Engineering Systems for the Common Good: Theories and Modeling to Drive Solutions and Hope

My love and scholarly passion is control systems – the science of creating mathematical models of things like motors, airplanes, or even the temperature inside a room, and using sensors and feedback to make these systems behave in a desired manner. I learned controls in graduate school and did my Ph.D. dissertation in adaptive control. Ever since, I have been fascinated by the beauty of the math behind control theory, the power of systems thinking, dynamical systems modeling, and the broad and wide applications of systems theory. Because control engineering is so multi-disciplinary, over the years my research has taken me to a number of different applications, from hypersonic aircraft to robotics to artificial lungs and more.

Throughout this time, I had a persistently nagging thought: “Can’t all these powerful engineering tools I’ve learned be used for something other than engineering applications?” Looking at society around me and all the problems we are facing (climate change is at the top of my list, but also environmental injustice, the need for sustainable development, discrimination and inequity, just to name a few), this inner voice has only grown louder. At the same time, so has my frustration, arising from this desire to “do something” but not knowing even where to start. 

However, watching my son Kaito grow has helped add hope and focus to this urgency. My wife, Susanne, is an avid advocate for justice, and through her own studies of Human Rights, she has educated me and quite simply opened my eyes to the multiplicity of needs around me, and the corresponding opportunities for concrete action. And luckily, as a member of the University of Dayton community I have had the good fortune of being exposed to a variety of ideas and initiatives that have slowly helped me find a more concrete focus. The fantastic School of Engineering initiative to create a brand new Human Rights Minor for engineers served as a perfectly timed catalyst. Altogether, I finally found that elusive “something” I had been looking for for so long: creating a new course, which I am calling Engineering Systems for the Common Good (EGR 419). As a professor who loves to teach, I thought that this would be one of the best things I could do to contribute to the community.

In this class, I will teach how a variety of current issues in society, such as resource depletion, poverty, and environmental justice, are intertwined with the notions of human rights, fairness, and the common good. Being an engineer and a systems scientist, I will teach students how these issues can be understood, analyzed, and modeled using systems theory. We will model aspects of the poverty cycle, for instance, or the tragedy of the commons, the occurrence of revolutions and their connection to epidemics, and we will then simulate these models using computational tools. Most excitingly, we will think about solutions: how can policies be modified, how can conditions be changed, in such a manner that a more just and sustainable society emerges?

The course will be offered through the Common Academic Program filling the Diversity and Social Justice and the Crossing Boundaries-Practical Ethical Action components. Such an offering will make this course open to all engineering students, as well as those in the sciences and humanities who meet sufficient math (calculus, differential equations, basic signals and systems concepts) requirements.

I realize that I am not the only one who feels the urgency to “do something” and the frustration of not knowing what that “something” is, or how to approach it. I can perceive this feeling in young people all around me. It is my hope that students who take this course will understand that all the engineering and scientific knowledge they have acquired can, and should, be used for the common good, in domains that are not necessarily engineering. Students should also feel confident in their ability to actually have a direct, positive impact on this society that we are all a part of; and, most importantly, they will also feel the hope – one that I experience, a hope for a better future for us all.

Raúl Ordóñez, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering - Control systems and robotics.

Mapping the Media Cityscape of New Orleans

This article appeared in Mediapolis no. 4, On Teaching, Student Voices, vol. 6 on September 25, 2021.

Mapping Cityscapes emerged from SSC 200, an interdisciplinary social science course required of all University of Dayton (UD) undergraduates. Though the course must fulfill the student learning outcomes (SLOs) and align with three of UD’s social science departments (Anthropology, Communication, Economics, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology), each course’s section is designed by instructors to fit their interests and academic backgrounds. With my background in film and cultural studies and my interest in cityscapes in film and television, I proposed an SSC 200 section titled “Mapping Cityscapes in Media.” Aligning the course with Communication (my own department), Economics, and Sociology, the course aims for students to better understand the relationship between on-screen representation of an American city and that city’s sociological reality. The course culminates in a mapping project assignment in which students map the production locations of a film or television series and analyze how those locations inform the city’s representations. The course was proposed in Spring 2019 and, after a summer workshop, was approved for the Spring 2020 semester.

