FACULTY KUDOS James Dockins, Ed.D., assistant professor of management, Kelly Phipps, Ph.D., associate professor of management, and Michael Stellern, Ph.D., professor of economics, authored a case study titled “The Turnaround at Truman Medical Center,” which was published in The Business Case Journal. Meredith Harold, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, assistant professor of communication sciences and disorders, presented a poster titled “Demystifying research: accessing and understanding evidence for clinical practice” at the American SpeechLanguage Hearing Association’s annual conference.
For more faculty news, visit rockhurst.edu/facultykudos.
Rick Janet, Ph.D., professor of history, is the author of In Missouri’s Wilds: St. Mary’s of the Barrens and the American Catholic Church, 1818 to the Present, which was published by Truman State University Press. Glenna Mahoney, D.N.P., associate professor at Research College of Nursing, and Susan Chrisman, Ph.D., professor at Research College of Nursing, presented a poster at the 21st Annual Midwest Regional Nursing Educators conference: Innovations, Quality and Safety in Nursing Education and Practice. The abstract is titled “Developing Evidence-Based Competency Assessment.”
Research Reveals Treasure Trove of Information About Collection S
ometimes, Loren Whittaker, Ph.D., would just sit in front of one of the works in the Van Ackeren Collection of Religious Art. Call it a stakeout.
That’s because Whittaker has been something like a detective for the collection, one of only 10 permanent art collections on display at Jesuit universities in the U.S., trying to piece together the individual histories of the collection’s objects as part of her dissertation at the University of Kansas. It was a project that began when she came to the Greenlease Gallery to research a 1410 work by Andrea di Bartolo. “And Anne (Austin Pearce, MFA, associate professor of art and gallery director), in a moment of inspiration, took me by the arm and said ‘you should research this collection,’” she said, smiling. Though the Van Ackeren Collection, a series of gifts from longtime University benefactors Robert and Virginia Greenlease starting in 1967, was purchased with the help of Ralph Coe, then a curator at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the amount of information known about each work could fit on its gallery placard.
Loren Whittaker, Ph.D.
“Each painting and sculpture had some incredible mystery about it.” —Loren Whittaker, Ph.D.
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WINTER 2018
Six years and thousands of frequent-flyer miles later, Whittaker’s dissertation fills in a lot of the details. By traveling to many of the places throughout Europe where these artists lived, she was able determine how each object was made, by whom, and why. “It took a phenomenal number of hours just looking at each work, to peel back the onion, so to speak, of each individual detail and then to compare those details with securely attributed works — for instance, making sure that the dimple on the left cheek matched the one overseas,” Whittaker said. “Each painting and sculpture had some incredible mystery about it.” Whittaker said she hopes to turn the information into a book in the near future and to inspire others to continue researching the collection she called a “jewel” among its peers.