Faculty and Staff Highlights: Assner-Alvey, Chekoudjian, Colletti, Green, Kaiser, Nomikos

Webster University faculty and staff highlights offer a roundup of recent Webster faculty and staff activity and achievements. 
 
Assner-Alvey Featured in Traveling Art Exhibition  

 
Professor of Art Robin Assner-Alvey's work is currently on display in a traveling exhibition titled Self Adjacent. Self Adjacent is a group exhibition curated by Sarah Irvin and Tracy Stonestreet. It examines the transforming experience of parenthood by artists as they navigate their many identities alongside and within the field of caregiving. This experience is impacted by a multitude of different factors which vary from person to person, and inevitably change over a lifetime. Assner-Alvey's artwork seeks to capture the various facets of motherhood and the toll it has on the body. 
 
The exhibition, which opened on Nov. 10 at the Virginia Arts Center of Richmond, will be on display in the Massey Klein Gallery in New York City in Spring of 2024, and the Kennedy Museum of Art in Ohio in Fall of 2024. 

Chekoudjian Takes on Full-Time Role 

 
Christiana Chekoudjian will be taking on a new full-time role at Webster as an instructional designer. Chekoudjian has been an adjunct faculty member at Webster since 2012 and worked in academic advising from 2012-2016. Chekoudjian will continue to teach a small load of courses in women, gender & sexuality studies. 
 
“I am excited to use my course development and design skills in this new role,” said Chekoudjian. The Webster University community has been a place I’ve always felt at home, and I am happy and proud to continue my career with Webster! 

Colletti Presented with Society for Music Theory Publication Award 

  
Department of Music Chair Carla Colletti was recently presented with the Outstanding Multi-Author Publication Award by the Society for Music Theory for her work as a co-editor of Engaging Students: Essays in Music Pedagogy, Volume 8, “Beyond Western Musicalities,” published in 2020. The 2023 publication award winners were announced at the Society’s Annual Meeting held in Denver, CO, in November. 
  
The Society for Music Theory promotes the development of and engagement with music theory as a scholarly and pedagogical discipline. Their publication awards recognize significant contributions to the discipline of music theory. The Outstanding Multi-Author Collection is given for a distinguished multi-author collection. 
  
Engaging Students: Essays in Music Pedagogy presents short essays on the subject of student-centered learning, and it serves as an open-access, web-based resource for those teaching college-level classes in music. Volume 8, “Beyond Western Musicalities,” elucidates some of the key issues around diversifying and decolonizing music theory classrooms. 

Green Presents at Marconi Institute for Creativity, Chairs Colonial Williamsburg Foundation 

 
School of Education Professor Emeritus Ted Green recently presented at the Marconi Institute for Creativity in Trieste, Italy, as part of the annual international conference, "Lessons from a Worldwide Pandemic:  Geographic Impacts on Place Based Theory, Technology and Creativity.” Green shared his findings from an analysis he conducted to explore the challenges and positive impacts the pandemic forced on students and instructors. He shared that students used setbacks from the pandemic as opportunities to build new skills, activating their creativity through a Growth Mindset (GM), (Dweck, 2019), resulting in creative outcomes and resilience in an anxious world.  
Green also presented at The College of William and Mary as part of an event put on by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. He chaired a session titled, “Freedom and Restriction at the Public Hospital of 1773", with Kelly M. Brennan, research historian at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and Margaret Perry, interpreter at the Galt-Pasteur Apothecary Shop at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. The panel explored how museum professionals work with the public to foster a better understanding of the historical treatment of the mentally ill. Attendees were asked to ponder the questions, “What constitutes freedom for the mentally ill in the 18th and 19th centuries?” and “What constitutes freedom for the mentally ill today?” 

Kaiser Collaborates on White Paper on Discrimination in Education 

DJ Kaiser, professor and director of teaching English to speakers of other languages, served on a special working group for TESOL International to write a new white paper on discrimination in education. Kaiser and six other English language teaching professionals from around the world collaborated from July through November researching, drafting, and editing this new white paper before it went to the TESOL Board of Directors for their final edits and approval. 

“This was one of the most positive and meaningful collaborative experiences of my career,” said Kaiser. “Work and scholarship that is focused on diversity, equity, inclusion, and access has come under attack in so many new ways these past few years. One of my contributions to this white paper was compiling a reference list of dozens of scholarly articles and chapters published in TESOL publications that demonstrates how DEIA has been and will continue to be central to scholarship in the field of TESOL and our work as English language teaching professionals.” 

As TESOL International noted in their press release: “This white paper highlights both the legacy and the path forward through scholarship, instruction, and advocacy in facing these challenges for affecting positive environments, opportunities, and outcomes throughout the world.” 

The new white paper on discrimination in education is available online on the TESOL International website. 

Nomikos Co-Edits Recent Publication on Islamic Militancy 

John M. Nomikos, associate professor and head of history, politics, and international relations at Webster Athens, recently was published as a co-editor for the book Aspects of Islamic Radicalization in the Balkans After the Fall of Communism. 

Nomikos contributed to the section “trajectory of Islamic Militancy in the Balkans.” The author’s essays emphasize risks concerning national security in the Western Balkans represented by the return of Islamic State fighters and the spread of the so-called jihadist Salafism within Muslim communities. 

Nomikos points out that the book intends to assist the reader in understanding the Balkan state’s foreign policy as a response towards the Muslim world in the context of the global war against terrorism. At the same time, the Balkan governments and civil society groups must continue to amass political will and social support for comprehensive programs that favor integration, inclusion and – if the need be - de-radicalization of the vulnerable population.