President's Column

Spring 2013

The fall 2012 semester was one of great highs and difficult lows. We began the semester by getting ready for the hosting of the second presidential debate on October 16, 2012, an extraordinary opportunity for our students and community to participate in the national dialogue about the issues of the presidential election. Just two weeks after the debate, however, we were faced with the trauma and displacement caused by Superstorm Sandy, which affected our students and faculty to a degree that we’ve not seen before.

Our community, as it always does, rallied around each other and our neighbors. Students volunteered, in groups and as individuals, in the towns and villages along our coastline, by running supply, blood and food drives. Our faculty also responded by donating to our relief fund and is, through the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, creating a research consortium to examine issues related to Superstorm Sandy.

As we are at the midpoint of a new semester, it is appropriate to stop and look at a few examples of the excellent scholarly work of our colleagues.

I encourage you to read about the developments and problems on the edge of digital “cloud” technology that Professor Hak Kim examines and explains in his article. Read about the work that Professor Russell Burke is developing with Hofstra graduate student Kaetlyn Kerr, through a generous award from the National Science Foundation, which will increase our understanding of the effects of Lyme disease. Professor Jason Davidow’s article discusses a highly replicable procedure to eliminate stuttering, and his research investigates promising connections between that procedure and others to help us learn how and why successful speech treatments work.

The importance of hope theory in student academic and life achievement is emphasized by Professors Holly Seirup and Sage Rose, who looked at the strategies of a new Hofstra course that assists students to transition successfully out of academic probation. Finally, through the work of Hofstra’s educational app development team, find out how Professor Roberto Joseph, students, and colleagues from various disciplines came together to heighten the fluency and confidence of urban minority youths through the use of a mobile device app that incorporates students’ local interests into learning mathematics.

With all of these articles, I hope that you feel the same pride in the impressive work of your colleagues and in your own work that I feel. Congratulations on another year of scholarly excellence.

Sincerely,
Stuart Rabinowitz
President