Obermann Graduate Institute
on Engagement and the
Academy
2007 Obermann Graduate Fellows
Presenters
Institute Co-Directors and Program Coordinator
| Teresa Mangum | David Redlawsk | Jennifer New |
2007 Graduate Fellows
Jill Baker transferred to the UI’s Intermedia Program in the School of Art and Art History after completing a year in the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has an interdisciplinary background in anthropology and gender studies, with research interests in visual culture, post colonial, and performance studies. This background is often a starting point for multi-media projects that include anything from textiles, installation, digital photography/video, prints and drawings. In current projects, Jill is exploring the possibilities of the artist as citizen as a way of responding to acts of love and violence, commemoration, and protest. She is a Teaching Assistant for the Intermedia Workshop and the spring 2007 Artists in Community, as well as the Director of the I Gallery.
Michael Ballirois a second-year master's student in social work. He earned a BA in Community Studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he was awarded honors for his thesis exploring the dynamics of the global social justice movement. Michael has worked as a case manager in support of those impacted by the events of September 11th. Currently he provides outreach to homeless and incarcerated veterans. His research interests include trauma studies, overcoming stigma among highly vulnerable populations, HIV/AIDS, and substance abuse interventions that vary from the abstinence approach. He is the Principal Investigator for a research project regarding barriers to societal integration faced by post-incarceration sex offenders.
Anne Haydock is an Iowa Arts Fellow and MFA candidate in Film and Video Production. She has screened documentary, experimental, and hybrid works at festivals and curated events in the U.S., Canada, Europe and the U.K. Her creative and research interests include early documentary forms and theory, transgendered images of femininity, steganography, and dead and dying mediums. A recent transplant from Philadelphia, Anne now lives and works in Iowa City.
Kate Henderson was born and raised in Minnesota. She is currently a PhD student in the English and is working on a dissertation about British Women Writers and the short story. Kate is particularly interested in how women use storytelling to express their experiences as marginalized individuals. She is a Program Associate in the General Education Literature Program, and is also organizing an exhibit of book arts based on the testimonies of children who are victims of the civil war in Uganda.
Joanne Nystrom Janssen has a master's degree in English literature from Ball State University and is currently a Ph.D. student in English. She is specializing in 19th-century British literature. Her research interests include intersections of gender and class, such as women authors who promote factory reforms and working-class education. Prior to to graduate school, Joanne worked as an editor for a non-profit organization that advocated for gender equality in the religious community. The experience of writing and editing articles exploring the impact of global poverty on women, the role of racism in America, and the effect of women's exclusion in male-governed churches deepened her personal commitment to social justice and also shaped her research interests in literature.
Robin Johnson is PhD student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. His primary teaching and research interests are gender and media, with particular emphasis on contemporary media production and representations of femininity and masculinity. He received his BA and MA degrees from the University of Colorado where he was a graduate instructor for the course “Critical Thinking and Writing,” a pre-journalism class on the analysis of media. Robin is currently a graduate teaching assistant for the course, “Cultural and Historical Foundations of Communication,” and is designing a community-centered course on contemporary gender and media.
Kate Karacay is an MA student in International Studies where she is focusing on human rights in the Middle East and Turkey, particularly human trafficking. She is Co-Director of the Iowa United Nations Association, a state-wide nonprofit dedicated to educating Iowans about the United Nations and global issues. Kate is also a commissioner on the Iowa City Human Rights Commission, treasurer of the UI chapter of Amnesty International, and founder and president of the Iowa Human Trafficking Awareness Project, a student group dedicated to education about human trafficking and advocacy for better laws that serve the needs of trafficking victims.
Nancy Menningis pursuing a PhD in Modern Religious Thought (Theology, Philosophy, Ethics, and Culture) in the Department of Religious Studies. She brings an extensive background in environmental studies, community forestry, and natural resource management to her current work in religious studies, thereby grounding a teaching and
research interest in environmental ethics and the emerging field of religion and nature. Her dissertation explores the role of creativity in moral decision making regarding land use issues in the Intermountain West, primarily via an analysis of the creative nonfiction of Terry Tempest Williams.
Tomomi Naka is a socio-cultural anthropologist currently getting her PhD in Anthropology. She is interested in the relationship between religious beliefs and economic decisions. For example: how do religious beliefs influence church members’ choice of occupations and how do church members’ occupational pursuits affect their religious understanding? Tomomi has worked with conservative and liberal Mennonite church members in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. For her dissertation, she interviewed many church members and participated in church activities to explore how religious beliefs are intertwined with occupational decisions.
Valerie Nyberg is pursuing a Ph.D. in the Language, Literacy, and Culture.
