Spring 2012 Deans, Faculty, Staff

Ernesto R. Acevedo-Muñoz , University of Colorado, Boulder (Media Studies)

Ernesto R. Acevedo-Muñoz is Associate Professor and Chair of Film Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He earned his BA in History from the University of Puerto Rico, and his MA and PhD in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa. He is the author of the books Pedro Almodóvar (BFI, 2007) and Buñuel and Mexico: The Crisis of National Cinema (California, 2003), and of articles and essays published in many journals and books including Film & History, Lit, After Hitchcock, and Genre, Gender, Race & World Cinemas. He has taught as visiting professor at New York University in Madrid, Spain and at the State University of Zulia in Maracaibo, Venezuela. Among many others, he teaches courses on Latin American & Spanish cinemas and cultures, on Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick, on classic Hollywood genres, and on the cultural politics of the “James Bond” movies.
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Margaret Kent Bass, St. Lawrence University (English)

Margaret Kent Bass is Associate Professor of English at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. Her undergraduate degree in English is from Wilmington College in Wilmington, OH. Margaret holds a M.Ed. in Special Education from The University of Mississippi and a Ph.D. in English from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. In addition to teaching, Margaret has held several administrative posts; among them are Interim Dean of Students and Director of the Center for Diversity and Social Justice. Margaret is an avid traveler and student of world cultures. She has led student groups on experiential learning trips in and out of the U.S. Margaret writes extensively on diversity and social justice in predominantly white academic institutions. Her other interests are travel writing and the personal essay. Margaret has won several awards for outstanding undergraduate teaching. Semester-at-Sea offers the opportunity for Margaret to engage in three of her passions simultaneously: teaching, traveling and cruising.
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Faye Belgrave, Virginia Commonwealth University (Psychology)

Dr. Belgrave is Professor of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and the Founding Director of the Center for Cultural Experiences in Prevention. Her programmatic and research interests are in the areas of drug and HIV prevention among African Americans and other ethnic minorities. Dr. Belgrave’s research also focuses on the role of culture and context in prevention interventions and on gender and female related issues. Much of her work has been conducted with undergraduate and graduate students in collaboration with community based organizations. Dr. Belgrave has published extensively including over 75 articles and book chapters, four books, and is an invited speaker on the topics of African American culture, gender issues, and community based research. Dr. Belgrave has received numerous awards for her teaching, research, and service. These include (among others) the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award, VCU’s outstanding teaching award, the American Psychological Association Minority Fellowship Program, Lifetime Achievement Award, the American Psychological Association Dalmas Taylor Distinguished Contribution Award, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Addie Jane Key Prevention Award. Dr. Belgrave considers it an honor and privilege to teach the next generation of scholars, activists, and people who will make a difference in the lives of others locally and globally.
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Jean L. Cooper (Librarian)

Jean L. Cooper is the Grants, Sponsored Programs and Instructional Services Librarian at the University Library, as well as serving as Genealogical Resources Specialist. She has worked for the University of Virginia for 28 years with a variety of responsibilities, including cataloging, managing the University Library’s first online catalog, and interlibrary lending services. She was the Librarian for the Summer 2007 voyage of the MV Explorer, which sailed along the west coast of Central and South America, visiting 9 countries in 10 weeks. An inveterate traveler, Jean is looking forward to the Spring 2012 voyage, which will add several new countries to her “life list.”
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Robin Doughty, University of Texas-Austin (Geography)

Robin Doughty is Professor Emeritus of Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin. Robin grew up in Yorkshire, England and after receiving degrees from Reading University and The Vatican, he earned a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley. He spent a year at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C researching the trade in bird feathers and joined the faculty at the University of Texas where he specializes in the history of the landscape change, environmental conservation with particular attention for endangered species. Robin has taught at many universities including UC Berkeley, The Australian National University, Canberra, the University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia, and Oxford University, England. He guides field excursions about landscape interpretation including bird conservation, and has taught a wide variety of courses during the past thirty years for which he has consistently received outstanding teaching evaluations. In 2011, Robin will publish his tenth book about international collaboration to save seabirds whose existence is threatened by nest habitat destruction and unregulated long-line fishing. Robin has conducted research in such places as China, Chile, Mexico and Central America, Ecuador, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Western Europe, Egypt and Morocco. His is a popular lecturer about birds, wildlife issues and habits of place making that guide our attachment to the land. .
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John Downing, Southern Illinois University (Media Studies)

John D.H. Downing received his degrees from The Queen's College, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He taught Sociology at Greenwich University, London, from 1968 through 1980, and then for one year at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He switched to Communication Departments in 1981, teaching at Hunter College, New York, through 1990; then in the Radio-Television-Film Department at the University of Texas, Austin, serving as John T. Jones, Jr., Centennial Professor, 1990-2003; and then as founding Director of the Global Media Research Center in the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts, Southern Illinois University, until 2010. He was invited guest professor at Aarhus University for the fall semester of 2010, and a Fulbright Visiting Professor at Helsinki and Tampere Universities, Finland, in the spring semester of 2011. He was awarded the University of Texas Dads Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2002. He is author, co-author or editor of numerous books and shorter writings on media, especially on global and international media, and on the small-scale media produced as part of social movements. His most recent edited work is the Sage Encyclopedia of Social Movement Media (2010).
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Edward Farmer, University of Minnesota (Chinese History)

Ted Farmer is Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of history emeritus from the University of Minnesota. He received a B.A. in History and Philosophy from Stanford and an M.A. in Regional Studies – East Asia and a Ph.D. in History and Far Eastern Languages from Harvard, and was a Fulbright Fellow in Taiwan. Over his career he has offered a full range of undergraduate and graduate courses; focusing on modern China, revolutionary China, and global history of the last fifty years. On a number of occasions he has led groups of students on summer study programs in China. His interests include early modern empires, Chinese cultural identity, globalization, and the evolution of printing and publishing. His research has concentrated on early modern China, especially the Ming Dynasty. He founded the journal Ming Studies and currently edits the Ming Studies Research Series. His publications include Comparative History of Civilizations in Asia (coauthored), Zhu Yuanzhang and Early Ming Legislation, and The Information Age: Introduction to Global History Since 1950. He is a member of the University of Minnesota’s Academy of Distinguished Teachers.
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Elizabeth Fowler, University of Virginia (English)

Elizabeth Fowler is Associate Professor of English at the University of Virginia, where she has taught since 2000. Her A.B. is from Brown University and her M.A. and Ph.D. are from Harvard University; she was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard’s Society of Fellows and an Assistant and Associate Professor of English at Yale before joining the faculty at UVa. She is the author or co-editor of twenty-some articles and three books, including Literary Character (Cornell, 2003), and she is one of the general editors for Oxford University Press of the forthcoming Collected Works of Edmund Spenser. She is a member of the Virginia Native Plant Society, and has taught for Yale in London and for UVa in Ireland (six courses), been a Fulbright Fellow in the U.K., and in ‘other’ lives designed houses in Massachusetts and Virginia, worked in a tax law firm in Rome, and played electric bass for the Hi Sheriffs of Blue at CBGB’s, Max’s Kansas City, and the Mudd Club. She will offer the World Drama course with an emphasis on ritual space; her course on prayer around the world will investigate its variety and beauty and involve students in primary research.
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Adam Graves, Metropolitan College of Denver (Religious Studies)

Adam J. Graves is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Metropolitan State College of Denver, where he also serves as Director of the Minor in Religious Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies (with a concentration in Philosophy of Religion) from the University of Pennsylvania in 2007. He has published on the topics of evil, freewill and hermeneutics, and has made numerous presentations in the United States, Canada, Belgium and Denmark. Graves, who also holds a degree in South Asian Studies (B.A., University of Pennsylvania, 2001), was a visiting scholar at Banaras Hindu University and conducted grant-supported research on Hindu temple iconography in Rajasthan, India. He received the Holden Furber Prize for Best Paper on a South Asian Related Topic and a Critical Writing Fellowship for his interdisciplinary freshman seminar “Religion and ‘The Conflict of Civilizations,’” which explored tensions between a variety of religious and secular ideologies around the globe. He is the author of Paul Ricoeur and the Philosophy of Religionand working on a book that traces the religious sources of modern conceptions of autonomy.
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Leigh B. Grossman, University of Virginia

