On the Prowl
Departmental News
Our notable student and faculty achievements demonstrate that Social Sciences is a college with lively and successful students and inspiring faculty members. Here’s a sampling:
Mass Communication
Dr. Anita G. Day and Professor Valerie Andrews have joined the faculty. Dr. Day teaches in the advertising sequence. Prof. Andrews teaches public relations courses.
Dr. Sherry Lee Alexander led a discussion panel in May 2007 for the Catholic Press Leadership Institute on ethical challenges media outlets faced while covering the Virginia Tech shooting incident. The discussion focused on newspaper headlines and television use of a videotape sent by the shooter to NBC News on the day of the incident.
Jennifer John’s documentary “Reconstructing Creole,” about the historic Laura Plantation home in Vacherie, Louisiana, was an official selection of the Boston International Film Festival. The film was screened on June 11 at the Loews Boston Common Theater. This was the first full-length documentary for John, who founded Fresh Media production company in 2003 and works as an adjunct faculty member in the School of Mass Communication. John graduated with a master’s degree in Mass Communication in May from Loyola and is a former news reporter for WWL-TV in New Orleans.
Prof. Lisa Martin, an extraordinary faculty member, attended the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Citizens Academy in New Orleans for six weeks in spring 2007. Special agents in the FBI’s New Orleans field office trained the citizen participants in fingerprints, forensics technology, tracking spies and terrorists, how the agency collects and preserves evidence, and hands-on firearm training.
Dr. Leslie Parr, journalism sequence head, worked as an official photographer of the 2007 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Two of Dr. Parr’s own photographs were on display at the juried exhibit of New Orleans photographs in the Grandstands at the 2007 Jazz Fest. Dr. Parr took both pictures at this year’s Super Sunday Mardi Gras Indian Parade.
Prof. Michael Perlstein, who teaches journalism, was a panelist on the “Neighborhoods Under Fire” crime forum aired on Cox TV Channel 10 in New Orleans on March 28.
Dr. Cathy Rogers, public relations sequence head, served this summer as a Visiting Professor at The Advertising Council in New York City. Rogers was chosen for the honor because of her work with nonprofits through the Shawn M. Donnelley Center for Nonprofit Communications.
Dr. Robert A. Thomas, interim director, has recently appeared in several documentaries on global climate change. One was the CNN documentary “Melt Down.” Several others were produced by the Moore and Van Allen law firm in Charlotte, North Carolina, and have played on various PBS stations around the country. One was filmed in Antarctica and another in Namibia.
Debra Woodfork, a former instructor, is now working as the production and design manager at the Association of Corporate Counsel, which is the in-house bar association for attorneys who practice in the legal departments of corporations and other private sector organizations worldwide.
Criminal Justice
Department faculty made presentations at the annual meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in Seattle in March.
Dr. William Thornton and Dr. Lydia Voigt presented “Bridging Religion and Criminal Justice: A Dual Graduate Degree in Pastoral Theology and Criminal Justice,” written in conjunction with Dr. Mark Markuly, former LIM director.
Dr. Wendy Hicks presented “Improving Instruction and Curriculum in Criminal Justice Education: The Use of Exit Surveys to Facilitate Growth.”
Kelly Frailing (MCJ ’07) and Dr. Dee Wood Harper presented “The Criminalization and Suppression of Abortion: New Orleans, 1940-1959.”
Dr. Hicks has published a textbook, “Police Vehicular Pursuits: Constitutionality, Liability & Negligence.” The book is due on shelves soon and is published by Charles C. Thomas Publishers.
Dr. Hicks also assisted with the rewrite of the vehicular pursuit policy for Queensland, Australia.
Dr. Harper presented a paper titled “Risk of Murder at the Neighborhood Level: A Time Series Analysis” at the European Society of Criminology meeting in Bologna, Italy in September.
Katrina W. Berger (MCJ ’06) and Dee Wood Harper’s paper “Relevant Law and Empirical Research on Profiling in Law Enforcement in the United States” was presented in April at the International Police Executive Symposium meeting in Dubai, U.A.E.
Dr. Harper and Kelly Frailing’s paper “Various Socioeconomic Factors and the Impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans” will be presented at the British Society of Criminology meeting in September.
Kelly Frailing and Dr. Harper's “Crime and Hurricanes in New Orleans” is due to be published in the Southern Sociological Society edited volume, The Sociology of Katrina: Perspectives on a Modern Catastrophe. The publisher is Rowman & Littlefield.
Gwen Nolan (MCJ ’06) and Dr. Dee Wood Harper’s paper titled “What does it take to Recruit and Retain Police Officers?” was published in the Working Papers (#2, February, 2007) series of the International Police Executive Symposium.
Dr. Dee Wood Harper’s and Dr. Lydia Voigt’s paper “Homicide Followed by Suicide: An Integrated Theoretical Perspective” is set to be published in a forthcoming edition of the journal Homicide Studies.
Tasha LaCoste and Betsy Finger were named Criminal Justice’s outstanding graduate students.
