Four Faculty Chosen For ETSU Research Mentoring Group

From East Tennessee State University:

December 16, 2021

JOHNSON CITY – Four East Tennessee State University faculty members have been chosen as the newest participants in the Faculty Research Mentoring Cohort.

This is the second year ETSU has offered the program which provides opportunities for faculty to build their skills and knowledge in designing research investigations and advancing their research agenda. The initiative is sponsored by ETSU’s Office of Planning and Decision Support, the Provost’s Office and the Applied Social Research Laboratory.

Members of the 2021-22 cohort are:

Dr. Patricia A. Harnois-Church, an assistant professor in the ETSU College of Nursing and holds a Ph.D. in nursing from the University of New Mexico-Albuquerque. A member of Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Honor Society, Harnois-Church is a Jonas Nursing and Veterans Healthcare Scholar, and her research interests include U.S. governmental responses to military sexual trauma. For the mentoring group, her research project is “The Impact of Undergraduate Student Levels of Emotional and Immune Resilience, Perceived Stress, Anxiety, Quality of Life, Perceived Social Support, Socioeconomic Status, and COVID Educational Experience on Academic Success.”

Dr. Kendrea Todt holds a Ph.D. degree in nursing from the University of Tennessee and currently serves as an assistant professor in the College of Nursing. She is a member of Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Honor Society and serves as Epsilon Sigma at-Large Chapter President. Her primary areas of research are addiction science and nursing education. Her project is entitled, “Voices from Within: Using Photo Elicitation to Explore the Impact of Caring for Patients Diagnosed with Intravenous Drug Use Associated Infective Endocarditis at End of Life on Nurses.”

Dr. Constanze Weise is an Assistant Professor of History in the History Department at ETSU. She holds a Ph.D. in African history from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research has been supported by various grants and fellowships from UCLA, the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the German Research Foundation and the German Academic Exchange Service. She is also the recipient of an ETSU Research Development Committee Major Grant. Her research focuses on the pre-19th century and early colonial cultural and political history of West Africa, with special emphasis on the intersection of politics and religion as well as urbanization. Weise’s project is titled “Kingdoms of the Confluence: Ritual, Politics, and Sovereignty in the Niger-Benue River Valley Regions of Nigeria to 1920.”

Dr. Shuling Yang is a faculty member in the Clemmer College where she is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. She received her Ph.D. in educational studies from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In addition to receiving the 2018 International Literacy Association’s Jeanne S. Chall Research Fellowship, she was awarded grants from the American Educational Research Association - Division C as well as the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Research Foundation. NCTE also presented Yang with the Early Career Educator of Color Leadership Award.

Yang’s research interests include interactive reading aloud, family literacy, bi-literacy and pre-service/in-service teacher education. The title of her research project is “What is My Name? An Exploration on Name Choices of Chinese Living in the U.S.”

This press release was produced by East Tennessee State University. The views expressed are the author's own.