In Which a Biologist Turns to Military History

03/14/23 • 42 min

Dr. Bethany Wasik is an Acquisitions Editor with Cornell University Press. She currently acquires projects in the fields of Classics, Archaeology, Modern Western European History, and Military History. Prior to joining the acquisitions team at Cornell Bethany completed a PhD and two postdoctoral fellowships in molecular genetics and evolutionary biology. Her transition from academia to publishing was fueled not only by a passion for editing and reviewing scholarly content, but also a desire to promote that content to a larger audience, which I hope we can talk about today. In addition to her science background, Bethany also minored in archaeology and enjoyed a robust liberal arts undergraduate experience, and so looks forward to building a publication list at Cornell in all the areas she acquires. Outside of the publishing world Bethany enjoys hiking, genealogy, bourbon, and creating complex and ridiculous Twitter hashtags!

Previous Episode

OER and the Future of Education

Relinda Ruth is the Director of Educational Resources and OER Specialist at the University of Arkansas-Cossatot Community College. She is responsible for the Educational Resource Center (ERC) at three campuses, which includes Kimball Library, all tutoring services, the college’s award-winning textbook rental & OER program, along with textbook procurement. She was instrumental in building the state’s first two-year-college internal textbook rental program and growing the college’s OER initiative in 2015. In 2020, UA Cossatot was awarded a Title III SIP 2.2 million-dollar grant, and Relinda serves as the Title III Director. As the college’s OER Specialist, she is responsible for the development and implementation of policies relating to open licensing, OER initiatives and practices, and provides guidance on Creative Commons licensing and OER content. She compiles open resources and provides OER usage training for faculty. Relinda leads the college’s OER Team, raises awareness of open education activities and practices, and as a leading contact for OER in Arkansas, she encourages broad participation across the state through conferences, also chairing the ARKLink OER Task Force. From 2019-21, Relinda served a two-year term on the six-member steering committee for the Open Education Network, and she is certified for specialization in open licensing and the Commons through Creative Commons.

Stephanie Pierce is Director of User Services and Director of the Physics Library at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, AR. In addition to managing one of three branch libraries, she serves on the Open Educational Resources Team and Open Access Interest Group to promote and advocate participation in the various open initiatives on campus. Her research interests include utilizing text-mining to assess open textbooks for inclusivity and diversity; library space design; digital scholarship; Women in STEM; open scholarship; and OER advocacy/professional development.

Next Episode

Counterinsurgency and the Profession of History

Dr. Marjorie Galelli is the Associate Director of the Center for Military, War, and Society Studies at the University of Kansas, where she recently received her PhD. She is also a Henry Chauncey ’57 Postdoctoral fellow in the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale. Her research focuses on the relationship between the US military, the government, the media, and the American people, throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries. Her manuscript, Two Sides of the Same COIN: A History of the United States and Counterinsurgency During Operation Iraqi Freedom examines the United States’ progressive adoption of counterinsurgency (COIN) between 2003 and 2011.

*Originally recorded June 7, 2022.