JOHNSON CITY – (Sept. 24, 2020) Five East Tennessee State University faculty members have been selected to participate in the inaugural Faculty Research Cohort.
Launched this fall, the cohort was established to provide opportunities for professional growth in scholarship and research skills. “One of our goals in creating this program was to help tenure-track faculty who are just getting started define their research agenda and acquire the resources they need,” said ETSU faculty member Dr. Trena Paulus.
Each member of the cohort received a grant and will spend the next year working on a research project.
The ETSU Faculty Research Cohort is being launched for the 2020-2021 academic year in partnership with the Office of Planning and Decision Support, the Provost’s Office, and the Applied Social Research Laboratory.
Members of the 2020-21 Faculty Research Cohort are:
Dr. Manik Ahuja is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Services Management and Policy. He completed his Ph.D. in Public Health (Social and Behavioral Health) from the University of Connecticut, and his post-doctoral fellowship in addictions research from Washington University in St. Louis. His research areas of interest include the epidemiology of substance use and mental health disorders among adolescents and emerging adults. He focuses on identifying pathways to substance use initiation and transition to problem use and examines risk and protective factors from the familial domain (e.g., childhood trauma, parental risk, neglect), peer networks (e.g. social networks, community involvement, religiosity), risk that contribute to substance misuse, mental health problems, and gambling disorders.
Ahuja’s project is: Social isolation, loneliness and substance use among college students in Central Appalachia during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Bethesda O’Connell earned her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees in public health with a concentration in community health at ETSU. O’Connell worked at Liberty University as an assistant professor and director of the Master of Public Health program before returning to ETSU as an assistant professor in the Department of Community and Behavioral Health. Her research interests are working with low resource populations on essential needs such as healthy housing, safe drinking water and solar lights.
O’Connell’s project is: Healthy housing: a retrospective analysis of the health impacts of interventions on substandard housing.
Dr. Mimi Perreault is an assistant professor in the Department of Media and Communication. Her research and teaching expertise are in community-media relations and media writing, specifically helping local non-profits develop strategic communication plans. She has researched local journalists, public relations practitioners and citizen scientists as both stakeholders and disaster communicators. She has been published in “Games and Culture,” “Disasters,” “Communication Studies,” and “Journalism Education.” Her research expertise informs her teaching in public relations and crisis communication-related career preparation. Perreault is also the advisor to ETSU’s student-led regional publication, Overlooked in Appalachia (overlookedinappalachia.org).
Perrault’s project is: An Evaluation of Campus and Community Conversations on Climate: Overlooked in Appalachia and the “Write your Story in (Blue+Gold)=Green” Event.
Dr. Anca Traian is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics and Finance at ETSU. She joined the ETSU faculty in 2017 and recently has been appointed the inaugural Martha Butler Rector faculty fellow in Finance. Traian earned her Ph.D. in Economics from Middle Tennessee State University and received an M.S. in Finance from Golden Gate University and an M.B.A from Eastern New Mexico University. Her research interests lie in the area of financial economics, ranging from how people make financial decisions to alternative financial services and financial literacy. When not working, Traian enjoys hiking, bicycling, reading, and experimenting with new food with her husband. Gustav, her cat, appears in many of her finance tests terrorizing students.
Traian’sproject is: An investigation on financial literacy and the role of social networks on financial decisions.
Dr. Wesley Wehde received his Ph.D in political science from the University of Oklahoma in August 2019. He started as an assistant professor in August 2019 in the Department of Political Science, International Affairs, and Public Administration at ETSU where he teaches courses on American government and research methods. Since starting at ETSU, Wehde has continued his research agenda on public policy preferences and responses to natural hazards including tornadoes, earthquakes, and hurricanes. In November 2019, he was awarded a prestigious NSF Enabling the Next Generation of Hazards Researchers Fellowship, which provides structured mentorship, networking opportunities and valuable grant proposal feedback to help build scholars in the interdisciplinary hazards field. His most recent work has been published in journals such as Risk Analysis, The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, and Natural Hazards.
Wehde’s project is: Comparing Public and Emergency Managers’ Perceptions of Emergency Communication and Response.
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