Faculty & Staff
Faculty & Staff News

Tuesday, June 07, 2022
Dunya Mikhail, an internationally celebrated poet and Oakland University special lecturer of Arabic in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, has been awarded the 18th UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture, based on the recommendations of an international jury of experts.

Friday, April 22, 2022
The Oakland University chapter of Sigma Xi, the national scientific research honor society, celebrated the research achievements of students and faculty during its annual lecture and banquet on April 7 on OU’s campus. The lecture was given by David Good, an author, filmmaker and member of the Yanomami tribe, an isolated indigenous people who reside deep in the Amazon Rainforest across parts of southeastern Venezuela and western Brazil.

Thursday, April 07, 2022
The Research Office at Oakland University presented awards to several OU faculty members in recognition of their outstanding research and initiative during the Research, Innovation and Engagement Town Hall, which was held on Thursday, April 7. The awards were presented virtually this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tuesday, April 05, 2022
Oakland University’s School of Nursing and its Board of Visitors have announced the 2022 Nightingale Award winners and runners-up. This year’s top nurses in Michigan come from a variety of clinical positions and settings and are recognized as exceptional in their areas of nursing.

Friday, March 18, 2022
GryphonHR, an OU INC client company specializing in human resource management and compliance, is being recognized as one of the best small businesses in Michigan. The company has been selected as the 2022 SmartZone Best Small Business Award recipient by Michigan Celebrates Small Business, an initiative of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation to honor and promote entrepreneurship across the state.

Friday, March 04, 2022
For its 2022 Meadow Brook Lecture in International Affairs, Oakland University will welcome keynote speaker Dr. Mary Gallagher to campus on Wednesday, March 16. Dr. Gallagher will present her talk, “U.S.-China Relations: Now What?”, with a Q&A session to follow, from 7-8:30 p.m. in the ballroom of Meadow Brook Hall.

Monday, February 21, 2022
Oakland University recently held its 6th annual Interprofessional Education Workshop, which brought together 340 students, faculty and community leaders from various health professions, including nursing, physical therapy, medicine, physician assistant, public health and social work. This year’s workshop focused on mental illness and substance use disorders, complex conditions that often coexist and require interprofessional collaboration to manage properly.

Friday, February 18, 2022
Researchers in Oakland University’s Department of Biological Sciences have published a study that employs statistical models to analyze host-parasite relationships – in this case between tadpoles (hosts) and flatworms (parasites). The study, published in The American Naturalist, one of the world’s leading peer-reviewed publications in ecology, evolution and behavior research, uses the Metabolic Theory of Ecology (MTE) to describe the role temperature plays in that relationship.

Wednesday, February 16, 2022
At the American Physical Therapy Association’s Combine Sections Meeting on Feb. 4 in San Antonio, Dr. Chris Wilson, an associate professor of physical therapy at Oakland University, received two awards — The President’s Award and The Debbra Flomenhoft Humanitarian Award — from the Academy of Oncologic Physical Therapy, an organization dedicated to the advancement of physical therapist practice in the area of cancer and oncologic diagnoses.

Wednesday, February 02, 2022
Oakland University’s Creative Writing Program will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a fiction reading by author Matt Bell, whose most recent book, “Appleseed” was recognized by The New York Times. The OU alumnus will share his work during a campus event at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 10 in Oakland Center Banquet Room A. In-person attendees will be required to complete OU’s Daily Health Screening Form. The reading will also be streamed via Zoom. To register, click here.

Thursday, January 20, 2022
Oakland University Professor Ilias Cholis was recently awarded a $60,000 grant from the United States Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science in support of his research on dark matter, a form of matter that has never been detected absorbing, reflecting or emitting light and is, therefore, extremely hard to spot.

Thursday, January 13, 2022
Puerto Rican Paso Fino Caballo Cuentas Claras, ridden by René Concepción, on the grounds of El Morro, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (Hostos Gallardo)Researchers in Oakland University’s Department of Biological Sciences collaborated with researchers from the United States, Ukraine, Sweden and Belgium on a study examining the genetic ancestry of two horse breeds, the common Puerto Rican Non-Purebred and the Puerto Rican Paso Fino, a horse noted for its smooth, sure-footed gait.

Monday, January 10, 2022
Oakland University Professor Khalid Malik has been awarded $92,500 by the Michigan Translational Research and Commercialization (MTRAC) Innovation Hub for Advanced Computing for his work on an Anti-Deep Fake technology and Deep Forgery Detector, which incorporates Deep Learning, Knowledge Graphs, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies to detect visual deepfakes, as well as voice cloning.

Thursday, December 02, 2021
Theatre alumnus Esau Pritchett has joined the cast of Keenan Scott II's Thoughts of a Colored Man on Broadway. The production began performances at Broadway's Golden Theatre on October 1, ahead of an official opening on October 31. Natasha Ashey with Broadway World has called Thoughts of a Colored Man “a jaw-dropping, thought-provoking, incredibly real production that is not to be missed,” and Pritchett’s performance has been praised by The New York Times.

Monday, November 22, 2021
With an impressive performance in regional competition, OU’s Ethics Bowl team recently earned a spot at a national tournament to be held in February. The team went undefeated at the Central States Regional Ethics Bowl Competition on November 6, placing third by points in a field of 18 teams from 10 schools.

Thursday, November 11, 2021
Kristen Munyan, assistant professor and undergraduate program director in Oakland University’s School of Nursing, was selected to receive a $25,000 grant from the Foundation for Academic Nursing, the philanthropic arm of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN). The grant will support Dr. Munyan’s work on Enhancing Laboratory Infrastructure to support at-risk and English as a Second Language (ESL) students.

Tuesday, November 09, 2021
In her recently published book, Mastering Emotions: Feelings, Power, and Slavery in the United States, Oakland University Professor Erin Austin Dwyer examines the interactions between slaveholders and enslaved people, and between White people and free Black people, to expose how emotions such as love, terror, happiness, and trust functioned as social and economic capital for slaveholders and enslaved people alike.

Thursday, November 04, 2021
The Oakland University Film Studies and Production program, with co-sponsorship by the College of Arts and Sciences, Student Affairs and Diversity, Women and Gender Studies, and the English department, is hosting a festival of three films about the lives of women in Afghanistan, directed by Afghan women. The festival will take place Nov. 7-21 on Sundays.

Monday, October 25, 2021
Professor Chris Kobus, director of Outreach, Recruitment, and Retention, and Bianca Bryant, assistant director of Outreach, Recruitment and Retention, for the Oakland University School of Engineering and Computer Science have been honored with the University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA) Engagement Award for providing outstanding educational programming to K-12 students.