Summer 2009 Faculty & Staff

Michael Joseph Smith - Academic Dean

Michael Joseph Smith is the Thomas C. Sorensen Professor of Political and Social Thought at the University of Virginia. A product of public schools in Yonkers, New York, he holds a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, and an M.Phil. from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He teaches courses on human rights, political thought, ethics, and international relations.

Since 1999 he has directed the Program in Political and Social Thought, an honors, interdisciplinary major for undergraduates. He has also directed the Distinguished Majors Program in the Department of Politics and was chosen to teach a University Common Course on "War, Justice, and Human Rights" in 2002-2003. Professor Smith has served the University of Virginia in many capacities, most notably as Chair of its Faculty Senate, and as Co-chair of the President's Commission on Diversity and Equity, whose recommendations have been adopted as policy for the University. The University has honored Prof. Smith's teaching in several ways: in 1998, the Seven Society cited his "selfless service to the university;" in 2000 he was chosen to present in the university's "Last Lecture" series; in 2001, he received an All-University Teaching Award; and in 2007 he was chosen as a Mead Fellow in recognition of his service to undergraduates, as well as the Serpentine Society Award for his work with the LGBT community. He has also served as a mentor to younger faculty in the University's Excellence in Diversity program.

Professor Smith has been active in promoting the inclusion of ethical questions in university courses on international politics, serving as a Trustee of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Relations in New York and frequent presenter in its faculty development programs. Professor Smith is the author of Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger; co-editor and co-author of Ideas and Ideals; and of many essays and articles on the ethical dilemmas raised by contemporary international politics. Most recently he was a research consultant and contributor to the UN-sponsored International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty that resulted in the report The Responsibility to Protect. Active in the human rights community, Professor Smith serves as the faculty advisor to the UVa chapter of Amnesty International and was recently the Keynote Speaker at a national meeting of Sustained Dialogue.

Michael Zoll - Executive Dean

Michael Zoll is the Vice President of Enrollment and Student Affairs for Semester at Sea/Institute for Shipboard Education. Mike's two decades of leadership in higher education include administrative and faculty positions. Before joining the Institute full-time in 2006, Mike served as vice provost at Saint Mary's College of California, dean at Mount Saint Mary's University, associate dean at Gonzaga University and the Claremont Colleges/Harvey Mudd, and assistant dean at College of the Holy Cross. Mike has sailed on four past Semester at Sea voyages (resident director in spring 1990, assistant executive dean in spring 1993; director of student life in summer 2000, and assistant executive dean in 2005) and will serve as executive dean for the summer 2009 voyage to Europe and North Africa. Mike earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Studies and Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara; Masters degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs Administration from the University of Vermont; and doctorate degree in Educational Leadership from the University of La Verne. Mike is active in several professional organizations (including NAFSA-Association of International Educators; and NASPA-National Association of Student Affairs Administrators) and recently co-presented a national webinar titled "Parents and Education Abroad: A Training Manual". Mike lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife and four children.

Faculty

Ian Baucom (English Literature)

Ian Baucom is Professor and Chair of the Duke English Department. He works on twentieth century British literature and culture, postcolonial and cultural studies, and African, Black Atlantic and world literatures. He is the author of Out of Place: Englishness, Empire and the Locations of Identity (1999, Princeton University Press), Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History (2005, Duke University Press), and co-editor of Shades of Black: Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain (2005, Duke University Press). He has edited special issues of the South Atlantic Quarterly on Atlantic Studies and Romanticism, and is currently working on a new book project tentatively entitled The Disasters of War: On Inimical Life.
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Richard Castaldi (Business/Commerce)

Richard M. Castaldi is a Professor in the Department of Management in the College of Business at San Francisco State University. He received his M.S.B.A. in Management from the University of Denver and a Ph.D. in Strategic Management from Virginia Tech. Dr. Castaldi has published over 30 refereed articles and case studies in scholarly publications such as the International Marketing Review, the Journal of Transnational Management, the Journal of Global Marketing, the International Wine Marketing Journal, the International Journal of Wine Business Research, the Case Research Journal, and Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, among others. He has presented his research at over 60 national and international conferences. Professor Castaldi's student evaluations consistently reflect excellence in the classroom and he has been the recipient of numerous teaching awards. He also has significant international teaching experience in China, as well as spending semesters at universities in France and Spain. Professor Castaldi has been the Program Director of four "Business and International Education" (BIE) grants awarded by the US Department of Education. He has been awarded over $750,000 of federal funds to support SFSU faculty and graduate students design and implement initiatives to 1) enhance the "globalization" of business administration curricula, and 2) conduct applied research with the US wine industry to improve their international trade and export endeavors.
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Angela Davis (English Literature)

Angela M. Davis holds a joint appointment at the University of Virginia in the English Department as Associate Professor of English and in Student Affairs as Special Assistant to the Vice President for Student Affairs. Ms. Davis, who holds a B.A. in English from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and a M.A. in English Language and Literature from Cornell University, is an Americanist with a specific area of expertise in African American Literature. In addition to teaching, she has served as a dean of students and was director of the University of Virginia's Residence Life Program for twelve years. In addressing the increasing diversification of the student body, she has designed workshops and conducted panel discussions on race, gender and diversity issues at the University. She has served on key University-wide committees such as the President's Task Force on the Status of Women at UVa, the Fine Arts Commission, and co-chair of the President's Commission on Diversity and Equity. In her new role as Special Assistant to the Vice President for Student Affairs Ms. Davis is leading implementation of the diversity and public service related initiatives recommended by the Commissions on Diversity and Equity and the Future of the University. In recognition of her teaching and service to the University, most notably Ms. Davis was inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa, and UVa's prestigious Raven Society, and is a recipient of the IMP Society's Distinguished Faculty Award, the University of Virginia's Last Lecture Series, and the Office of African-American Affairs' Outstanding Contribution and Dedication to Students Award. She currently serves on the Monticello Advisory Committee on African American Interpretation, as faculty representative on the Walter Ridley Scholarship Advisory Board, is a member of NASPA-National Association of Student Affairs Administrators, and is a lifetime member of the NAACP.
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Peggy Kreshel (Communication/Media Studies)

