Outgoing Chairs Honored For Contributions to the College of Sciences
L to R: Dr. Arlen Chase, Dean Michael Johnson, Dr. Jana Jasinski and Dr. Laurence Von Kalm
Drs. Arlen Chase, Jana Jasinski and Laurence VonKalm were recently honored by the College of Sciences for their hard work as the anthropology, sociology, and biology chairs, respectively. A small celebration featuring a Pegasus cake and fellow associates, including Dean Johnson, was held in the College of Sciences building.
Dr. Arlen Chase, Associate Dean, College of Sciences
Dr. Chase, former Anthropology Chair, has been promoted to Associate Dean of the College of Sciences where he will take on duties focused in the Undergraduate support area as well as being the college point person for faculty qualifications review and the regional campus liaison.
Dr. Chase is currently a Professor of Anthropology, specializing in anthropological archaeology, and has served as Department Chair for the Department of Anthropology since 2007. He previously served as Interim Department Chair of Anthropology in 2006 when Anthropology & Sociology became independent departments within the newly formed COS. Dr. Chase received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983. He came to UCF initially as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology in 1984. Dr. Chase served as Assistant Dean and Research Associate at the University of Penn prior to coming to UCF. He is the recipient of many honors and awards including being named as a UCF Pegasus Professor in 2007. He has served as a member of the Florida BOG and UCF BOT and is the recipient of 2 UCF TIP and 2 RIA awards. Dr. Chase is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His long-standing research program in Belize investigating the Maya civilization there is world renown.
His research interests focus on archaeological method and theory in the Maya area with particular emphasis on contextual, settlement, and ceramic analysis and secondary interests on urbanism, ethnicity, and epigraphic interpretation.
Dr. Jana Jasinski, Associate Chair, College of Graduate Studies
Dr. Jasinski, former Sociology Chair, has been promoted to Associate Dean of the College of Graduate Studies where she will focus on financial support. Working with various faculty committees to award fellowships to graduate students and with programs to allocate tuition waivers are a few of her new responsibilities. Dr. Jasinski will be responsible for working with different departments and units on campus to develop new graduate programs and to participate in the process of program reviews that take place for every academic program every seven years. She also intends to develop a graduate fellows community.
When asked about transitioning to her new postition, Dr. Jasinski had this to say. “Part of the reason I am moving to this position is because I enjoy finding opportunities to support our graduate student population at UCF. In this new role I am looking forward to doing just that.”
Dr. Jasinski received her Ph.D. from the University of New Hampshire (1996) where she was also a National Institute of Mental Health Post Doctoral Research Fellow at the Family Research Laboratory (1997). Dr. Jasinski’s research interests are in the areas of both lethal and non-lethal interpersonal violence, substance abuse, the response of the criminal justice system to violence, and the negative consequences of child sexual assault. Her research appears in Child Abuse & Neglect, Violence and Victims, Social Science Quarterly, and Journal of Interpersonal violence. She is also the co-editor of two books: Out of the Darkness: Contemporary Perspectives on Family Violence and Partner Violence: A Comprehensive Review of 20 Years of Research.
Dr. Laurence Von Kalm, Biology
Dr. Laurence Von Kalm, former Interim Biology Chair, will return to being a faculty member and focus on research with his laboratory.
Dr Von Kalm’s laboratory pursues three main areas of interest. First, they study epithelial morphogenesis in Drosophila imaginal discs. They are particularly interested to understand the coordination action of steroid hormones and intracellular signaling pathways in this process. A second project focuses on the biology of polyamine transport in Drosophila epithelia. This is a collaborative project with the Phanstiel laboratory in Chemistry. Their major objective is to identify a polyamine transporter, with the goal of using the sophisticated genetic approaches available in Drosophila to study transporter structure and function. These studies will help with the identification and characterization of a human polyamine transporter, and the development of anti-neoplastic drugs that target the transporter. A third project, conducted in collaboration with the Jenkins laboratory in the Department of Biology, investigates a possible role for Wolbachia in the reproductive life cycle of Daphnia. These studies have implications for the Ecology and Molecular Biology of host-parasite interactions, and the evolution of reproductive strategies.