Elon Research Seminar

| Home | About Democratic Thinking |To Apply |

Participants
	Swasti Bhattacharyya is Associate Professor of Religion at Buena Vista University. As an applied ethicist, her work examines ethical issues (bioethics, environmental ethics, and nonviolence, peace and justice) from different religious perspectives (Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Jewish, Muslim). Her book, Magical Progeny, Modern Technology (SUNY, 2006), provides an example of how she interweaves elements of bioethics and Hinduism. Swasti's current project is enabling her to combine familial connections, long term commitments to nonviolence, peace and justice, and her teaching. Over the past 3 years, she has been exploring the living legacy of Vinoba Bhave (disciple, friend, and confidant of Mahatma Gandhi). What she has been learning from the sisters of the Brahma Vidya Mandir and the many sarvodaya workers is what she is most looking forward to developing in this seminar.
	Patti H. Clayton is a Senior Scholar with the Center for Service and Learning at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and a Visiting Fellow with the New England Resource Center for Higher Education (NERCHE). She has served as a consultant with over 30 schools, universities, and higher education organizations. She was founding Director of the Center for Excellence in Curricular Engagement at NC State University and previously served as a Faculty Fellow with National Campus Compact’s Project on Integrating Service with Academic Study. Clayton has ten years of experience as a practitioner-scholar in community-engaged teaching and learning, including leading a multi-faceted scholarship agenda, College-level institutionalization efforts, discipline-based and multi-disciplinary faculty learning communities, engaged graduate and undergraduate education initiatives, and a range of intra- and inter-institutional collaborations. Her work focuses on building the capacity of individuals, units, institutions, and the field as a whole for scholarly community-engaged teaching and learning. Clayton has co-developed with students and faculty a leading critical reflection and assessment model (the DEAL Model for Critical Reflection), models for student leadership in service-learning, and a variety of faculty development and curriculum development processes. Her research interests include student and faculty learning and the processes and outcomes associated with capacity building and mutual transformation among all partners in community engagement as co-educators, co-learners, and co-generators of knowledge.
	Mark Cubberley is an assistant (soon to be associate) professor of chemistry at Wright State University-Lake Campus (Celina, Ohio). Mark received his Ph.D. in chemistry from The University of Texas at Austin and his B.S. from Eckerd College (St. Petersburg, Florida). His scholarly work has focused on pedagogies of engagement and broad issues confronting education. Mark’s current interests include contemporary science pedagogies and interdisciplinary teaching and learning. Mark and his wife Carrie have three children: Lauren (8), Holden (6), and Ellison (10 months). He is a fledgling foodie and enjoys spending time outdoors.
	Robert Drake has been an Assistant Professor in the Division of University Studies (UNST delivers the general education curriculum) at North Carolina A & T State University for the past two years. He has been teaching the core UNST 120: The Contemporary World course—an interdisciplinary social science course taught to all incoming freshmen students. Dranke has also taught the college survival University Experience (UNST 100) course. His upper level course on genocide in the twentieth century has been offered each semester and he plans to offer a course on conflict resolution next year. For the previous ten+ years he worked as a faculty member and administrator (Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning) at Siena College, a small liberal arts college in upstate New York. His PhD is in History (SUNY-Albany) with a focus on modern international history and international affairs. Drake's present research interests center on the scholarship of teaching and public opinion and journalism in the 1930s and 1940s US. He has recently had an interdisciplinary article accepted by Southern Jewish History on comparative newspaper coverage of Kristallnacht and will be submitting a scholarship of teaching and learning manuscript on student-faculty interaction later this month.
	Kathleen Edwards is currently the Assistant Director of the Kernodle Center for Service Learning at Elon University. In the fall she will be a full-time doctoral student in the Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations program at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Although she has spent much of her professional career as a student life practitioner in higher education, her background also includes work in tenant organizing, educational outreach regarding topics of sexual violence and homelessness, and volunteer coordinating. She has traveled to Rwanda, Cambodia, and Poland to study community development in post-genocidal locations, and hopes to continue that research in her PhD program.
	Lynne E. Ford is a Professor of Political Science at the College of Charleston, an urban public liberal arts university in Charleston, South Carolina. She received her PhD in government and political behavior from the University of Maryland-College Park. Her teaching and research interests are in American politics, including women and politics, elections and voting behavior, political psychology, civic engagement, and research methods. She is the author of Women and Politics: the Pursuit of Equality (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 3rd edition, forthcoming) and The Encyclopedia of Women and American Politics (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2008). New research focuses on women’s under-representation in political office in the American South and work-family policy in the United States. She has just completed eight years as department chair in Political Science and has led a number of campus-wide initiatives at the College including general education reform and faculty compensation.
	Eric Fretz directs the Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning at the University of Denver. His teaching interests include community organizing, civic engagement in higher education and nineteenth and twentieth century American literature. Eric has written about incorporating community organizing techniques in higher education, the public good and higher education and democratic practices in the university classroom. He has a Ph.D. in English and American Studies from Michigan State University.
	Yael Harlap is a Faculty Associate at the Centre for Teaching and Academic Growth at the University of British Columbia in beautiful Vancouver, Canada. She received her PhD in social work and developmental psychology from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Yael’s educational development work at UBC focuses on linking the university vision to educational practice, and in particular on fostering and modeling global citizenship in teaching and learning. She has edited a collaboratively written 100-page resource, Road to Global Citizenship: An Educator’s Toolbook, and continues to develop programs that provide educators opportunities to explore what global citizenship means in their teaching. Yael’s research questions focus on how people develop social justice understandings, and she is currently laying the foundation for a project to evaluate the impact of a new teaching enhancement program for faculty with learning objectives related to global citizenship. Yael is also a creative writer, working on a narrative nonfiction book on how political identity is nurtured by families and communities, inspired by her dissertation research.
