VCU news

John Venuti, chief of the VCU Police Department and assistant vice president of public safety

Christopher Preuss, assistant chief, VCU Police Department

Shana Mell, performance manager, VCU Police Department

Greg Felton, external relations officer, VCU Police Department

Venuti, Preuss, Mell and Felton presented at the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators Conference in Nashville in July. Their topic was “Managing External Relations and Off-Campus Conduct.” 

The group detailed how the VCU Police Department has worked with campus and community partners to better coordinate police response, improve record-keeping and work to hold problem property owners and residents accountable.

They also explained how the creation of the external relations officer position, letters to property owners, and improved technology such as the LiveSafe safety mobile application, the PRTY SMRT party scheduling system, the VCUPD noise suppression vehicle and an upgraded campus surveillance video system have resulted in fewer noise complaints and improved community relations.

The presentation was also detailed in the Sept. 2 edition of “The Weekly Snapshot,” an electronic newsletter by the National Center For Campus Public Safety.

 

Cristina Stanciu, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of English, College of Humanities and Sciences

Stanciu has received a prestigious $30,000 fellowship from the American Association of University Women.

As a recipient of the AAUW’s 2015–16 American Fellowship, Stanciu will spend a research year working on her book manuscript, “The Makings and Unmakings of Americans: Indians and Immigrants in American Literature and Culture, 1879-1929,” a study of Native American and new immigrant responses to Americanization discourses and practices at the turn into the 20th century.

“I am very honored and humbled by this generous award, and extremely grateful to the AAUW for supporting the academic and activist work of female scholars throughout the world,” Stanciu said in a news release. “It is a great gift of time to complete a project I’ve been working on for several years, and which has required many trips to archives in the U.S. and abroad.”

She said she was honored to receive the fellowship. “This is a highly competitive and much coveted national grant, held in the past by leading scholars in their fields,” she said. “It carries with it a tremendous sense of responsibility as well as great recognition of my research and work so far.”

Stanciu, who teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in U.S. multi-ethnic and indigenous literatures and visual culture, has received a number of notable national fellowships, including from the Newberry Library in Chicago and the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University. Her first book, “Laura Cornelius Kellogg: Our Democracy and the American Indian and Other Works,” co-edited with Kristina Ackley, was published this year by Syracuse University Press.

 

Garry Glaspell, Ph.D., research assistant professor, Department of Chemistry, College of Humanities and Sciences

Glaspell has been named the 2015 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Researcher of the Year.

Glaspell, who works in the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s Geospatial Research Laboratory, was recognized for his development of a prototype for a non-pyrotechnic daylight visible tracer that possesses the advantages of a non-pyrotechnic approach but is bright enough to see in daylight.

“One of the downfalls of the current pyrotechnic tracer is the mechanism that allows the warfighter to see the trace also reveals his location to the enemy,” Glaspell said in a news release. “By using a non-pyrotechnic tracer, the field of view behind the tracer is substantially reduced improving the warfighter’s survivability.”

He received the award earlier this month at the National Awards Ceremony at the Government Accountability Office Auditorium in Washington, D.C.

 

David X. Cifu, M.D., chairman and professor, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, School of Medicine

Cifu is the new lead editor of the fifth edition of Braddom’s Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. The textbook is the most trusted resource for knowledge and techniques in the field of physical medicine and rehabilitation. Cifu was selected as lead editor by the book’s author, Randall L. Braddom, M.D.

New in this edition is an emphasis on the treatment of concussions and military amputees. In addition to serving as the chairman and Herman J. Flax, M.D., Professor in the Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Medicine and Rehabilitation, Cifu is the national director for Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Prosthetic Services with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.