Leigh B. Grossman, M.D. graduated from Brandeis University and the Medical College of Pennsylvania and completed her Pediatric Residency and Infectious Disease and Critical Care Fellowships at the University of Virginia. She is the former Vice Provost for International Affairs at the University of Virginia and is currently Chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Disease and the Associate Dean for International Programs in the School of Medicine. Her clinical work at the University of Virginia is devoted to the care of hospitalized children both as a general Pediatric inpatient ward attending and as an infectious disease consultant. Her research is devoted to the prevention of hospital acquired infection in the critically ill newborn and child. She teaches at the bedside, in the classroom, nationally and internationally. She has edited and authored four books, Infection Control for the Pediatric Patient, Infection Control in the Preschool and Day Care Center, Infection Control for the Healthcare Worker and The Medical Student’s Guide to Successful Residency Matching. Dr. Grossman’s history of international experience includes growing up in India, service time with the Peace Corps, consultancies for the Pan American Health Organization in Washington, DC and Chile, Project Hope and the King Faisal Hospital in Saudi Arabia. She has participated in ten years of medical service work in Haiti. She has directed the pediatric resident International Medicine Elective for 26 years with sites in India, Thailand, Kenya, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Peru, Ecuador, Morocco and Guatemala. Her career has been honored with the McLemore Birdsong Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Virginia State Council of Higher Education Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Medical College of Pennsylvania Alumni Achievement Award, the Department of Pediatrics Clinical Excellence Award and the Arnold P. Gold Foundation Humanism in Medicine Award.
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Christy Goodnight, Utah Valley University (Assisstant Librarian)

Christy is currently the Media Librarian at Utah Valley University where she has worked since the summer of 2007. Prior to working at UVU, she worked for four years as Library Instruction Coordinator and Reference Librarian at Montana Sate University in Bozeman. She has a BA in Russian Language and Literature from Michigan State University, an MBA from Philadelphia University, and an MS in Library and Information Science from Drexel University. Christy's specialties include business research, instruction, media, and all things science fiction. Prior to discovering librarianship, she moved around the country trying various careers such as outdoor retail buyer, bartender, army reservist, Starbucks barista, snowboarding instructor, and a stint with AmeriCorps as First Mate, navigator and cook aboard a square-rigged tall ship. This will be Christy's first voyage and she is excited to bring back the global outlook and student engagement ideas to her university that this amazing semester is sure to generate.
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Stefan Helmreich, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Anthropology)

Stefan Helmreich is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his B.A. from University of California, Los Angeles (Anthropology, 1989) and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University (Anthropology, 1995). Helmreich is a cultural anthropologist interested in the social implications of research in the contemporary life, information, and environmental sciences. He has conducted ethnographic research among biologists interested in the boundaries of “life” as a category of analysis, writing on the cultural meaning of computer simulation in biology in Silicon Second Nature: Culturing Artificial Life in a Digital World (University of California Press, 1998; winner Diana Forsythe Book Prize from the American Anthropological Association, 2001) and on marine biological investigations of extreme environments in Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas (University of California Press, 2009; winner Senior Book Prize from American Ethnological Society and Gregory Bateson Book Prize from Society for Cultural Anthropology, 2010). Helmreich has conducted fieldwork in the United States, France, Spain, Australia, and India. For work with marine biologists, he traveled on oceanographic voyages to the Sargasso Sea, the North Pacific Gyre, and the Juan de Fuca Ridge. He has also served as a visiting scholar at the University of Iceland.
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Lewis Hinchman, Clarkson University (Political Science)

Lew Hinchman graduated from Princeton University in 1968 and—after a student Fulbright fellowship in Frankfurt, Germany-- received his PhD in Government from Cornell in 1979. Until his retirement in 2009, Lew taught at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, where he offered a variety of courses in political theory, comparative politics, and American government. He also taught twice at German universities, most recently in 2009 at Bonn thanks to a faculty Fulbright grant, and has been a visiting scholar in Australia. He has published over twenty articles and book chapters as well as writing and/or editing three books, mostly on topics in European and American political thought. More recently he has been asked to translate several scholarly books and articles from German into English. Although officially an emeritus professor, Lew continues to be active in teaching and scholarship. The 2012 Semester at Sea voyage will be his second for ISE. He now lives in Moab, Utah, a small community near the Colorado border where he finds plenty of opportunities to explore the region’s countless canyons, mesas, Native American ruins and rock art sites.
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Sandy Hinchman, St. Lawrence University (Political Science)

A graduate of Vassar College, Sandy Hinchman earned her Ph.D. from Cornell University. She taught political philosophy at St. Lawrence University in northern New York for almost 35 years before retiring as Munsil Professor of Government in 2008 and moving to the desert Southwest. Sandy won outstanding teaching awards at both Cornell and St. Lawrence. Her scholarly publications have concerned the use of narrative in the social sciences, the environmental rights of native peoples, the intellectual roots of the environmental movement, and the political thought of Hannah Arendt. With her husband, Lew, Sandy served on the Spring 2010 Semester at Sea voyage, and they found the experience so fascinating and compelling that they couldn’t wait to repeat it. On next Spring’s trip, Sandy is scheduled to offer two courses designed to complement our journey around the world, Global Environmental Politics and the Politics of Development. Outside the classroom, she enjoys dancing, cooking, playing bridge, participating in a wide range of outdoor activities (from hiking to rafting to scuba diving), and—of course!—travel.
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Donald Howard, Capital University (Business/Commerce)

Donald G. Howard is a Professor in the College of Leadership and Management at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio and Professor Emeritus at the University of Akron. His areas of expertise include International Marketing, Marketing Research and International Business He received his Ph.D. and MBA in Marketing and International Business from The Ohio State University. Professor Howard has published over 20 articles in scholarly publications including the International Marketing Review, the Journal of Global Marketing, the European Journal of Marketing, and the International Journal of Management among other peer reviewed journals. He has presented numerous papers at national and international conferences. His primary research interest is in assessing the impact of government policy multinational firms' export performance. Professor Howard's international teaching experience includes semesters in Croatia and New Zealand. He served as Director of the Kent State/Geneva, Switzerland Program for a year. He also consulted for the International Trade Center: UN/WTO program in China. He has lead student groups to both Russia and the Netherlands. He is a retired Air Force pilot with over 8000 hours of active duty and reserve flying including nearly two years in S/E Asia. His interests include rugby, scuba diving, and travel.
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Charles Ingrao, Purdue University (History)

Charles Ingrao has been a world traveler long before joining Semester at Sea. In addition to his permanent position as Professor of History at Purdue University, he has held visiting appointments at Brown, Chicago, Indiana, and Washington, as well as abroad at Cambridge and multiple institutions in Cyprus and New Zealand. He has also been Fulbright Fellow three times. Since receiving his B.A. at Wesleyan (1969) and Ph.D. at Brown (1974), he has published a dozen books and over fifty articles in six languages in the fields of German, Habsburg, and Balkan history. He has won or been nominated for teaching awards five times, and been recruited by The Teaching Company for its Great Lectures DVD series. In recent years, he has lectured extensively on ethnic coexistence and conflict before academic, governmental and military audiences in 21 countries, and is a regular commentator for print, radio and television media across the USA and Europe, including The News Hour with Jim Lehrer (PBS). In addition to serving as editor of The Austrian History Yearbook, and general editor of Central European Studies book series, he founded the internet's first history discussion group exactly twenty years ago...
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Jenna Lawrence , Columbia University (Biology)

