CINSAM Awards

Dr. Amanda Brockman from Sociology, Anthropology, and Philosophy. I first met Amanda through that Black, Brown and Bruised book study that Cori co-led. It was Amanda's first semester at NKU. She too soon joined our NSF proposal-writing effort as senior personnel. When we lost one of our Co-PIs before the project even started, Amanda stepped up to take that work on, even though it was a pretty daunting undertaking for many reasons. She has been a critical part of the TRUE ACCCESS project's research and core teams from the beginning. Those of you who know her won't be surprised to hear that even though she's soft-spoken, she often serves as the voice of conscience, which is saying a lot since our team is already a VERY conscientious one! But Amanda always brings great research insights as well as a grounded, human perspective, which was of further value to CINSAM last year when she also served as a CINSAM Faculty Fellow. In this capacity, she helped advance CINSAM's evaluation and UR-STEM research efforts. It was amazing to have a sociologist at CINSAM! Amanda, we are so grateful to you for sharing your brilliance, kindness, and steady leadership with us as part of the TRUE ACCCESS and CINSAM teams.

For many years, Dr. Dick Durtsche from Biological Sciences has collaborated with SOTA faculty to lead a CINSAM summer camp called The Art of Nature Exploration. Through this camp, Dick, his colleagues, and undergraduate assistants get a bunch of middle schoolers outside for a week, handling frogs and bugs, creating wire sculptures, journaling, and shocking fish. Don't worry, the fish are fine. But the kids are never the same again. You should see them as they share their art and stories with their families at camp closing! And this is only one of the ways that Dick gets children and families out to the Research and Education Field Station. As director of REFS, he hosts regular Talk 'n Walks and other community programming. He also mentors many undergraduate research projects out there, oftentimes in partnership with CINSAM through UR-STEM. He has led study abroad courses in multiple countries. He has also developed various credentialing programs for NKU students and community members. Dick, thank you for being such a great ambassador of science for our students and the region.

Dr. Michael Guy from the Chemistry and Biochemistry department has been a perennial partner to CINSAM through his participation in UR-STEM. More broadly, he has been a model mentor to student researchers. If you talk to his students--including CINSAM's very own intern, Alisha Detmer--they'll tell you his lab feels like a family because of the efforts he takes to build relationships and community. In fact, they just got back from traveling to a national conference together. He provides incredible mentorship to his research students in and out of the lab. Furthermore, he has served as the advisor for all pre-med track students for many years now. In this capacity, he supports a large number of students through a complicated process via a different type of mentorship as well as through administrative support. For several years, he has also been lead on Randolph Days, bringing local students to campus to gain exposure to health and STEM careers--or sending NKU's people out to schools. Michael, thank you very much for all of the many hats you wear--including CINSAM hats!!— and for doing it all with such integrity and care.

Dr. Cori Henderson from Institutional Research is the kind of person whose impact is so wide-ranging, it’s hard to sum up in a few sentences. She has worked with CINSAM and the STEM disciplines for many years now – from tracking students into college with the Greater Cincinnati STEM Collaborative and Strive Partnership through supporting STEM and other students in Students2Scholars. She has also conducted research on CINSAM’s UR-STEM as part of her doctoral dissertation, which helped us understand the impact of this undergraduate research and retention program on students and faculty. She partnered with CINSAM and the CTL to co-lead an Educator Learning Community book study about Black, Brown and Bruised. Soon after, she became an integral part of our NSF proposal for the TRUE ACCCESS project and is on the project’s Synergies Board. She has long been our go-to person for IR-related requests. In addition to this support for STEM, she has supported ALL NKU employees and students by serving admirably as Staff Regent and a leader in the Black Faculty and Staff Association. And I know this is just a small portion of what she does for this university. And... she always does it all with the greatest warmth and can-do attitude. Cori, thank you for being such a critical and incredibly helpful partner to CINSAM.

Julie Reizner is a long-term Visiting Teaching Professor in the Physics, Geology, and Engineering Technology department and from what her PGET colleagues say, she has been a bedrock of the department through many years of transition. Even as the program faced the challenge of having no permanent faculty, Julie stepped up to serve as program director, not just to keep the program going, but also to keep it improving. Julie has gone well beyond expectations of visiting faculty in other ways too, including supervising UR-STEM research students, and engaging visiting high school students with geology activities, which she did just this morning! She has even led a study abroad trip to England and Scotland. Years ago, she gave a CINSAM seminar about the geology of Great Britain and recalling that seminar now, I am sorry I didn't get to participate in that study abroad trip! And I'll never forget when Julie brought her incredible baking skills to one of CINSAM's pizza suppers a few years ago to help us celebrate the holidays with cookie decorating. Julie, thank you for being such a steady, generous and creative force for NKU's students and community.

Dr. Maureen Doyle has long been instrumental in advancing CINSAM's mission directly and indirectly. She was a co-PI on Project FORCE, which made a real difference in recruiting and retaining STEM majors at NKU. She then helped CINSAM institutionalize FORCE programs like UR-STEM and STEM Ambassadors after the grant ended. As chair of the department of Computer Science for many years, she collaborated with CINSAM too many times to count... on pretty much all of our undergraduate efforts and many P-12 outreach efforts as well. She has long been a staunch advocate for equity in STEM and beyond, for example mentoring women in computing through National Center for Women & Information Technology and the Women in Informatics group at NKU. And she has continued mentoring students since returning to the faculty through the SOAR program and other channels.

