Jody Baumgartner On November 1 Dr. Eamon was a guest on a live public radio special focusing on the 2018 elections and background in North Carolina. There were three segments in the one hour program. He was the guest on the first which focused on evolution of NC politics and speculation on 2018. Sponsored by WFAE in Charlotte and WUNC in Triangle, program was aired on most North Carolina public radio stations.
On Nov. 9, three political science faculty were honored at the 2018 Faculty Book Award ceremony for books published in academic year 2016-2017. Dr. Armin Krishnan was recognized for his Why Paramilitary Operations Fail (Palgrave Macmillan), Dr. Alethia Cook was honored for Terrorist Organizations and Weapons of Mass Destruction: US Threats, Responses and Policies (Roman & Littlefield), and Dr. Jody Baumgartner for The Internet and the 2016 Presidential Campaign (with Terri Towner, Lexington). Congratulations to all three!
Peter Francia and Jonathan Morris, on behalf of the Center for Survey Research, co-authored a report on the state of public opinion towards the legalization of sports gambling. The report generated press attention from several media outlets across the nation, including the Miami Herald, Kansas City Star, and Sacramento Bee, as well as from newspapers across the state of North Carolina, including The News & Observer of Raleigh and The Charlotte Observer.
In April 2018, a team of faculty and student affairs educators presented a workshop titled “Working Beyond Boundaries: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to Bridging Ethical Global Learning and Campus Context” at the 5th Global Service-Learning Summit at the University of Notre Dame. The team included Dennis McCunney and Nichelle Shuck, Center for Leadership and Civic Engagement, Archana Hegde, Human Development and Family Science, Kim Larson, College of Nursing, Derek Maher, Religious Studies, and Susan McCammon, Psychology.
This cross-disciplinary panel representing student affairs and academic affairs addressed some of the large-scale challenges of institutionalizing ethical global learning across campus. The presenters discussed ECU programs and partnerships representing several continents and social issue areas, including conflict transformation in Northern Ireland, public health and community health nursing in Guatemala, sacred spaces and community service in India and Nepal, and family health care services in the Dominican Republic.
Armin Krishnan and Magda Giurcanu have invited Dr Istvan Hegedus, Chairman of the Hungarian Europe Society (a Budapest-based NGO), from Brussels to ECU. Dr Hegedus will attend Magda Giurcanu’s Visegrad course, will meet with interested students and faculty, and will give a public lecture. The topic of the public lecture is “Hungary’s Relations with the European Union: An Anti-Liberal Experiment.” The lecture will take place in Rivers 105 on October 23, 2018 from 6pm to 7:30pm. All interested students and faculty are welcome.
In August, Dr. Samantha Mosier presented a co-authored paper at the American Political Science Association’s Annual Meeting in Boston Massachusetts. The paper, “A Moving Target Concept: Citizens, Partisanship, and Defining Sustainability”, examines how the American public defines the term ‘sustainability’ and compares the results against existing theoretical conceptualizations for the term. This research extends Dr. Mosier’s work on the politics and policy of sustainability.
Colonel (retired) Scott Barker continues to serve as the President of the Pitt County Veterans Council for a second year. In addition to leading this particular group of veterans, Barker also is the Chairman of the East Carolina Veterans Coalition and the Chairman of the North Carolina Army Retiree Council – Eastern Region – while he is not teaching.
Dr. Magda Giurcanu’s Summer 2018 Study Abroad in Prague included a visit to the Prague Castle, a complex composition of palaces and ecclesiastical buildings dating back to 10th century. Today, the Prague Castle is also the seat of the Czech President. A distinct week was dedicated to life under communism. To match up with the course theme, they visited the Museum of Communism and the Yalta Bunker, which allowed students to visit diverse scenes and scenarios from everyday life in the 1950s and later decades of communist rule. The two sites showcased the realities of day to day life behind the Iron Curtain, the role of party propaganda, censorship, the role of surveillance, show trials, lack of consumer goods, restricted travel options.
Dr. Brad Lockerbie has been appointed as an affiliate member of the Religious Studies Executive Committee at ECU. Among other things the Religious Studies program serves to instruct students in the academic study of religion and to show the relationships between religion and public policy. Lockerbie teaches the political science department’s Religion and American Politics class, as well as having published “Race and Religion: Voting Behavior and Political Attitudes” in Social Science Quarterly and having presented several papers on the topic at various academic conferences.
One of the highlights of the 2018 Study Abroad program in Prague this summer, led by Dr. was the visit to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the American Center of the US Embassy in Prague. The opportunity of interacting with foreign journalists at Radio Free Europe and Foreign Service officers (at the embassy) allowed them to think of possible future career opportunities that they may engage in upon graduation. At Radio Free Europe they visited the News Room and were able to observe several country teams at work. They were also provided with a brief overview of the role of Radio Free Europe during the Cold War and the role played by this American news agency in providing uncensored information to citizens behind the Iron Curtain. Finally, they spent about one hour discussing the media realities in Russia with a senior Russian journalist, Irina Langunina.