Spring 2009 Faculty & Staff

Faculty

• Deirdre Bird (Business/Commerce)
• Matthew Burtner (Music)
• Jodi Cohen (Speech Communication)
• Sergio Conetti (Physics)
• Edward "Ted" Eaton (Drama/Theatre)
• Richard French (Economics)
• Graeme C. Gerrans (Chemistry)
• Michael Goldweber (Computer Science/Mathematics)
• William Greenfield (Sociology)
• Carl Grindstaff (Sociology)
• Louise Harmon (Law/Philosophy)
• Jon Kastendiek (Biology)
• Anne Kinney (East Asian Studies)
• Dan Kinney (English and Comparative Literature)
• Marquisa LaVelle (Anthropology)
• Fred Levine (Art History)
• Fred Mabbutt (Political Science)
• Richard Miksad (Engineering)
• Robin Miksad (Mediation)
• John Mueller (Psychology)
• Joyce Salisbury (History/Religious Studies)
• Allan Schoenherr (Global Studies)
• Faye Serio (Studio Art)
• John Serio (English)
• Mark Shadle (English/Communication)
• Robert Smith (Geography)
• Joan Strouse (Sociology)
• Sarah Swank (Biology)
• George Thomas (Linguistics)
• Jody Tompson (Business/Commerce)

Deirdre Bird (Business/Commerce)

Deirdre Bird is assistant professor of marketing and Chair of the Department of Marketing at Providence College School of Business, Providence, Rhode Island. She has previously taught at Northeastern University in Boston; American University of Armenia, Intercontinental University of America, London; ESCEM-Tours, France, ESC-Lille, France, and continues to teach in a visiting capacity at ESC-Reims, France. Dr. Bird holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Purdue University, W. Lafayette, Indiana, an M.B.A. from University of Cape Town, South Africa, and a B.Com. from University of Natal-Durban, South Africa. Dr. Bird’s research and course work focuses on international marketing, global marketing of luxury brands and marketing for non-profit organizations. She has published in journals such as Journal for Global Competitiveness, American Society for Competitiveness, Thunderbird International Journal of Business and International Journal of African Historical Studies. She is a member of American Marketing Association, International Academy of Business Disciplines, American Society for Competitiveness and Academy of International Business. She is originally from Zimbabwe, and has lived and worked on four continents. This is Professor Bird’s second voyage with Semester at Sea.

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Matthew Burtner (Music)

Matthew Burtner is Associate Professor of Composition and Computer Technologies at the University of Virginia where he is Associate Director of the VCCM Computer Music Center and Director of Undergraduate Programs in Music. As a UVa Teaching+Technology Fellow and as leader of the Interactive Media Research Group, he develops new music technologies for educational and creative application. His music explores ecoacoustics, interactive multimedia, and rhythm and noise-based musical systems. Originally from Alaska, Burtner lived in Australia, Santa Fe, New Orleans, Paris, Baltimore, Barcelona and Palo Alto before relocating to Charlottesville to the University of Virginia He studied composition, computer music, saxophone and philosophy at St. Johns College, Tulane University (BFA, summa cum laude, 1993), Iannis Xenakis's UPIC-Studios, the Peabody Institute/Johns Hopkins (MM, 1997), and Stanford University/CCRMA (DMA, 2002). Burtner’s original compositions have received numerous awards and prizes including first prize in the Musica Nova International Competition and a 2008 Howard Foundation Fellowship. He composes music for a range of multimedia contexts employing video, dance, theatre, acoustic instruments and computer sound. His music has been performed widely, at major festivals and venues throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Among recordings for DACO (Germany), The WIRE (UK), MIT Press (US), Innova (US), Centaur (US), and Euridice (Norway), his music appears on two critically acclaimed solo CDs: "Portals of Distortion" and "Metasaxophone Colossus". He has conducted major artist residencies at IRCAM/Centre-George-Pompidou, Paris; Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff; Phonos Foundation/Pompeu Fabra Universidad, Barcelona; Musikene, San Sebastian; Cite des Arts, Paris; and the University of Washington, Bothell. Performers and organizations commissioning his music include Integrales (Germany), San Diego New Music (USA), Ascolto (Germany), Spectri Sonori (USA), Peabody Trio (USA), Phyllis Bryn-Julson (USA), MiN Ensemble (Norway), Musikene (Spain), German Ministerium for the Arts (Germany), Think Thank (USA), Augsburg Mozart Festival (Germany), Jerome Foundation (USA), CrossSound (Alaska), and others.
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Jodi Cohen (Speech Communication)

