Clinical Health Sciences and Wellness facility will enhance the collaborations that define Miami

April 7, 2021

The new Clinical Health Sciences and Wellness facility will be part of Miami University's first "corridor of excellence," said Steve Large, assistant vice president for health and wellness and a member of the planning committee for the facility. Located on Campus Avenue, its proximity to Miami's Recreational Sports Center, Phillips Hall, and the Goggin Ice Arena creates a corridor that will naturally promote cross-divisional partnerships in order to advance holistic wellness efforts for our campus and local communities, Large said …

Valuing Water MiniConference educates the public on importance of clean water

March 31, 2021

On March 19, the Western Center for Social Impact and Innovation sponsored and organized the four-session half-day Valuing Water MiniConference: An Environmental and Sociocultural Exploration of Water. A service project on March 20 also took place at Four Mile Creek Restoration with Three Valley Conservation Trust …

Ohio officials to share insight on the pandemic's impact on health equity and social justice

March 11, 2021

The Center for American and World Cultures, through its Robert E. Strippel Memorial Fund, has organized an online panel series beginning on Tuesday, March 16 to discuss the disproportionate impacts of Covid-19 in underrepresented communities …

Jumping genes: a Q-and-A with geneticist Meixia Zhao

February 10, 2021

Geneticist and computational biologist, Meixia Zhao studies transposable elements — also known as "jumping genes" — using maize as a model system. She joined Miami University in fall 2018 as assistant professor of biology …

New professional communication course kickstarts student exposure to work in healthcare

February 4, 2021

Spring 2021 saw the introduction of a new pilot course constructed and taught by professor of English Heidi McKee, ENG 310B: Professional Writing for Healthcare. The course offers students a curriculum focused on practicing tasks healthcare professionals complete every day …

Miami University-based initiative receives $6 million to aid mental wellness for Ohio's K-12 students and staff

January 11, 2021

The Ohio School Wellness Initiative, a Miami University-led project to aid mental health and substance use supports for Ohio's K-12 students and staff, was selected to receive $6 million from the Governor's Emergency Education Relief (GEER) fund. The project is led by Cricket Meehan, director of Miami's Center for School-Based Mental Health Programs (CSBMHP) in the department of psychology …

Miami University geology research has far reach, local implications

November 6, 2020

For most faculty, getting their research published in peer-reviewed journals is career gold. It's safe to say in 2020 alone, Miami University Regionals Associate Professor of Geology Dr. Mark Krekeler has the golden touch. Working alongside his students and colleagues from Miami University's Oxford campus, Krekeler had 8 papers published or accepted into noted environmental journals in 2020 …

Psychology students push forward their research despite the pandemic to present at a major national conference

October 30, 2020

Two undergraduate psychology students, who since last May have been working in professor of psychology Christopher Wolfe's Medical Decision Making lab, have been selected to present their research at the 50th annual meeting of the Society for Computation in Psychology on November 19. Three other Miami undergraduate and a graduate student are co-authors on a third presentation …

Stats+Stories podcast honored with national award for mathematics communications

October 28, 2020

Miami University's John Bailer, Richard Campbell and Rosemary Pennington have been honored with the 2021 Joint Policy Board for Mathematics (JPBM) Communications Award for their "engaging, entertaining and enlightening" Stats + Stories podcast. The annual award is designed to reward and encourage communicators who, on a sustained basis, bring mathematical ideas and information to non-mathematical audiences …

Miami is a Top 100 Sierra Club Cool School and a Princeton Review Green College

October 22, 2020

Miami University ranked 71st among the Sierra Club's "Coolest Schools" 2020 for the greenest colleges. Miami is the top Ohio public university on the list of 312 schools ranked based on food, energy, waste, research, transportation and curriculum. Miami is also again listed in The Princeton Review Guide to Green Colleges: 2021 Edition, one of 416 schools selected for being environmentally responsible …

Miami's public health program engineers a new contact tracing program for Butler County to fight COVID-19

October 7, 2020

Early this summer, after the COVID-19 pandemic had already swept across the country and shut down college campuses and businesses around the world, Miami's public health program began to put together a plan to help track the virus's rampant spread throughout the local community. …

Miami fire scientist: "Zombie fires" one of new features driving Arctic fires

October 6, 2020

"Zombie fires" and burning of fire-resistant vegetation are new features driving Arctic fires—with strong consequences for the global climate—warn international fire scientists in a commentary published last week in Nature Geoscience. Fire scientist Jessica McCarty, assistant professor of geography at Miami University, and her team found that "Arctic fires are burning earlier and farther north, in landscapes previously thought to be fire resistant" …