Over the three semesters I taught SSC 200, I continued to adjust the syllabus and course focus, building on what I thought worked well while adjusting ineffective assignments and lessons. While instructors are encouraged to design their lessons on their chosen focus, the SLOs for the class are for students to be able to locate, understand, and utilize social science research. This dual emphasis on flexibility of structure and set-in-stone SLOs requires a balancing act that every SSC 200 instructor must navigate on their own. For my own syllabus, I started the semester with a screening of a media text to stimulate their interest in the media studies aspect of the course, before pivoting back to lessons on my three social science disciplines and how to identify, read, and find social science scholarship. After these requirements are completed, culminating in a midterm and an annotated bibliography, the focus pivots to the mapping portion of the course. During class workshops and on their own time, students find locations that appear in their chosen film or TV episodes, using a shared Google Map to map their locations and analyze the significance of their appearances on-screen. This research and analysis was intended to culminate in student presentations spread across the final weeks of the semester, until the outbreak of COVID-19 necessitated the closing of campus and “pivot” to online learning. For Mapping Cityscapes in Media, this pivot led to an adjustment to the requirements of the final presentation to allow for either a video or a PowerPoint submitted with accompanying audio or written notes with each slide. Due to UD going all-remote after Thanksgiving the following Fall semester, Spring 2021 was the first time I was finally able to see my students present in person.

For the first semester that I taught this course, the section was not grounded in a specific location; each student made their own maps, which limited their ability to analyze the significance of their locations. For Fall 2020, I allowed each “half” of my class (I split my section into Tuesday and Thursday sections for social distancing purposes) to choose their own cities to focus on (they respectively chose Los Angeles and New York). One of the unexpected challenges that emerged during this section was my realization that Google Maps only allowed for ten different layers, necessitating the sharing of layers so that each media text could appear on the same map. Though it came with challenges, the adjustment to one map improved the quality of their analysis and allowed them to compare their text’s locations to those that appeared in other film and TV. However, I still felt that the class spoke of urban development and media production too generally, not allowing me to account for the dynamics that are specific to a single urban location. For this reason, I decided to focus my Spring 2021 section entirely on film and TV set in New Orleans, the subject of my dissertation and one of my primary academic focuses.

For this semester, I constructed a syllabus that balanced a sociological history of New Orleans with its recent ascension as a center of film and TV production, along with incorporating mapping methodology and film theory to enhance the analysis of their chosen texts. I started by screening The Big Easy (Jim McBride, 1986), a film still notorious among New Orleanians for its cultural excesses, but which stereotypes, distorts, and critiques the city in significant and compelling ways. So that my students could begin to understand a place known for its cultural density that most of my students have never visited, I assigned readings by New Orleans scholars, including Richard Campanella’s geographic studies of the city’s gentrification and “coolness,” Andy Horowitz’s history of Hurricane Katrina, and Ana Croegaert’s anthropological study of the city’s removal of Confederate monuments. So that my students understand how their text’s representation is related to a given era’s context of production, they were assigned the chapter in Joshua Gleich and Lawrence Webb’s edited collection Hollywood on Location that aligned with their era of film production history, while those analyzing a TV show were assigned a chapter from Glen Creeber’s Small Screen Aesthetics. As a basis for our mapping projects, we spent a week looking at the University of Cambridge’s Battersea Project, analyzing select clips from Battersea-set films and using their map of represented locations in that London neighborhood as a basis for their own mapping of New Orleans. To frame their analysis within film theory, I taught the realism/classicism/formalism spectrum drawn from Siegfried Kracauer’s Theory of Film (1960), requiring my students to consider their text’s place on the spectrum in relation to the mode of production they were analyzing (blockbuster vs. independent, romantic comedy vs. action movie, etc.). Finally, in addition to revisiting The Big Easy as a base of understanding New Orleans’ history of representation, I demonstrated intersections of production and location through showing and analyzing clips from disparate New Orleans-set feature films like Saratoga Trunk (Sam Wood, 1946), Panic in the Streets (Elia Kazan, 1950), A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan, 1951), Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969), Streets of Blood (Charles Winkler, 2006), Déjà Vu (Tony Scott, 2006), Now You See Me (Louis Leterrier, 2013), and Chef (Jon Favreau, 2014); documentaries like Trouble the Water (Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, 2008) and Big Charity (Alexander Glustrom, 2014); and TV series like Treme (HBO, 2010-2013) and American Horror Story: Coven (FX, 2013-2014). The culmination of this semester-long analysis of New Orleans’s on-screen representations was a Google Map of locations used in each film and TV episode, along with a collection of fascinating, compelling presentations.

