Dr. Loury Ollison Floyd, associate professor and associate dean in the School of Education, chaired the selection committee charged with conducting a national search for new editors for Multiple Voices for Ethnically Diverse Exceptional Learners, the journal for the Division for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Exceptional Learners (DDEL).

Dr. Cathy Kea, professor of special education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, was an invited visiting scholar at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas, Jan. 24–26. Kea conducted a community talk with colleagues and doctoral candidates on the integration and importance of “Diversity and Teacher Preparation: Culturally Responsive Planning” in higher education today. In addition, she spent a day engaging the Project TELL doctoral scholars in conversation on “Multiple Career Paths: Culturally Responsive Practices,” an under represented area of research in the literature.

Kea’s research interest and engagement focuses on the intersection between general education, special education, and multicultural education- a trilogy to be transformed. Her current research focuses on preparing teachers to design and deliver culturally responsive instruction in urban classrooms and ways to infuse diversity throughout course syllabi and teacher preparation programs

Dr. Lyubov A. “Luba” Kurkalova, associate professor of economics in the School of Business and Economics and with the Department of Energy and Environmental Systems in the College of Arts and Sciences, along with co-authors T. Jang, G. Vellidis, J.B. Hyman, E. Brooks, J. Boll and J. Cho, has published a paper, “Model for prioritization best management practice implementation: Sediment load reduction,” in Environmental Management (2013, vol. 51, pp. 209-224).

Dr. Kofi Obeng, professor of transportation and supply chain management in the School of Business and Economics, has published “Bus transit technical efficiency using latent class stochastic indirect production frontier” in Applied Economics (vol. 45, no. 28, pp. 3933-3942).

Dr. Tonya Smith-Jackson has been hired as chair of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) in the College of Engineering, effective Monday, Jan. 28. She replaces Dr. Paul Stanfield.

Prior to joining N.C. A&T, Smith-Jackson was a professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech (VT), where she also served as associate director of the Center for Innovation in Construction Safety and Health. She was also a principal faculty member in the Myers-Lawson School of Construction and an affiliate faculty in the Center for Human-Computer Interaction and the Center of Gerontology. Since 1999, Smith-Jackson has chaired and co-chaired over 50 ISE doctoral and masters committees. She also served in leadership positions at VT to facilitate diversity and broaden participation.

Smith-Jackson graduated from the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, earned a B.A. in psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and earned her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from North Carolina State University in psychology/ergonomics (interdisciplinary ISE). She is also certified by the Board of Certification in Professional Ergonomics. Her research expertise is in the application of cognitive and cultural ergonomics to the design, analysis and evaluation of systems, with a specific focus on safety and risk, systems design, work system analysis, inclusive design, human-systems integration, and mixed-methods data integration and analytics.