University News
2008 Phi Kappa Phi Faculty, Administrator Initiates
May 7, 2008
MACOMB, IL -- Eleven Western Illinois University faculty and administrators were recently inducted into Western's chapter of Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society.
2008 initiates include:
Roberta A. Davilla, communication chair and professor, has been a member of the Western faculty since 2005. Her latest research has involved researching how couples communicate about personal finances and how children learn about money and its use. Davila has presented papers and has been a panelist and respondent at more than 40 conferences, has authored four and co-authored four instructors' manuals and workbooks, has written several articles for professional journals and authored and co-authored seven book chapters. Davilla's teaching areas include interpersonal and small group communication, family communication, communication theories, qualitative research methods and the basic communication course.
Farideh H. Dehkordi-Vakil, an assistant professor in the department of information systems and decision sciences, has been at WIU since 2002. Her area of interst include interdisciplinary research and research directed toward the development of new statistical methodology. Dehkordi-Vakil has done creative work in applying the Bayesian methodology to questions of regression in general and monotone smoothing, and she has collaborated with researchers in such fields as business, health education, oral health, nursing and health policy and outcomes. She has presented the results of her research in national and international conferences, and she has published several papers in professional, peer refereed, national and international journals.
Samuel Edsall, a broadcasting associate professor who has been a member of the WIU faculty since 1990,
grew up on public broadcasting. His father was chief broadcasting engineer at several public television stations, designing and planning many of them. Since Edsall was old enough to answer the phone, he worked at pledge drives and auctions to help raise funds for the local PBS station and continued to serve various volunteer roles until graduation. Edsall specializes in new technologies in mass communication and teaches television production, online and multimedia journalism and computer graphics for television. He has recently published the textbook "Computer Graphics for Television – A Reference Manual" and has won several regional and national awards for his television and multimedia productions. Edsall has presented numerous papers at regional and national conferences.
A unique feature of the 2008 Phi Kappa Phi event included the induction of a father-daughter team at Western Illinois. Western junior Reilly Hendricks and her father, Dan Hendricks, vice president for advancement and public services, were both inducted into the 2008 class.
Hendricks began his his tenure as vice president for advancement and public services at Western Illinois University in August 2005. Since joining Western's administration, he has added prospect research and campaign support services staff in the Office of the Vice President for Advancement and Public Services; and development directors have been hired in each college, as well as for the WIU-Quad Cities and the University Libraries. Major gifts during his tenure include the University receiving the largest planned gift in Western's history when WIU was named as a beneficiary of a $20 million trust established by Dr. Norman C. Teeter and his wife Dr. Carmelita B. Teeter of Memphis, TN; the establishment of a new Donor Advised Fund by Recreation, Park and Tourism Administration (RPTA) Professor Emeritus A. Gilbert Belles; and the acquisition of 77 acres of donated land approximately 2.5 miles west of the WIU-Macomb campus known as the Rodney and Bertha Fink Environmental Studies Field Laboratory and Conservancy. Under his direction, Western Illinois' Annual Fund campaign brought in $1.6 million in 2007, more than 30 percent better than the previous year. He is the author of numerous articles on institutional advancement; he has written eight campaign feasibility and training manuals; and he is a novelist, having published "Tobee and the Amazing Bird Choir," under the pen name, Chloe Canterbury.
Garry Johnson, who was named vice president for student services in May 1998, also serves as an associate professor of counselor education and college student personnel. Johnson served as the University's interim vice president for student services from 1997 to 1998, and prior to this appointment, he served as associate vice president for student services from January 1997-September 1997, and as assistant vice president for student services – student life from 1983 to 1996. He was Western's director of residence life from 1980 to 1983. Johnson has more than 38 years of professional experience in higher education. He has held regional, national, and international offices in several professional associations, including serving as President of ACUHO-I (Association of College and University Housing Officers-International). Additionally, Johnson has been actively involved in community activities. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Macomb Chamber of Commerce and is involved in the Rotary Club of Macomb, currently as past-president. He has served on the Performing Arts Society Board and was co-chair of the 2003 United Way Campaign.
Bill Kincaid, associate professor and head of acting in the department of theatre and dance, came to WIU in August 2003. Kincaid has worked as an actor, director and musical director for numerous theatres around the country, including the Williamstown Theatre Festival, New England Shakespeare Festival, Chicago's Vitalist Theatre, the Brown County Playhouse in Indiana, New York's Cortland Repertory Theatre, Seacoast Repertory Theatre in New Hampshire, Johnny Appleseed Outdoor Drama, Theatre Works of Sarasota Florida and McLeod Summer Playhouse. His particular interest in original performance practice of Elizabethan scripts led to him to found Macomb's "Bard in the Barn" project with the support of the Macomb Area Convention and Visitors Bureau and grants from the Performing Arts Society and the University Research Council. At Western, he has played Benjamin Franklin in "1776," directed productions of "Fuddy Meers, "Henry IV, Part One," "Bach at Leipzig" and "The Visit." Recently he received a Faculty Directing Fellowship from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF), and was honored by the National Partners of American Theatre with a Classical Acting Coach Award. Kincaid is actively involved in regional leadership of the KCACTF, serving frequently as a production respondent and also as the Illinois state chair.
