Congratulations to Jeff Bailey, who has been elevated to dean of Ellis Library, where he has served on staff since 1991. With a Master of Science in Library Science degree from Pennsylvania Western University, Clarion, he has been library director since 2009, when his predecessor retired. Bailey served as president of Faculty Senate in 2000-01, and was interim library director twice earlier in his A-State career.

Dr. Holly Hall, professor of strategic communication, serves on the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Board of Ethics and Professional Standards which developed a report on the ethical use of artificial intelligence for public relations practitioners. The group’s report provides guidelines for using generative AI and AI tools while staying within PRSA’s long-standing code of ethics. The committee’s work was covered in an article by PRWeek.

Dr. Richard Segall, professor of information systems and business analytics, is lead author of an article, “Data Visualization of Big Data for Predictive and Descriptive Analytics for Stroke, COVID-19, and Diabetes" in International Journal of Big Data and Analytics in Healthcare. This work, funded by seed money and the summer student internship program from Arkansas Biosciences Institute (ABI), involved undergraduate co-author Soichiro Takashashi of Japan.

Research directed by Dr. Bernardo Pérez-Zamorano, A-State Campus Querétaro, was presented to the Undergraduate Symposium at Rice University in the section “Systems, Synthetic and Physical Biology.” Biotechnology senior Luisa Macias presented the study, with which students Carla Zavala and Kevin Santoyo assisted. They discussed the evolutionary history of type one aldolase enzymes, which catalyze carbon-carbon unions and show valuable potential for the synthesis of organic compounds.

Dr. Angelo Brown, assistant professor of criminology, gave an invited talk at the annual Jail Resources Day in Little Rock. He discussed the value and impact of analytical data, what it means to the justice system, and how a university can assist in its application. Brown also spoke at the annual meeting of the Criminology Consortium, discussing how the transition to virtual courts has impacted the judicial system.