Dr. Marla Lemmon's collaborations with CINSAM began somewhat recently - in the winter of the last school year. But in that relatively short time, she has had a huge impact on CINSAM. She took on the half time role of CINSAM's interim director of recruitment and retention for spring semester of 2023. In that role, she applied her prodigious analytical, organizational, creative, and social skills to great effect, keeping our core recruitment and retention functions going at a time when we had just lost two full time people focused on this work at CINSAM. Then in the fall, she came back to run our STEM Peer Mentors program and teach its aligned course. Finally, she has helped tremendously in onboarding our new Director of Recruitment & Retention. And, she has done it all with positivity as well as a constructive eye for better ways serve students. It's no exaggeration to say that without you, Marla, we wouldn't have been able to serve several of our critical functions, like managing STEM scholarships offers and supporting undergraduate research and retention.

Carolyn Noe is Director of the Institute for Health Innovation. Since she came to NKU in 2018, she has worked with CINSAM on High School STEM+H Day, an annual outreach and recruitment event. She has also collaborated with us and other folks engaging with P-12 students through the NKU Outreach Team. Separately, she has worked with our Biology Department to help them bring more than a thousand high school students to campus to visit our Cadaver Lab for an experience those students will never forget. She also established Teen Science Cafes for students in Northern Kentucky. Carolyn, thank you for all that you do.

If you have ever held an event in the student union, you know how invaluable Chris Tambling is. As Associate Director of Student Union Operations, he has been our partner in making sure the student union is set up just the way we need it, when we need it. And... you may have also had the experience of Chris knowing what you want better than you do. He keeps meticulous records of what has worked well in the past and what might work well the next time - and he always comes to meetings prepared with those records. We have had many CINSAM folks plan many, many events in the SU over the past decade, and they have all remarked on how helpful Chris has been, especially when they were new in their positions. People in roles like yours aren't always front of mind when making awards for advancing CINSAM's mission, but we can't further our mission without you.

Kim teaches science methods and environmental education courses, among others. As part of her elementary science methods courses, she and her students have been partnering with CINSAM on Elementary STEM Days since she started teaching course - in fact, we just held this spring's Elementary STEM Day today and it was fantastic to see her students engage so enthusiastically with the children from Dry Ridge Elementary. Kim also shares her ideas and expertise with educators every year at the Tri-State STEM Conference that we put on. And outside her partnerships with CINSAM, she does a lot to promote environmental education in the state through student and educator outreach as director of our Center for Environmental Education.

Dr. Mahdi Yazdanpour is another faculty member who consistently partners with CINSAM to help advance STEM education and scholarship in our community. He has worked with CINSAM on UR-STEM as well as CINSAM Research Grants as a recipient and reviewer. He has mentored 15 students over the past three years and given them some pretty awesome experiences with engineering mind-controlled robotic arms. And he has brought those robotic arms to outreach activities like High School STEM+H Day. Finally, we also really appreciate his participation in the College of Arts & Sciences Inclusive Excellence Committee, through which he is advancing equity in more than just the STEM disciplines.

Dr. Bethany Bowling is well known across campus for all of her contributions to our students, colleagues, and NKU as a whole. With Bethany's collaboration comes high impact for all involved. She has helmed three National Science Foundation (NSF) grants aimed at supporting student success in STEM, and has partnered with CINSAM on institutionalizing the work born from these projects. She regularly partners with us on outreach, recruitment, and retention activities, and has even served as CINSAM's temporary Director of Recruitment and Retention when needs arose. Bethany shows up willingly - over and over again - whether it's in her job description or not.

Dr. Funda Gonulates has collaborated with CINSAM since her arrival on campus in 2016. Funda's involvement with CINSAM is varied and includes: welcoming CINSAM's Outreach Team into her mathematics education classes, serving on CINSAM's internal Advisory Board as a faculty representative, and partnering with us on three grant proposals. Her students say she is a fantastic professor who holds them to a high standard and goes to great lengths to help them reach those standards. Her research and KCM work on mathematics education are very closely aligned with CINSAM's mission of promoting enthusiasm, excellence, and equity in STEM education.

As Program Coordinator for Community Connections, Melanie Hartzel has been partnering with CINSAM for 10+ years. Her collaboration has been crucial to CINSAM's ability to improve and grow P-12 outreach programs. Melanie always brings a positive attitude, and literally shows up to help us with our activities. She's skilled at finding improvement opportunities for registration processes, and voluntarily implements solutions to give our stakeholders a user-friendly experience.

Dr. Zeel Maheshwari came to NKU in 2018 and has been a constant collaborator of CINSAM's since her start. She has been a research mentor through CINSAM Grants and UR-STEM, served on the CINSAM Research Grants review committee, and partnered with us on recruitment and outreach events like High School STEM+H Day. Zeel's students and colleagues can attest to her infectious enthusiasm for the work she does. This summer, she is leading CINSAM's Engineering Academy for high school students, the longest-going of all of our summer programs.

As a faculty member in the Biological Sciences department, Dr. Mary Schilling has taken on many of her department's outreach and recruitment activities. In collaboration with Dr. Jay Avenido, Mary developed the department's Cadaver Experience for high school students and teachers, giving our campus visitors a truly unique opportunity that leaves them wowed. Mary and her department welcomed CINSAM's High School STEM+H Day attendees to labs this year, which was the highlight for many students that day. Additionally, Mary’s creativity and attention-to-detail with her department’s social media has really helped our community engage with and see the fun in biology.