Jodi Cohen is a Professor at Ithaca College, received her MA in Speech Communication from Colorado State University and her PhD in Speech Communication from The Pennsylvania State University. She teaches courses in the practice, theory, and criticism of public communication. Her publications address the synthesis of critical and social-scientific research methods, the synthesis of classical and postmodern theories of rhetoric, the role of rhetoric in democracy, and critical studies of specific texts. Her most recent work focuses on the rhetoric of environmental risk. She has a strong record of service at the college and in the local community. Most notably, she has coordinated First Year Seminar Program at Ithaca College, chaired the Humanities and Science’s curriculum committee, and the committee that developed the General Education Program. She just completed a seven year term as president of the Board of Directors of the 7th Art Corporation of Ithaca, a non-for-profit organization that manages two film exhibition theaters in Ithaca. She has independently traveled through many countries in South America, Africa, and Asia; and to a lesser extent, Europe.
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Sergio Conetti (Physics)

Sergio Conetti, a Professor of Physics at the University of Virginia, received his Physics Doctorate from the University of Trieste, the northern Adriatic Italian city where he was born and raised. His scientific career has been in the field of elementary particles, working on experiments at the highest energy accelerator laboratories around the world; an exception was a parenthesis as a meteorological officer, when drafted by the Italian Air Force. In 1973, in the context of a Canadian initiative to establish a strong particle physics research program, he moved to Montreal’s McGill University and, during his tenure, contributed extensively to the growth of the newly formed Canadian Institute for Particle Physics. In 1989 he joined the faculty at the University of Virginia, where he co-founded an experimental particle physics group, a field of fundamental research until then not represented at UVa. Sergio Conetti has performed experimental work at CERN (the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland), the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Batavia, Illinois), the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and the Deutsches Electronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, Germany. Highlights of his research, where he played leading roles in several international collaborations, include measurements of lifetimes and other properties of charmed quarks, stringent limits on neutrino oscillations and studies of subtle differences between matter and antimatter. This last topic was the subject of a collaborative effort between the University of Virginia and the Italian Frascati National Laboratories, initiated while spending a sabbatical year in Rome as Research Director. During a previous sabbatical in 1988 he helped establish the Lecce section of the Italian Nuclear Physics Institute. Sergio Conetti has co-authored over 100 papers in refereed scientific journals and has presented the results of his research at numerous international meetings and conferences, including a month-long series of lectures in the People’s Republic of China. His teaching has covered a broad range, from advanced graduate courses to introductory courses for non-science majors, including the popular USEM’s “Bricks and Mortar of the Universe” and “Does Antimatter Matter?”
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Edward "Ted" Eaton (Drama/Theatre)

Dr. Eaton was graduated with a PhD in Theatre History from Bowling Green State University (Ohio). Since then, he has taught Theatre and English at Quincy College, Lesley University, and Emmanuel College in the Boston area. He also was on the faculty, specializing in Stage Combat, at Emerson College and The New England Conservatory. Last year, Dr. Eaton was the Visiting Honors Professor and Artist in Residence at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. His publications and presentations have focused on the impact of primary documents on our understanding of theatre history and its surrounding social context. Dr. Eaton has directed and staged violence for stage and screen in New York, New England, regionally, and internationally.

