Tulsa Community College Research Retreat

October 23, 2020

9:30 Crafting a research question and conducting literature review Adam Brennan, Amy Lagers

11:00 Break

11:15 Humanities Research Panel Rilla Askew, Denise Blum, Marc Carlson, Randy Krehbiel Dr. Robert Katz, moderator

11:15 STEM Research Panel Dr. Randall Davis, Mona Easterling, Dr. Valerie O’Brien, Justice Robinson Dr. Allen Culpepper, moderator

1:00 Institutional Review Board Dr. Jennifer Ivie, Dr. Alicia MacKay

1:20 Student research presentation Sara Spencer

Rilla Askew’s acclaimed novel about the Tulsa Race Massacre, Fire in Beulah, received the American Book Award and the Myers Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in 2002. Askew has received a 2009 Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in a variety of journals, and her story "The Killing Blanket" was selected for Prize Stories 1993: The O. Henry Awards. Her first novel, The Mercy Seat, was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dublin IMPAC Prize, was a Boston Globe Notable Book, and received the Oklahoma Book Award and the Western Heritage Award in 1998. She was a 2004 fellow at Civiella Ranieri in Umbertide, Italy, and in 2008 her novel Harpsong received the Oklahoma Book Award, the Western Heritage Award, the WILLA Award from Women Writing the West, and the Violet Crown Award from the Writers League of Texas. Askew received the 2011 Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book. Her novel Kind of Kin deals with state immigration laws and was a finalist for the Western Spur Award, the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, and was long-listed for the Dublin IMPAC Prize. Her most recent book is Most American: Notes from A Wounded Place.

Adam Brennan is a TCC reference and instruction librarian, and a TCC and University of Oklahoma graduate. He has been a peer reviewer for the Journal of Academic Librarianship, presented at national conferences over using library resources to create free textbooks, and has been published nationally for his contributions to assessment in research instruction. He loves research and the research process, board games, table-top RPGs, and helping students discover the library.

Marc Carlson has been the Librarian of Special Collections and University Archives at McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa, since November 2005. He holds a Master’s in Library and Information Studies from the University of Oklahoma, and a Bachelor of Arts in History and Anthropology from Oklahoma State University. He has worked in McFarlin Library since 1986.

Dr. T. Allen Culpepper is Associate Professor of English and Coordinator of the Honors Program at TCC. He teaches English composition, British literature, and creative writing, and is himself a poet. Dr. Culpepper is a current peer reviewer for Whale Road Review, an online journal based in San Diego; a former poetry editor for Nimrod International Journal at The University of Tulsa; and one of the founding faculty advisors for Tulsa Review, TCC's online journal of the literary and visual arts. He has also served as an advisor for Phi Theta Kappa and TCC Pride. He has a Ph.D. in English from The University of 1

Tulsa, an M.A. in English from the University of West Florida, and an honors B.A. from the University of Alabama, where he majored in English and minored in history and Spanish.

Dr. Randall L. Davis is a Professor of Pharmacology at the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences, Associate Dean of Biomedical Sciences, and Director of the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program. He holds a BS in Biomedical Sciences and an MS in Zoology from OSU and a PhD in Nutrition from Texas Tech University. Dr. Davis’s research lab is interested in the role of neuroinflammation and neuroimmune signaling in depression/anxiety and obesity. In particular, his research efforts are focused largely on 1) characterizing the novel anti-inflammatory actions of opioid compounds, and 2) understanding the role of neuroimmune signaling in post-ovariectomy weight gain in rats.

Mona Easterling began her postsecondary education at TCC, completing a Biotechnology AS in 2010. Following graduation, she transferred to NSU’s Broken Arrow campus to complete a Natural Sciences MS with molecular emphasis. Her thesis involved transgenic plants and was entitled “Plant Selectable-Marker Gene Deletion Using Bxb1 Site-Specific Recombination System.” Her career passion lies in the interface of science and communication. She began working at TCC in 2014 as the OK-INBRE Bioscience Outreach Representative under the supervision of Dr. Diana Spencer, became TCC’s AEP Credits Count Program Manager in 2016, and joined the TCC faculty in 2018 to follow in the footsteps of individuals who began investing in her more than a decade ago.