	Elsebet Jegstrup is Adjunct Associate Professor of Philosophy at Elon University. She retired from Augusta State University in 2001 as tenured Associate Professor of Philosophy. While at Augusta State she hosted an international forum on a deconstructive reading of Kierkegaard with participants from Europe and America, among them Professor John Caputo. She has published extensively on Kierkegaard and edited The New Kierkegaard (Indiana 2004). She has also published numerous articles on Kierkegaard in Philosophy Today, in Political Theory, and in PhaenEx, an online journal on existential and phenomenological theory and culture. She has presented papers in America, Canada and Italy. In 2008 she was accepted for presentation of “Backwards into the Future: Buber, Levinas, and the Original Encounter” together with Professor Yoram Lubling, Philosophy, Elon University, at the international conference on “Understanding Conflict at Aarhus University, Denmark. She was unable to attend because of illness. Dr. Jegstrup and Professor Lubling have had their paper “Seeing Beginnings: Buber, Levinas and the Original Encounter” accepted for participation at the international Metanexus Conference in Phoenix, AZ, July 2009.
	Spoma Jovanovic, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, integrates her research, teaching and service with people and programs targeting social change. Operating from a base of communication ethics, social justice, and community, she is currently completing a book-length project focused on the power of community action to promote participatory democracy through the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the first such commission in the United States. Her experience of teaching more than two dozen service-learning courses has been noted in her selection as a Service-Learning Faculty Fellow, the 2007 recipient of her university’s UNCG Martin Luther King, Jr. Service Award, and a founding editorial board member of Partnerships: A Journal of Service-Learning and Civic Engagement. Jovanovic’s publications, service, and workshops that showcase university-community partnerships have led to her most recent invitation to be a faculty leader for the 2009 National Communication Association’s Doctoral Honors Seminar on Communication as Engaged Scholarship.
	Angela Frye Keaton is an Assistant Professor of History and Commons at Tusculum College in Greeneville, Tennessee. Keaton earned her Ph.D. in History from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She has integrated her interest in history and the scholarship of teaching in her courses, which range from United States history to western civilization. She is also active in teaching courses in the Commons curriculum at Tusculum, including Theory and Practice of Citizenship. Recently, she received the Tusculum College Excellence in Teaching and Campus Leadership Award. Her historical research investigates the post-World War II era in America. Specifically, she argues that the period between 1945 and 1963 constituted the last era in which the use of firearms by children and adults went unchallenged and were instead, promoted as a source of national strength and identity. In addition, she is interested in how to use history to explore issues of citizenship and democracy. Before earning her doctoral degree, Keaton served as a coordinator for service-learning programs. In addition to her faculty duties, Keaton is also the Director of the Warren W. Hobbie Center for Civic Advancement, an initiative which promotes faculty development in the civic arts at Tusculum.
	Donald Jeffrey Lokey is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration and the Director of General Education at Tusculum College in Greenevile, Tennessee. His participation in the Seminar on Teaching Democratic Thinking reflects his scholarly interest in interdisciplinary studies and his administrative responsibility for assessing citizenship skills and virtues. Jeff has taken an active role in efforts to develop and sustain an intentional core curriculum that supports the College’s Civic Arts mission. His commitment to this mission includes teaching the interdisciplinary “Traditions” and “Engaged Citizenship” courses of the Commons Program. This summer, Jeff has been working on assessment handbooks for analytical reading and critical thinking.
	Jaime Martinez is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, where she teaches courses in Civil War History, African-American History, and Women's History, in addition to US History survey classes. Her current research project explores slave impressment in the Confederacy. Jaime received her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in August 2008.
	Jessie L. Moore, an Assistant Professor of English at Elon University, teaches in Professional Writing & Rhetoric and coordinates Elon’s first-year writing course. Her recent scholarship examines service-learning in an Introduction to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) course, and she is beginning a Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning Scholar project at Elon on stakeholder involvement in language policies. Moore is a Past-Chair of the Second Language Writing Interest Section at TESOL, Inc. and a current board member of Carolinas Writing Program Administrators.
	Christopher Price is the Director of the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching and Instructor for the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the College at Brockport, State University of New York. He received his PhD in political science from the University at Albany in 2004. As a faculty development professional, Chris is interested in helping faculty implement learner-centered teaching methods in their courses. He also has presented and written about how the power-balanced classroom can serve as a means of citizen education. The courses Chris teaches include introduction to political thought and an upper-division seminar on political liberalism and current issues.
	Patricia Rogers Biography coming soon
	Desirae Simmons is the Associate Director of the Scott/Ross Center for Community Service and Director for Undergraduate Service-Learning at Simmons College. She graduated from Simmons College with a BA in Public Relations and Marketing Communications and a MS in Communications Management. Before returning to Simmons in August of 2008 for her current position, sheworked with Jumpstart for Young Children as a Site Manager at Northeastern University and the Community and Government Relations Associate in the regional office. She is interested in policy issues that relate to women, children, and families. She enjoys working in the community and hopes to continue to build her network of like-minded professionals.
	Nanette Veilleux is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science and Information Technology Department at Simmons College and chair of the undergraduate Curriculum Committee. Her research field is Computational Linguistics where she investigates the use of intonation in human speech. A common theme in Professor Veilleux’s teaching and research is that of uncovering assumptions about the way students think about their subject material, whether about a computer model or the socio-linguistic implications of dialect. She has participated in numerous workshops, conferences and experiments in pedagogy. In addition to her academic work, Prof. Veilleux also served for ten years as Board president for one of the first domestic violence programs.