The variety of film texts explored by my students are testament to the diversity of both New Orleans’s representation and my students’ cinematic interests. Several presentations demonstrated significant scholarly engagement and creativity in their analyses of their media texts. These include an analysis of how the pilot of Treme (HBO, 2010-2013) attempted to convey an authentic picture of the titular neighborhood post-Katrina and the relationship of that representation’s appeal to gentrification; how NCIS: New Orleans (CBS, 2014-2021) unexpectedly veers into a realist lens in its accurate portrayal of tourism foot traffic in the French Quarter; a detailed analysis of the accuracy in the post-Katrina damage in the Algiers neighborhood in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Werner Herzog, 2009); and how the on-screen supernatural conflict within the French Quarter and the Garden District in The Originals (The CW, 2013-2018) reflect the city’s off-screen trends of post-Katrina displacement. Among these students, the student who distinguished herself with engaged, detailed scholarship is Sharifah Nadeen Abouzarah with her analysis of Remember Sunday (Jeff Bleckner, 2013). Analyzing a little-seen Hallmark TV-movie romance about a waitress (Alexis Bleidel) who falls in love with a jewelry store worker (Zachary Levi) with short-term memory loss, Nadeen brings to light a remarkable paradox: a Hallmark movie that eschews the romantic tourist image that overwhelms so much of New Orleans film and TV. By analyzing the film’s usage of the areas of the city where New Orleanians actually live and work in their day-to-day lives, Nadeen demonstrates unexpected realist tendencies in Remember Sunday. Her presentation demonstrates what I found in the best student scholarship in Mapping Cityscapes, in which a careful mapping and analysis of a properly contextualized media text can reveal unexpected insights about how a city’s identity is constructed in film and television.

Robert Joseph, Ph.D. is a lecturer in the Department of Communication at the University of Dayton. His teaching interests include introductory communication, film history, media effects, and media geography. His research interests include cinematic geography, New Orleans, and American film and TV as cultural artifacts. His work has been published in The Projector and The Smart Set.

2021 Early Launch Students Share Diversity and Social Justice Reflections

With interactive online courses created just for incoming first-year students, the Early Launch program provides an engaging learning community that enhances students' academic success. Launched in 2020, it is designed to ease their transition to the collegiate learning experience during the summer and accelerate their progress toward earning their degree by fulfilling requirements for the Common Academic Program (CAP) or their major. 

Introduction to Comparative Politics was offered through the 2021 Early Launch program fulfilling the CAP Diversity and Social Justice (DSJ) component. Over eight weeks, an inspiring group of six students reflected on how COVID-19 presented itself as a pandemic bringing new realities and challenges to the world we’ve always known, and how nations, states, leaders and communities rushed to respond to the crisis in varying ways—some doing better than others. 

Through varying activities including reflections, simulations, movie screenings and six case studies, we collectively explored the basic institutions of power–states, regimes, societies, markets–and how they shape systems of oppression or create conditions to improve communities and people’s capabilities. We focused on a range of forms of political participation, cultures, and identity challenges shaping various societies through a comparative lens yet an examination of our own bias and perspective.

It is often easy to define and identify an artifact perhaps that represents a bad society. But how can we centralize and define what is good? One classroom activity invited us to do so utilizing a visual, whether an image, a painting, or video screenshots. Victoria Rivera took this photo and shared its story. “A few summers ago I was working with the Press office of the Senate of Puerto Rico and I got to experience what some of these senators were currently doing for the country. Since my mother is a person who is very involved with the politicians here on the island, I also got to experience some opportunities and encounters with her as well. The picture that I chose is one I took of the mayor of Canovanas. The mayor had a project in which she wanted to restore a section in Canovanas in order to provide a place to the residents of the city, somewhere they could go to be one with nature. This section that she chose was going to be transformed into a parking lot and she wanted to conserve this piece of nature especially for her residents. To me, a good citizen is a citizen that fights for what is right and just. And, a good society is a group of citizens who work hand in hand to help their community in many different ways, and with their actions, they make the world a better place.” 

Ikeyaira Metcalf found inspiration in The Square, a documentary capturing the Egyptian revolts. Ikeyaira says “I think it’s different when you see something and it’s hypothetical or fictional, but to watch in real-time people really fighting against their government and fighting for change was inspiring. The story was so powerful because you saw how even though people were being abused and hurt they still went out there everyday to fight back. Because of this documentary and after being in this class, I will leave being more grateful for the rights that I have and will continue to exercise them because not all people in this world have them.”

“The documentary really put things into perspective. It really opened my eyes to why things are the way they are; why things take so long to change. From now on, I want to stay more informed on social movements and their history” says Elizabeth Bornhorst who was also motivated by the weekly news digests. “I really liked the weekly news updates, and sitting down each week just to check in and see what's happening in the world made me feel really informed. It's something I'm definitely going to keep doing.”

