Stockton University News - June 2017
Dear Alumni and Friends,
Greetings from Stockton University! Last month, we welcomed Nancy Taggart Davis to Stockton’s Board of Trustees, and celebrated our largest Commencement ceremony ever – and our first at Atlantic City Boardwalk Hall. Here are just a few more highlights of what has been happening at Stockton:
New Master’s Degree in Data Science to Launch in Fall 2017
Stockton University is launching a new degree program this fall to prepare graduates for the fast-growing field of “Big Data” – the vast sea of digital information generated daily by business, science, entertainment and education.
Stockton University is launching a new degree program this fall to prepare graduates for the fast-growing field of “Big Data” – the vast sea of digital information generated daily by business, science, entertainment and education.
The first classes for the Master of Science in Data Science and Strategic Analytics within the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics (NAMS) will be held in September with approximately 12 students to start, and enrollment is expected to grow to a maximum of 25 in future years.
“Big Data science is the application of computer software and code to large data sets with the intention of answering questions in business, industry or science,” said Physics Professor J. Russell Manson, who will serve as director of the program.
Instruction will be primarily online but students will meet with their instructors on one evening a week at the University’s Kramer Hall site in Hammonton, N.J. This will be an interdisciplinary degree, and may draw on faculty from NAMS, Arts & Humanities, Business, Education and Social & Behavioral Sciences, and other programs.
An information session will be held at Kramer Hall in Hammonton on Thursday, July 20 from 6-7 p.m. To R.S.V.P. and for more information, visit: stockton.edu/graduate/data-science-strategic-analytics.
Officials Break Ground for First Building at SARTP
Federal, state, county, municipal and University officials on May 15 broke ground for the first of seven buildings at the Stockton Aviation Research and Technology Park (SARTP).
Federal, state, county, municipal and University officials on May 15 broke ground
for the first of seven buildings at the Stockton Aviation Research and Technology
Park (SARTP) in
Egg Harbor Township, N.J., a major step in diversifying the region’s economy.
The $17.2 million, 66,000-square-foot building is being constructed in the 58-acre park, located adjacent to the FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center, the nation’s premier air transportation laboratory, and the Atlantic City International Airport.
The park will offer high-speed connectivity to FAA Tech Center laboratories, and state-of-the-art conference rooms. An FAA laboratory will occupy 7,000 square feet with an additional 47,000 square feet of rental space for laboratories and offices.
The research park is a collaboration between the academy and industry, offering Stockton and other universities opportunities in research and education.
We consider this project to be a central instrument for change. Stockton’s commitment
to the project will be unwavering.
Breaking ground for the first of seven buildings at the Stockton Aviation Research & Technology Park, from left to right: Howard Kyle, Atlantic County chief of staff; Tim Edmunds, Atlantic County Improvement Authority (ACIA) director of projects; ACIA Chairman Roy Foster; Edward H. Salmon, president of the SARTP board of trustees; Stockton University President Harvey Kesselman; Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson; Jaime Figueroa, deputy director of the FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center; N.J. Congressman Frank LoBiondo, R-2nd; Washington Congressman Rick Larsen, D-2nd; John C. Lamey, Jr., executive director of the ACIA; and Joseph Sheairs, former executive director of the SARTP.
Faculty Members Receive Health Hero Award
Three Stockton University faculty members and their partners in Live Healthy Vineland (LHV), a collaborative, multi-organization effort, recently received the first-ever “Population Health Hero Award – Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration Heroes” award from the N.J. Department of Health.
Three Stockton University faculty members and their partners in Live Healthy Vineland (LHV), a collaborative, multi-organization effort, recently received the first-ever “Population Health Hero Award – Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration Heroes” award from the N.J. Department of Health.
LHV includes a Healthy Food Network comprised of initiatives promoting farm-to-pantry, healthy corner stores, healthy restaurants, as well as school district well-being and worksite wellness. The overall project is designed to increase access to healthy foods and beverages, encourage and promote physical activity, and increase awareness and the use of resources that promote health among Latino families. These activities were paid for with a multi-year $1.35 million grant to LHV, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the NJPHK, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Stockton’s M. Alysia Mastrangelo, professor of Physical Therapy; Betsy Erbaugh, assistant professor of Sociology and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies; and Kelly Dougherty, assistant professor of Exercise Science, are the evaluation team, working with the Cumberland-Cape-Atlantic YMCA, the Food Trust in Philadelphia, the NJPHK and the Vineland Health Department, where several Stockton alumni are among the employees participating.
Mastrangelo is the lead on the overall evaluation team, with Dougherty taking the lead on research related to corner stores and food pantries, and Erbaugh taking the lead on research related to promoting health among families with young children.
This research receives $45,000 a year of the three-year grant. Twenty-three corner stores are currently participating in the Healthy Food Network, offering customers access to healthy foods and beverages. Patrons are also being surveyed about their options and choices.
“Lack of access to purchase affordable, healthy foods is a prevalent problem in many communities,” said Dougherty. “Helping a corner store owner to expand his or her inventory of fruit and vegetable offerings and making sure these changes are both profitable and sustainable will hopefully improve the overall health of the residents in that community by providing access to healthy foods options.”
“Live Healthy Vineland is a partnership aiming to improve health for all citizens in the City of Vineland,” said Mastrangelo. “This truly has been a collaborative process and Stockton is at the forefront of this community wellness grant.”
Student Mahalia Bazile Earns U.S. State Department Scholarship
Stockton student Mahalia Bazile won the U.S. Department of State’s Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship to work in Cape Town, South Africa for eight weeks this summer. R
This summer, Stockton University student Mahalia Bazile is spending eight weeks in Cape Town, South Africa as a recipient of the U.S. Department of State’s Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship.
“I wanted to travel to South Africa to learn indigenous languages and culture, because, as a black person in predominantly white institutions, I want to understand the history and cultural value that lies in Cape Town,” she said. “In times of increased cultural misunderstandings and racial tensions, I am deeply interested in learning about South African social culture after apartheid, to build and gain through interpersonal experience a more inclusive and global perspective of the world and its agents.”
Bazile, a Communications major with math and political science minors, will be a senior in the fall. At Stockton, she started as an Educational Opportunity Fund (EOF) student and now works mentoring other students in the Coordinated Actions to Retain and Educate (CARE) program. She has served as a student senator, a residential assistant, and now serves as president of Unified Black Students Society.
“I set myself out to be well rounded in my academic career, but most importantly, my way of thinking,” she said “This is in the hope of one day becoming a news executive producer, or possibly a commentator, to take charge of the narrative and relay facts to the people that represent them and their interests.”
In South Africa, she plans to learn some of the indigenous languages such as Afrikaans or Xhosa, and to play traditional instruments including the uhadi, a mouth bow. She is looking forward to learning cultural dances such as the Isicathulo, in which dancers stamp the ground wearing “gumboots,” or wellingtons, all in one of the world’s most multicultural cities.
“I care dearly about developing connections with people through valuing our differences,” she said. “I encourage myself and others to learn more about how to value and appreciate people for their identity. I believe we cannot limit ourselves to the social norms or pressures that seem so commonplace in our society. This goes for racial differences, cultural differences, differences in sexual orientations, or religion – the list goes on.
“What matters is for us to learn from our history in how poorly we’ve handled difference, reconcile with it, and learn from it to ensure we move forward in a positive direction.”
Follow Bazile’s travels on her blog.
I hope you enjoy reading this newsletter!
Harvey Kesselman
President, Stockton University
