Hendrix College Associate Professor of Biology Dr. Maureen McClung ’01 has been working with Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AGFC) researchers and the Urban Wildlife Information Network (UWIN) to launch a wildlife research project in the cities of Little Rock, North Little Rock, and Maumelle. After planning and laying groundwork since the fall of 2019, the collaboration has yielded photos from its first field season, some of which were released when the project was announced in late August. 

The Central Arkansas Urban Wildlife Project involved placing a series of 30 cameras in public parks (a mix of city and state, urban and rural locations) to observe the variety of wildlife in the area. The cameras are active for four seasons each year during the months of January, April, July, and October. The goal of the research is to learn more about how wildlife — particularly mammals like raccoons, foxes, and deer — use urban green spaces. The group is already seeing evidence of animals like foxes and hawks managing rodent populations. Select images of the study’s first season were released near the end of August and can be viewed at the project’s website, which will be updated with each season.

Hendrix students Lauren Berry ’22 and Jaclyn Reifeiss ’23 received Hendrix Odyssey Program funding for the summer research project, and Tristan Hoerschelmann ’22 joined them when his Scott Henderson Fellowship through the AGFC was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

“It wasn’t what I had originally planned, but it was an incredible opportunity to gain valuable research experience and explore a potential career path,” said Hoerschelmann.

Together, the three biology majors worked with McClung and AGFC researchers on camera site selection, setup and maintenance — “which involved plenty of hiking around parks in June, from urban playgrounds to Pinnacle Mountain State Park,” McClung said — maintaining and retrieving the gear, downloading the images, and tagging the photos with species identification and notes about any interesting behaviors.

For Reifeiss, all the hot-weather hiking became worth it when the team began sorting through the first round of camera photos. “We captured images of bobcats, foxes, and deer, all in some of the most frequented parks of Little Rock,” she said. “Some of these animals I have never had the privilege of seeing in person, so finding out that these creatures are right in the backyards of some of our most populated cities is incredible.”

All three Hendrix students participating in the study are biology majors, and this project gives them real-world experience studying wildlife populations using remote data collection. In addition to developing scientific skills, the students also benefit from interacting with the various AGFC personnel who make up the team, including a field biologist, social scientist, geographic information systems (GIS) specialists, watchable wildlife coordinator, and administrative analyst. 

“This was my first time working on a research project that will contribute data to the scientific community,” Reifeiss said. “I was excited to have Odyssey funding this summer to support me while doing research — I feel like I was able to get a head start on my career in science.”

“It’s a great opportunity to conduct field research, but students also get to see different places their biology degrees could take them in a state agency like AGFC,” McClung said.

During this semester and the next, these students will help recruit more of their peers to join the project, giving it longevity.

“The goal is to keep the project running for the foreseeable future,” McClung added, “so this project represents a research opportunity for generations to come.” 

While “nomophobia” isn’t a recognized disorder, many people know the feeling: a panic that arises when they are out of mobile phone contact—or a similar response to just the idea of losing contact. 

A focus on nomophobia in a recent presentation at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s SLEEP 2020 conference in late August had radio DJs mentioning Hendrix College research in drive-time sound bites.

The presentation of preliminary results from a collaboration between researchers at Hendrix and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock revealed that in a sample of more than 300 college students, 89% experienced moderate or severe nomophobia. Greater nomophobia correlated to greater daytime sleepiness and more behaviors associated with poor sleep quality. What’s more, it means the common recommendation to decrease phone use around bedtime may not help people who experience nomophobia—limiting their smartphone use before bed might actually increase anxiety and make it harder to get to sleep and stay asleep.

“The recommendation to curtail bedtime phone use, which is meant to improve sleep and seems rather straightforward, might need adjustment or consideration for these individuals,” said Dr. Jennifer Peszka, the Charles Prentiss Hough Odyssey Professor of Psychology at Hendrix College and principal investigator on the study. 

Co-investigators on this project are Dr. David Mastin and Dr. Bruce Moore of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and members of the UA Little Rock undergraduate student research team: Shalonda Michelle, Benjamin T. Collins, Nataly Abu-Halimeh, Monnar Quattom, Maya Henderson, Madison Sanders, and Jeremiah Critton.

Peszka’s Hendrix undergraduate team (Hayley Chunn ’21, Justin Lockhart ’19, Graham Harris ’18, Kelly Brice ’17, Althea Strozier ’17, Kristi Scott ’18, Adrian Shuler ’17, Amy Crump ’18, Jessica Bonumwezi ’17, and Alundra Dickson ’17) came up with the idea to explore nomophobia while considering the larger topic of how technology use in the two hours before bed affects “sleep hygiene,” or the behaviors and environmental variables that can improve sleep quality. 

“I always have a big question or project that we’re working on, but I encourage my student researchers to add components to the study that are of particular interest to them,” she said. “If it makes sense, and we can ask a good question that contributes to the literature about their topic, then we add it in. The students thought that ‘cell phone addiction’ might moderate some of the relationships we examined. That group of students were all pretty high on nomophobia themselves, so they were really interested in the outcome.”  

Peszka found it particularly interesting that the percentage of college students who report experiencing nomophobia has risen by about 12% since 2012, when the nomophobia scale was developed. 

