Month: July 2024

Recently the Reginald F. Lewis Scholars, an initiative focused on Black male retention led by the University of Louisiana System, visited Southeastern. 

The program aims to enhance the collegiate experience of Black male students across all University of Louisiana System institutions. Specifically, it recruits Black males and offers educational programs, mentoring opportunities, and co-curricular experiences to improve outcomes. Each cohort consists of two students selected from each UL System member institution, totaling 18 members annually per cohort.

During their visit, the scholars took a tour of Southeastern and were welcomed with a networking reception. After the tour, they traveled to Baton Rouge, where they spent a day learning from various political leaders, elected officials, and research innovators about the importance of civic engagement, leadership, and research innovation. They were also provided seminars on post- graduation success, international affairs and studying abroad, and the research process and approaches to economic, civic, and community development.

Southeastern scholars include Demille Davis and Dylan James (Cohort 1), Nicholas Gibson and Joshua Randall (Cohort 2), and Kennith Woods and Jarius Smith (Cohort 3). 

“These young men have worked extremely hard to represent Southeastern in various capacities within the program,” said World Languages and Cultures Instructor and Undergraduate Coordinator Jerry Parker. “Additionally, Dylan James was honored at this visit, alongside other seniors, for his participation in the program and upcoming graduation.” 

Southeastern Athletics invites fans to kick off the 2024-25 athletic year with the Coaches Caravan, which begins July 16.

Admission is $10 for each of the three stops on the caravan, with Southeastern employees and students receiving free admission by presenting their university ID. Coaches club members for 2024-25 will also receive free admission.

Fans can enjoy a night of food, fun and fandom while hearing from all of Southeastern’s head coaches. Head football coach Frank Scelfo is scheduled to be at all three stops.

Each event starts at 6 p.m. The first stop is scheduled for July 16 at Greystone Golf & Country Club (9461 St. Andrews Court) in Denham Springs. The caravan moves on to The Rusty Pelican (482 Myrtle Dr.) in Covington July 18. The final stop sees the Lions return to Hammond July 24 at Gnarly Barley Brewing (1709 Corbin Rd.).

For more information on the Coaches Caravan, contact Deputy Athletic Director/SWA Lindsey Owens at lindsey.owens@southeastern.edu or 549-5226.

Southeastern Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice Joshua McDermott has been selected to receive a Fulbright U.S. Scholar fellowship. He will conduct research and teach in the Sociology Department at Njala University in Bo, Sierra Leone, the country’s third largest city and largest city in the South of the country.

According to Fulbright Director of Academic Relations Julie Taylor, Fulbright Scholar Awards are prestigious and competitive fellowships that provide unique opportunities for scholars to teach and conduct research abroad.

“Fulbright scholars play a critical role in U.S. public diplomacy, establishing long-term relationships between people and nations,” Taylor said. “Alumni include 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 80 MacArthur Fellows, and thousands of leaders and world-renowned experts in academia and many other fields across the private, public, and non-profit sectors.”

McDermott’s research focuses on the nature of irregular and informal work in Africa, like work done outside of formal wage work, such as street vending. He plans to continue his research in Sierra Leone, looking at the political behavior and views of college educated young people who are forced to survive in the informal economy. While there, McDermott also plans to finish the field research and writing for his first book.

“Research on informal labor markets in the rapidly automating global economy is timely and important,” said Sociology and Criminal Justice Department Head Kenneth Bolton. “Dr. McDermott’s theoretical insight and unique skill set allows him to investigate the impact of economic restructuring on the experiences of workers, as well as their ability to organize, struggle and define their lives. He is very deserving of this honor, which will also benefit the university and our students.”

When asked why he thought he was selected for the fellowship, McDermott said he thinks it’s because informal and irregular work is a central and understudied issue in global and domestic politics and economics.

“Around 90 percent of people in Sierra Leone do not have formal jobs. Surviving in the informal sector entails precarity and poverty, and a majority of the world’s workers work informally,” he said. “So I think there is a growing recognition of the need to address and understand why informality is so prevalent and how it impacts political stability, economic development, and individual lives and communities.”

McDermott said he feels lucky and privileged to be able to spend an academic year conducting field research in a place he loves (Sierra Leone) because it is an opportunity not many people get.

“I am really excited to be able to build connections between students and faculty in Sierra Leone and the students and faculty at Southeastern,” he  said. “I think there are so many learning opportunities that can arise from building connections between Njala and Southeastern, and I hope to facilitate that in any way I can.”

An Alumna’s Journey to Becoming a Best-Selling Romance and Disney Author

By Sheri Gibson

Many people dream of becoming a professional author, landing on the New York Times Best Sellers list and doing what they love from the comfort of their home—or from exotic locales around the world. However, it’s a dream that few are ever able to capture.

But through a combination of great talent, insight, and determination, alumna Farrah Roybiskie (’01) has been able to make this seemingly storybook scenario a reality.