Jenna Lawrence received her Ph.D. and Advanced Certificate in Environmental Policy from the department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology (in conjunction with the New York Consortium in Evolutionary Primatology) at Columbia University, where she is currently a Lecturer teaching graduate and undergraduate courses. The majority of her fieldwork has involved chasing monkeys around the rainforests of Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, and Kenya for behavioral ecology research, though she also honed her bird-chasing skills as an undergraduate at Boston University. She has since added the marine realm to her repertoire, leading courses in both aquatic and terrestrial field ecology in Jordan and the Dominican Republic. Other ongoing teaching adventures include working with professionals in the Certificate Program in Conservation and Environmental Sustainability, as well as introducing New York City public-school teachers to urban ecosystems as part of the Inquire Institute, both run by the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation at Columbia University. Her most recent appointment is as faculty for the Earth Institute M.A. program in Sustainability Management. She holds a special place in her heart for teaching undergraduates, however – last year she was proud to receive two invitations to the student-faculty dinner (the students were allowed to share her).
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Donna LeFebvre, University of North Carolina (Political Science)

Donna LeFebvre, J.D., Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, received her J.D. from UNC-Chapel Hill and her B.A. from the University of South Carolina. Her teaching areas are international criminal and human rights law (present-day genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity); violence against women; U.S. criminal law; and morality, ethics, and law. She is an advocate of community-based learning and teaches 2 service-learning courses and directs the political science internship program. Before teaching at UNC-CH, Prof. LeFebvre practiced law for 7 years, specializing in civil rights and criminal law, and is a member of the N.C. State Bar; U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Bar; and the United States Supreme Court Bar. She is passionate about global education and taught abroad for a year in Eritrea, East Africa; two semesters (S’03, S’08) on SAS; a semester in the UNC London program; created and led a UNC field program in Rwanda; and in 2010 taught in and directed the UNC Cape Town program. Professor LeFebvre has also done research in Iceland, Tanzania, and England and has won several UNC teaching awards and a campus-wide public service award.
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Andrea Abernethy Lunsford, Stanford University (English)

Andrea Abernethy Lunsford is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor of English and the Louise and Claude Rosenberg Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University, where she has taught since 2000 and where she founded Stanford’s Hume Writing Center. A frequent faculty member of The Bread Loaf Graduate School of English, she has designed and taught undergraduate and graduate courses on writing history and theory, rhetoric, literacy studies, graphic narratives (aka comics), and women’s writing. She is the editor, author, or co-author of seventeen books, including The Everyday Writer; Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse; Singular Texts/Plural Authors: Perspectives on Collaborative Writing; Reclaiming Rhetorica; Everything’s an Argument; Writing Matters: Rhetoric in Private and Public Lives; and The Sage Handbook of Rhetorical Studies. She is currently at work on two major projects, The Norton Anthology of Rhetoric and Writing and Writing Lives, a longitudinal study of student writing and writers.
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Suchitra Mattai, University of Colorado, Denver (Studio Arts)

Suchitra Mattai is currently Lecturer, Studio Art, at the University of Colorado, Denver. Previously she has taught at the College of Saint Benedict, Saint John’s University and the University of Pennsylvania. She received an MFA in painting and drawing and an MA in South Asian Studies, both from the University of Pennsylvania. Mattai was also awarded fellowships to study at the Royal College of Art, London and at the American Institute of Indian Studies, Udaipur, India. Through the trope of landscape, her paintings, drawings and installations explores the boundaries between the real and the unreal, the near and the far, and the personal and the global. She is interested in cultural and linguistic barriers and the manner in which communication breaks down at borders. Mattai has had solo and group shows in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Denver, and most recently in Austin at Grayduck Gallery. She was nominated for a Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award and was the winner of the Angello Savelli Award and the Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award from the University of Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in New American Paintings and is part of the Viewing Program of the Drawing Center, New York.
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Alysse Morton, Westminster College (Management)

Alysse Morton is Full Professor of Management in the Bill and Vieve Gore School of Business at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, UT. She earned her Ph.D. in Operations Management at The Georgia Institute of Technology and a B.S. in Business at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. Dr. Morton researches the interaction between manufacturing and marketing as well as supply chain initiatives. She has been published in business journals such as Production and Operations Management, European Journal of Operational Research, and Journal of Product Innovation Management. Her travels include visiting over 30 countries including leading student business tours in Mexico, Cambodia, Singapore, China, France, and Eastern Europe. As a faculty member at the University of Utah, she received the David Eccles School of Business Graduate Teaching Excellence award. Prior to returning to receive her Ph.D., Dr. Morton analyzed the pricing and promotion of consumer goods as a marketing analyst at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, OH.
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Paul Muldoon, Princeton University (English/Poetry)

Paul Muldoon was born in 1951 in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, and educated in Armagh and at the Queen's University of Belfast. From 1973 to 1986 he worked in Belfast as a radio and television producer for the British Broadcasting Corporation. Since 1987 he has lived in the United States, where he is now Howard G.B. Clark ’21 Professor at Princeton University and Founding Chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts. Between 1999 and 2004 he was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford. In 2007 he was appointed poetry editor of The New Yorker. Paul Muldoon's main collections of poetry are New Weather (1973), Mules (1977), Why Brownlee Left (1980), Quoof (1983), Meeting The British (1987), Madoc: A Mystery (1990), The Annals of Chile (1994), Hay (1998), Poems 1968-1998 (2001), Moy Sand and Gravel (2002), Horse Latitudes (2006) and Maggot (2010). A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Paul Muldoon was elected a Member of the American Academy in Arts and Letters in 2008. Among his recent awards are the 1994 T.S. Eliot Prize, the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the 2003 International Griffin Prize, the 2004 American Ireland Fund Literary Award, and the 2004 Shakespeare Prize given ‘for contributions from English-speaking Europe to the European cultural heritage.’
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Alex Nalbach, Baldwin Wallace College (History)

Alex Nalbach received his Ph.D. in European and World History from the University of Chicago. A specialist on global information-gathering in the age of the telegraph, he has reviewed works of history for the popular press, and is currently completing an historical survey of the Mediterranean (The Emporium of the World) and his own World History textbook (Discovering the World). He has accrued over a dozen years of experience teaching and lecturing at the University of Michigan-Flint, Wayne State University (Detroit), Saginaw Valley State University (Michigan), and Baldwin-Wallace College (Berea, Ohio), and has won several recognitions for his innovative and engaging pedagogy. Widely traveled on five continents, he has also led student trips abroad for several institutions, and served as the Global Studies Coordinator for Semester at Sea in Summer 2009. His lectures, which deploy a range of audio and visual media, introduce a handful of concepts developed by great historians and social scientists (both canonical and cutting-edge) as tools for probing, framing, and analyzing the colorful and dramatic events and personalities of the past.
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Victoria Olwell, University of Virginia (English)

Victoria Olwell is an Assistant Professor of English Literature at the University of Virginia. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Chicago, and her B.A. from the University of Virginia. Her interdisciplinary research interests include political theory, gender studies, citizenship, and globalization. She is the author of a recent book, The Genius of Democracy: Fictions of Gender and Citizenship (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), and of articles on fiction and citizenship that have appeared in major scholarly journals and anthologies. Her courses at UVA focus on modern and contemporary literature, and her teaching has been recognized by UVA’s University Teaching Fellowship (2006). Her Semester at Sea courses will examine recent fiction written in the Caribbean, South America, Africa, South Asia, and East Asia, seeking to illuminate how local cultures speak to global contexts. Victoria is thrilled to be bringing her husband, John O’Brien, and young children, Aidan (7) and Maeve (2) on the voyage.
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Andrea Parrot, Cornell University (Sociology)