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Richard French (Economics)

Professor French received the doctorial degree in economics at the University of Oklahoma. He specialized in banking and finance at The Graduate School of Business at New York University, and post doctoral study in economics at Harvard University. His academic positions include faculty appointments as assistant professor at the University of Florida, associate professor at the City University of New York, Professorial lecturer at The George Washington University, and Professorial lecturer at the State University of Irkutsk, Russia; and the Siberian American Department of Management under the auspices of the University of Maryland University Collage. His work with the U.S. government included research positions with several agencies including the Economic research Service at USDA, The General Accounting Office, and the Department of the Treasury. While at Treasury he was assigned to The Saudi Arabian Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation as an economic advisor to the Saudi Minister of Finance. Most recently he was posted by the U.S. Department of the Treasury as the macroeconomic advisor to the Minister of Finance of Romania. At request of The American Ambassador and The Romanian Minister of Finance he published an extensive study exploring the size and composition of the Underground Economy in Romania. His dissertation: Estate Multiplier Estimates of Personal Wealth at the State level, was published by the University of Florida Press. He was an Associate Editor of The Review of regional Studies.

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Graeme C. Gerrans (Chemistry)

Graeme (Gus) Gerrans is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Virginia. He was educated at Rhodes University, South Africa (B Sc Honors in Chemistry) and Cambridge University, England (Ph D in Chemistry). During his career he has worked in the chemical industry and for the Chemical Industries Association in South Africa. He has taught undergraduate chemistry at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and at the University of Virginia. He has also advised graduate students in organic chemistry and in chemical education at the University of the Witwatersrand. He has held visiting professorships at the California Institute of Technology (1972), the University of Illinois (1979), the University of East Anglia, England (1986) and the University of Virginia (1990). Amongst the awards that he has received are the Convocation Distinguished Teacher’s Award (University of the Witwatersrand) and the Education Medal (South African Chemical Institute). He has published over 80 papers and is the co-author, together with P and R Hartmann-Petersen, of “Encyclopedia of Science and Technology”, (New Africa Books, 2007).
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Michael Goldweber (Computer Science/Mathematics)

Michael Goldweber (mikeyg) is an associate professor in the department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Xavier University in Cincinnati, OH. Mikey attended Boston University receiving both a B.A. in Mathematics and a B.S.B.A. in Finance. Following this, and a short stint working in industry, he spent a year living in Israel. Upon returning from Israel he received both a Masters and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Dartmouth College. A respected and active participant in the computer science education community, Mikey's current research focus is in systems virtualization. As a senior member of the V2 research project, he helped develop Virtual Distributed Ethernet (VDE) and ViewOS among other virtualization tools and techniques. Currently he is developing a series of projects allowing for the use of VDE in undergraduate curricula. Mikey was a visiting lecturer for six months in 2003 at New Zealand's University of Technology (UNITEC), and a visiting researcher for six months in 2004 at the University of Bologna in Italy. Having lived and worked on four continents, he is looking forward to being a part of the unique educational experience of Semester at Sea.
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William Greenfield (Sociology)

Professor William D. Greenfield, Ph.D., holds the rank of Emeritus Professor at Portland State University. He received his doctorate in Educational Leadership in 1973 from the University of New Mexico. His undergraduate degree is in English Literature from Miami University. He has served as a Professor at Syracuse University, Kent State University, Louisiana State University and Portland State University. Areas of expertise include: leadership training, qualitative research methods, and organizational development. Dr. Greenfield is the recipient of Penn State University D. J. Willower Center for the Study of Leadership and Ethic’s 2006 Award of Excellence. Dr. Greenfield is the author of several textbooks and over 80 journal articles on leadership and leadership development. He has lectured extensively and his work is frequently cited in professional journals and at conferences. Professor Greenfield consults with hospitals, schools, businesses, and non-profit organizations in the area of leadership and organizational development. From 1991-92 Professor Greenfield was a Fulbright Scholar in Thailand where he taught courses and designed curriculum at Chiang Mai University. He has been an invited lecturer at universities in Malaysia, Thailand, Pakistan, and Lebanon. Professor Greenfield currently resides in Mexico where he is involved in building basic shelter for those in extreme poverty.
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Carl Grindstaff (Sociology)