Miami commits to carbon neutrality and climate resilience: Virtual PCLC signing ceremony

September 15, 2020

Join Miami University President Greg Crawford as he signs the Second Nature's Presidents' Climate Leadership Commitments (PCLC) Climate Commitment in a virtual ceremony at noon Tuesday, September 22. Second Nature president Tim Carter, members of Miami's new Climate Action Task Force executive steering committee, the office of sustainability, and Oxford Mayor Mike Smith will give brief remarks during the ceremony …

Don't let COVID be an excuse to marginalize older Americans

September 9, 2020

Kate de Medeiros, O'Toole Professor of gerontology and a research fellow at the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University, discusses perhaps the most quietly pervasive, and therefore most insidious, negative effects of the coronavirus — the casual dismissal of "the elderly" …

Carolyn S. Craig joins CAS as director of diversity, equity, inclusion & belonging

September 8, 2020

The College of Arts and Science is excited to welcome Carolyn S. Craig to the dean's staff as their new director of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. Craig has worked at Miami University since 2015 and is credentialed as both a certified diversity professional (CDP) and an advanced certified cultural intelligence professional (ACCQP) …

Instituting a healthier perspective on food: Miami's community supported agriculture program swings into fall

September 2, 2020

Food options in Oxford, Ohio aren't just limited to Bagel and Deli, campus dining halls, or Mac & Joe's. The Institute for Food, founded in 2015, engages the Miami University community around issues of food, health, and sustainable agriculture …

Search for the "wings" of a crustacean sheds light on origins of insect wings

August 26, 2020

Genes from a tiny shrimp-like crustacean could help in the search for the origin of insect wings, a new study finds. To be clear, there is no evidence that any crustaceans ever evolved to fly, according to evolutionary biologist Yoshi Tomoyasu, associate professor of biology at Miami University and senior author of the study recently published in Nature Ecology and Evolution …

Miami's Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation honored with STEM award

August 17, 2020

Miami University's Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) has been named a recipient of INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine's 2020 Inspiring Programs in STEM Award. The Inspiring Programs in STEM Award honors colleges and universities that encourage and assist students from underrepresented groups to enter the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) …

Opening Minds through Art masks feature designs made by elders with dementia

August 5, 2020

Since May, Opening Minds through Art (OMA) has been selling cloth masks featuring 29 different artistic designs created by participants in Miami University's award-winning intergenerational art program for people with dementia. "This is how we honor the creativity of people living with dementia. We happily and with pride wear their artwork on our faces," said Elizabeth 'Like' Lokon, director and founder of OMA, which is based in the Scripps Gerontology Center …

Miami chemists' breakthrough technique enables design at the interface of chemistry and biology

July 20, 2020

A technique developed by Miami University associate professors of chemistry and biochemistry Dominik Konkolewicz and Rick Page may help enable more rapid and efficient development of new materials for use in pharmaceuticals, biofuels, and other applications. Konkolewicz and Page's technique uses nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technology to illuminate how proteins and synthetic polymers interact in chemical substances known as bioconjugates …

Psychology department chair discusses the connection between pets and wellness on latest Stats and Stories podcast

July 10, 2020

Miami's long-running Stats and Stories podcast, now in its 8th year, recently interviewed University Distinguished Professor and chair of psychology Allen McConnell about his research on the well-being benefits of socially constructed relationships with family and pets …

Miamians help local landowner in the fight against emerald ash borer

June 25, 2020

Miamians are helping with a program that hopes to greatly reduce the number of emerald ash borer beetles, which have killed hundreds of millions of ash trees in North America since its detection in 2002. The biological control program involves releasing Asian wasps — parasitoids — on ash trees …

Miami's Scripps researchers find no link between nursing home residents with COVID-19 and facility quality

June 22, 2020

A new study by Miami University's Scripps Gerontology Center found no link between nursing home residents with COVID-19 and facility quality. In recently published research, John Bowblis, professor of economics and Scripps Research Fellow, and Robert Applebaum, professor of gerontology and sociology and director of the Ohio Long-Term Care Research Project, examined resident cases of COVID-19 in Ohio nursing homes and whether the presence of COVID-19 among residents is associated with facility quality …

Generation COVID: Film studies students turn their quarantine experiences into a documentary

June 8, 2020

In mid-March when Miami students were informed that all spring classes would be taught remotely and they would have to move off campus, students in Andy Rice's documentary film production class agreed to work collaboratively on a film about the impact of COVID-19 on the students' lives …