Graduate Institute Fellows 2009
Mohammad A.Basir is a second-year Ph.D. student in the College of Education studying Science Education. Before joining this program, Mohammad got an M.S. in physics in his home country, Iran. He has taught physics for ten years with an emphasis on inquiry-based teaching and learning. Mohammad considers the ways that social interactions among scientists and social environments play a crucial role in scientific inquiries and science classrooms. His work explores the ways the classroom can be similar to real scientific inquiries and can have more emphasis on social than experimental aspects of science inquiries. He asks how inquiry-based classrooms, similar to an authentic scientific setting, are complex environments in which all the involved agents—including students, teachers, content, material, and local natural and social environment—are in mutual interaction with each other. Studying the effect of those mutual interactions on students’ learning is his research interest. He hopes that his study will provide insight in the role of social interactions in classroom science inquiry.
Matthew Cassidy is a second year M.A. student in the Teaching and Learning Department of the College of Education. He earned his B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Iowa in 2005. In the fall of 2009, Matt will begin his career as a social studies teacher at the secondary level. One of his primary professional objectives is to enhance socio-civic education by creating a student-led organization devoted to active engagement in the community. Matt hopes this organization will foster a culture of civic engagement in the school so that students will regard active participation within the community as a natural behavior for any socially responsible citizen. The ultimate goal is that these learned behaviors will be maintained indefinitely and that students will motivate others to develop similar attitudes towards civic engagement.
Douglas Grane is a third year PhD student in Geography and a second year M.A. student in Educational Measurement and Statistics with an emphasis in program evaluation. Douglas is interested in using research approaches from the discipline of Geography to inform context and analysis for program evaluation in education, human rights, international development and other social programs. Prior to coming to graduate school at the University of Iowa, Douglas worked in refugee services. He is a graduate of the Pennsylvania State University where he was awarded the J.W. Saxe Prize for Public Service for his work advocating for the rights of asylum seekers detained in Pennsylvania county prisons in 2002. Douglas currently works for the University of Iowa Center for Evaluation and Assessment (CEA) and plans to use his multi-disciplinary academic training to engage stakeholders in program evaluation as a professional evaluator and scholar.
Janet Hendrickson is a second-year M.F.A. student in the Nonfiction Writing program of the English Department in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Before coming to the University of Iowa, she worked as a teacher and public relations director at a center for recently arrived immigrants on Chicago's southeast side. She also volunteered for more than two years on the multilingual, multiethnic Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua and is writing a thesis about the city where she lived and her experience working there. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Dallas and currently teaches an undergraduate service-learning course called “Spanish in the Community.”
Amy Jones received B.A. degrees in both psychology and sociology from Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. After working in social work for two years she continued her education at the University of Iowa, receiving a M.A.T. in secondary history education. Amy taught American history for four years in the Cedar Rapids School District, during which time, she created and led a service-learning group with her students. The project was recognized both locally and nationally for its outstanding service to the community. Amy has now returned to the University of Iowa to complete her Ph.D. in History Teaching and Learning in the College of Education. While her dissertation research focuses on a new technological instructional method in history teaching and its effects on student engagement and history learning, her research interests include the incorporation of civic engagement and service-learning in history curriculum.
Peter Likarish is a third-year Ph.D. student in Computer Science of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Originally from Littleton, CO, he has a B.A. in Computer Science and in English from Grinnell College and a Master's in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh. His research area is computer security. In particular, he designs secure systems that people can actually use. His work has focused on preventing people from falling for phishing attacks. During the Institute, he will design a course in internet security to educate parents and children on how to remain safe online.
Matthew M. Low is in his third year of the English Ph.D. program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Previous to coming to the University of Iowa he spent eight years at Creighton University in Omaha, NE, receiving a B.A. (English and Greek), M.Ed. (Secondary Teaching), and M.A. (English). He also taught junior high for four years at an underprivileged Catholic school in Omaha as part of the MAGIS (Mentoring Academic Gifts in Service) program at Creighton. His teaching and research interests are largely informed by his life as a native Iowan. The project he is developing will connect Midwestern American literature, prairie restoration, and environmental education.