Dr. Carl Grindstaff is a Professor Emeritus from the Unversity of Western Ontario where he taught for over 30 years in the fields of Sociology and Demography. He also served for five years as chair of the Sociology Department at UWO. Professor Grindstaff also has taught at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia; The University of Miami in Miami, Florida; and The University of California at Davis. His awards include an appointment as a senior fellow at the Population Institute of the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii, and a teacher of the year award from the University of Ontario Faculty Associations. His major field of research is in the field of Demography with more than 50 research articles and conference presentations and six research monographs and edited books. "Dr. G" was a member of the Spring 2005 Semester at Sea voyage and he is looking forward to another special educational experience with the students, other faculty, and lifelong learners.
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Louise Harmon (Law/Philosophy)

Louise Harmon is a professor of law at Touro Law School on Long Island. She received her B.A. from Indiana University, her J.D. degree from the University of Texas at Austin, her LL.M. from Harvard Law School with an emphasis on legal history, and her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Columbia University. She is the author of Cultivating Intelligence: Law, Power and the Politics of Teaching (New York University Press, 1996, with Deborah Post) and Fragments on the Deathwatch (Beacon Press, 1998). Professor Harmon has also published many scholarly articles for law reviews, covering a wide range of topics from medical ethics, the visual arts, law and literature, evidence, women and the law in India, and legal history. Professor Harmon is the co-founder of the only study abroad law program in India, located in Shimla and Dharamsala, and has taught both Buddhism and Hinduism in that program for eleven summers. She has also taught classical Chinese philosophy in Touro Law School’s summer abroad program in Xiamen, China for four summers. In 1999, Professor Harmon taught medical ethics at the medical school at University College, Cork in Ireland for a semester, and in 2003, she was a Senior Research Fellow for a semester at the Center for Indian Studies at SUNY University at Stony Brook. She has also served as a member of the Huntington Hospital Biomedical Ethics Committee for the past twenty years.
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Jon Kastendiek (Biology)

Dr. Jon Kastendiek is an Associate Professor of Biology at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. He received both his B.A. and Ph.D from the Zoology Department of the University of California at Los Angeles. He has over twenty years of experience conducting field research in a number of different marine habitats such as Pacific coral reefs, Southern California kelp beds and subtidal sand beaches, and under Antarctic sea-ice. He has also conducted environmental impact studies on the effects of a nuclear power station on marine communities. He has traveled extensively and studied natural history in South America, Africa and tropical Australia. Recently he has studied the patterns of forest regeneration in a temperate deciduous forest in Virginia.
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Anne Kinney (East Asian Studies)

Anne Kinney is Full Professor of Chinese in the Department of East Asian Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Virginia. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. She specializes in the literature and social history of early China. Her books include Representations of Childhood and Youth in Early China, Chinese Views of Childhood, and The Establishment of the Han Empire and Imperial China. She studied Chinese language and literature in Taiwan from 1976-1979 and did graduate work at Peking University from 1982-1984. She is currently chair of East Asian languages, Literatures and Cultures.
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Dan Kinney (English and Comparative Literature)

Dan Kinney is Professor of English at the University of English. He earned his highest honors BA in English and Classics (Greek) at Yale and proceeded to Clare College, Cambridge, as a Paul Mellon Fellow for a further degree (MA), primarily in classical philosophy; he came back to Yale for a Renaissance Studies Ph.D., winning Yale's Porter Humanities Dissertation Prize for his Ph.D. thesis on More. Specializing in the fortunes of classical texts and ideas in the culture of Early Modern Europe and since, he has edited and written extensively on More and Erasmus and on the rhetoric of Renaissance cultural experiment, co translated and edited Petronius' Satyrica, and launched pathbreaking websites devoted to Ovid's Metamorphoses in Image and Text and to polymath Abraham Cowley's expansive engagements with the culture of Civil War England. He is currently working on generic experimentation in seventeenth century England and the many ways novels especially resist and refunction traditional forms like the epic.
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Marquisa LaVelle (Anthropology)