American Factory resonated the most with Zachary Mackewicz. “The difference in the working cultures between the U.S. and China was interesting to explore. It impacted my understanding of comparative politics. It also showed me that if you stand up against an oppressive force, you can attempt to make great changes. One change that I will make going forward is to always stand up for what I believe in.”

“Too many times when people are measuring whether or not a certain community is good, they only look at the economic situation and GDP, and not if the people enjoy the quality of life there.” Doughnut Economics inspired Brynn Shoup-Hill because “I never really enjoyed learning economics in any of my previous classes, and this model shows all of the things our societies need to be working towards including environmental and social action, in order to achieve equality, prosperity and citizens' well-being.”  

Reflecting on The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, Grace Valentine underscores how critical it is to never give up and continue our work to better the society, despite all the violence and political turmoil. “It impacted my understanding of comparative politics because it goes to show how important it is to look beyond the statistics and understand how communities respond to issues internally in light of the struggles they are facing.” 

With a responsibility to promote the dignity, rights and responsibilities of all persons and peoples, the Common Academic Program contributes to diversity learning efforts, and does so in a scaffolded way throughout its curriculum and components, but in a more focused way through the Diversity and Social Justice (DSJ) component.

Through these short reflections, the 2021 Early Launch students highlight not only the value of DSJ learning at large, but the importance of engaging various dimensions of diversity and social justice including intersectionality, bias, and intercultural competence.

Youssef Farhat, CAP Diversity and Social Justice (DSJ) Coordinator, and Lecturer in the Department of Political Science.

Financial Markets: It is Not What They Are, But What You Do With Them

Financial markets have been used for centuries to connect providers and users of funds to make projects viable. They have been necessary for firms to pool enough resources to fund expensive and risky ventures, such as sending Dutch sailors to Asia to obtain spices for trade in the 17th century, or more recently, sending commercial rockets to the International Space Station. Governments also take part in the markets, particularly the bond market, to finance large scale efforts ranging from wars to irrigation projects. The financial systems’ ability to pool resources to fund projects and share risks is unparalleled and has shaped the world we live in. Yet, despite their importance for human development, financial markets have also played a part in accentuating inequalities through practices such as predatory lending and redlining.

The field of financial economics, which we survey in our Finance curriculum, is mainly concerned with descriptive issues around the U.S. and global financial markets, such as their efficiency and structure, rather than the role they play in societal welfare. While the operational aspects of the markets are very important for a business education, it might underscore the real importance of the markets for all sectors of society. As our students enter the workforce in new and evolving fields created to solve the world's most pressing problems, they are increasingly discovering that these projects also require financing and institutional arrangements not unlike those seen in for-profit businesses.

Given that the academic curriculum at the University of Dayton advocates for the formation of professionals with a strong desire to work towards society's common good, it is necessary for our students and graduates to understand how their professional skills can be used to advance social causes and what is the state of the art on the interrelation between business and society. 

It is in this spirit that CAP 305/FIN 200: Finance for the Common Good came to fruition—to provide constructive options for future professionals looking to work on projects that would advance social causes and needing practical ways to find them within the realm of the current financial markets. The course aims to show students that, in addition to helping corporations raise capital, financial instruments can also be used to implement projects designed by government agencies, foundations and NGOs to advance society’s common good, or in the words of Pope Paul VI, “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.”

The course will be taught as a seminar with lectures and discussions based on academic and journalistic readings, as well as a series of conversations with guest speakers who have expertise in the space on local, national, and global levels in areas of fintech for financial inclusion, climate financing, microfinance, and crowdsourcing. Students will examine and reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of financial markets to advance social justice causes through case studies. They  will also visit several businesses and community organizations in the City of Dayton currently using sustainable practices and the power of the markets to reach their objectives. 

While these topics may primarily appeal to finance majors, CAP305/FIN 200 will be offered as a Common Academic Program course providing students across campus with the option to take it, filling their Diversity and Social Justice (DSJ) component. Students from all majors and disciplines, such as international business, human rights, international studies and sustainability studies, as well as those who are engaged in Flyer Consulting development projects, will find it of interest given the discussions on corporate social responsibility, the role of nonprofits and NGOs in financial markets, economic institutions and development, environmental project financing, and consumer and shareholder activism.

By introducing this course, University of Dayton students at large will have an opportunity to learn and see firsthand how financial instruments and systems can either obstruct social justice or help provide opportunities to the poorest and most marginalized members of society. At the end of the day, the difference will depend on the professionals who will one day work in these systems.

Maria Vivero, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Economics and Finance.