Andrea Parrot earned her Ph.D. at Cornell University, and has been teaching there for 30 years. She is currently a full Professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell. She also holds a position as a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry where she teaches human sexuality to medical students at the Upstate Medical University in Syracuse NY. Her professional work is in the areas of women's health, human sexuality, violence against women, and medical ethics; and related cultural and policy issues. She has been on numerous radio and television shows, including Face the Nation, Oprah, Good Morning America, Larry King Live. Her work in sexual assault has required her to provide expert testimony at Congressional Hearings, and well as in civil and criminal cases. She has been a grant reviewer for the US Department of Justice to fund programs through the VAWA funds appropriated by Congress. Dr. Parrot has lectured at over 100 U.S. and international colleges and universities. She has been a board member of the NY State Coalition Against Sexual Assault, and the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. Her most recent books co-authored with Nina Cummings are the Sexual Enslavement of Girls and Women Worldwide (2008), and Forsaken Females: The Global Brutalization of Women (2006). Professor Parrot taught for SAS during the Fall 2001 and Summer 2006 and 2009 semesters.
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Heather Paxson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Anthropology)

Heather Paxson is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her B.A. is from Haverford College and her M.A. and Ph.D. are from Stanford University. Before arriving at MIT in 2003, she taught courses in cultural anthropology, urban studies, and gender studies at Stanford, NYU, Princeton, and Pitzer College. Her work explores how people grapple with changing socioeconomic conditions and new bioscientific knowledge through everyday ethical practices, especially those having to do with reproduction and food. Trained as a Mediterraneanist, her book, Making Modern Mothers: Ethics and Family Planning in Urban Greece (California, 2004), drew on two years of fieldwork conducted in Athens. Now working closer to home, she is finishing a ethnographic book on American artisan cheese and the people who make it, using the case study of farmstead and artisanal cheese to get at the legal, moral, and community politics that organize food production, distribution, and eating in the U.S. Heather became a cultural anthropologist in order to combine study and travel. On Semester at Sea, will teach a course investigating cultural issues in globalization and development, and one exploring the politics and pleasures of food and culture.
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Chandrashekhar (Chandra) G. Ranade, World Bank, retired (Economics)

Ranade has a long career in the field of Development Economics and has been involved in a long term research on international economic growth and development. During his tenure at the World Bank in Washington DC, Ranade visited and worked on several countries in Sub Saharan Africa, Transition Economies of the Former Soviet Union, South Asia, Middle East, Vietnam and the Philippines. His work involved preparing, appraising and supervising numerous Bank financed projects, in preparing sector reports, and in organizing training programs for trainers and policy makers. He did Master of Statistics (1969) from the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta, India; Ph. D. from Cornell University in Agricultural Economics; and Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) from Johns Hopkins University (2005). During his professorship at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad from 1977 to 1983 he was involved in teaching courses in Economics and Finance. He is presently an adjunct professor in Stratford University and Virginia International University, both located in Virginia, where he teaches International Finance, International Trade, Applied Statistics and Business Strategies. Ranade has published numerous papers and books, and continues to publish his work.
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Armin Schwegler, University of California, Irvine (Spanish/Linguistics)

Dr. Armin Schwegler is Full Professor of Spanish Linguistics at the University of California, Irvine, where he is also Director of Global Cultures. Born and raised in Switzerland, he obtained a Business Degree at the École Supérieure de Commerce, Neuchâtel (Switzerland), and a Ph. D. in Romance Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley. Author of several books and over 50 scholarly articles, he has lectured or taught at prestigious institutions worldwide, including the University of Amsterdam, Brigham Young University of Utah, Academia de Ciencias in Havana (Cuba), Universidad de la Coruña (Spain), etc., Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá (Colombia), and Middlebury College (Vermont). He is Co-Editor of two prestigious linguistics journals (Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana and Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages), and was Director of Education Abroad in Costa Rica. Prof. Schwegler has learned over a dozen languages. He frequently carries out fieldwork in Latin America and the Caribbean. His research and course offerings emphasize the study of language in its social, cultural and historical contexts. Courses routinely taught by him include the Language and Globalization, History of the Spanish Language, Spanish Phonetics and Phonology, Latin American Spanish, Spanish in the USA, and Pidgin and Creole Languages. In recognition for his excellence in teaching, he recently the 2009 Humanities Faculty Teaching Award at UC Irvine. Three years prior, students voted him UC Irvine’s Outstanding Professor of the Humanities
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Julie Strand, Northeastern University (Ethnomusicology)

Julie Strand is a Postdoctoral Teaching Associate in Ethnomusicology at Northeastern University in Boston, and she has been teaching in the Boston area since 2007, with visiting positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University, Brandeis University, Boston University, and Emerson College. She completed her PhD in Ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University in 2009, and holds an MA in Ethnomusicology from Arizona State University, and a BMA in clarinet performance from the University of Michigan. Her research has focused on xylophone music in Burkina Faso, where she completed 18 months of dissertation field research funded by a Fulbright-Hays grant. She has several publications in process, which focus on issues of music and identity, migration, history, and music analysis. Professor Strand taught for Semester at Sea on the Spring 2007 voyage, a summer overseas program in Ghana with Lewis and Clark College in summer 2007, and a Dialogue of Civilizations program to Bali, Indonesia with students from Northeastern in the summer of 2011. In addition to various genres of African drum and xylophone music, Professor Strand performs regularly in a Balinese gamelan in the Boston area, recently premiering a composition for MIDI gamelan and string quartet with the Kronos quartet at Lincoln Center.
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Molly Takeda, California State University (International Business/Strategy)

Molly Takeda grew up in Central Illinois and at the age of 16 left her small town for Sao Paulo, Brazil as a high school exchange student. That experience was an early turning point in her life and instilled in her a thirst for adventure and a desire to “learn by going”. She graduated from the University of Illinois, but not before she spent a year as an exchange student in Birmingham, England. She began her business career with Procter and Gamble in Cincinnati, Ohio in the Sales division. She developed expertise in Quality Management, Training and Development, and Human Resource and Operations Management over the next few years. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in International Business at the University of Pittsburgh and since then has been an Associate Professor at Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo; an Associate Professor in the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, and a part-time faculty in the Australian National University, the University of Colorado, and the University of California Riverside. She teaches International Business, Global Strategy, Organizational Theory, Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior related courses at the undergraduate, graduate and EMBA levels. She has authored over 20 publications, including an award winning article from a series on global disaster management systems. She has lived and worked in Japan, Australia, Brazil, the UK, the United States and Cyprus. Currently, Dr. Takeda is an adjunct faculty in the California State University San Bernardino and the University of Pittsburgh. She is actively consulting with clients in healthcare, professional services and banking both locally and internationally.
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Annette Taylor, University of San Diego (Psychology)

Professor Taylor graduated from California State University, Long Beach with both BA and MA degrees in psychology. She received her PhD in general experimental psychology in 1987 from the University of Southern California. Her specialty area was information processing cognitive psychology. She was awarded NIA and NSF grants over a three year period to study cognitive aging at the Andrus Gerontology Center at the University of Southern California, where she focused specifically age-related differences in attention and memory. Professor Taylor has been a member of the University of San Diego faculty since 1990, primarily teaching courses in introductory psychology, research methods and cognitive psychology. She has taught in the Guadalajara program twice. Professor Taylor’s research has encompassed various areas of human memory and attention within the information processing paradigm. Currently her research focuses on diverse teaching-related issues such as academic integrity and classroom pedagogy, student engagement, motivation to learn, and conceptual change of misconceptions.
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Rob Thomas, University of Montana Western (Environmental Science)