Marquisa LaVelle teaches courses in Biological Anthropology as well as Human Variation and Evolution using a biocultural perspective of our species’ past and present. Recently retired, she is Emerita Professor of Anthropology at the University of Rhode Island. Her degrees include a BA degree in social psychology from the University of California and an MA in cultural anthropology and a Ph.D in biological anthropology from the University of Michigan. Her major research interests are in international nutrition and health with emphases on longitudinal studies in non-Western populations. She has done field research in Samoa, the Sea Islands of South Carolina, Belize and among Warlpari communities in Central Australia. Her publications include articles on obesity, malnutrition, adolescent development and heath outcomes (“Are There Long-Term Health Consequences of Seecular Trend in Early Menarche?”), as well as current examples of evolution in modern populations (“Human Growth and Continuing Evolution in Modern Populations”).
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Fred Levine (Art History)

Fred Levine is Professor of Art History at Palomar College in San Marcos, CA. He has authored numerous publications and spoken widely on a vast range of issues in art and cultural studies both in the United States and overseas. Levine completed his undergraduate studies at New York University and received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Washington University in St. Louis. He has taught at the University of Texas, Austin, Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. As a Fellow in Art History at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia he explored a vast range of Aboriginal sacred sites in often remote areas throughout the country. Fred remained in Australia for five additional years as Lecturer in Art History and Theory at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, where he also served as Associate Dean and Director of the Graduate Program at the Tasmanian School of Art. Fred has lectured on cruise ships for twenty years, including the past thirteen years as Art and Architecture lecturer with Crystal Cruises and has sailed more than 100 voyages. He has traveled extensively visiting more than 80 countries on six continents.and has taught two Semester Abroad programs at the University of London. Spring 2009 will be his third voyage on Semester at Sea.
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Fred Mabbutt (Political Science)

Fred R. Mabbutt is a retired Professor of Political Science from UCLA, where he taught Constitutional Law. Formerly with California State University at Long Beach, he taught Comparative Politics and International Relations and was the recipient of a Distinguished Teaching Award in the Political Science Department and an Outstanding Educators Award from Notre Dame University. He is the author of several books and numerous articles, including publications in American law journals and The Nation. Professor Mabbutt previously sailed with Semester at Sea on the Fall 89, Fall 92, Spring 96, Fall 03, and Fall 07 voyages, and has travel experience in North Africa, Europe, Asia, South and Central America. He received his B.A. from California State University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Claremont Graduate School and University Center.
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Richard Miksad (Engineering)

Dr. Miksad is the Thomas M. Linville Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Virginia. He received his doctorate in Physical Oceanography from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University, and his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Bradley University. Dr Miksad served as Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia from 1994 to 2004. He was on the faculty of the College of Engineering of the University of Texas at Austin from 1974 to 1994, where he served as Associate Dean for Research and as Chair of the Department of Aerospace Engineering & Engineering Mechanics. Prior to that he was on the faculty of the Imperial College of Science and Technology, and the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. Dr. Miksad has conducted research in the areas of wave forces on deep-water offshore structures, the atmospheric and oceanic transport of pollutants, hydrodynamic stability, and the nonlinear dynamics of transition to turbulence. Dr. Miksad is the author, or co-author, of over 150 research publications.
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Robin Miksad (Mediation)

Ms Miksad is a trained Mediator, certified by the Commonwealth of Virginia to conduct mediation for participants in cases before both General and district courts. She is also certified to mentor persons seeking certification as a mediator in Virginia. She is a member of the Positive solutions Group, a group of mediators and lawyers focused on alternative dispute resolution. Prior to her current association she was the primary mediator with FSR Associates, another mediation group in Charlottesville. Ms Miksad was the faculty liaison in the Office of the Vice Provost for Research at the University of Virginia and was the inaugural Coordinator of the TASP Office at the University of Texas at Austin, responsible for developing programs to foster student academic success. Ms Miksad has also been a management consultant for both government and education organizations and has taught business courses to college students. She has been a board member of several charitable or volunteer organizations and president of two of them. Ms. Miksad earned her MBA from MIT's Sloan School of Management where her concentration was Organization Development and earned her undergraduate degree in Biology is from Harvard University.