Kelly Frailing won the university’s Ignatian Award for the outstanding graduate student as well as one of the departmental honors for outstanding graduate student. She is on her way to England to study at the University of Cambridge for her Ph.D.
Frailing’s paper “Attitudes about FEMA Benefit Fraud Following Hurricane Katrina: A Test of Rational Choice and Techniques of Neutralization Theory” was presented at the British Society of Criminology meeting at the London School of Economics in September. She published “The Myth of a Disaster Myth: Potential Looting Should Be Part of Disaster Plans” in the University of Colorado Boulder’s Natural Hazards Observer. Dr. E.L. Quarantelli (Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware) wrote the counterpoint to Kelly’s article. Dr. Quarantelli is probably the most cited authority on the sociology of disasters in the United States.
Undergraduate students Kevin Decker and Diane Puig received undergraduate awards for highest grade point averages in the department.
Nursing
The School of Nursing has two new faculty members, Dr. Kim Brannagan, assistant professor of nursing, and Dr. Edna Hull, associate professor of nursing and the RN-BSN Program Coordinator. Dr. Brannangan joins us from Nicholls State University. Dr. Hull has been teaching at Our Lady of the Lake School of Nursing. Joining the staff is Sonia Bordes, Student Records Coordinator.
Gwen George received a $3500 professional development grant to explore the development of a Doctorate of Nursing Practice Degree for Nurse Practitioners. The DNP is a terminal clinical doctorate designed to be the entry level for nurse practitioners in the year 2015. Development of this program will keep Loyola University New Orleans School of Nursing NP program competitive with other programs in the area and the region. .
Dr. Mary Oriol, Associate Professor, School of Nursing, published “Crew Resource Management: Applications in healthcare organizations” in the prominent, peer reviewed Journal of Nursing Administration. The article included a review of how some healthcare organizations have successfully adopted the aviation industry’s curriculum called Crew Resource Management to facilitate safety practices in the workplace. CRM practices promote and continually reinforce the conscious, learned team behaviors of cooperation, coordination, and sharing.
Dr. Gail Tumulty, professor and interim director, School of Nursing and John Batty (C ‘06) presented Nursing Heroism: Nurses Response to Hurricane Katrina at the American Nurses Association Conference, Nursing Care in Life, Death and Disaster held in June in Atlanta.
Dr. Tumulty and Dr. Oriol received $215,530 in grant funding from the Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration for the second year of the project titled “Bridge to Leadership Education at a Distance.” This is a three-year project to assist nurses with bachelor’s degrees in other fields to enter into graduate education. Dr. Barbara Bihm has been working intensively with the team in the project implementation.
Nurse practitioner graduate students Sheena Newman and Tara Comeaux presented a paper on Senate Bill 59 to Senators Landrieu and Vitter in Washington D.C. while attending the American College of Nurse Practitioners' Policy Forum in February. The students were accompanied by Prof. Gwen George who took the opportunity to show the students the art of lobbying and how the political system works in the United States.
Nursing students who stay in Louisiana and work full time after graduating won’t have to pay interest on their college loans. To learn more about the program, please send us an e-mail.
Political Science
Dr. Peter Burns’ chapter entitled, “Community Organizing in a Nonregime City: The New Orleans Experience,” is part of the recently published, Transforming the City: Community Organizing and the Challenge of Political Change (2007, University Press of Kansas), edited by Marion Orr, the Fred Lippitt Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Political Science and Urban Studies at Brown University.
Burns, associate professor of political science, is a Fellow at Dartmouth University’s Rockefeller Center this year.
Burns and Dr. Edward Renwick spoke to a group of students from Emory University’s Community Building Fellows Program in May. The fellows and their professor, Michael Rich, returned to New Orleans to research, observe, and participate in the rebuilding of the city.
Burns had a book signing for his Success In College: From C’s In College (2006, Rowman and Littlefield Education) in June. In conjunction with that event, Burns was interviewed on New Haven’s WPLR-FM and Bridgeport’s WICC-AM. The Connecticut Post and The New Haven Register also wrote columns about Burns, his appearance, and his talks at the Ansonia High School. He also had a book signing locally at Barnes & Noble.
Gayle Mumfrey, Department of Political Science Administrative Assistant, traveled to the Heartlands Delta V Conference in Cleveland, Ohio, in May. The conference was held at John Carroll University and Gayle was one of several Loyola University New Orleans delegates. Diane Blair, Manager of Recruitment, Promotion, and Student Services for LIM was another delegate from CSS. They hope to share with our Loyola community all the inspiration they received at the conference entitled, "Learning From Each Other: Companions in Mission."
Loyola University New Orleans sponsored a scholarly and reasoned debate entitled “Shadows Still Remain: Myth, Truth, Crime, and Recovery in New Orleans” at The City Club of Houston on June 28th. Panelists included Burns, Dr. George Capowich, associate professor of sociology, Dr. Matt Thomas, professor of political science, California State University, Chico, and Lucy Bustamante, evening news anchor and journalist, WWL-TV, New Orleans.