and lecturer Paul Henriksen, who has served in his role for more than 20 years and is beloved by both students and student-athletes. Congratulations to Brenda, Paul and our other Game Changers!
• Speaking of CSM, Dean Sam Prins was recently elected to a three-year term on the Board of Directors for the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences.
• Interim Academic Unit Head of Management David Peterson, a recent management graduate and a current management student were featured guests on several episodes of the Teaching Evidence-Based Management podcast. In Episode 5, the students spoke about their experience in his MGT 357 class. Last December, Dr. Peterson was a guest in a two-part episode (Part 1, Part 2), talking about teaching Evidence-Based Management to undergraduates.
• Associate Professor of Sociology and Dr. Lisa Porter taught the seminar-style course SOCI 390 with the topic “Every Campus a Refuge,” which was developed with support from a 2023 CAL Course Development Grant. Since JMU was designated an Every Campus a Refuge (ECAR) chapter in 2023, administrators and faculty have worked alongside community leaders and local organizations in finding ways to support refugee families resettling in the Shenandoah Valley. This course represents the first JMU student involvement in local ECAR efforts, providing a space for students to learn about key global processes that contribute to forced displacement and (im)migration while becoming actively involved in shaping the future of JMU’s ECAR chapter. 
• Assistant Professor of Geography Xiaojing Tang’s proposal, “Improving Urban Climate Simulation by Integrating Remotely Sensed High-Resolution Albedo into the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model,” was selected for funding by the NASA Land Cover and Land Use Change (LCLUC). With this grant, JMU will receive funding of nearly $690K in the next three years.

This weekend we face Old Dominion University in football, but we do have more friendly collaborations. School of Communication Studies Associate Profession Dr. Lindsey Harvell-Bowman (JMU), Research Compliance Manager Cindy Morgan and Director of the Social Science Research Center at Old Dominion University Dr. Tancy Vandecar-Burdin are presenting at the 50th anniversary meeting of Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R) this month and will be facilitating a networking event between universities across the nation. This builds on their networking with other IRB chairs and administrators in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Please keep emailing provost@jmu.edu with teaching and scholarship highlights for you and your colleagues.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Bob

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