“Nomophobia may very well be on a rapid rise,” she said. “That may not seem like a very interesting or concerning development, but here we found that severity of nomophobia was predictive of sleepiness, which can have a significant impact on daily life.”

The Hendrix College Department of Physics has been accepted into the Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Alliance (IDEA) network of the American Physical Society (APS).

APS is one of the largest professional organizations for physicists in the world. The APS-IDEA network is a new initiative meant to establish an international community of departments and organizations working to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion. 

“The department wrote an application for a team that includes each faculty member, our lab manager, a senior student, and a sophomore student,” said Dr. Todd Tinsley ’98, professor of physics. “That application described the strides we have made in our department in creating a welcoming place for women, and we described the ways we want to broaden that work to include a more intersectional vision for diversity in our department.” 

In its application, the department specifically mentioned increasing attention to recruitment and retention of LGBTQ+ students and students of color, considering activities, events, and practices that acknowledge the diversity of physics majors and also help to foster a bond among those students and with the department, regardless of their individual identities.

Tinsley also credited Associate Provost for Faculty Development Dr. Leslie Templeton ’91 in the efforts that led to the department achieving the designation. “Her work as has been critical to our past successes and our thinking about the future,” he said.

The APS-IDEA Application Review Committee provided positive feedback to the Hendrix Department of Physics, applauding the department’s previous efforts to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion, its significant support from the administration, and the proposed team’s makeup. The team is reflective of all the stakeholders in the department—faculty, staff, and students:

• Julie Gunderson ’06, Assistant Professor of Physics
• Jacob Nordin ’21, Senior Physics Major
• Damon Spayde, Professor of Physics
• John Steward ’94, Lab Manager
• Todd Tinsley ’98, Professor of Physics, Department Chair
• Mayra Velazquez ’23, Sophomore Physics Major
• Ann Wright, Professor of Physics, Natural Sciences Area Chair

“On May 30, President Arnold challenged our community to ‘demonstrate our support of our students and our community, not just with statements on paper, but with acts of genuine love and support,’” Tinsley added. “Our department believes that the IDEA network is a way for us to focus on those acts, and our team is excited to get started on this work.”

Film Matters, a magazine celebrating the work of undergraduate film scholars, has announced a new partnership with the Hendrix College Film and Media Studies program and Department of English.

Dr. Kristi McKim, chair of English and professor of English/Film and Media Studies, has been appointed online editor of Film Matters. In this role, she will guide undergraduate students in serving as joint authors and editors of Film Matters online, in cooperation with Film Matters home institution at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. With McKim’s guidance, Hendrix students will provide mentorship and peer review to fellow undergraduate authors worldwide through the drafting and editing process, while learning crucial publishing and project management skills on the job. Sophomores Sydney Boone, JaZmyn Shambley, and Sophia Stolkey—students who have studied film and writing in multiple courses and who hope for future careers in writing, editing, publishing, and film criticism—will comprise Hendrix’s first Online Editorial Board.  

“I am thrilled that this opportunity gives our Hendrix students a chance to gain precious experience as writers and editors,” McKim said. “It’s a chance for students to call for and curate what they want to read and learn, to gather work from students internationally, to generate a virtual home for undergraduate conversation about film and moving image media. Film Matters is singular in what it offers to students: the only international film/media undergraduate magazine of its kind. Film Matters’ ever-supportive editors-in-chief have been generous to entrust us with this charge, and I hope that our work will continue to earn this trust. Even as this work involves added responsibility, it is the kind of responsibility that yields community joy and pride. My English Department colleagues, and especially my comrade in Film and Media Studies, Dr. Joshua Glick, have been enthusiastic in supporting this opportunity for our students and in shaping future mentoring experiences with the magazine. I’m proud to lead this charge, and I’m grateful to share it with my colleagues and students, without whom none of this would be possible.” 

Published by students, for students, Film Matters includes features, reviews, profiles of film studies departments, articles that engage the undergraduate film studies community and prepare students for graduate study in the field, and resources and opportunities for undergraduate scholars. This partnership complements the focus on engaged learning provided through the Hendrix Odyssey Program, which offers a structured experience of active learning throughout students’ undergraduate education. 

McKim has been a longtime member of the Film Matters advisory board and has served as a guest editor in the past. At Hendrix, she has received multiple honors for her work with students, including the 2014-15 United Methodist Exemplary Teacher Award and the 2019-20 Carole Herrick Award for Excellence in Academic Advising. She has written the books Cinema as Weather: Stylistic Screens and Atmospheric Change and Love in the Time of Cinema, in addition to essays in a range of magazines and journals; her current project considers film as a natural history.  

“My own writing and teaching grow out of a love of experiencing films and reading books, which—in college and grad school, thanks to my peers and professors—helped me to find my own closest friends and truest self. As an undergraduate student, working together with my co-editor of our college literary magazine, I learned the power and intimacy of a friendship built through collaborative writing and shared inquiry,” McKim said. “Such opportunities that blend our learning with community, our professional interests with personal passions, are those that I always want to nurture in my students.” 

Starting in September 2020, current undergraduate students and recent alumni looking for online publication opportunities with Film Matters will now work with Hendrix College. Student writers, in addition to filmmakers seeking interview or review coverage, may email submissions or emails of interest/introduction to FilmMattersOnline@hendrix.edu.