In addition, she is enrolled in the Education Policy and Leadership Studies
program pursuing a Principal Certificate in Educational Administration. Fore Academy
for Scholastic and Personal Success in Cedar Rapids, a summer enrichment
program for African American high school students. As part of this program,
she has begun researching community-based play of scripts programs and other
alternatives to add a creative outlet which allows students to express
themselves and their experiences. Last year, this took the form of a short
program called I Am the Bridge, in which students performed three pieces of
African American literature, song lyrics, and/or personal writings. Her
focus for her dissertation is on effective programs that serve the needs of
disadvantaged and underrepresented populations, particularly those linking
home, schools and the larger community in order to assess what works, how it
works, and why it works. In addition, she plans to assess the degree to
which eastern Iowa schools link home and schools literacies in an effort to
support measures that assist students with achieving higher performance and
increased engagement in school.
Jennifer Proctor is a filmmaker and former Managing Director of the Cinematexas Short Film Festival and Austin Cinemaker Co-op. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Film and Video Production while teaching courses in video production, videoblogging, and screenwriting in the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature. Jennifer is a founding member of Iowa City Microcinema, a community-based film arts organization devoted to building and fortifying an active filmmaking community in Eastern Iowa. She is an active videoblogger and is particularly interested in the practice of documenting regional communities through personal online video. She holds a BA in Philosophy and a BS in Radio-TV-Film from the University of Texas at Austin as well as an MA in Film Studies from the UI.
Patrick Rossmannis a second year Master’s student in the Student Development
Program. He also works for the Office of Residence Life as a Graduate Assistant where he develops educational programs in the halls. An Iowa City native, Patrick majored in Communications and Philosophy at Boston College. After graduating, he spent a year working with the Jesuit Volunteer Corp at a homeless shelter in Spokane, WA and another year volunteering at a non-profit woodshop with AmeriCorps in Seattle. He credits a service-learning course that he took his freshman year to opening his eyes to greater social justice issues. Patrick enjoys riding his bike, listening to NPR, and camping in the Pacific Northwest.
Jill Smith is a PhD student in Community Development and Nonprofit Organization, which fo
the past two years, she has worked as the Assistant Director for Thcuses on successful nonprofit management practices and community planning. She is currently working with the Iowa Department of Economic Development to develop a report about the Economic Impact of Iowa’s Nonprofit Charitable Organizations. Her other pursuits include the White House Faith-based Initiative to build the capacity of Iowa’s faith-based and community organizations that provide services within Iowa communities, as well as dynamic grant development training to student volunteers in community organizations throughout Iowa. Her Obermann Graduate Fellowship will allow her to explore methods for training student volunteers to become more genuinely involved in the community they are serving.
Elizabeth Sutton grew up in Minneapolis and received a BA in Art History from Carleton College. Certified to teach 7th -12th grade English, she spent a year before starting graduate school as an instructional assistant in special education in Watertown, Massachusetts. Elizabeth is particularly concerned with how both education and the arts are under valued in our society. As a PhD student, she is specializing in 16th and 17th-century Dutch art, especially travel accounts as they relate to other empirical science books. How identities and subjectivities were formed by travel account images, particularly the notion of European superiority, are of interest in her current work.
Ryan Wells is a PhD candidate in Educational Policy and Leadership Studies. He is currently working on his dissertation: “How Schools Affect the Educational Expectations of Immigrant Students.” He is a Teaching Assistant for the course Human Relations for the Classroom Teacher, and is a research assistant for Dr. David Bills researching sociological issues related to education and labor markets.
Presenters
Linda Bolton is an Associate Professor in English. Bolton's work focuses on the ethics of difference, with regard to our relationship to the Other as human, as alter-species and as Earth. Her book, Facing the Other: Ethical Disruption and the American Mind explores six moments in 18th and 19th Century American literature, politics and performance when the face of the Other, as Native and African, disrupts the discourse on freedom to assert the primacy of justice. Bolton's work in ethical philosophy has led to her collaboration with two visual artists in a three-woman national exhibition, "Memory and Oblivion: Legacies of Enslavement in the Americas." She continues to work collaboratively with Public Arts Sculptor, Barbara Grygutis. Grygutis and Bolton were the designers for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial at Battle Creek, MO. Bolton is currently working on a new book manuscript, Monumental Shame: The Legacy of a Daughter's Inheritance, as well as a series of ethical meditations in metal. She has been awarded the 2007 Collegiate Teaching Award from the College of Liberal Arts for exemplary performance as a teacher.
Willard “Sandy” Boyd See his homepage
Hope Burwell, founder and director of the nonprofit organization Strong Like a Willow: A Belarus Relief Project, teaches and directs the Center for Excellence in Learning & Teaching at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, IA. In her 20 year teaching career she has taken students to such venues as South Africa to make bricks for the building of schools and to Chernobyl-contaminated Belarus to meet the people for whom the students had collected food, clothing and medical supplies. Most recently she combines teaching about nuclear power and contamination with helping her students engage with Belarusan victims of the 20-year old disaster.