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John Mueller (Psychology)

John Mueller has been a Professor of Applied Psychology at the University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, since 1990. He previously spent 22 years in the Department of Psychology at the University of Missouri, Columbia. He recently retired, but continues to teach on a part-time basis in on-line and campus courses. Dr. Mueller received a Ph.D. and a MSc in Experimental Psychology from St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, and a Bachelors degree from the University of Missouri, Columbia. Dr. Mueller's research has been in human learning, the role of emotional states as factors in performance and cognition, aging and cognition, technology and stress, and face memory. His teaching has been in cognitive psychology, history of psychology, educational technology, stress and coping, aging, and research methods. Dr. Mueller is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science, on the Board of Directors of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, and a member of many other psychology organizations. He has published over 100 articles on human learning and cognition in various professional journals, book chapters, educational software packages, and numerous papers at professional meetings. He has served in various editorial capacities for several journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Anxiety, Stress and Coping, Journal of Experimental Education, Journal of Research in Personality, Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, and Technology, Pedagogy, and Education. Although Dr. Mueller has participated in several conferences in the U.K., Germany, New Zealand, and a sabbatical in Australia, this is his first voyage with Semester at Sea.

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Joyce Salisbury (History/Religious Studies)

Joyce E. Salisbury is Professor Emerita from University of Wisconsin – Green Bay, where she taught and served as Associate Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Director of International Education. Professor Salisbury has a PhD from Rutgers University in Medieval History. Salisbury is an award-winning teacher who received the prestigious national Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) award for excellence in 1991 in addition to other teaching awards. Professor Salisbury is a prolific author whose books include the award-winning Perpetua’s Passion: Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages, and the widely-used textbook, The West in the World. Salisbury has considerable international experience, including growing up in Brazil and Mexico, doing research and guiding students to Europe and Tunisia, lecturing on cruise ships around the world, and teaching on Semester at Sea in Spring 2007.
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Allan Schoenherr (Global Studies)

Allan Schoenherr is a retired Professor of Ecology at Fullerton College in southern California. He also has taught a variety of ecology classes at the University of California, Irvine, and California State University at Fullerton. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Southern California, and his Ph.D. from Arizona State University. He was honored as Teacher of the Year (2000) at Fullerton College. A recognized authority on California, he is the author of two major books on the state. A Natural History of California (University of California Press, 1992) is a 772-page compendium on the plants, animals, and geology of California. His more recent publication, Natural History of the Islands of California (University of California Press, 1999), is a 491 page discussion of all the islands of California including those in San Francisco Bay. He is coauthor of the third edition of The Terrestrial Vegetation of California. An accomplished nature photographer, he has provided the photographs to illustrate his books and he has received two awards for his images of California Gray Whales. His academic interests are in ecology, evolution, biogeography, and endangered species. Among his scientific writings are articles on the Population Ecology, Ecology of the Bolsa Chica wetlands, the Colorado Desert, Desert Conifers, and the California Islands. He also has written articles on amphibians, reptiles, and freshwater fishes. He is an authority on the desert pupfish.
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Faye Serio (Studio Art)

Senior Lecturer from St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, Faye Serio has been teaching courses in traditional, digital, and non-silver photography, computer art, and studio arts for over twenty years, and she has given numerous workshops dealing with creating art on the computer. As an active artist, she has exhibited her work in more than seventy-five shows and has frequently won awards for her photography. Her images have appeared on book and scholarly journal covers. The source for much of her art comes from travel experiences, especially while living and travelling abroad. During her first Semester at Sea experience in Spring 2005, Professor Serio shot over four thousand photographs, displayed many in shows. She received her B.A. in Fine Arts from DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana, and her M.F.A. in photography from the University of Notre Dame.
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John Serio (English)