Rob Thomas is a Full Professor of Geology and Regents’ Professor at the University of Montana Western in Dillon, Montana. He is currently the chairperson of the Environmental Sciences Department and specializes in interdisciplinary, field-based teaching. He earned geology degrees from Humboldt State University (B.S.), the University of Montana (M.S.) and the University of Washington (Ph.D.). His is the co-author of the Roadside Geology of the Yellowstone Country (2nd Edition), numerous geologic interpretive signs and over 60 peer-reviewed publications on topics ranging from the Yellowstone hotspot to Cambrian mass extinctions. In the winter of 2011, he will be teaching geology and environmental interpretation to Sherpa guides at the Khumbu Climbing Center near Mt. Everest in Nepal. He has been awarded the Carnegie Foundation/CASE U.S. Professor of the Year Award, the Geological Society of America’s Distinguished Service Medal, the Humboldt State University Distinguished Alumni Award and the University of Montana Geosciences Alumnus Award. He has been appointed Regents’ Professor by the Montana University System and is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, which is granted to the “best of the profession.”
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Janette Wallis, University of Oklahoma (Lifelong Learner Academic Coordinator)

Janette Wallis is an online lecturer in the Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Environment program at the University of Oklahoma. Her Ph.D. is from an interdisciplinary program from OU that combined zoology, anthropology, and psychology. She is a primatologist whose main areas of study are primate conservation and behavioral biology. Her preferred study subjects are chimpanzees and baboons, but she also includes several other African species in her work. She has a long list of publications in a variety of primate studies and has served as editor on numerous books and newsletters. Janette is the Executive Director of the Kasokwa Forest Project in Uganda and previously worked in several other African countries; she was a founding faculty member of the American University of Nigeria (Yola, Nigeria), Coordinator of Chimpanzee Research at Gombe Stream Research Centre (in Tanzania), taught field courses in Equatorial Guinea and Tanzania, conducted research in Gabon, and consulted for an environmental impact assessment in Sierra Leone. Janette is the Vice President for Conservation of the International Primatological Society and a member of the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission’s Primate Specialist Group. As a primatologist and photographer, Janette is eager to visit the countries on this Semester at Sea voyage, seven of which are primate habitat countries. She especially looks forward to working with the Lifelong Learners; she views this as a perfect opportunity to teach others - and to learn from them.
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Nancy Wilkinson, Oklahoma State University (Art History)

Nancy Wilkinson, Associate Professor of Art History, Oklahoma State University, has graduate degrees in Asian and Modern Western art history from the University of California at Berkeley (M.A.) and UCLA (Ph.D.). She has taught Chinese and Japanese art as well as European art from the Greek period to the twentieth century. Her research area is the influence of Japanese art and culture on Great Britain during the nineteenth century. Her publications include a book chapter on Japanese design in the work of British architect E. W. Godwin and an article on western residents of Canton, China, “The Chinese Collection of Nathan Dunn.” She is currently working on a book titled Cautious Embraces: Britain, Japan and Art in the Nineteenth Century. Her administrative experience includes serving as Head of the OSU Art Department (1990-98), Chair of the OSU Faculty Council (1998-99) and Director of Graduate Programs in the School of International Studies (2003-06). She has participated in numerous international programs, such as the Peace Corps (Thailand), Fulbright in China and India, an OSU-USIA teaching project in Samarkand, Uzbekistan and Semester at Sea, where she taught world art on two voyages.
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Ruizhuang Zhang, Nankai University (International Relations)

Ruizhuang Zhang is a professor of International Relations at Nankai University, Tianjin, China where he serves as Dean of the Academy of International Studies and Director of the Center of American Studies. He got his Ph.D. in political science from UC Berkeley in 1997. His teaching and research interests include International Relations, US Foreign Policy and Sino-US relations. Social Sciences Methodology is another area his work has been focused on. He has won financial support for his research from Won Kuancheng Education Foundation (Hong Kong, 2007), Ford Foundation (U.S.A., 2004-06), and Chinese Ministry of Education (2004-07). He is Vice President of China Association of International Relations (since 2010) and Editorial Board Member of Chinese Journal of International Politics (Oxford University Press). He sits on the Executive Board of several other professional associations in China. Professor Zhang was a visiting fellow at SAIS, Johns Hopkins U (1984) and visiting professor at U of Minnesota (2007), Peking U (2005) and Catholic U (S. Korea, 2002). He has published extensively in top journals of international relations and foreign policy in China, with his latest book being The Unharmonious World (Shanghai, 2010).
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Marc Zimmer, Connecticut College (Environmental Sciences/Chemistry)

Marc Zimmer was born in a small town in South Africa. While at the University of Witwatersrand he got a bachelor and masters degree in chemistry. Partly out of interest and partly out of a need to avoid the South African (apartheid) military service he came to the United States, where he got his Ph.D. in chemistry from W.P.I. and did his post-doc at Yale University. Marc has been at Connecticut College for the last 20 years where he teaches chemistry and studies the proteins involved in producing light in jellyfish and fireflies. He has also taught at the University of Cape Town and Heidelberg University and given talks about his research in India, Cuba, South Africa and all over Europe. Marc has written a book about Green Fluorescent Protein, and has published over 60 research papers about cow flatulence, computational chemistry and bioluminescence in fireflies and jellyfish. His research is funded by the National Institutes of Health. Marc was named the Connecticut Professor of the Year 2007 by the Carnegie Foundation. He and his glowing axolotls often visit schools to give chemistry demonstrations, classes and workshops. He was the featured scientist in the fall 2009 NIH Findings magazine.
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Julie Beitzel (Dependent Children Coordinator)

Since hearing about Semester at Sea, Julie has been dreaming of going on a voyage and couldn’t be more excited that it is finally coming true! She was born and raised in Chicago and completed her bachelor’s degree in therapeutic recreation at Southern Illinois University. Shortly after graduation, she moved to Portland, Oregon where she ran after-school programs, managed a recreation center for adults with disabilities and taught cooking and nutrition classes in local schools. She spent the past year teaching 4th grade at an all-girls school in Amman, Jordan and had an amazing time learning about the culture and traveling around the Middle East. She is currently enrolled in an international teaching program at George Mason University in Virginia and will be concluding her master’s degree next fall. In her free time, Julie enjoys traveling, swimming, being active outdoors and reading.
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Joey Besl (Communications Coordinator)

Joey hails from Cincinnati and graduated from The College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio with a degree in Communication Studies and a minor in Geology. In the few years since graduation, he has been fortunate enough to receive various educational and travel-based jobs, including guiding bike trips in Nova Scotia, leading community service programs in Ghana, and teaching overnight field trips at both a Kentucky state park and a museum in Alabama. He recently completed a one-year tour with the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, driving cross-country in a giant hot dog while hosting community events, collaborating with local media outlets, and promoting the company via social media. He is excited to join the Voyage team and continue the unmatchable lifestyle of continuous travel aboard the MV Explorer.
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Timothy L. Cassens (Resident Director)

Tim recently finished a year teaching English in Dongtan, South Korea where he taught English at a private academy as well as visited orphanages to teach. He has previously worked for Norwegian Cruise Line for 5 years as Assistant Cruise Director and Crew Activities Coordinator in Hawaii, South America and the Caribbean. Tim holds a B.A. degree in Business Administration (International Business) from Milligan College and an MBA degree in Human Resources from Liberty University. In his undergraduate studies, Tim studied abroad through the International Business Institute and was privileged to visit and interact with world leaders in businesses and governments across Europe. He is a member of the Society for Human Resource Management and, on this voyage, he is interested in how each participant of Semester at Sea will be impacted by the voyage by the people they meet and the experiences they will have. Tim has currently traveled to over 50 countries and he sailed on the Summer 2010 Mediterranean voyage as a Living Learning Coordinator (Recreation/Student Activities.)
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Christian Michael Chavez (Resident Director)

