Tim Bianco, Assistant Professor of Economics, co-wrote with Ana Maria Herrera (University of Kentucky) the paper “Monetary Policy and Credit Flows: A Tale of Two Effective Lower Bounds,” accepted by the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control.
The article examines the Federal Reserve’s impact on firm credit flows, especially when interest rates are at the zero lower bound, seen during the 2000s financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was found that unconventional monetary policy significantly boosted the flow of credit to smaller, younger, and financially constrained firms in these times, potentially aiding economic growth in subsequent recoveries.
In March, Guo Wu, Associate Professor of History, presented a paper titled “Writing about Monks and Nuns: Historiography and Hagiography in Early Medieval China” at the Annual (Centennial) Meeting of The Medieval Academy of America, held at Harvard University, in the session “Saints and Commemoration II.”
In San Antonio, TX, he presented another paper, “Politics and Public History: Telling the Chinese Story in Chinese American Museums,” in the panel “East Asians Making U.S. Places” at the annual conference of Asianetwork, a national organization aimed at promoting Asian Studies in the liberal arts.
Tim Chapp, Associate Professor of Chemistry, and Alice Deckert, Professor of Chemistry, accompanied nine chemistry majors to present their research at the National American Chemical Society meeting in San Diego, March 22-25.
The following presented posters based on their independent study or senior project work:
- Dilani Frorup ’25
- Dominic Juliana ’26
- Kathleen Lynch ’25, supported by the Klomp Family Endowment
- Sophie Mackley ’27, supported by the Christine Scott Nelson ’73 Student-Faculty Research Endowment
- Samantha Oakes ’27
- Shyann Rylander ’27
- Elizabeth Smith ’25, supported by the Klomp Family Endowment
- Amara Taddeo ’25, supported by the Christine Scott Nelson ’73 Student-Faculty Research Endowment
- Annabella Zgurzynski ’25, supported by the Edward David ’61 Student Support Fund
Deckert also presented a poster compiling work from several years of work done by Senior Comprehensive students.
Barbara Shaw, Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies (WGSS), co-designed with colleagues from Denison, DePauw, and Kalamazoo the 5th Annual Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Undergraduate Conference and serves as a co-facilitator of the GLCA WGSS network.
The Department of WGSS congratulates six Allegheny students for presenting their original research at this conference:
- Alexandria Adams ’26, “Feminist Care and Institutional Constraints: Rethinking Sex Education and Sex Work in Scandinavia”
- Matilda M. Earwood ’25, “Breaking the Silence: Leveraging Cycle Syncing to Promote Gender Inclusivity and Menstrual Health in Athletics”
- Catalina Marchando ’27, “Archival Traces of Decolonized Dutch Liberation”
- August McCannon ’25, “Education Interrupted: Enforcing Gender & Race in Texas High School Dress Codes (presented March 2024)
- Samantha Oakes ’27, “Kenyan Women Endurance Athletes and Their Role in Increasing Awareness of Gender-based Violence”
- Olivia Samonsky ’25, “Empowerment or Exclusion: Women’s Roles in Collective Land Rights”
Shanna Kirschner, Robert G. Seddig Professor of Political Science, served as head of the Undergraduate International Relations Section at the Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Chicago.
Kirschner also got to see alumni Sarah Twing ’13 and Chloe Nunez ’13.
Several faculty, staff, and students attended and participated in the 2025 National Conference of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) in March in Columbus.
Mallory Furgal ’27 served in the Student Ambassador Program and was partnered with Aris Pretelin-Esteves, a Mexican scenographer whose work creates opportunities for humans and nature to connect with one another and emphasizes the recovery of public spaces. Furgal spent three days working one-on-one with Pretelin-Esteves and interviewed them during the final day of the conference.
Michael Mehler, Professor of Theatre, was selected as Chair of the Fellows of USITT, a role that he filled on an interim basis for the past year.
Additionally, he co-hosted the Distinguished Achievement Award Winners in Conversation session and served as a professional mentor in USITT’s Gateway Program.
The book chapter, “Persisting and pivoting in the face of failure: Learning from what did not work” by Ryan M. Pickering, Associate Professor of Psychology, was recently published in Creating a Faculty Activism for Commons for social justice: Finding Hope in the Messy Truth, edited by Kim A. Case and Leah R. Warner.
He will be co-hosting a virtual webinar in May and giving a talk in Portland, Oregon, in June with other authors featured in the book.
Alice Deckert, Professor of Chemistry, gave an invited professional development session on Mentoring Undergraduate Research at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions to the Spring Career Workshop of the American Chemical Society Women’s Chemist Committee Pittsburgh Section on April 15.
Marley Parish ’19, rural affairs reporter for Spotlight PA and former editor-in-chief of The Campus, Allegheny’s student-run newspaper, is a finalist in the Golden Quills awards of the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania. “Rocky Waters,” Parish’s multi-part investigation of how customers of privately owned Rock Spring Water Company in rural Centre County were failed by the company, state regulators, and elected officials, was among four finalists in the enterprise/investigation category for large daily print publications.
