For the Record, Aug. 8, 2025

Mikayla Jackson with Robert Oakes, , assistant professor of biomedical engineering

Mikayla Jackson, a doctoral student in the College of Engineering, has received the 2025 George W. Laird Merit Fellowship, created to honor the memory of George W. Laird to encourage recipients to engage in intellectual pursuits that may extend beyond their chosen fields of study. Jackson will continue her commitment to outreach through her work with the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), where she is developing a low-cost, 3D-printed microscope for its use in K-12 schools. This project leverages affordable fabrication materials to introduce students to advanced STEM concepts that are typically beyond the standard curriculum. She is a graduate research assistant in the Oakes Research Laboratory at UD.

Robert “Smitty” Oakes, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, was recently featured in an online interview by his alma mater, the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Utah, discussing his career path, graduate school, mentorship and team building.

Publications

Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women’s Studies and professor of humanities, continues to publish poetry connected to her research and teaching interests. Her poem titled “The Hours,” an account of an imaginary conversation with Virginia Woolf, was published in Issue #21 of Last Stanza Poetry Journal, edited by Jenny Kalahar (North Haven, CT: Stackfeed Press, 2025), pp. 77–78, which is sold on Amazon. com. Another poem of hers, “French Kiss,” is in the current issue (#117) of Hanging Loose Magazine (pp. 115-116) a poetry journal that has been publishing continuously for 59 years and is sold by Hanging Loose Press in Brooklyn, New York. Every issue of Hanging Loose has a distinctive feature–a small section devoted to work by high-school age poets. When Stetz was 16 years old, one of her very first publications was a poem in that magazine. 

Heinz-Uwe Haus, professor emeritus of theatre and dance, published an essay, titled “European Community of Experience and National Cultural Identity – Facts” in the yearly magazine Symposium ( The Romanian Institute of Orthodox Theology and Spirituality, Vol. XXXII, Nr. 1, 2025, New York). Haus analyzes how in the process of globalization, two dynamics collide. One aims at leveling out cultural differences, the other emphasizes the need for diversity in cultural, social and economic developments in different regions of the world. Dealing with these dynamics is one of the great challenges of this century. In order to do justice to this, the author describes why it is important to examine the similarities and differences between cultures more intensively to undergo historical-anthropological research and reflection; building on this, education must be seen more than ever as an intercultural pan-European task.

In Memoriam

Kevin A. Brown, adjunct instructor in criminal justice in the Associate in Arts Program at Wilmington, passed away Aug. 1, 2025. He began teaching at UD in 2013.

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