Around Webster: Grotewiel, Hanssen, Kleinman, Smith
October 08, 2021
Recent professional news and achievements for Webster University community members include:
Grotewiel Shares Expertise on Test Anxiety
Morgan Grotewiel, assistant professor of psychology at Webster University in St. Louis, was interviewed
for an article, "Test Anxiety: Symptoms, Causes, & How to Cope," for the online publication Choosing Therapy. The article contains unbiased information regarding what test anxiety is, what it
might look like, and ways to overcome it.
As part of her PhD in Counseling Psychology, Grotewiel trained at multiple university
and college counseling centers, where test anxiety is a common presenting concerns.
She has authored an eBook and mentored student research on test anxiety.
Kleinman Publishes on History of Statistics
Kim Kleinman, director of Undergraduate Advising, is coauthor with Antony Unwin of the University of Augsburg of an article that will appear later this year in Significance, a joint publication of the Royal Statistical Society, the American Statistical Society, and the Statistical Society of Australia.
"The source of the Iris virginica data has been found (we believe)" traces the origins of this widely used data set in the field work of Edgar Anderson of the Missouri Botanical Garden. That Anderson, Kim's research topic for over 20 years, shared this data with Sir Ronald A. Fisher has certainly been known, but this article establishes when and where Anderson collected the plants in question.
The Iris data has been used widely in developing many kinds of statistical techniques and methods. Its role in education is its frequent use in Statistics and Machine Learning courses curriculum.
Hanssen Publishes Chapter in Brecht Anthology
Paula Hanssen, chair of Global Languages, Cultures and Societies (GLCS), recently published a chapter in the Anthology Bertolt Brecht in Context last month titled: "[S]he made suggestions, we took them: Bertolt Brecht's women collaborators." ed. Stephen Brockman, Cambridge UP: 2021.
She also published a review of Ela Gezen's Brecht, Turkish Theater, and Turkish German Literature in Colloquia Germanica, vol 53.1, 2021.
Smith Co-Authors Paper on Media Literacy
School of Communications instructor Julie Smith and KMOX Radio producer Beth Coghlan co-authored a paper for the Radio & Television News Director's Association website about the importance of including media literacy in analysis of news coverage.
"It’s more important than ever that everyone learn to analyze, evaluate and critique the messages we consume since the average American consumes over eleven hours of media daily," they write. "We decided it was time to help our community with media literacy skills, a necessity for life in the 21st Century."