Roman Hladio, ’23, chief reporter at NEXTpittsburgh and former editor-in-chief of The Campus, was recognized in the Golden Quills awards of the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania, which were announced in April. Hladio’s story, “Market Square business owners worry that revitalization jeopardizes their future,” is one of two finalists in the traditional feature category for local online outlets.
Mike Crowley, faculty adviser for The Campus and part-time lecturer in the Department of Communication, Media, and Performance, was also recognized in multiple categories of the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania’s Golden Quills contest. Crowley’s stories were finalists in the traditional feature, public affairs, business, science/environment, and education categories for small daily print publications.
In early April, Delia Byrnes, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Sustainability, presented at the annual conference of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies in Chicago, IL.
Her presentation, titled “Extractive Horror at the End of the World in HBO’s True Detective: Night Country,” contributed to a roundtable on the modalities and approaches of horror media in the 21st century.
Byrnes’s presentation focused on how contemporary narrative television represents the violence of extractivism in Arctic resource frontiers, with an emphasis on Indigenous cosmologies that challenge the logics and metrics of Western science.
Amelia Finaret, Associate Professor of Global Health, and Abigail Smith, ’22, along with a team from around the world published a paper in the journal Nature Communications. It is available with open access here.
In the study, the team of authors found that household survey/public health data quality is not uniform, and deteriorates with the distance from nearby towns. This lack of high-quality data in remote areas further places strain and stress on livelihoods and well-being in hard-to-reach places.
Adrienne Krone, Associate Professor of Environmental Science & Sustainability and Religious Studies and current Scholar-in-Residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute of Brandeis University, contributed a chapter to The Routledge Handbook of Religion and American Culture, which was published in March 2025.
Her chapter, “Agriculture,” focuses on farming as a site for religious practice in the United States.
Collecting soil at the Bousson Environmental Research Reserve long-term climate change study
Richard Bowden, Professor of Environmental Science and Sustainability, along with colleagues from Oregon State, the University of Toronto, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, published the paper “Soil organic matter molecular composition with long-term detrital alterations is controlled by site-specific forest properties” in the journal Global Change Biology.
The work on a long-term forest soils experiment at the Bousson Environmental Research Reserve showed that efforts to use forest soils as part of climate change mitigation efforts need to take into consideration site-specific soil and forest conditions. Many students have assisted on this project over the years.
Photo Credit: Rich Bowden
The Department of Psychology would like to acknowledge and congratulate the following students (and mentors) for the recent oral or poster presentations at the 52nd Annual Western Pennsylvania Undergraduate Psychology Conference (WPUPC) at PennWest University-California on Saturday, April 12, 2025.
- Charlotte Allen ’25 (Prof. Ryan Pickering)
- Braislee Byrne ’26 (Prof. Monali Chowdhury)
- Maley Gleason ’25 (Prof. Lauren Paulson)
- Lily Kons ’25 (Prof. Kristen Warren)
- Hanan Hamed ’25 (Prof. Kristen Warren)
- Rachel Oberst ’25 (Prof. Monali Chowdhury)
- Josh Salisbury ’25 (Prof. Megan Bertholomey)
- NealeyClare Wheat ’25 (Prof. Ryan Pickering)
- Julia Williams ’25 (Prof. Megan Bertholomey)
- Sarah Willison ’25 (Prof. Lauren Paulson)
- Aria Zong ’25 (Prof. Ryan Pickering)
WPUPC is dedicated to providing students with opportunities to present research in a supportive, academic environment. This conference allows students to grow as individuals, students, and psychologists while regional institutions maintain strong academic relations.
Lisa Whitenack, Professor of Biology and Director of Faculty Development, had two essays published in the ADVANCE Journal blog about the impact of the recent termination of grants.
The first essay, “Grief”, was written with Jasmin Graham (Minorities in Shark Sciences) and is about the termination of Whitenack and Graham’s National Science Foundation grant. “Grief” can be found here.
The second essay, “Persisting with critical friends through the impact of the HHMI Inclusive Excellence three program cancellation”, was written with colleagues from St. John’s College and College of the Holy Cross and is about the termination of the HHMI Inclusive Excellence grant program and the work Allegheny faculty and many others were involved in. “Persisting with critical friends” can be found here.
Lisa Whitenack, Professor of Biology & Director of Faculty Development, coauthored an invited review paper, “Diving Deeper: Leveraging the Chondrichthyan Fossil Record to Investigate Environmental, Ecological, and Biological Change,” published in the May 2025 volume of the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
The paper discusses the evolutionary history of sharks and their relatives, the current state of the field of paleobiology of these animals, and how lessons from the fossil record could be applied to conservation efforts for living sharks and their relatives.