Christian is a recent graduate from the University of Southern California (USC) where he obtained his master’s degree in Post-Secondary Administration and Student Affairs with USC’s highest graduate recognition, the Order of Arête. The award is given to students who have demonstrated significant depth and scope of responsibility in a campus or community leadership role.
During his time at USC Christian held graduate positions in Residential Education, Campus Activities, and Orientation Programs. He was born and raised in Orange County, California and attended the University of California, Irvine (UCI), where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and a minor in Spanish. Before beginning his experience at UCI, Christian obtained an Associate of Arts degree in Social Behavior from Orange Coast Community College, where he had the opportunity to study abroad in Florence, Italy.
Christian’s International experience only began once he studied in Italy. Four years after his study abroad program and after he graduated from his undergraduate institution, Christian began a month backpacking journey throughout Europe where he further explored Italy, France, Spain, Ibiza, Belgium, Amsterdam and England. Semester at Sea will give Christian the opportunity to combine two of his life passions, developing students and traveling the world.
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Lynette Cook-Francis (Assistant Dean of Students)

In twenty plus years in higher education, Lynette has had a varied career. She has held faculty and administrative positions in public, private, research and community colleges and universities. Currently, she is the Assistant Vice President for Student Affair, where she overseas student success and academic partnerships. She is the author of several articles on higher education and diversity, and has presented her research on millennial students, “Not Your Mama’s Multiculturalism: Changing Approaches to Diversity on the College Campus,” at dozens of conferences nationally and internationally. Lynette is an avid traveler, and this will be her second time with the Semester at Sea with her family as ADOS. She challenges the shipboard community to participate in karaoke and cut–throat scrabble. Lynette holds BA and MS degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently doctoral candidate at Northern Arizona University.
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Christy Drescher (Outreach Coordinator)

Christy is thrilled to return to the M.V. Explorer and Semester at Sea as staff. She has been awaiting the opportunity since she concluded time aboard as a student on the Summer 2004 voyage through the Pacific Rim. She holds a B.A. in History and Secondary Social Studies Education Certification from University of Iowa. She conducted her student teaching experience in Wiltshire, England and spent time visiting Spain, France, Italy and Ireland. She currently resides in the city of Chicago working as an Assistant Director of Admission at DePaul University, where she received her M.Ed. in Social and Cultural Foundations of Education. Her time in higher education has consisted of many highlights; working in International Admission, advising international students as a DSO, recruitment travel in over 15 states, serving as a part time faculty member for a first year course on Immigrant Youth in Chicago, and considering the student that is at stake with our education system facing a giant achievement gap. She loves living in the city, with the endless restaurants to indulge in, city full of people to engage with alongside her church activities, and miles of lakefront paths to run on while training for various races and marathons. Her love for traveling stems from her intent interest in being exposed to others perspectives of people, places, issues, and events. She is excited to share this opportunity to live this experience with the shipboard community.
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Kelly Gerstbacher (Administrative Assistant)

Kelly is a Program Coordinator at WestEd, a non-profit education research and development agency, where she coordinates projects and events for a research team of 35-40 people. Kelly’s work is primarily in the U.S. Department of Education’s Regional Educational Laboratory West, which provides free research, tools, and events in 4 Western states. She has a BA in History from Boston University, a MA in Consciousness and Transformative Studies from John F. Kennedy University, and a Master’s Certificate in Dream Studies also from John F. Kennedy University. Although she participated in an Enrichment Voyage aboard the M.V. Explorer a few years ago, this is her first semester on Semester at Sea. While traveling, Kelly likes to see how the country, culture, political climate, etc. impacts her dreams and looks forward to tracking her dreams as she crosses the globe on this fantastic journey.
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Sarah Harte (Psychologist)

Sarah is the Clinical Director of Bridge Back to Life, an outpatient substance abuse treatment provider in Brooklyn, NY. Ms. Harte has worked in the field of Social Work for over 10 years. She began her career working with severely emotionally disturbed adolescents in both Northern Arizona and Los Angeles. After relocating to New York City, in 2001, Ms. Harte’s work has been primarily in the field of substance abuse treatment, with both adolescents and adults. Ms. Harte is also an Adjunct Faculty at Columbia University, teaching courses on the clinical practice with substance users and serving as an advisor in the Master of Social Work program.
Ms. Harte received her Ba in Psychology from Northern Arizona University and her MSW from New York University. She is a certified Motivational Enhancement and Cognitive Behavioral therapist. Ms. Harte is alumnus of Semester at Sea, Fall 1998.
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James Hennessey (Psychologist)

James is currently the Director of Intern Training and a psychologist at the Florida State University Counseling Center, positions he has held for over 14 years. In addition to directing the multi-disciplinary internship program, James provides individual, couples and group therapy using an integrative, developmental approach. He has particular interest in social anxiety, personality problems, risk assessment and the issues of international students. James’ interest in diverse cultures and his commitment to experiential learning led him to coordinate for seven years an international exchange program between FSU and the University of Costa Rica. James also has extensive personal travel experience, having visited over 30 countries.
James received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; his M.S. in Clinical Psychology from San Diego State University; and his B. A. in Psychology from Dartmouth College. Prior to coming to Florida State University, James had primarily worked in psychiatric inpatient settings, including six years as Program Director of an innovative unit, treating hospitalized students from universities around the US at Four Winds Hospital in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. James considers Semester at Sea a unique opportunity to meld his professional skills in working with students with his enthusiasm and appreciation for cultural exploration.
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Kathleen Horn (Assistant Field Office Coordinator)

Kathleen, also known as Kat will be joining Semester at Sea for the first time this spring. Kat is a dual citizen of The Netherlands and the US. She grew up in the Midwest until age 13 when she moved to The Netherlands. She went on to complete her undergraduate degree at The American University of Paris, in France. Since then Kat has begun her career in International Education by working for EF Educational Tours, and GlobaLinks Learning Abroad’s AustraLearn program, both out of Denver, Colorado. Kat is currently working on her Masters degree in International Education from SIT Graduate Institute through the low-residency option. Kat has traveled extensively throughout Europe and speaks Dutch and French proficiently. She has also spent a month living on the coast of Ecuador while taking a course on Organic Farming. It is one of Kat’s life goals to combine education and travel and she is beyond excited to do so with Semester at Sea.
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Ko Kashiwazaki (Resident Director)

Ko has six years of experience in university housing and primarily serves as an Assistant Judicial Affairs Coordinator for Residential Life at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He also assists the university with adjudicating academic integrity issues in the Office of Judicial Affairs. Ko received his Masters in Postsecondary Administration and Student Affairs from the University of Southern California and holds a BA in Communications from UCSB. The Semester at Sea Spring 2012 voyage will be his first and he is looking forward to the experience of traveling the world with the students, faculty and staff. Ko was born in San Francisco, California and raised in the north bay in sunny Marin County.
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Jenni Lindberg (Resident Director)

Jenni, originally from Chicago, Illinois, received her B.A. in 2006 from Carthage College with double major in English and theatre and a minor in Spanish. After Finding her passion was working with college students, Jenni took time away from Theatre to pursue a career in Student Affair. Jenni completed her M.A. at Michigan State University in Student Affairs Administration with a concentration in Leadership Development. For the past three years Jenni has worked as a Resident Director at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. She has committed her professional experience to the areas of Leadership, Residence Life and Service. She was most excited to be given the opportunity to create and implement a Leadership Theme Community for first year female students. To enhance this community she also tailored and instructed a course to incorporate the impact of gender on women’s leadership identity and development, One of Jenni’s personal passions is travel. She studied abroad twice in college and was bitten by the travel bug. She is over the moon that she is now able to pair her dedication and excitement for student and travel as a Resident Director on the upcoming spring voyage for the Semester at Sea!
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Taisha D. Mikell (Resident Director)

Taisha currently holds the position of Assistant Program Coordinator for the Student Success Center at Eastern Illinois University (Charleston, IL). Her responsibilities include facilitating learning for students at the University through classroom and workshop instruction, and 1:1 consultations. An EIU alumna (BS ‘01, MS ‘05, MBA ‘10), she returned to her alma mater in June 2007 after serving as First Year Adviser at Miami University (Oxford, OH). When Taisha isn’t working, she can often be found curled up with her puppy, a hot cup of coffee & her Nook, surfing through her Netflix queue, or dancing & singing karaoke. Her love of learning and travel has led her to her first SAS voyage. She is looking forward to exploring the world while supporting the academic endeavors of the students who have chosen to set sail on this voyage. She is a member of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA), the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA), and Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc.
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Tom Nicholson (Videographer)