John N. Serio is a Full Professor of Humanities at Clarkson University. He is a specialist in modern American poetry and has edited The Wallace Stevens Journal for over twenty-five years. Among his publications are Teaching Wallace Stevens: Practical Essays, The Cambridge Companion to Wallace Stevens, and a forthcoming edition of Selected Poems of Wallace Stevens. In addition, he has edited two collections of poetry for young people, Wallace Stevens and The Seasons. Professor Serio has been the recipient of several NEH grants as well as two Fulbrights, one to Greece and one to Belgium. He has won awards for his scholarly articles and his journal editing. He is a confirmed shellback, having taught in the Semester at Sea program during the Spring 2005 voyage. Professor Serio holds a B.S. in English Education from the State University College at Buffalo, an M.A. in English from Northwestern University, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Notre Dame.
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Mark Shadle (English/Communication)

Mark Shadle is Professor of English-Writing at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande, Oregon. He received his B.A. in Political Science from Colorado College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Iowa, where his dissertation focused upon the writing of Ishmael Reed. He is the co-author of Teaching Multiwriting: Researching and Composing with Multiple Genres, Media, Disciplines, and Cultures, has published numerous book chapters, including “A Pinata of Theory and Autobiography: Research Writing Breaks Open Academe” in Research Writing: A Sourcebook for Teachers, as well as poems and many journal articles, including “Schama and the New Histories of Landscape” in Postmodern Culture. He has been the recipient of a Stanford University Seminar on Theoretical Approaches to Ethnic Literature, an NEH Summer Seminar in American Indian Written Literature, NEH Summer Institutes on The Transatlantic Slave Trade and Mayan Worlds throughout Central America and a Fulbright-Hays Summer Seminar on Sustainability and Environment throughout Brazil. Current research and writing interests include the theory, criticism and rhetoric of place and travel, and the role of music in world literature. Memberships in professional organizations include The Rhetoric Society of America, the National Council of Teachers of English and the Modern Language Association. Professor Shadle has traveled extensively in over 50 countries.
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Robert Smith (Geography)

Now an Independent Geographic Consultant, Robert Smith served 31 years in the U.S. Department of State as a geographer. After receiving his PhD in Geography from the Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill he became the U.S. government’s geographic expert responsible for negotiating U.S. maritime boundaries and establishing U.S. claims to marine jurisdiction. Dr. Smith represented the U.S. at numerous United Nations conferences pertaining to the law of the sea. He oversaw and was the principle author of the State Department’s Limits in the Seas studies. He is the author of a book on the Exclusive Economic Zone, co-author of two books on excessive maritime claims and currently is the co-editor of the American Society of International Law’s International Maritime Boundaries volumes. Dr. Smith has taught the Political Geography of the Oceans course at Georgetown University. He has provided expert testimony in both U.S. Supreme Court cases and in international courts. As a geographic consultant he advises foreign governments, oil and gas companies, and international law firms on all aspects of ocean policies and planning and developing strategies for exploring and exploiting offshore resources, including risk assessments. Smith participated in mapping the Arctic seafloor while on board the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker, Healy, during the summer of 2007.
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Joan Strouse (Sociology)

