Faculty/Staff Accomplishments and Departmental News 4/7/21

In this issue, we celebrate accomplishments of faculty and staff in communication, foods and nutrition, hospitality and tourism, and world languages and cultures. In Departmental News, Facilities Services shared utility information from Duke Energy.

Hospitality and Tourism Program Director and Instructor Michael Altman has been invited to join the Wake County Career Advisory Team (CAT), a group of Career and Technical Education administrators and teachers working together to make sure the high school hospitality and tourism and marketing curriculum are effectively preparing our students to enter the workforce. The goal of the CAT is to gain a better understanding of what knowledge and skills employers need young people to have as they enter the industry and to share it with educators who can use that information to adjust their curriculum to help students successfully complete school and better prepare them for meaningful employment. The CAT met on March 10 to begin its work by reviewing preliminary data from an initial survey of its members and will continue its collaboration throughout the school year by attending CAT meetings, facilitating virtual demonstrations or collaborative talks with students and/or teachers, or offering advisory support via email or over the phone.     

Assistant Professor of Food and Nutrition Rebecca Hagedorn and Associate Professor of Food and Nutrition Lanae Hood had an article, “College Student Sleep Quality and Mental and Physical Health are Associated with Food Insecurity in a Multi-Campus Study,” published this month in Public Health Nutrition. Read the article online. 

Instructor of Communication Angela Smedley presented a workshop “Combating Stage Fright: Helping Students Manage Communication Apprehension” and served on a panel “Casting Call: Creative Ideas to Engage New Actors to Join the Virtual Communication Center” at the National Association of Communication Centers (NACC) conference on March 20, 2021.

Professor of World Languages and Cultures Jonathan Wade’s essay “Tilting at Relevance: The Quixotic Enterprise of Portuguese Authors of the Iberian Union” was recently published in Cosmic Wit: Essays in Honor of Edward H. Friedman (Juan de la Cuesta), a peer-reviewed volume consisting of contributions by twenty-two of his former students.

Departmental News

Facilities Services Shares Utility Information from Duke Energy

Please follow the link below for a very important message from Duke Energy regarding North Carolina’s electric energy generation mix and proposed plans for the future. After recent events in Texas resulting in loss of power because of extreme weather and equipment failures, Meredith’s Facilities Department wanted faculty and staff to know what our utility company is doing to improve reliability as well as address climate change issues. Duke is actively pursuing carbon emissions reduction goals for near-term 2030 and long-term 2050 and is seeking input on strategies for balancing costs and benefits.  https://news.duke-energy.com/our-perspective/finding-best-fit-for-carolinas

–Sharon Campbell, Director, Facilities Services

Melyssa Allen

News Director
316 Johnson Hall
(919) 760-8087
Fax: (919) 760-8330

allenme@meredith.edu