Faculty/Staff Achievements Roundup: Thering receives SUNY Online Effective Practice Award

This is part of a regular series highlighting the honors and achievements of Buffalo State University faculty and staff. The roundup is compiled from the previous months’ submissions to the Daily Bulletin and department newsletters.

Angela Thering, lecturer of adult education, was awarded a 2026 SUNY Online Effective Practice Award for her practice: Developing Students’ A.I. Fluency Through Custom Prompts and Persona-based Instructional Design. The practice is implemented in a graduate online instructional design course in the adult education program. It centers on a multiphase, persona-based learning sequence that builds AI literacy and fluency through targeted learning activities. This is the second consecutive SUNY Online Effective Practice Award for Thering and the fourth SUNY Online Award for Buffalo State’s adult education program (in 2025, the program received a first place award). Thering also won an OSCQR Individual Achievement Honorable Mention from SUNY Online this year.

“This recognition reflects the innovative work happening in our Adult Education program to prepare graduate students for a rapidly changing educational landscape,” said Andrea Nikischer, program coordinator. “By helping students develop AI fluency through ethical, reflective, and inclusive instructional design practices, Dr. Thering is ensuring our graduates are equipped to use emerging technologies thoughtfully. These recognitions highlight Dr. Thering’s outstanding commitment to excellence in online education. Through thoughtful course design, attention to accessibility, and a focus on meaningful student engagement, she exemplifies the high standards of quality we value in adult education.”

In addition to Thering’s honors, here are some other recent outstanding achievements by Buffalo State faculty and staff members: 

Assistant professor of art and design Alexandra Allen will have four publications this year: one was recently published with Research in Arts Education, one is approved for publication this summer in Art Education Journal, and an additional two will be finished with reviews this summer. She is also currently working on a book titled Inclusion in Art Education: A Disability Studies Approach, which will be published in 2027.

Matt Baran, assistant director of the Muriel A. Howard Honors Program, received the Honors Professional of the Year Award at the 2026 Northeast Regional Honors Council (NRHC) conference in New Haven, Connecticut. The award recognizes professionals who demonstrate a dedication to honors education at their home institution as well as significant engagement at the regional and national level. Baran established the Honors Leaders peer mentoring program at Buffalo State in 2022, introduced a new HON 189 experiential learning course, “The Queen City: Understanding Place in Buffalo, N.Y.,” based on NCHC Place As Text pedagogy, published in the Honors In Practice journal, and has presented at both NRHC and the national conference, NCHC. 

Tim Bryant, associate professor of English, presented “Second-Guessing the Utopian Impulse in The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet” on March 19 at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando. The talk applied Fredric Jameson’s claim, that utopian impulses expressed in literature are most useful when they fail, to a reading of Becky Chambers’s 2014 hopepunk novel. Bryant is currently revising the talk for publication in an essay collection on theoretical and applied models for teaching twenty-first-century literature.

Bridget María Chesterton, professor of history and social studies education, along with Brazilian scholar Pedro Mallman, has been awarded the Middle Atlantic Conference on Latin American Studies Harold Eugene Davis Prize for the best article published by a member in the past two years for their article “Modernity, Migration, and Defeat: The Brazilian Gaze in Noites Paraguayas during the Era of Alfredo Stroessner,” in Latin and Latinx Visual Culture 7, no. 2. Chesterton also recently gave a webinar at UCLA’s Latin American Institute. Her talk, “The Hotel Guaraní: The Brazilianization of Paraguay during the Stroessner Dictatorship,” is a discussion of her forthcoming book with the same title with the University of Pittsburgh Press and is available online for viewing.

Naila Ansari Catilo, associate professor of theater and Africana studies, and Erin Barr, assistant professor of history and social studies education, appeared on Buffalo Toronto Public Media’s NPR program Group Chat in March for a conversation exploring the cultural and historical themes surrounding the film Sinners and annual St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. The episode examined the intersections of Irish and African American cultural history, including discussions of Irish dance traditions and the shared historical experiences between the two communities. 

Erica Carey, coordinator and instructor of math support services, has completed and achieved the Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies certification through the International Association of Accessibility Professionals. This achievement demonstrates her dedication and perseverance in furthering her knowledge and understanding of disability needs, global laws and standards, the barriers to learning for different disabilities, and how assistive technology bridges the gap for learners. 

Associate professor Kim Chinquee’s piece “How Do You Roll” (excerpt from her 2022 novel Pipette, originally published in Post Road, and winner of a 2023 Pushcart Prize) was selected for inclusion in The Pushcart Book of Twenty-First Century Poetry and Prose, edited by Philip Schultz and Bill Henderson. This anthology showcases 100 pieces of the best fiction, nonfiction, and poetry published in the Pushcart Prize anthology over the past 25 years. In the regarded resource and network WRITING WORKSHOPS, Chinquee was named as one of eight masters (alongside writers Lydia Davis, Diane Williams, George Saunders, Etgar Keret, and others) in the flash fiction form, reiterating her title as “the queen of flash fiction.” Chinquee has published hundreds of very short stories in major literary journals, earning multiple Pushcart Prizes and establishing a body of work that maps the emotional terrain of everyday life with startling economy. Chinquee's prose poetry collection, Contact with the Wild (MadHat Press, 2025), is a finalist for the 2025 Big Other Readers’ Choice Award. The winner will be announced at the 2025 Big Other Book Awards Ceremony later this year. 