Maria Vivero joined the University of Dayton in 2013 and currently teaches Finance courses at the School of Business Administration. She has 20 years of experience teaching Finance and Economics courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels in topics ranging from introductory finance and microeconomics to advanced topics in investments and international finance. Dr. Vivero is an active researcher with publications in asset pricing and the economics of information. Her current research agenda includes projects on the pricing of risk in international markets, the effects of income inequality in portfolio selection, and the effects of learning styles on hedge fund manager performance. In addition to her professional affiliation with UD, Maria is part of the Flyer family as the proud parent of a student in the Class of 2022.

Finding Passion and Hope While Celebrating Diversity

Black History is worth more than just one month and should be celebrated throughout the year because there is no American history without Black history. In this reflection, I highlight the value of immersing yourself in diverse cultures and learning more about the identities that are hidden by eurocentric education systems. I hope that by reading this blog, you are able to find hope not only by acknowledging Black history, but praising it, emphasizing it, and integrating it into every aspect of life and educational curricula. 

Growing up, my parents sent me to Catholic schools where I was always the only Black person in my classes. In grade school, my family was one of (at most) three Black families and, in high school, I could count all of my Black classmates on two hands. I never had a Black teacher (I still haven’t had one), and surely didn’t learn about Black history past the slavery-MLK-President Obama pipeline. It wasn’t until coming to the University of Dayton that I had the opportunity to learn about my culture inside the classroom. The Common Academic Program (CAP) provides many routes that allow students to take courses centered around various ethnic groups and identities, yet there are still so many students who choose not to fully engage in learning about something that is different from what they have grown up with. Therefore, the CAP Diversity and Social Justice (DSJ) component, with its goals to frame learning by highlighting intersectionality, bias, and intercultural competence, is critical, and so are the many campus and intellectual opportunities provided to engage students further with these dimensions. 

Attending the 2019 Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) Conference with Black Action Through Unity (BATU) was one of the most influential parts of my college experience so far and one of my favorite memories. Together with eight students and Tiffany Taylor-Smith, Executive Director for Inclusive Excellence Education and Professional Development, we attended sessions on promoting research, education, and dialogue regarding Black history and culture. During our few days in Charleston, South Carolina, we had the opportunity to engage with Black intellectuals and learn about our history surrounding the Great Migration, leaving me eager to continue learning about the parts of my history that our education systems have attempted to erase. Passionate about the ways in which identities intersect with social systems, I added an Africana Studies minor. 

The first class I took that addressed Black people’s experiences was Racial and Ethnic Relations (SOC 328) with Dr. Leslie Picca which covered CAP requirements for Crossing Boundaries-Integrative. The discussions allowed me to gain a better understanding of my own experiences as well as the experiences of people of color due to systemic and institutional racism such as Indigenous people, Latinx people, and Asian/Pacific Islanders among others. 

In high school, I was so used to reading works from white authors who I struggled to relate to. As a junior in Fall 2020, I enrolled in African American Literature (ENG 335) with Dr. Thomas Morgan. In this DSJ course, we read works from modern writers such as Toni Morrison and Ta-Nehisi Coates—providing us with a space to gain a better understanding of the Black experience, as well as engaging, reading and writing about issues of relevance to me as a Black woman. After 15 years of education, I finally felt like I was able to connect with the authors and the stories they told through their literature. Taking this course helped to validate my experiences and see them manifest in real stories. 

Drawing from this learning, I joined efforts to better understand and analyze Black people’s experiences through a critical lens as a research assistant for the 2021 Global Voices Symposium. My research over the past few months has allowed me to look at the experiences of our Black students, faculty, and community since 2016. THE Black Experience isn’t just one single experience, and that’s one of the many reasons that makes Black people so excellent. We are all different people and come from different places. There is no specific kind of Black person. A main takeaway from our findings is that we are in desperate need of Black voices, Black students, Black professors, Black organizations, Black love, Black stories, Black music, and Black experiences in order to make our community whole. 

Taking CAP Diversity and Social Justice courses and other courses that incorporate the Diversity learning goal allows us as students to examine our own identities and explore the identities of others in ways that are not traditionally represented in our education systems. As a school that prides itself in its community, let us continue to advocate for transformation where ALL of our students feel like they belong, they are loved, they are needed, and their voices matter. 

Happy Black History Month! 

Amira Fitzpatrick ’22, Core and Honors Student with Sociology and Criminal Justice Double-Major and Africana Studies Minor. She is a research assistant for the 2021 Global Voices Symposium on Race, Vice President of Cultural Engagement for the Multicultural Programming Council, and a PEERS Mentor. Amira works as a Facility Operations Supervisor for UD Campus Recreation, and a Resident Assistant in Housing and Residence Life.

Artwork used in this blog is a courtesy of Maaike Bakker for Fine Acts.