Peggy J. Kreshel is an Associate Professor of Advertising at the University of Georgia Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and an affiliate faculty member in the Institute for Women's Studies. She earned a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a Ph.D. from the Institute of Communication Research at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign. Peggy is an active member of the UGA Teaching Academy, received the University of Georgia's Richard B. Russell Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award in 1992, and was the Outstanding Teacher in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations in 2005. Peggy is active in curriculum development, having designed two courses: advertising and society and media culture and diversity, both of which are now components of the College's curriculum. Peggy's primary teaching responsibilities include advertising and society, media culture and diversity, gender and media, consumer culture, and media planning. Peggy has served the University in a number of capacities including Associate Director and Editor of the SACS Accreditation Self-Study, "Creating a Climate of Inquiry"; and a member of the Presidential Task Force on the Quality of the UGA Undergraduate Experience, and the Presidential Task Force on University of Georgia General Education. Peggy's research interests mesh well with her teaching responsibilities, and include advertising history, occupational culture, gender issues in mass communication and consumer culture, women's studies, cultural studies and ethics. She is co-author of Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning, (8th ed.).
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Andrea Parrot (Sociology/Women's Studies)

Andrea Parrot earned her Ph.D. at Cornell University, then joined the faculty in 1981. She is currently a full Professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell. She is also is a member of Cornell's Graduate Field of Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies; a member of the faculty for the Sloan program in Health Administration; and a Biology and Society Program faculty member. 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 New York. She works in the areas of women's health, human sexuality, violence against women, and medical ethics; and the cultural and policy issues related to those areas. She has been a guest on numerous radio and television shows, including Face the Nation, Oprah, Good Morning America, Larry King Live, and many others. 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. Dr. Parrot has lectured at well over 100 U.S. and international colleges and universities. She has been a board member of the New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault, and the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. Her most recent books are the Sexual Enslavement of Girls and Women Worldwide (2008), and Forsaken Females: The Global Brutalization of Women (2006). She taught on Semester at Sea during the Fall 2001 and Summer 2006 semesters.
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Michael Pearson (English Writing)

Michael Pearson is Professor of Creative Writing at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. He has published six books - a novel ("Shohola Falls") - and five works of nonfiction. His first book, Imagined Places: Journeys into Literary America (1991), was listed by the New York Times as a Notable Book for the year. In his most recent book, Innocents Abroad Too, published in 2008, he recounts two journeys on Semester at Sea. From 1997-2006 he was the Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University. Twice he has been a finalist for the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award.
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Melvin Rogers (Political Science)

Melvin Rogers is Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. His research and teaching interests include classical and contemporary pragmatism, American and African American political thought, and democratic and republican theory. A native of New York, he received his B.A. from Amherst College, his M.Phil. from Cambridge in Political Thought and Intellectual History, and both his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University in Political Science. He has held a pre-doctoral fellowship from the Ford Foundation, was an Exchange Scholar in the department of Religion at Princeton, and a Scholar-In-Residence in the department of Political Science at Carleton College before joining the faculty at UVA. His book, The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality, and the Ethos of Democracy, will appear in November from Columbia University Press. He is also editing a reprint of John Dewey's 1927 classic work of political theory, The Public and Its Problems, under Rethinking the Western Tradition Series with Yale University Press. Additional publications include forthcoming articles in Philosophy and Social Criticism, European Journal of Political Theory, and Contemporary Political Theory.
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Michael Wormington (Biology)

Michael Wormington is Associate Professor of Biology and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Biology at the University of Virginia. He received a BA with honors in Biology from the University of Kansas in 1975 and his PhD in Biochemistry also from Kansas in 1979. From 1979-1982 he was a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at the Carnegie Institution's Dept. of Embryology. In 1989 he joined the Biology faculty of the University of Virginia. In 1998, Prof. Wormington was an Overseas Visiting Scholar in the Dept. of Biochemistry at Cambridge University. His lab has a longstanding interest in investigating the regulation of gene expression during oogenesis and embryogenesis and has recently initiated new studies characterizing the biogenesis of microRNAs and their function in silencing maternal mRNAs. He has authored or co-authored 40 peer-reviewed publications and his research has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, and the National Science Foundation. He has given many invited presentations at institutions and conferences throughout the UK and Europe. Prof. Wormington has taught both introductory and advanced courses integrating aspects of cellular, molecular and developmental biology. Since 1992 he has taught the core Cell Biology course for which he has received two departmental distinguished teaching awards, and the 2004 All-University Teaching Award. In recognition of his commitment to excellent undergraduate biology education, Prof. Wormington was recently named as a National Academies Education Fellow in the Life Sciences. He emphasizes the human connection in all of his courses, including, the pertinence of complex cellular processes to human diseases and development; the increasingly interdisciplinary and international nature of biological research collaborations; and finally, the consequences for global health posed by newly emerging infectious diseases. He enthusiastically advocates incorporating study abroad programs such as Semester at Sea into the life sciences.
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