2021 Fall CAS Newsletter

FACULTY Research and Publications DR. DUSZENKO Retires DR. GUANGWEI DING, Professor of Chemistry, collaborated on two articles: “Soil Quality Index Evaluation Model in Responses to Six-year Fertilization Practices in Mollisols,” co-authored with Meng Zhou, Yang Xiao, Yansheng Li, Xingyi Zhang, Guanghua Wang, Jian Ji, and Xiaobing Liu, was published in Archives of Agronomy and Soil Science , and “Humic Substances and Distribution in Mollisols Affected by Six‐year Organic Amendments,” co-authored with Meng Zhou, Chunyu Wang, Zhihuang Xie, Yansheng Li, Xingyi Zhang, Guanghua Wang, Jian Ji, and Xiaobing Liu, was published in Agronomy Journal . DR. NUURRIANTI JALLI , Assistant Professor of Communication Studies, has participated in several research activities. She served DR. ANDRZEJ DUSZENKO, Professor of English, will retire after the 2022 summer session. He will have completed thirty-three years of continuous dedicated service at NSU. He came to us in 1989 from Carbondale, Illinois, where he took his PhD in English literature, having earned his MA in English at Wrocław University (Wrocław, Poland). His students will remember him as “a hard professor.” He held them to high standards as he urged them beyond their comfort zone to encounter challenging ideas and demanding literary artists. With his sensitivity to the nuances of written expression and his exceptional command of its mechanical and grammatical conventions, he guided countless students in their growth as university-level writers. He understood that dedicated students achieve their best when the best is expected. Dr. Duszenko’s teaching duties have been wide-ranging. He was NSU’s first Writing SUPPORT OUR STUDENTS AT NORTHERN STATE UNIVERSITY Visit northern.edu , click on “ Give Now” and select “College of Arts and Sciences” to support the College of Arts and Sciences. Center director. In addition to the upper- and lower-division courses in composition and literature that English faculty usually cover, he also taught linguistics, hypertext markup language, and the General Studies capstone course. Through decades of change, he eagerly explored all the pedagogical resources that new technology afforded, from the earliest forms of in-class electronic discussion to distance course delivery. For colleagues wanting to keep up with his pace, he has been a generous and patient guide. Naturally, then, Dr. Duszenko has been the go-to person for editing and graphic design. For years, he has taken on the editing responsibilities for the CAS newsletter and has often served on the editorial board for the student literary magazine, Northern Lights . Dr. Duszenko is our preeminent James Joyce expert. He has led many senior seminars in Joyce over the last thirty years. Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939) has been his constant scholarly interest, and anyone who has read Joyce attentively understands why even a career-long interest is not enough to plumb the full depth of Joyce’s encyclopedic imagination and linguistic resources. His Joyce scholarship has yielded new understandings of how modern scientific theories—relativity theory, quantum physics, and particle physics—inform Joyce’s mythological universe. That scholarship has reached international audiences through prestigious journals including J ames Joyce Quarterly and Irish University Review . Furthermore, his sustained interest in modern and contemporary Polish literature has inspired his English translations of favorite poets and novelists. Less widely known, however, is Dr. Duszenko’s skill as an uncommonly resourceful autodidact. Multiple interests have driven his pursuit of deeper knowledge. Those interests include the martial arts, orchestral and choral music (especially opera), wine-collecting, and tennis. He will take issue with anyone who would call him an expert, but a sustained discussion with him on the subject of any of his passions can leave some feeling as if they are on the receiving end of his deadly left-handed short-angle cross-court forehand. If a wide range of inner resources is the key to a fulfilling retirement, Dr. Duszenko’s will be as blissful as it is well-deserved. He takes with him our warmest wishes. as subject expert for the online project titled “Double Think Lab (Taiwan): The Misinformation Playbook”; her contributions include two videos available on the project website (https://fight-dis.info/#towhom ). She wrote a chapter for UNESCO Media and Information Literacy Module for Malaysian Universities—a project led by National University of Malaysia with funding from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). She was invited as a subject expert for Disinformation Project led by Convergence Center for Policy Resolution (Washington, DC), and as a guest commentator for Southeast Asia Today (SEA Today) Morning Show “Malaysia’s New Cabinet: A Political Compromise?” Dr. Jalli also gave a research presentation titled “Reclaiming Native Customary Lands and Thwarting Deforestation: Act of Resistance among Sarawak Indigenous Peoples as Observed through Facebook Digital Activism” at the Conference of European Association for Southeast Asian Studies. DR. ALYSSA KIESOW, Professor of Biology, published a book titled Amphibians and Reptiles in South Dakota . Co-authored with D. Davis, the book, now in its second edition, was published by the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks in Pierre, South Dakota. Dr. Kiesow also collaborated on a paper titled “Salaries in Higher Education Systems: A System-wide Perspective on Career Advancement and Gender (Sex) Equity.” Published in The Advance Journa l, the paper was co-authored with A. Liebl, P. Rowland, M. Redlin, C. Anderson, and A. Surovek. DR. STEVEN USITALO, Professor of History, has signed a contract to write a biography of the Russian scientist, poet, and historian, Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov. This will be a Russian-language study based partly on Dr. Usitalo’s earlier work on science in eighteenth- century Russia. The book will be published by Akademicheskii Proekt Publishing House in St. Petersburg, Russia as part of a series titled Contemporary Western Rusistika. Dr. Usitalo has also contributed to a recent book publication: Black Garden Aflame: The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict in the Soviet and Russian Press , issued by East View Press; his contributions included assistance in the compiling of articles, revising translations, and writing the preface to the volume.