Ashley Meredith graduated with a B.S. in cultural anthropology and Spanish from Middle Tennessee State University and is currently pursuing an M.S. degree in Social Foundations of Education in the College of Education. As an undergraduate student, she received both regional and national recognition for designing and directing Café Symposium, an after-school program that encourages philosophical discussion among high school students in Tennessee. Her research interests include the benefits and limitations of the socratic method as a tool to promote critical thinking in young adults. Her work focuses on the necessity for critical thinking and civic engagement in secondary education, and she plans to continue developing and evaluating programs which foster these activities.
Ann Pleiss Morris has an M.A. in Renaissance literature and performance from Mary Baldwin College, and she is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, specializing in sixteenth-century British drama. This past summer, she taught literature at Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids during the floods. In the days immediately following the devastation, she encouraged her students to use literature and writing to help them cope with their grief. The result was a multi-media blog on which students posted their responses to the flood. This spring, she plans to have students in an interpretation of literature course explore the healing potential of literature both in the texts they read and consider their experiences as volunteers in community rebuilding efforts. She is also in the beginning stages of a dissertation that explores how American acting companies use Shakespearean texts to explore such social issues as prison reform, racism, and gender equality.
Timothy Paschkewitz is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Chemistry of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He earned his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater in 2005. Tim currently studies how magnetic particle inclusion in alternative/renewable power sources such as batteries and fuel cells enhances efficiency. He has been doing research in the field of electrochemistry since 2003 and is very interested in energy and energy policy. His goal after earning his doctorate is to work in Washington, D.C. in the broad category of science and policy. He is excited to engage society in scientific advancement by transitioning into public policy where he hopes to affect national change through federal agencies or the US Congress. Tim is the President of the Graduate Student Senate and truly enjoys his service to the organization and the opportunities to combine academic pursuit, social and professional networking, and administrative policy.
Leah Pesola is in her third-year of the Ph.D. in French and Francophone World Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. In her research, she focuses on the ways that architecture helps to reveal gender relations and struggles for power in seventeenth-century French literature. Leah is a Group Facilitator at the Women's Resource and Action Center and a co-chair of the Graduate Student Senate Educational Outreach Committee. Inspired by her work as a French instructor for Upward Bound, the great success of the Iowa Edge, and her own experiences as a non-traditional student, she is planning an outreach program geared directly to high-school girls who face obstacles along their path to higher education. The program will combine discussions of women's life writing, individual research or action projects, and mentorship relationships between the girls and women in the community.
Andrew Saito
The grandson of Japanese, Irish and Austro-Hungarian immigrants, Andrew Saito is a first-year graduate student in the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and recipient of an Iowa Arts Fellowship. He has lived, worked, and taught with Zapotec communities in Mexico, Mayan youth in Guatemala, where he will soon return to Peru to collaborate with Andean theatre company Kusiwasi on a play about how climate change threatens ceremony and lifestyle in the Urubamba Valley. He has worked with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the Asian American Theatre Company, and the legendary Peruvian theatre collective Yuyachkani. A finalist for a Princess Grace Playwriting Award and a Fulbright Fellowship, his work has been supported by Brava Theatre Center, Theatre Bay Area, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, and the Association of Performing Arts Presenters. Recurring themes in his plays include humans' destructive relationship with themselves and the natural world, and cross-racial relationships between different communities of color.
Barbara Shubinski is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Her dissertation examines the social and cultural shifts of the 1970s through the lens of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Project Documerica,” which was the last extensive federally-funded documentary photography initiative. She holds masters’ degrees in Historic Preservation (University of Vermont) and Anthropology (Stanford), and a B.A. from the University of Virginia. Her interests include visual culture, the built environment, and public interpretations of crises and disasters. She has also worked professionally in theater, including the Civic Center in Madison, Wisconsin; TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, CA; as General Manager of Iowa Summer Rep; and most recently as Executive Director at Liars Theatre, based in Marion, Iowa.
Craig Webster received a B.A. in math and physics from Willamette University, then studied for an M.S. in mathematical modeling at Oxford University. Alongside his mathematical studies he worked regularly on video and art projects, such as the community-based project "We're Here to Help," which was documented at the PDX Film Festival. Last year, he lived in Budapest, Hungary and worked to combine math and filmmaking in a Fulbright scholarship. He participated in the public exhibition "Interventions in the Everyday" in which he advertised prime numbers through a brand of t-shirts. As a first-year M.F.A. candidate in film/video production in the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, he studies relationships between creator-audience and maker-consumer and explores how video can document or affect these relationships.