A grant proposal from Dr. Zahid Hossain, professor of civil engineering, has been approved by the Arkansas Department of Transportation (ARDOT). The grant will provide $197,690 for his research and development of the sustainable use of rice husk and scrap tires as construction materials for transportation infrastructure. Details are in a Jonesboro Sun article. Hossain also recently organized and moderated a Transportation Summit on Materials Durability, a national conference hosted by A-State.

Dr. Cherisse Jones-Branch (left), dean, Graduate School, and Dr. Melanie Wicinski (right), assistant vice chancellor for accreditation and assessment, have been selected to participate in a pilot program initiated by the American Council on Education (ACE) Women’s Network. From the national pool of applications, Jones-Branch was selected to serve as a mentor and Wicinski was selected as a mentee in the six-month Women’s Leadership Mentoring Program. Both will begin working with their respective counterparts this month.

Kelli Listenbee, director, Learning Support Services, and coordinator, first-year experience (FYE), and Dr. Stacy Walz, associate professor of clinical lab sciences, department chair, and assistant dean, Nursing and Health Professions, co-authored a presentation accepted for the First-Year Experience National Conference. They will discuss how a Faculty Advisory Board (FAB) can positively impact an institution’s FYE program and leverage available resources through a shared approach to programming.

Dr. Po-Lin Pan, professor of strategic communication, and alumnus Ahmed Deen co-authored a research article published in the Journal of Social Media in Society. Their study uses a social network approach to examining 39,341 tweets of two hashtags: #Election2020results and #BidenTransition after the 2020 presidential election. They found five influential nodes, with three from the same organization — MyNation based in India. The article is available online.

Congratulations to Elianet Roldan-Cubero, the academic adviser for students in the College of Agriculture. Roldan-Cubero has been selected by Staff Senate to receive the PROPS (Proudly Recognizing our Pack Staff) award for January. She was nominated because of her dedication and passion for advising students and offering them a listening ear. She also volunteers for the A-State mentoring program for high school students. Details are online.