Darci Thoune, English, was elected Vice President of the Council of Writing Program Administrators.

Gita Pai, History and International & Global Studies, presented "Adorning an Adored Goddess in Madurai" at the Conference on the Study of Religions of India (CSRI) on June 26 at the University of California, Davis.

Tanner Knorr, Recreation Management & Recreational Therapy, was interviewed by Sean Dwyer of WIZM Talk Radio on June 25. Tourism is one of the state's strongest economic engines, consistently outpacing inflation and support thousands of jobs. Tanner Knorr, assistant professor, joined Sean Dwyer on LaCrosseTalk to discuss revenue, research and resources.

Kelly O'Connor, Mathematics & Statistics, co-authored the article "Nonsplitting of the Hilbert exact sequence and the principal Chebotarev density theorem" in "The Ramanujan Journal Volume 68," article number 125 (2025), published on Dec. 12, 2025, by Springer. In joint work with Lian Duan, ShanghaiTech University; Ning Ma, State University of New York at Buffalo; and Xiyuan Wang, The Ohio State University. Given K/k a finite Galois extension of number fields, we find a way of verifying the non-splitting of the Hilbert short exact sequence by finite calculation. Our method is based on the study of the principal version of the Chebotarev density theorem, which represents the density of the prime ideals of k that factor into the product of principal prime ideals in K. We also find explicit equations to express the principal density in terms of the invariants of K/k. In particular, we prove that the group structure of the ideal class group of K can be determined by reading the principal densities.

Kelly O'Connor, Mathematics & Statistics, co-authored the article "Unit lattices of D4-quartic number fields with signature (2,1)" in "Journal of Number Theory," Volume 280, March 2026 published on March 15 by Elsevier. In joint work with Sara Chari, St. Mary’s College of Maryland; Sergio Ricardo Zapata Ceballos, Youngstown State University; Erik Holmes, University of Toronto; Fatemeh Jalalvand, University of Calgary; Rahinatou Yuh Njah Nchiwo, Aalto University; Fabian Ramirez, University of California Irvine; and Sameera Vemulapalli, Harvard University; we investigate the set of unit shapes for D4-quartic number fields with two real embeddings and one pair of complex conjugate embeddings. We show this set consists entirely of transcendental elements and prove that its set of limits points contains at least three explicit algebraic numbers.

Gita Pai, History and International & Global Studies, received a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship (Research) for a second time. She will use the award from the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program to conduct research in south India during her 2026-2027 sabbatical, while affiliated with the French Institute of Pondicherry. The fellowship is managed by the United States-India Educational Foundation (USIEF), a binational organization funded and governed equally by both governments to promote mutual understanding through educational and cultural exchanges. 

Penelope Hardy, History, authored the article "'His Name Does Not Appear:’ Missing Voices in Ocean Science and the Invisible Technician at Sea" in "The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord," published on Wednesday, July 8 by the Canadian Nautical Research Society and the North American Society for Oceanic History. Hardy also co-edited, with Christina L. Bolte, University of West Florida, and Kevin Grubbs, McLennan Community College, the special issue of the journal in which the article appeared.

Matthew Cashion, English, authored the short story "Please Pass the Flotsam" in The Florida Review, published on Jan. 29 by the University of Central Florida graduate program in Creative Writing. The story is included in his forthcoming book, "How We Do Things Here."