Joan H. Strouse received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Educational Policy Studies in 1985. Her area of specialization includes adjustment and transition challenges for immigrant and refugee populations and improving the educational opportunities for historically marginalized groups. Since the awarding of her degree she has served as a Professor at Portland State University (PSU) in the Graduate School of Education. Professor Strouse is also an affiliated faculty member in PSU's departments of Applied Linguistics, Women's Studies, and International Studies. In 2007 Dr. Strouse was awarded the rank of Emerita Professor. The 3rd edition of her book, "Exploring Socio-Cultural Themes in Education" was published in 2006. While on sabbatical in 1991-92 Dr. Strouse was a research associate at Chiang Mai's Tribal Research Center in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Dr. Strouse has received Fulbright-Hays Awards and has traveled to Turkey in 1998 and N. Yemen and Tunisia in 1989 to further her research. In 2002 Professor Strouse was recognized for her enduring work with the Portland Public Schools-Migrant Education Project and received the "Urban Impact Award" from the Council of Great City Schools and the Council of Great City Colleges of Education. The Mayor of Portland, Oregon appointed Professor Strouse as Commissioner to the Metropolitan Human Rights Commission in 1994. Dr. Strouse has led Portland State University Senior Capstone Service-Learning projects in Latin America. Currently Dr. Strouse is living in central Mexico where she is involved in several NGO's that promote educational opportunities for young rural Mexican women.
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Sarah Swank (Biology)

Dr. Sarah Swank is Full Professor of Biology (Emerita) at Bridgewater College. She received her B.S. degree in Biology from James Madison University; M.A. in Biology from the University of Virginia and the Ph.D. from the Ecology and Evolution Program of the University of Southern California. She has a strong background in marine ecology and environmental science. Her current teaching interests include Ecology, Evolution and Zoology. Her recent research interests relate to the ecology of terrestrial plant communities. She does field-oriented research using both descriptive and experimental approaches. She has studied shrubland communities under varying degrees of stress in places like California (see Ecology 72: 104-115) and Chile, the effects of deer on forest regeneration in Virginia and rain forest ecology in Peru, Costa Rica, and Australia. Dr. Swank particularly enjoys introducing students to ecology by allowing them to learn through personal observation. She has taught a series of short field courses in Tropical Ecology involving travel to San Salvador, Bahamas; Costa Rica and East Africa.
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George Thomas (Linguistics)

Professor Thomas received his B.A. and his Ph.D. in Russian from the University of London in the United Kingdom. Since 1969 he has been teaching at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, specializing at first in Russian language and linguistics and later branching out into Slavic and general linguistics. He has taught introductory courses in linguistics as well as upper level and graduate courses in sociolinguistics, language planning, applied linguistics, languages in contact and historical linguistics. His main field of research has been in the area of language contact, language planning and lexical enrichment. Most of this research, published in 34 articles and three book-length monographs, has concentrated on Russian, Czech, Slovak, Slovene and Serbo-Croatian. However, in 1991 he published Linguistic Purism, a much cited book dealing with the efforts around the world to combat unwelcome influences (usually foreign) on standard languages. Among his recent academic interests are the study of areas of linguistic convergence (Sprachbund) as well as pidgins and creoles. Since his formal retirement in 1999 at the rank of Full Professor of Linguistics he has continued to teach and maintain an active research profile. His major work in progress at the moment is a book on the linguistic history of Europe. He has studied, taught and lectured throughout eastern and western Europe, North America and South Africa and has traveled widely in Europe, eastern and southern Africa and the Americas.
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Jody Tompson (Business/Commerce)

Associate Professor and Director of the Naimoli Institute for Business Strategy, The University of Tampa, Tampa, FL. Bachelor of Science (Finance and English), Trinity University, San Antonio, TX, 1987. Ph.D. (Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship), University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, 1995. Dr. Tompson’s research has been published primarily in academic journals that focus on strategic management and entrepreneurship. Specifically, his research addresses the decision making methods used by management teams when they develop new strategies. He has also written several case studies that focus on start-up companies in the board game industry, the biodiesel industry, and the macadamia nut industry. From 1996 – 2000 Dr. Tompson lived and worked in Hamilton, New Zealand. During that time he was a Senior Lecturer in the School of Management Studies at the University of Waikato. During that time he gave academic presentations at conferences in New Zealand, Australia, and Singapore. While working at the University of Tampa, he led study tours to China in 2006 and 2008. Groups of MBA students visited companies in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong.
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