Dr. Jennifer Ivie earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in Quantitative Psychology at the University of Kansas. She worked as an Assistant Professor at Fresno State University for six years conducting research in survey and test development, and the scholarship of teaching, learning, and assessment, and as the Director for the Center for Teaching and Learning at Northeastern State University for four years prior to joining the TCC community. She spent the last five years as the Director of Institutional Research and Assessment here at TCC, and is now a full-time faculty member in Psychology. She continues to serve as the co-chair of the Institutional Review Board.

Dr. Robert Katz is an Associate Professor of humanities and music, and is the GKFF Endowed Chair of Undergraduate Research, at TCC. In addition to teaching general humanities and music courses he is co-Chair of the TCC Sustainability Committee and is a former president of the TCC Faculty Association. He has been actively engaged with student groups and organizations including the Muslim Student Association, the Secular Student Alliance, Phi Theta Kappa, and the Research and Scholarly Activities club. Dr. Katz has helped organize an ongoing series of college-wide events focusing on issues related to both Peacebuilding and Sustainability, including annual Sustainability Conferences, guest lectures, and commemorative activities exemplified in the development of a campus peace garden and memorial space. Dr. Katz is a member of the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra double bass section, in addition to writing the Symphony’s program notes and serving on its board of directors. He received his Ph.D. in Historical Musicology from the University of Texas at Austin, MM in Music Theory from the University of Tulsa, and B.M. from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.

Randy Krehbiel is an Oklahoma native and a graduate of Oklahoma State University. He arrived at the Tulsa World in 1979 as a sports writer, and has remained there ever since. He has reported on a wide range of topics, including college football, boxing, politics and the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing. In 1999 he was assigned to coverage of the Tulsa Race Riot, a panel established by the Oklahoma Legislature to investigate the events of May 31-June 1, 1921, and their aftermath. Thus began the two decades of research and reporting that became the basis of Tulsa 1921: Reporting a Massacre, which was published in September 2019 and was named Oklahoma Department of Libraries’ Nonfiction Book of the Year and the Oklahoma Historical Society’s Book of the Year. Randy lives in Tulsa, Okla., where he continues to report on issues related to race and the Race Massacre as well as state and national politics and government. He is a member of the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame.

Amy Lagers is a TCC reference and instruction librarian. She holds an Associate of Arts in World Languages-Spanish from Tulsa Community College, a Bachelor of Science in Human Environmental Sciences from Oklahoma State University and a Master of Library and Information Studies from the University of Oklahoma. She has a certificate in open licensing from Creative Commons, and serves on the TCC Library Open Education Resources team. She loves helping students find resources and looks at every reference question as a challenge or puzzle to solve.

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Dr. Alicia MacKay received her undergraduate and graduate degrees in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Kansas. She worked as a research assistant at the University of Kansas Medical Center for eight years. It was through this experience with varied patient populations that her interest in research flourished. After graduating, Dr. MacKay began teaching at TCC and has now been here for 12 years. She teaches a variety of courses, from Introductory Psychology to Brain and Behavior. She is currently co-chair of the Institutional Review Board at TCC.

Dr. Valerie O'Brien is an Associate Professor of Biology at TCC’s Metro Campus. Her Ph.D. research at the University of Tulsa focused on the ecological interactions between an arthropod-borne virus (Buggy Creek virus), its native cliff swallow host and introduced house sparrows. She did postdoctoral research at Oklahoma State University examining the response of biting insects to habitat characteristics, and this research involved TCC students. Her current research focuses on food provisioning in cliff swallows, which allows her to combine her interests in cliff swallow behavior and insect ecology. Her students in Honors biology courses frequently conduct semester-long original research projects in a variety of topics.

Justice Robinson is a junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill pursuing a B.S. in Neuroscience and Biology and a minor in Chemistry. She graduated with an A.S. in Biology from Tulsa Community College in Spring 2020 as an Honors Scholar and Barry Goldwater Scholarship recipient. During her time at TCC, she participated in multiple undergraduate research opportunities which provided a strong foundation for her current role as an undergraduate research assistant in the Frohlich Lab at UNC. Her research interests involve human neurobiology, biomedical innovation, and cognitive neuroscience.

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