Farrah, who writes under the pen name Farrah Rochon, has been writing stories ever since she can remember, first falling in love with the idea of getting to make up elaborate stories as a child. As she grew up, she discovered other passions, including psychology and digging in to how people think, but a love for writing always stayed with her.

After the St. John the Baptist Parish native graduated from Xavier University in New Orleans, where she started working on her first novel on the side, she enrolled at Southeastern for a master’s degree in psychology with a concentration in industrial/organizational psychology.

When it came time to pick a grad school, Farrah knew Southeastern was the place for her upon touring the campus for the first time. “The campus was gorgeous, everything was laid back, and I just thought, this is a better fit for me. And it was; it turned out to be great—the professors, everything about it,” she said.

It was in the warm atmosphere of Southeastern that she kept working on her debut book.

“I was in the library all the time at Southeastern. And sometimes I would just go out on campus with my little notepad and allow myself to just be.”

“It was one of the best moves that I could have made,” she added. “Some of the classes that I took, like comparative psychology, were the best classes I’ve ever taken.”

And while at first glance psychology may seem disparate from writing, Farrah’s studies actually play a significant part in her career as a novelist.

The author reports that her process for coming up with the stories and characters is one area that is particularly enhanced by this.

She first plots out everything that will happen before even writing a single word, thinking through everything. Then, she fully delves into fleshing out the characters. “The characters will come in very quickly because, again, I’m always interested in how people think, so I spend a lot of time on characterization,” she said. “I use a lot of psychology methods, such as Myers-Briggs and different personality tests. I will get in the character’s head and answer those tests in their heads, because you have to know their personality in order to make them authentic. My biggest thing is always making sure I am having them react the way the character with that personality would react and not the way I would react.”

By the time she graduated from Southeastern, Farrah knew that she wanted to pursue writing as a fulltime career. She was picked up by a small New York publisher, who helped get her work onto shelves at Borders and Barnes and Noble—the big leagues at that time. After a few books, she moved to Harlequin, which published another 14 of her works.

“People love to make fun of Harlequin novels,” she said with a smile. “I used to make fun of them when my aunt would read them. But Harlequin turned out to be such a great thing for me. People buy them more for the book itself instead of the author, so it’s a great way for new writers to find an audience. And a lot of readers discovered me because I started writing for them.”

When Kindles first became must-haves for many readers and independent publishing really began to take off, Farrah tried publishing through this route and found great success.

Eventually, though, she came up with a high concept book idea and knew that partnering with a major agency would be her best bet moving forward.

“I knew that I had something special when I came up with the idea for my Boyfriend Project series about five years ago, and it was another one of those business moves where I had to go with my business sense instead of my heart. I realized that my little independent career wasn’t enough for this idea. It was bigger than that. So, I decided to go back to New York publishing, and it was the best move I could have made. The first book [in the series] was my 39th book, but a lot of people thought it was my first because they had not heard of me before it came out. It really put my career into a different stratosphere.”

This book, The Boyfriend Project, released in 2020, become a USA TodayBestseller. The third book in the series, The Hookup Plan (2022), is Farrah’s all-time favorite that she’s written, and it was chosen by The Today Show as a recommended summer read.

Since that move, Farrah has also begun writing official Disney novels, starting with the New York Times Best Seller Princess Tiana book Almost There: A Twisted Tale.

Not only was making that ranking a bucket-list achievement for Farrah, but so was working with Disney. “When they talk about the Disney adult, that’s me. It’s basically my personality,” she said.

“It was something that I did not know was even a dream that could come true, because I did not think that I could write for them since I wrote adult romance,” she said of being asked to write for Disney. “And it’s been something that has stretched my creativity and brought me places that I never thought I would be as a writer. It’s amazing. I’m having the most fun that I’ve ever had in the 17 years that I’ve been doing this job.”

In addition to making the top bestseller lists, her books have been featured in other media including O, The Oprah Magazine; Cosmopolitanmagazine; Entertainment Weekly; NPR; and Shondaland.

In order to accomplish so much and meet deadlines for multiple projects at once, Farrah keeps a very strict regimen, writing 2,000 words a day. To achieve this and avoid burnout, she again pulls from her psychology training, utilizing the Pomodoro Technique by working in timed 25-minute increments interspersed by 5-minute breaks.

Even while traveling, which Farrah loves to do, having recently visited locales such as Disneyworld, Egypt, Australia, and New Zealand, she usually keeps up the work. “I like to travel a lot,” she said. “It’s the one benefit of being able to work wherever you are. I will bring my laptop, or sometimes write on an iPad. But if I’m on a deadline, if I can get 2-300 words in while I’m at the airport, I will do it.”

This dedication, from delving deep into the psychology of characters to putting in the work time in the most effective ways, combined with a natural talent, have paid off, helping Farrah to live her best life. And while she still has goals of hitting #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list, she’s happy with where her path has led her.

“I really am so satisfied and content with where I am now,” she said. “If I can just continue to write and go out and meet the readers, which I love, I will be satisfied.”