University of Dayton honors six undergraduate students for research in Catholic intellectual traditions

Six University of Dayton students will be honored this month as the first recipients of the Fr. Jack McGrath, S.M., Award for Research in Catholic Intellectual Traditions, which recognizes outstanding undergraduate student research in a Common Academic Program course related to Catholic intellectual traditions.

The students’ work ranges from a study of historical writing about the Black church’s role in the reconstruction era to a musical recital that showcased the performer’s spiritual and musical journey during her time at the University.

The awardees receive a $500 stipend and will present their research from 5 to 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 22, and Thursday, Feb. 25, during two online Catholic intellectual tradition (CIT) celebrations.

The celebrations also feature prominent keynote speakers. On Feb. 22, Andrew L. Prevot, Boston College associate professor of theology, will address Mysticism and Ordinary Life. On Feb. 25, Robert Ellsberg, Orbis Books editor-in-chief, will discuss Writing About Holiness. Both events are on Zoom and open to the public.

“These are celebrations of the raison d'être of the University of Dayton,” said Timothy Gabrielli, Gudorf Chair in Catholic Intellectual Traditions and associate professor of religious studies. “At the heart of a UD education is inquiry driven by the conviction that careful reflection upon the breadth and depth of our lives — those lives we readily remember and those whom we’ve marginalized — is essential for growing in understanding, that profound gift of God.”

Gabrielli sponsors the McGrath Research Award. He is co-sponsoring the CIT celebrations with Sandra Yocum, University Professor of Faith and Culture.

This year’s McGrath Award honors projects conducted from the 2019 fall semester through the 2020 fall semester in the context of the Common Academic Program (CAP), a learning experience shared by all undergraduate students, regardless of their major. Three awardees each were selected in the first-year/sophomore and junior/senior categories from 20 student submissions.

The 2021 awardees:

• Maya Drayton, a sophomore health sciences major from Hazel Crest, Illinois. Her project, completed for the Development of Western Culture in a Global Context, is Reconstruction’s Black Church and its Role in the Healing Process.
• Margaret Feder, senior music education major from St. Louis. Her project, completed for the degree recital course, is Music as a Window to the Soul: The Story Behind My Senior Recital.
• Emily Georgopoulos, senior biology major from Cincinnati. Her project, completed for The Road to Hell: The Apocalypse in Classical and Contemporary Forms, is Natural Selection: The Eschatological Role of Nature in 1 Enoch and Snowpiercer.
• Emma Grace Geckle, senior religious studies and theology major from Cincinnati. Her project, completed for her capstone seminar course, is A Call for Renewal: How the Creation and Promulgation of Nostra Aetate Transformed Catholic-Jewish Relations.
• Emily Rotunda, a first-year religious studies and theology major from Fallbrook, California. Her project, completed for the Roots and Development of Western Culture in a Global Context, is The Argument of a Modern Psychopath: I See God on Sunday.
• Mira Wilson, a first-year religious studies and theology major from Bellbrook, Ohio. Her project, completed for Faith Traditions: Topics in Religious Studies, is The Effects of Clerical Sexual Abuse on the God Question.

Gabrielli said Drayton and Feder’s projects presented unique perspectives on what it means to do research in conjunction with Catholic intellectual traditions.

“They were all good, but of course the awardees were particularly impressive,” he said. “The committee had a fun time reading these pieces because we were all just so enamored of our students’ great work, which we don’t always get to see when it happens in a particular class. The quality of the work was just astounding.”

Feder, a cellist, said her project was the culmination of 12 years of musical training and a lifetime of faith practice. For her senior recital, she selected pieces that mirrored her personal journey and paired each with a Beatitude to remind listeners to witness Christ in all aspects of their lives.“If I've learned anything from the last four years, it's that there is no right path, but rather a series of directions our lives can take through which God will work,” Feder said. “The Marianists have taught me that we are all missionaries called to witness Christ's beautiful and all-encompassing love for his people with the gifts we are given.”

Drayton looked at how the Black church helped the Black community with healing during reconstruction and worked to build that community into what it is today. She also looked at how historians’ views of Black people have changed over time.

“Personally, this recognition shows me that what I care about and the work I put into my research matters and that is something I will always be grateful for,” Drayton said. “Academically I think this award is the push I needed to see that not only do I belong at UD, but I can truly thrive here. This is also something that I will never forget and I thank the McGrath Award committee for giving me that.”

The McGrath Award is named in honor of alumnus Fr. Jack McGrath (1935–2015), a dedicated teacher who celebrated and embodied Marianist education in the Catholic intellectual tradition.