Bill Knox, professor of English, returned to Western as the director of the Centennial Honors College in July 2006. Knox began his fulltime career in higher education in 1976, teaching composition and English as a Second Language at WIU. In addition to curriculum and programming as director of Western's Honors College, he has overseen increased participation in the annual Undergraduate Research Day and Pre-Law Symposium; supervised the re-chartering of the campus chapter of Phi Eta Sigma, the nation's oldest
freshman academic honorary; supported the chartering of Phi Alpha Delta, the national pre-law and law fraternity; and hosted the 2008 Spring Student Research Conference of the Honors Council of the Illinois Region, which he serves as president (2008-2009). During his career, he has presented more than 50 papers on writing, writing pedagogy, undergraduate research, student life and honors education. His publications range from feature articles in local newspapers to essays in The National Honors Report and English Journal. He co-edited "Students Write about College" (with David Schoem), and authored "Writing Our Way."
Jill Joline Myers joined Western's law enforcement and justice administration department as an assistant
professor in 2004. She served as a prosecutor in Maryland for more than 20 years and served as the division chief of the Special Investigations Division which focused on employing wire, electronic and oral surveillance techniques. At WIU she teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses primarily addressing legal issues concerning the privacy and Constitutional rights of victims, offenders and citizens. In addition, she regularly teaches law related courses to lawyers, police, federal agents and legislators. Myers also serves as a consultant to state and federal law enforcement agencies providing expertise regarding surveillance technologies and applications under the USA PATRIOT Act and various state and federal statutes. She has also, on occasion, she served as a script consultant for the Home Box Office, Inc.'s production of "The Wire." Her research interests include the collection of information and data through technology and its impact on privacy rights, Fourth Amendment protections, Constitutional due process and witness intimidation legislation and policy. She was the advisory editor and author of numerous articles published in peer reviewed reference books, including the Encyclopedia of Privacy by Greenwood Press. She is also the author or co-author of several other publications including "Our Panoptical Society Where the Invisible Becomes Visible" and "The Legality of Converting Information into Actionable Intelligence by Law Enforcement."
Born in multicultural and multilingual Ilorin in northern Nigeria, Abdul-Rasheed Na'Allah has served as chair of African-American studies since 2004. He joined the department in 1998. Na'Allah founded the Creative Writers Society at Western in Fall 1998 and has been honored with such awards as the Gold Key Society Recognition Award, the Graduate Students Association Award, the Alberta Heritage Charles Noble Awards (for student leadership), the Alberta Black Achievement Society Award, The Province of Alberta Graduate Fellowship, the Regional Africanist Fellowship of the Center for African Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and the Outstanding Faculty Award by the WIU Minority Student Association. He received the Intel Corporal Grants for ethnographic research in Nigeria and was nominated for the 2007 Carnegie Scholars Program grant. Na'Allah is listed in Marquis' "Who's Who in America" and in Contemporary Authors. His book publications include "Ogoni's Agonies: ken Saro-Wiwa and the Crisis in Nigeria," "The People's Poet: Emerging Perspectives on Niyi Osundare," "Ahmadu Fulani" and more. He is currently working on a book on Elaloro, an indigenous African discourse paradigm. Na'Allah's articles have appeared in numerous professional publications.
Nancy Parsons, health sciences professor, has been a member of the Western faculty since 1988. She has
co-authored one book and several national refereed journal articles, and authored or co-authored several state and national refereed presentations. Parsons has served on the WIU Faculty Senate and has chaired the Council on Curricular Programs and Instruction; and she has chaired or served on several national, state and local professional committees for Eta Sigma Gamma (the national professional health education honorary), the American Association for Health Education, the American School Health Association, the Illinois Public Health Association, the Illinois Society for Public Health Education, the McDonough County Chapter of the American Red Cross and the McDonough County Tuberculosis Sanitarium Board. Parsons is a manuscript reviewer for the American Journal of Health Education, and served as editor of the Illinois Public Health Association's newsletter, "Viewpoint." She also serves as the department's internship coordinator. Parsons has served as a consultant to local government to assess local health concerns and design coordinated community health plans.
Rajeev Sawhney, a professor of supply chain management, has been a member of the department of marketing and finance since 1999. Sawhney's research is in the areas of supply-chain management including negotiations, lean supply-chains, global sourcing, environmental greening, quality management, transportation and warehouse management. He has published and presented numerous papers and cases, and has also served as a consultant/researcher to Fortune 500 companies and nonprofit organizations. Sawhney has been involved with the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS), the Canadian Institute of Management and the Indian Chamber of Commerce in designing and developing their training and certification programs for practitioners. In conjunction with Professor Mike Leenders, he designed the "Business Condition Index" for the Purchasing Managers Association of Canada (PMAC), which is now published monthly. Sawhney has been inducted multiple times into "Who's Who in the World," "Who's Who in America's Teachers," "Who's Who in Science and Engineering" and "Who's Who in Higher Business Education."
Posted By: Darcie Shinberger (U-Communications@wiu.edu)
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