Faculty In Focus

Gerardo Mancilla, Director of Education Administration and Leadership and Assistant Professor, School of Education, was recently honored with the Emerging Leader Award at the Mortar Board national conference in Columbus, Ohio. The award recognizes an alumni member who exemplifies the ideals of scholarship, leadership and service through their profession or through their service.

Julie Dunbar, Professor in the Music Department, gave a lecture in October as part of the “Humanities in the Community” lecture series housed at the Goodman Center in Madison.  The title of the talk was “The Power and Peril of a Women’s Musicological Narrative,” and was based on her textbook, Women, Music, Culture: An Introduction, published in 2016.

Tom Holub, Professor in the School of Education, is working as a Visiting Scholar at The Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Museum and Memorial in Washington, D.C.  In this work, Dr. Holub is conducting research and interviewing survivors of the Holocaust.  He is using ethnography, an anthropological tool, to investigate the relationship between hope and survival in the Jewish Ghettos of 1937-1941.

Jeanne Leep, Professor and Chair of the Theatre Arts Department, presented “Viola Spolin the Revolutionary” at the Association of Theatre in Higher Education conference in Boston in August 2018.

Will Hutter, Chairperson in Psychology and Associate Dean, Henry Prediolin School of Nursing, presented “Improving Your Workplace Climate and Culture” at the Bert Nash Community Health Center in Lawrence, Kansas.

Lauren Lacey, Trustee, Associate Professor and Chairperson of the English Department, had her essay “Science Fiction, Gender, and Sexuality in the New Wave” published in The Cambridge History of Science Fiction, Cambridge University Press, 2018.

For the fifth consecutive year, Steven Post, Professor of Mathematics, organized and facilitated a pre-college program for area high school students. This year, eleven high school students from under-represented populations participated in the program which allowed them to take a college level math course in the mornings and college preparedness workshops in the afternoons for seven weeks. A number of alumni of past summers are now students at Edgewood College.

Roberta Pawlak, Professor in the Henry Predolin School of Nursing, and Barbara Pinekenstein, DNP ’15 presented “A Customized Advanced Leader Model” at the International Nursing Administration Research Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Pinekenstein currently as a Clinical Professor at UW-Madison.

Melanie Herzog, Professor of Art and Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences, enjoyed a special opportunity earlier this fall at the University of Iowa.  There, she joined Rufus Reid, one of the world’s premier jazz bassists, for a discussion of American artist Elizabeth Catlett. Reid composed the Grammy-nominated “Quiet Pride – The Elizabeth Catlett Project” as a tribute to the artist. Herzog is widely-recognized as the leading expert on the life and work of Catlett, who died in 2012. The podcast Hancher Presents, recorded live in the Iowa Old Capitol Museum, captures their discussion about Elizabeth Catlett, and was a highlight of Reid’s week-long artist residency at the University.