The award committee included Corinne Daprano, associate professor of health and sport sciences; David Fine, associate professor of English; Julio Quintero, associate director for inclusive excellence education and initiatives; Bill Trollinger, professor of history and Core program director; and Pam Young, director of accreditation and assessment, School of Education and Health Sciences.

To attend the Feb. 22 CIT celebration, use the Zoom link https://rb.gy/nyruyp and the password 237132. To attend the Feb. 25 celebration, use the Zoom link https://rb.gy/rhiztp and the password 701719.

For more information about the McGrath Award, visit the website.

A House is Not Built in One Day

When I first arrived as a first year student at the University of Dayton, there were a lot of things I did not know about the world or myself. Being the somewhat nerdy student in middle and high school who would become excited at the opportunity to take a map quiz and was enamored with all things history and politics, I knew more or less where my passions lay. However, it was not until much later in my college career that I began to envision how I was going to turn that passion into a purpose. 

In the Fall of 2020, Flyer Consulting was able to take on their second-ever international client - Fundacion Raiz - through the efforts of Dr. Maria Vivero, professor in the Department of Economics & Finance and a board member of the Raiz Foundation their partner nonprofit. I served as a semester-long consultant on the team’s engagement with this Ecuador-based nonprofit organization serving a variety of community needs.  Our efforts focused primarily on their CAEMBA program, which provides secure housing for vulnerable populations. It was started by Manuel Pallares and Cristina Latorre following earthquakes in the country which left more than 40,000 people homeless. Since then, volunteers with Fundacion Raiz have built hundreds of homes and shelters, schools, and even a community center and a church. 

 As a consultant, my job was to conduct research with the Flyer Consulting team, work closely with Cristina and Manuel to provide recommendations with the ultimate aim of supporting their nonprofit to expand their donor base into the U.S. What I loved most about the process was the creative and solutions-driven nature of our work. And I felt the opportunity to learn more about the world of marketing, accounting, and business development, and the opportunity to work with nonprofits serving areas of great need in their local communities was invaluable. 

Counting for the International Experience component of my International Studies major, this opportunity added a hands-on component to my in-class experience, and reflects the transdisciplinary nature of a University of Dayton education allowing me to gain the most from my experience last semester and carrying it with me well after I exit the doors of the UD arena on graduation day. 

The Common Academic Program (CAP) provides such flexibility to carve unique learning opportunities and a choice of courses which touch on my interests and experience in a more explicit way. Among those is the First Year Humanities Commons which instilled the critical thinking skills beneficial to a consultant, and my first year Communication 100 course which, although it was uncomfortable at the time, strengthened my public speaking and interpersonal communication skills. Another CAP course that has benefited me is the Economic Development & Growth (ECO 460) taught by Professor Barbara John in which I came to better understand the landscape of economic development and its intertwined relationship with health, education, and quality of life outcomes through analyzing and interpreting data. 

When students first arrive at UD, many words are thrown at them but the ones that seem to resonate, coming up again and again are: community, service, and the common good.  As my time as a student progresses, I have witnessed how accurate those terms are on our campus and the real opportunity to meaningfully contribute to this mission, especially through projects like mine with Flyer Consulting. Over the course of the semester,  I better understood the University of Dayton’s mission to promote the common good and be a constructive part of our global community. 

Nothing I did could ever match up to the service and impact Manuel, Cristina, the rest of the Fundacion Raiz team and volunteers have had on their local community in Ecuador, but it brings me joy to consider that in some small way I was able to have a positive impact on theirs and through the work of our team, they are better able to promote and achieve their mission. If I had to impart any advice on other students at UD, it would be to get involved, even - or perhaps especially - if it is something outside your comfort zone. This experience was not anything I would have envisioned during my first year, and such opportunities to get involved in meaningful, hands-on experiential learning are immense whether you are an engineer or business student, into computers or poetry, musically-inclined or a sports fan. By getting involved in some small way in all that UD has to offer, I have been able to, piece by piece, discover who I am and what my purpose is.  There are still a lot of things I am trying to figure out about myself and my calling, but that is okay. After all, a house is not built in one day.

Samuel Attea ’22 is a junior student pursuing a B.A. in Economics & International Studies with a concentration in Global Migration & Economic Development and has been a member of Flyer Consulting since Fall 2019. After graduation, Samuel is interested in pursuing work with the US Government or a NGO focused on issues related to international development, migration, or education or a career in journalism or law. 

