KEN CALHOUN, MFA, assistant provost, published a short story, “Bad Actor,” in The Harvard Advocate, the nation’s oldest continuously published literary magazine. In the story, a conspiracy-embracing vigilante invades the home of a man he believes is a crisis actor who is merely pretending to mourn the loss of his child in a school shooting.

RACHEL DOUGHERTY, M.P.P., director of leadership giving/philanthropy and engagement officer, received the Torchlight Award at Lasell’s annual Employee Recognition Breakfast.

SAMANTHA DUTRA, ED.D., LMHC, lecturer, presented and published “Domestic Violence, IPV. A Progressive Understanding” at the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) New Hampshire Chapter Conference JEDI Symposium.

PATRICIA GARCIA, PH.D., assistant professor of education, published “Building Bridges for Multilingual Learners” in Language Magazine and “Peer Coaching in Teacher Preparation” in Faculty Focus. She also presented her action research study, “Peer Coaching for Teacher Candidates: Strengthening Professional Practice for Multilingual Learners,” at the National Association of Teacher Educators (ATE) Conference in February.

ETHAN GILSDORF, MFA, lecturer, published a personal essay, “50 years on, ‘Rocky Horror’ is still for us freaks and geeks” with WBUR/NPR’s Cognoscenti, and an essay, “Weaving Imagination with Fact: Using Research as Metaphor in Creative Writing,” in the Brevity Blog. His essay “Plastic Water Bottle: Origin Story,” published in Witness, was nominated for the 2025 Best of the Net Anthology.

ELIZABETH HARTMANN, PH.D., professor and chair of graduate education, was part of the team awarded a five-year, near $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education in partnership with colleagues at UMass Lowell. The grant will fund training of 32 total scholars (16 at Lasell) who will receive fully paid tuition and travel/materials stipends.

MEG KEARNEY, MFA, director of the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing program, published three sonnets in the winter issue of Boston College’s Post Road literary magazine: “Out of the Blue,” “Bill Matthews’ Students Can’t Believe He’s Dead,” and “Rest in Peace.”

ASHMITA KHASNABISH, PH.D., lecturer, presented a paper, “Steiner and Sri Aurobindo on Spiritual Evolution and Philosophy,” at the Harvard Divinity School. She was also interviewed about her book, Virtual Diaspora, Postcolonial Literature and Feminism, at the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival in India.

AMANDA KNIGHT, M.S., director of student activities and orientation, received the Early Distinction Award at Lasell’s annual Employee Recognition Breakfast.

SARA LARGE, PH.D., MFA, associate professor of writing; MICHELLE NIESTEPSKI, PH.D., assistant vice president of academic operations; ANNIE OU, PH.D., associate professor of writing; and GREGORY CASS, PH.D., director of the writing program, presented a panel, “Having the Conversations that Matter: Implementing and Assessing Support-Centered Self Placement in First Year Writing” at the Conference on College Composition and Communication convention in Cleveland in March.

VARSHITHA MANJUNATH, M.S., assistant professor of cybersecurity, was elected to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) Boston Section leadership team and published a paper, “Lightweight MultiTenant Security Isolation for Resource-Constrained Edge Environments,” as part of the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Edge Computing and Scalable Cloud.

JESSI ORLANDO, M.A., associate director of the Center for Career Readiness, received the Champion of Collaboration Award at Lasell’s annual Employee Recognition Breakfast.

CHRYSTAL D. PORTER, PH.D., provost, completed the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Ruth C. Easley Leadership Institute, an advanced leadership development program focused on strategic governance, organizational effectiveness, and service. The experience further strengthened her commitment to values-based leadership and institutional impact.

PHOEBE ROBERTS, MFA, lecturer, debuted her Victorian adventure play HOME RULE at the Boskone Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention in February.

DIVYA SHARMA, M.S., lecturer, published a paper, “Statistical Modeling of Achievement in Engineering Pedagogy—Targeted and Computational Interventions: Agrarian Regions,” in New York University’s The Torch Journal of Higher Education and Student Affairs.

HALEY SHERMAN ’22 G’25, M.S., project director, Project LASER, received the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award at Lasell’s annual Employee Recognition Breakfast.

KERRY SMITH, PH.D., associate professor of exercise science/chair of exercise science and health science, received the Early Distinction Award at Lasell’s annual Employee Recognition Breakfast.

JESSE TAURIAC, PH.D., assistant vice president and chief institutional engagement officer, was named the 2026 USA Professor Laureate by the TramutoPorter Foundation. He represented the foundation during a week-long series of events in Italy that highlighted his work in inclusive education, student mental health, and campus climate transformation. He and Donato Tramuto co-presented to graduate students at the University of Florence and the University of Perugia.

ANH LE TRAN, PH.D., the Joan Weiler Arnow ’49 Professor of Economics and Management, contributed an article, “Adam Smith and Freedom,” in PhanBook’s commemorative edited volume 300 Years of Adam Smith.

BILLY UBERTI ’14, M.ED., former head baseball coach/recruiting coordinator, received the Torchlight Award at Lasell’s annual Employee Recognition Breakfast.

BRIAN WARDYGA, ED.D., professor of communication, completed production of The Video Games Textbook, 3rd Edition, and won the 2026 Intercollegiate Broadcasting System award for best faculty advisor (television) for the second time in five years.