Faculty & Staff

M. Travis Maynard, Ph.D. is a Professor and Associate Dean of Graduate Programs in the College of Business at Colorado State University (CSU). He received his doctoral degree from the University of Connecticut with an emphasis in Organizational Behavior. He also holds an undergraduate degree in accounting from The College of William and Mary, and an MBA degree in Organizational Behavior from the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver. Travis has had several international experiences while on the faculty at Colorado State University. Specifically he was a Fulbright Scholar in 2015 and worked with the faculty and students at ISCTE-Instituto Universitario de Lisboa in Portugal. Additionally, he has been a visiting professor at SRH – Hiedelberg (Germany) in 2018 and 2016, Foreign Trade University (Vietnam) in 2017 and 2012, and Aalto University (Finland) in 2014. Additionally, Travis served as a Global Teaching Scholar on the spring 2017 voyage of Semester at Sea.

Sona Karentz Andrews is a professor emerita of geography & provost emerita at Portland State University. She has held faculty positions at the Univ of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Univ of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Boise State Univ, Portland State Univ, and taught at Semester at Sea. Her academic area is geography, cartography, and Geographic Information Science. Sona has held administrative positions at several universities, including Provost/Vice President for Academic Affairs at Portland State University, Vice Chancellor of the Oregon University System, and Provost/Vice President for Academic Affairs at Boise State. Sona is bilingual (she speaks fluent English and Armenian). She grew up in New England and she and her husband, Steve, like to hike, bicycle, travel, read, and attend live performances.

Alissa Arp has extensive experience as a marine scientist and educator. She has conducted research, mentored graduate students, and published articles on the physiology of life in challenging environments ranging from the deep ocean to suburban estuaries. Alissa has been to the bottom of the ocean in research submarines, and at sea on many university research vessels. She currently travels extensively as an eco-tourist and has sailed on more distant oceans, including the Arctic, Southern Ocean, Indian Ocean and South Pacific. These travel experiences are woven into her teaching, bringing personal first-hand experience to classroom discussions. Alissa recently relocated to Portland, Oregon, and is an avid collector of folk art from her world-wide travels, and an avid textile enthusiast.

Colleen’s interests include sustainable food systems, global nutrition, public health, and foodways. Her passion for this discipline stems from curiosity about the physiological and psychological interplay associated with health behaviors, and the relationship among food, culture, and society. It is a dynamic field where everyone has a voice, opinion, and story to share. The influence among social, environmental, historical, political, and economic variables on food, nutrition, and health is complex and constantly evolving and responding to change. The Semester at Sea voyage will provide a unique platform to explore these interacting factors through a global comparative framework. Colleen looks forward to sharing this journey with you and her partner, Jeff!

Dr. Deborah Che is originally from the Washington, DC metro area. Tourism research and practice were integral to her studies which included internships to develop tourism and recreation programs on US Army bases in Germany and to improve regional tourism promotion and branding in rural, resource-dependent communities.
Deborah has extensive teaching experience at universities in the US and Australia. She has taught a wide range of tourism, hospitality, food studies, geography, and environmental studies courses. A common theme in Deborah’s research, which draws upon her disciplinary background in geography, involves the interconnection between economic restructuring and shifting land uses towards a greater emphasis on tourism and recreation.

Dr. Dane S. Claussen is Editor-in-Chief/Executive Director of Nonprofit Sector News, a small nonprofit organization (founded in 2020) that covers US national nonprofit organizations for the general public and for other news media. Dr. Claussen has most often taught courses in media law, media ethics, media history, media management, journalistic reporting/writing/editing, and social science research methods, and he also taught social media management, media and society, media literacy, integrated marketing communications, public opinion, mass communication theory, and other courses.

Dr. Erin Davis is an professor at Indiana Wesleyan University with over 25 years of experience in the fields of student development, higher education, psychology and graduate counseling. She enjoys interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly in the areas of psychology, neuroscience, and sociology. Dr. Davis has studied and participated in service work in several countries around the world, including England, Uganda, Egypt, Australia and Portugal, and her research interests include cross-cultural and international psychology. Dr. Davis’ areas of interest include international student adjustment; neuropsychology and empathy; relational aspects of sexuality; dreamwork; cross-cultural and international psychology; positive psychology and coaching.

David Hackett is Professor and former Chair in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida. As a child, David boarded a ship in California with his parents and set out for Japan.

In recent years, he has taught in the University of Florida’s London Study Center and from there led students on field studies throughout Great Britain; participated in a Council on International Educational Exchange faculty seminar on “Music, Society, and Conflict in Ireland and Northern Ireland”; and taught a seminar on American religious history, sponsored by the State Department’s United States-China Education Trust, at Fudan University in Shanghai.

Dr. Meg Jay is a clinical psychologist at the University of Virginia who specializes in twentysomethings. A narrative nonfiction writer, she is the author of The Defining Decade and Supernormal. Her work has appeared in numerous media outlets including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, O Magazine, and on the BBC and NPR.
In The Defining Decade, Meg elevates what it means to be a twentysomething. She argues that, rather than a developmental downtime, the twenties are a developmental sweet spot a time when the things we do—and the things we don’t do—will have an enormous impact across years and even generations to come. The Defining Decade has been published in more than a dozen countries around the world, and her related TED talk has been viewed more tha

Pete Seel is professor emeritus at Colorado State University where he taught video production, photojournalism, telecommunication, and documentary history/production. This is his fourth voyage with Semester at Sea and his positive experiences with students and experiential education on these voyages led to the creation of media-related study-abroad courses for Colorado State that he led in Europe and Australia/New Zealand. He has extensive professional experience in photojournalism and video production. His research is focused on the global effects of new communication technologies, primarily concerning the internet, artificial intelligence, and social media.