Podcast: Sexual Identity, Inclusion, and Community on Campus

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A month filled with barbeques and baseball games, June is also an important month for the LGBTQ+ community. Queer people and their allies celebrate Pride Month with festivals, parades, and artistic reflections on the progress made toward political inclusion since the Stonewall Riots in 1969. We’ve come a long way since then. In 2015, the US Supreme Court legalized marriage equality with the Obergefell v. Hodges decision -- a case that originated in Cincinnati! 

At the University of Dayton, community is a key institutional value. Although we do not collect demographic information on the undergraduate population’s sexual identities, the American College Health Association estimates that 10% of college students identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, asexual, pansexual, or questioning. Moreover, the numbers may be higher because the development of sexual identity is in flux over the course of a young person’s life. Yet regardless of whether students are out and proud, closeted, or questioning, they are still likely to be affected by microaggressions and bias incidents that occur on campus.

In Spring 2020, we enrolled in Dr. Jamie L. Small’s sociology class on Sex, Crime, and Law. Our discussions ranged from domestic violence to mass incarceration to pregnancy discrimination in the workplace. For our final project, we were tasked to develop a podcast that investigated broader course themes. We brainstormed ideas at the beginning of the semester, and then Dr. Small placed in groups based on shared interests. The unexpected campus closure in March created new barriers to making a podcast -- a project that neither of us had done before! After consulting with Dr. Small, though, we decided to continue with the podcast because documenting the micro- and macro-aggressions that LGBTQ+ students experience on campus is really important work. 

We learned a lot and would like to share the podcast and some of those findings with you.

Spectrum is UD’s LGBTQ+ student organization. The group is comprised of dedicated students who strive to help make other LGBTQ+ students on campus know they are safe to be themselves, while being transparent about the challenges. Spectrum provides aid, support, and a safe space for LGBTQ+ students and their allies. For instance, through one initiative “Know Your Rights,” Spectrum’s members learn about what microaggressions are on campus; how to report them; and the resources available to them. 

One moment of hostility for which Spectrum provided critical support occurred last fall. Early in September, vandalizers ripped down rainbow flags -- symbols of solidarity and the queer community -- from the Spectrum South Ally House. The flags were later found in a nearby garbage can. Similar incidents happened two more times during the semester, and a memorial for Transgender Day of Remembrance was also vandalized.

President Eric Spina wrote an email to the campus community denouncing this bias-related vandalism. He wrote:

“We condemn this act as incompatible with our Catholic, Marianist values and our commitment to create an environment where all feel safe, supported, valued and respected. We are all called to safeguard the dignity of every person in thought, word and action, and to work together to strengthen our sense of community. This is an offense not only against certain members of our community but, indeed, an offense against the entire University community.”

While these kinds of bias-related incidents are noticeable on campus, microaggressions can be harder to see.

In the podcast, you will hear interviews that we conducted with Chloé Massie-Costales and Laura Hutchinson. They discuss their respective experiences with the LGBTQ+ community at UD. Chloé Massie-Costales is graduated this May with a degree with sociology, and during her time at UD, she was deeply involved with Spectrum. She helped us understand what bias-related incidents look like for students and how the campus climate regarding these incidents has changed over her five years on campus. Laura Hutchinson, also a UD alum, is coordinator of LGBTQ+ Support Services at the Brook Center. She explained the nuances of micro- and macro-aggressions and how bias-related incidents negatively impact LGBTQ+ students in higher education.

After talking with Chloé and Laura, we then discuss how Title IX, legal protection against discrimination on the basis of sex, does not explicitly extend to the LGBTQ+ community. We pivot to examine some of the policies that UD has in place to ensure its students are protected, whether it is in the Non Discrimination Statement or in policies such as the Chosen Name Policy.

We hope that our podcast can help listeners understand and learn about the bias-related incidents that can happen on any college campus. We hope that our listeners will become more aware of the different ways these violent incidents occur and how they can affect their peers, friends, and even family members. We hope to inform students of resources on our campus and what UD does to support them. We hope our listeners understand that using expressions such as, “That’s so gay” is harmful because it’s basically saying, “you are wrong.” 

No human is wrong. 

We also understand that social change is not something that happens overnight. While incredible strides have been made in the past few decades, it is clear that there is still so much to be done. But to be silent is to be complicit. By speaking out and educating others, we hope to make a change in people’s everyday lives. 

 🎙🎧LISTEN TO PODCAST  

Authors and Podcast Creators in Sociology 329 "Sex, Crime, and Law" course:

• Jessie Starkweather'22 (She/Her/Hers) is a Criminal Justice major
• Chris Reynolds'21 (They/Them/Theirs) is a Computer Science major

Dr. Jamie Small is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work and a Human Rights Center Faculty Research Fellow at the University of Dayton.