WSCC Faculty Publish Research

West Shore Community College faculty were a part of two publications recently; one a research paper and the other a book.

Dr. Adam Moreno recently started at the college as an Associate Professor of Mathematics. He received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Notre Dame, and came to West Shore from Amherst College in Massachusetts where he worked as a visiting assistant professor.  His research paper was published by Springer, a publisher of journals, books and eBooks in all areas of Mathematics.  According to Springer.com, they “publish many of the most prestigious journals in Mathematics, including a number of fully open access journals.”

His ​paper, titled “Core reduction for singular Riemannian foliations and applications to positive curvature,” aimed to look at what conditions​, if any, ​may ensure that a​ particular ​quotient space has boundary and if there is a way to determine the presence of boundary prior to taking the quotient.  Riemannian foliations utilize language that relates to trees.  ​Given a geometric space (a Riemannian manifold), one can partition the space into submanifolds (called “leaves”) which are equidistant from each other (i.e., parallel planes.) By forgetting the ambient space and focusing only on the geometry and interplay of the leaves themselves, one forms the quotient (or “leaf space.”) This quotient space may or may not have a boundary, and Dr. Moreno’s work establishes a condition which can detect the presence of boundary.

Dr. Moreno was first inspired to look at this during the process of writing his thesis.  His advisor proposed that he tackle a well-known open problem: is the boundary of an Alexandrov space that itself an Alexandrov space? “We realized right away that this problem was too broad, so we turned our focus to special types of Alexandrov spaces, like leaf spaces,” stated Moreno.  “Though it would have been nice to solve the open problem, we were able to prove that the boundary of a leaf space is in fact an Alexandrov space, ​which was progress.”

“We are so fortunate to have faculty the caliber of Dr. Moreno teaching our students,” said Dean of Arts and Sciences Darby Johnsen.  “Not only has he been a part of ground-breaking research, as a first-generation high school and college graduate, Adam has a history that will relate to much of our student body.”

Dr. Moreno will be presenting his findings at the Joint Mathematics Meeting, the largest math conference in the world, early next year.

Another WSCC Faculty member, Dr. Erwin Selimos, professor of sociology, was part of a recent publication. Routledge, a leading publisher of social scientific research, published the book “School-Based Family Counseling with Refugees and Immigrants,” of which Dr. Selimo was a co-author.  As a sociologist, his research interests include socialization processes, childhood and youth studies, and the sociology of families. The book focuses on the practical application of school-based family counseling emphasizing collaboration, mutual assistance and joint problem solving.

The group of authors are leading specialists in the field of family counseling and immigrant and refugee settlement.  The project emerged out of Dr. Selimos’ involvement in the Institute for School-based Counselling’s special international working group on immigrants and refugees.  “I was asked by Dr. Brian Gerrard, the chair of the institute, to participate in the group after he read one of my published scientific articles on migrant youth in Canada,” stated Dr. Selimos.  “The three authors of the book come from different disciplinary backgrounds: sociology, psychology, and counseling. We thought that having an interdisciplinary team would ensure a broad perspective when approaching intervention strategies for immigrants and refugees.”

The target audience for the book are those who work in settings such as schools or community services that assist immigrant and refugee clients.  The goal of the book is to identify some of the problems and pressures immigrant and refugee families face and provide concrete strategies on how to assist them in managing these problems.

“We are proud of our faculty and the work they do outside the classroom to enhance their academic discipline, our communities, and our students,” said President Scott Ward.

To find out more on Dr. Selimos’s book, visit routledge.com.  For Dr. Moreno’s journal, visit https://rdcu.be/cRz1A