Tom is an Associate Professor in the Television Radio Department at the Park School of Communications at Ithaca College. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Film and Television from the University of Pittsburgh and Master of Science in Television, Radio, and Film from Syracuse University. Before he became a Professor he spent over twenty years as a Director and Editor in the film and television industry. He has worked for National Geographic, PBS, and the BBC. In recent Years he worked on "The Gold Rush," a two hour documentary for the PBS series American Experience, and an episode of "Fabric of the Cosmos," a mini-series for PBS series NOVA.
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Meg O’Brien (Field Office Coordinator)

Meg is sailing with Semester at Sea following a brief period of retirement. She wants people to know she didn’t fail at retirement. It’s just that she decided the rocking chair type of retirement could come after additional work and adventures during Spring 2012. Meg grew up in a farm community in the Midwest, but she soon realized there was much to see in the rest of the world. After teaching school in both the U.S. and Germany, she took the long way home from Germany, traveling through Africa and Asia before settling in Los Angeles. She then switched fields and spent the remainder of her career in the travel industry. She worked for Singapore Airlines for 26 years in various capacities in the Sales and Reservations Departments. Planning travel for individuals and groups was challenging and rewarding for her. Her travel interests are diverse. She enjoys cities, mountains, beaches, adventure travel, village markets, scenic drives, you name it—everything from Irian Jaya to Niger. Fortunately, her husband of 34 years shares her wanderlust. Meg holds an undergraduate degree from Marquette University and a Masters in Education from USC. She is also certified to teach English as a Second Language.
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Christine Papandrea (Assistant Field Office Coordinator)

Christine is the Sr. Admissions Coordinator for the Advanced Academic Programs at the Johns Hopkins University Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. She earned her BA in Rhetoric and Communication from the University of Pittsburgh and is currently completing her MA in Communication at Johns Hopkins University. Her passion for international education began with an internship and several administrative positions with Semester at Sea. During her time with Semester at Sea, she served as the Enrichment Voyage Coordinator and Assistant Director of Communications and Public Relations. Christine sailed as a student on the Spring 2005 voyage and as a staff member on several Enrichment Voyages.
Christine recently studied abroad at the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies researching China’s new media order, public relations practices, and political communication. When she isn’t working or studying, she can be found practicing yoga and working on her photography skills around Washington, DC. She looks forward to returning to the MV Explorer and watching the students transform as the voyage progresses.
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Martin Premoli (Teacher's Assistant)

Martin Premoli was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and raised in southern California. He graduated from Pepperdine University with a degree in English literature. While at Pepperdine, Martin studied abroad for one academic year in Florence, Italy, where he was able to pursue his scholarly and cultural interests at once. Currently, Martin is finishing his second year in the graduate English program at the University of Virginia, and will be assisting on board the ship’s writing center and global studies course. He is interested in contemporary, global Anglophone literature, as well as Hemispheric American studies.
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Jane Rogers (Lifelong Learners Coordinator)

Jane retired in 2010 from her position as Assistant Director in Career Services at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She also is an alumna of CU-Boulder, with a degree in Speech Pathology and Audiology. Following graduation, she worked in the field of Special Education for several years. Later, she managed an Academic Assistance program at Boulder High School, and then supported students in their search for colleges and other post-high school educational options. During her 10 years with CU Career Services, she coordinated the on-campus recruiting program, wrote a weekly e-newsletter highlighting upcoming career-related events on campus and in the surrounding area, and organized student programs. She and her family hosted several exchange students over the years, and her children spent time overseas during high school and college. One of them also served in the armed forces and was stationed abroad. Jane has traveled throughout North America and Europe, including the Czech Republic, and is keen to see more of the world. This is her first voyage with Semester at Sea, and she is thrilled to be part of this life-changing adventure. Jane has three grown children and one really adorable grandson.
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Brian Scannell (Photographer)

Brian is ecstatic to be sailing again onboard the MV Explorer as the staff photographer! His first voyage was in fall of 2006, and he served as the voyage video editor. Brian started his own photography and video production company in Portland, OR in 2003 called Happy Medium Studios. He graduated from Montana State University with dual degrees in English and Video and TV Production. On the 2006 voyage, he befriended the staff photographer Patrick Brown, who encouraged him to take his photography seriously. He has traveled extensively in SE Asia, and has spent the past 2 ½ years living and working in Amman, Jordan. His work has appeared in magazines throughout the world, including Architectural Record, Smithsonian, Travel+Leaisure, and a slew of regional magazines most people have never heard of. He recently concluded a year as the visiting photography instructor at SAE University in Amman. He is an avid guitar player, loves a good movie, and is passionate about books and photography. Brian looks forward to helping the shipboard community get the most out of their cameras to capture those magical moments of the voyage.
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Lori Schuyler (Registrar)

Lori Schuyler is Chief of Staff at the University of Richmond, where she has served since 2007. At Richmond, Schuyler works with the vice presidents and their senior staff members on policy and budget issues, and she serves as an advisor to the university president. Before moving to the University of Richmond, Schuyler served as Assistant Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia, where she also taught in the history department. She is the author of The Weight of Their Votes (UNC Press, 2006) which was awarded the Julia Cherry Spruill Prize for the best book in Southern women's history. Prior to her graduate work, Schuyler worked on Capitol Hill and for the U.S. Department of Education. Schuyler earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University and earned her Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia. During the Spring 2012 voyage, she will serve as the Assistant Academic Dean and Registrar. She will be travelling with her husband, Ridge, and sons, Charlie and Sam.
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Rahel Schwarz (Assistant Lifelong Learners Coordinator)

Born and raised in Switzerland, Rahel Schwarz currently works as a bilingual (Spanish/English) elementary teacher in California. Previously, she worked many years as a multilingual office manager/administrative assistant in Switzerland. In 2007, she earned a B.A. in Global Cultures at the University of California, Irvine, where she also obtained a Multiple Subject Credential with emphasis in Spanish.
Fluent in French, German, English, and Spanish, Rahel will be accompanied on this around-the-world voyage by her two daughters Alaia (18) and Tahina (15), as well as by her husband, Prof. Armin Schwegler (he will teach linguistics and other courses on this journey).
Rahel has had many opportunities to travel and/or live in Europe, South and Central America.
The family also lived 2 1/2 years in Costa Rica. Traveling, biking, hiking, are among the many passions she cultivates in her life. She and her family are excited to embark on the Spring 2012 voyage!
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Greg Seib (Teacher's Assistant)

Greg Seib is a fiction writer from Vancouver Island, Canada. He completed an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Virginia (2011), where he was a Poe-Faulkner Fellow. He also holds an MA in English from Concordia University in Montreal (2007), where he received the David McKeen Prize for his creative thesis. He has taught fiction workshops and composition and has assisted teaching classes on Literary Theory and on Canadian Literature. He has traveled widely, and his international work experience has taken him to St. Petersburg, Russia, where he was Programs Coordinator for the 2006 Summer Literary Seminars. He also lived in Nagoya, Japan for more than two years teaching English as Second Language. He is currently working on his first collection of short stories and a novel and hopes to find new material while on the spring 2012 voyage.
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Kyle Sirowy (Resident Director)