Leigh Duffy, associate professor of government, planning, and philosophy, presented her paper, “Knowing-by-Being: An Epistemology of Meditation,” at the Pacific Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association Conference on April 8.

Carolyn Guzski, associate professor of music, presented "Unsung Heroine: Caterina Jarboro and the Desegregation of the New York Opera Stage" as part of the Dr. Virginia Radley SUNY Fellowship Webinar, Hidden Architects of Change, on March 25. Guzski joined Radley Fellows from SUNY Binghamton and Brockport in a program honoring Women's History Month, moderated by Dr. Shadi Sandvik, SUNY senior vice chancellor for research, innovation, and economic development.

Great Lakes Center field station manager Brian Haas and aquatic research specialist Ben Szczygiel were interviewed by the Buffalo News for an article that ran earlier this month. The article detailed the two weather buoys maintained by the field station staff—one in Lake Erie about six miles from Dunkirk’s shoreline, and one just two miles west of the Buffalo harbor. The seasonal buoys provide real-time data by measuring above-water data such as wind speed/direction, air temperature, wave height, etc., and below-water data including temperature and varying intervals, chlorophyl, turbidity, dissolved oxygen, and conductivity. The new Buffalo buoy will also feature a webcam that will take a 30-second image at the top of every hour. Haas and Szczygiel also recently gave a presentation on the buoys at the Buffalo Maritime Center.

Jinseok (Jin) Heo, chair and associate professor of chemistry, presented an invited research talk titled “Freezing into Function: Nanoparticle Aggregates for Plasmonic and SERS Sensing” on March 23 at the Chemistry Department at the University at Albany. The host of the seminar was Dr. Igor Lednev, SUNY distinguished professor and Williams-Raycheff endowed professor. A potential collaboration was also discussed.

Camille Holmgren, professor of geosciences, published an article entitled “A 40,000-year packrat midden series from Cataviña, central Baja California, Mexico" in the peer-reviewed journal Quaternary Research. The study provides a record of vegetation change since the last ice age in a region rich in biodiversity and endemic species.

Alexander Karatayev and Lyubov Burlakova, senior research scientists at the Great Lakes Center, were co-authors on a paper, “Developing the first binational dreissenid mussel biomass map for Lake Erie,” that won the 2025 Elsevier Early Career Award, an award which recognizes the top-ranked paper in the 2025 volume of the Journal of Great Lakes Research, whose lead author is within five years from their terminal degree at the time of acceptance.

Some of associate professor of art and design David Mawer’s recent artwork was on display in Repeat as Necessary at Deluge Contemporary Art in Victoria, BC. He was one of 10 artists from eight countries whose work was accepted. Additionally, Mawer received an invitation to show some recent work in PROYECTOR Festival 2026 in Madrid this September. The festival is “an international platform dedicated to the dissemination of moving image, with a focus on experimental, contemporary and critically engaged practices.” Since its foundation it has featured artists from over 60 countries working across video art, installation, and expanded cinema formats. Mawer was also filmed and interviewed for The Process: WNY Artists, a video portrait series archived at the Burchfield Penney that now features around 25 artists. The Burchfield premiered the latest collection of these documentaries in May.

Marko Miletich, assistant professor of modern and classical languages, has published the article “Traduttore Traditore: How the ‘Unfaithful’ Illuminate Translation and Interpreting Studies” in Estudios de Traducción. This peer-reviewed annual journal is published by the University Institute of Modern Languages and Translation at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

Joseph A. Miller, associate professor of art and design, had several of his paintings published in 300 magazine, Fine Art Shippers magazine, on the Fine Art and You blog, and the Trendy Art Ideas blog. 

Shasti O’Leary Soudant, assistant professor of art and design, has been selected to be one of Buffalo State’s participants in the AI in Action Program at UB this summer. O’Leary Soudant was also chosen, along with two contingent interior design faculty and nine Buffalo State art and design alumni, to create artwork for the new Buffalo Bills stadium. 

Brent Patterson, associate professor of art and design, was a technical reviewer for the book 3D Environmental Design with Blender 5, which was recently published.

Christopher Pennuto, interim director of Great Lakes Center, recently was awarded a $100K grant from NY DEC, with collaborators Jinseok Heo and Sujit Suwal from the Chemistry Department, to isolate and verify mating pheromone compounds for controlling invasive crayfish.

Bhakti Sharma, associate professor of interior design, was nominated by freshman Victor Kachaluba for Dr. Muriel A. Howard Presidential Award for the Promotion of Equity and Campus Diversity. She received this award on April 21, 2026.

Tao Tang, professor of geosciences, published his textbook, Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Analysis: Applying ArcGIS Pro, with John Wiley & Sons Ltd. and the International Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Press. This textbook is the first of its type to combine both illustrations of theoretical and conceptual approaches and hands-on GIS exercises. 

Top photo: Angela Thering at the 2024 Faculty and Staff Fall Research Forum; photo by Jesse Steffan-Colucci.

Headshot courtesy of Thering.