Kyle is a Complex Coordinator at the University Village Apartments for Foundation Housing at Cal Poly Pomona where he has worked for five years. Kyle completed his Master’s degree in College Student Affairs at Azusa Pacific University in 2009 and received his BA in History from the University of Redlands. Residence Life and Student Activities have always been a passion of Kyle’s. As an undergrad, Kyle was a member of a non-Greek brotherhood (and now an alumni member) based out of the University of Redlands called Rangi Ya Giza which focuses on educating the campus and local community on issues of social justice, diversity and community service. Kyle’s passion for helping others is evident in his work with his students at Cal Poly Pomona and even outside the office. For the last 8 years, Kyle has developed a passion for working with special needs children and students and coaches a basketball league for special needs teenagers. Kyle has never had the opportunity to travel outside of the country and is incredibly excited for this experience to learn and grow alongside the students!
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Terrie Tran (Resident Director)

Terrie is currently a Residential Community Coordinator at California State University, Fullerton Housing & Residence Life program and has been in this position for two years. Terrie is responsible for the training and supervision of student employees who serve as leaders and mentors to the students who reside in the on-campus Housing community. She also serves as advisor to the hall government council. Terrie is also currently serving as a mentor in the NASPA Undergraduate Fellows Program and has found this experience to be a meaningful way to contribute to the student affairs profession.
Terrie attended UCLA, where she received her B.A. in Sociology and Social Welfare and her M.Ed. in Higher Education and Student Affairs. During her undergraduate career, Terrie studied in Granada, Spain, where she studied Spanish language, arts, history and culture for six weeks. While working at Willamette University, Terrie participated in a ten-day administrative exchange in which she worked at Tokyo International University in Kawagoe, Japan. Terrie is passionate about incorporating cultural exchange and global awareness into the educational process and is thrilled to have the opportunity to be an active participant in the transformative Semester at Sea experience.
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Moises Orozco Villicana (Resident Director)

Moises is a fourth year doctoral student and academic advisor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In his professional student affairs experience, Moises served as a Resident Assistant, Resident Coordinator, and Apartment Living Assistant Coordinator for the University of California at Santa Barbara’s Housing and Residential Services. In these various roles, Moises valued the importance of co-creating an interdependent environment that encouraged students from diverse backgrounds to excel academically, socially, professionally, and personally. At the UCSB, Moises majored in Law & Society and Sociology with a minor in Education. As a graduate student at the UIUC, Moises has served as an academic advisor for undergraduates admitted through the Liberal Arts and Sciences’ Access and Achievement Program. As part of his doctoral program, Moises has conducted several qualitative studies that examine how Latina/o undergraduates view the college environment and how it shapes their cognitive and personal development. Outside professional and academic commitments, Moises is a sports enthusiast, especially football. This will be Moises first voyage, so he is excited about his involvement in this floating community. Lastly, he is thrilled about the possibility of sharing and promoting the development of a global consciousness among faculty, staff, crew, and students.
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Shari Walsh (Resident Director)

Shari, originally from Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, received a B.A in History from Trent University. Following her time at Trent University, Shari completed her M.A in Student Affairs Administration from Michigan State University. After an incredible experience working with students at both institutions Shari confirmed her love for working with students by accepting a Residence Life Manager position at the University of British Columbia Okanagan campus, in Kelowna, British Columbia. Most recently Shari has shifted into a new role; Manager, Leadership, Training & Development at the University of British Columbia Okanagan campus. In this new role, Shari is working to build leadership curriculum for students through various programs, opportunities and experiences both on and off campus.
Shari is most excited to be a part of a community of scholar’s working towards a higher awareness of global citizenship. Shari is thrilled to be a part of the SAS Spring 2012 voyage and can’t wait to meet the incredible group that she will be traveling with.
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Krista Weih (Alumni and Development Coordinator)

Krista is the Director of Alumni Engagement for the Institute for Shipboard Education/Semester at Sea in Charlottesville, Virginia. Before coming to ISE five years ago, she worked for the University of Virginia in adult educational travel programs. She sailed as a student on Semester at Sea in the Spring of 1979 and has had many opportunities to travel internationally since then. Krista is excited to be sailing around the world again, this time with her husband Kevin and son Aibek.
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Dave Weitz (IT Coordinator)

Dave retired from The Boeing Company in 2010 where he was the Senior Manager of Enterprise Electronic Communications. He was responsible for applying computer technology and applications to the processes used to communicate to Boeing employees, public media, Boeing shareholders and the general public. His specific responsibilities include management of the Boeing public web site, and several top level internal Boeing web sites, news and information distribution.
Dave started working for Boeing after earning a BS degree in mathematics from the University of Idaho in 1967. His 43 year Boeing career was centered on Information Technology (IT) and its application to the Boeing business environment. His assignments included management positions in IT Training and Development, nationwide marketing, business management, IT service sales, project management and web technology. He has published articles and presented to nationwide audiences on the subject of computer-based training, and was responsible for creating and installing the Boeing Education Network.
Dave spent two years on assignment in Canberra, Australia, and has experience working in the fields of banking, insurance, communications, and federal and local governments. He is looking forward to his second SAS voyage as an opportunity to establish new friendships and increase his awareness of the world’s cultures and the people who populate them. Dave’s first SAS voyage was in the fall of 2010.
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Jennifer Wilde (Medical Staff)

Jennifer is a family nurse practitioner with sixteen years of experience in a variety of settings, including family practice, internal medicine, and the emergency department. She currently works at Columbia River Women’s Clinic and is affiliated with Mid-Columbia Medical Center in The Dalles, Oregon. She graduated from the American University in Washington, DC and the MGH Institute of Health Professors in Boston, MA, with an MSN (Master of Science in Nursing). She also holds an MA in English literature from Portland State University.
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William Yeaton M.D. (Physician)

Bill attended the University of Colorado in Boulder obtaining a B.A. degree in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. He then graduated from Dartmouth Medical School in 1985; completed his residency in Family Practice at Travis Air Force Base, California; and became board certified in Family Medicine. He spent the next 6 1/2 years serving the United States Air Force in Italy, Germany, and England, and traveled extensively throughout Europe. Since then he has been doing Locum Tenens, covering short-term needs for various types of medical practices throughout the United States, New Zealand, and sometimes other parts of the world. Cruise ship assignments have included Alaska, the Bering Sea, Japan, Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, Central America, and Europe. Most recently he was the physician for the Spring 2011 Semester-at-Sea Enrichment Voyage in Central America. He is also a serious photographer, specializing in travel photography. Some of his photos have been published in National Geographic, National Wildlife, and American Photo magazines and have been displayed in the National Geographic Explorer’s Hall and the Smithsonian Institution. He greatly looks forward to contributing to this upcoming journey with the students, staff, and lifelong learners aboard the MV Explorer.
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Oscar Zavala (Textbook Coordinator)

Oscar has been an Academic Counselor at Santa Barbara City College (SBCC) in Santa Barbara, California for over 22 years. SBCC was recently voted one of the top 10 community colleges in the country and he loves his work there. He holds a B.A. in Sociology from UCSB, and an M.A. in Education with Emphasis in Educational Psychology, Counseling and Guidance from CSU Northridge. He has traveled with Semester at Sea in Spring of 1992, Summer of 2007, Summer of 2010 and a few reunion trips. He will be traveling this spring with his wife, Jill Hurd, who will be the Dean of Students, along with their two daughters, Kyla and Emma Zavala. He will be working as the Textbook Coordinator, a position he has held in the past. Oscar is so excited to be at sea again with his family and sharing this adventure with all the people on board the MV Explorer!
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Dianne Zimmer (Assistant Dependent Children Coordinator)

Dianne has been an elementary classroom teacher for the last 18 years at a small private school in Connecticut. She received a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Witwatersrand, and her master’s degree in teaching from Connecticut College. Every few years she has been lucky enough to join her husband and family on sabbaticals to South Africa and Germany. Currently, Dianne is spending a semester in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa, where she is homeschooling her daughter, Caitlin (13), and exploring all the area has to offer. She will be travelling aboard the M.V. Explorer with Marc, professor of chemistry, and their 2 children. Dianne can’t wait for the adventure of a lifetime to begin!
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