Damon Cole is the Facilitator of the Arts at Johnson School of the Arts, an arts-based K-6 school that serves a diverse population in Cedar Rapids. He is the guiding force behind providing opportunities for the students and staff to participate in and expand their own talents and and gain appreciation for the visual and performing arts. He is a strong advocate for the Reggio-Amelia educational philosophy, which utilizes a child-centered approach and the arts to allow children to explore diverse learning styles. For the last 25 years, Damon has been the Musical Director/Co-Creator of Follies, an over-the-top song and dance show benefiting the Cedar Rapids Symphony as its largest yearly fund raiser. He is a freelance musician and has been Musical Director for Theatre Cedar Rapids for the past 25 years. A graduate of Cornell College, he is in his 35th year as organist and choir director at First Presbyterian Church in Mt. Vernon.
Marcella David See her homepage
Monique DiCarlo is the director of the Women's Resource and Action Center and an adjunct faculty member in the UI School of Social Work. Monique's practice, teaching and community involvement includes experience in agency administration, fund development, collaborations, community organizing, volunteer management, and cultural competency. Monique received her Masters Degree in Social Work from the University of Michigan and Certification in Nonprofit Management from St. Ambrose University.
Helen Damon-Moore, Ph.D., is Curriculum Coordinator at the Carver College of Medicine, supervising the design, planning, implementation, integration and evaluation of the M1-M4 curriculum leading to the M.D. degree. She serves in the role of community coordinator for one of four student learning communities, advising student government and service learning activities, and as faculty advisor to the student-run Community Health Outreach service learning course. As Director of Volunteer Services and Service Learning at Cornell College, Helen created and directed the first Cornell College office to focus exclusively on student, faculty, and staff volunteerism and on service learning in the curriculum. She served as Adjunct Professor in Education and Women's Studies at Cornell College from 1988-2003, utilizing service learning techniques in all of her courses, and is the author of Magazines for the Millions: Gender and Commerce in the Ladies' Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post, 1880-1910 . She is a member of the Board of Directors for the Domestic Violence Intervention Program in Iowa City.
Pat DolanPearned a PhD in English Renaissance Literature from the UI in 1994 and is finishing a Masters in Social Work at Iowa. His teaching interests include speaking/writing, Renaissance Literature, Wilderness Literature, narrative, pain and death/dying. He teaches a full range of courses in the Rhetoric department, including service learning courses. Durning the 2006/2007 school year, Ann Broderick, assistant professor in the College of Medicine, and he are team-teaching "Learning about Living from the Dying," a service learning course focused on hospice for professional students in medicine and health related fields
Barbara Eckstein is the author of Sustaining New Orleans: Literature, Local Memory, and the Fate of a City (Routledge, 2005) and is co-editor, with Jim Throgmorton, of Story and Sustainability: Planning, Practice, and Possibility for American Cities (MIT Press 2003). Her work in platial studies reaches out from literary research to scholarship in human geography, urban history, and planning. She is a professor of English and Director of Graduate Study in English.
Andrew Epstein is a doctoral student in the Education Policy Studies program at the University of Wisconsin, with a concentration in international and comparative education. His research is focused on education, forced migration and media. He spent 15 years as an English teacher and administrator in schools serving at-risk youth in urban and rural settings.
Patti Fields, a graduate of the UI, is the Director of Volunteer Services at the Johnson County Crisis Center. As a strong supporter of public engagement, she was a member of the UI Civic Engagement Program Steering Committee and now serves on the Civic Engagement Program Advisory Board. Patti is also a member of the Iowa City Community School District Board of Directors. She has 12 years of professional experience with volunteers and instructs continuing education classes for a Volunteer Management Certification at Kirkwood Community College.
Laurence Fuortes, M.D., is professor of occupational and environmental health. In 2005 he was the first recipient of a new UI College of Public Health award for faculty achievement in community engagement. The award recognizes a faculty member for application of theory, research and practice to address public health challenges at the community level. Fuortes was selected for his leadership of numerous projects with major community service components, including programs focused on pesticide toxicology, traumatic head and spinal cord injury, and his direction of the Burlington Atomic Energy Commission Plant-Former Worker Program (BAECP-FWP). Since 2000, the BAECP-FWP, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, has provided free medical screenings to more than 600 former nuclear weapons workers at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant (IAAP) near Burlington. Fuortes has also been an active member of many community-based organizations in the Iowa City area, including the Iowa City Free Medical Clinic, the Iowa City Crisis Center and Foodbank, the Johnson County Coalition Against Tobacco Addiction Among Youth and the Salvation Army. In 2002, Fuortes was the recipient of a Fulbright Research/Lectureship Award, which he used to conduct tuberculosis surveillance and prevention research and teach medical students in community health at the University of Natal in South Africa..
Sylvia Gale is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English at the University of Texas at Austin, where she concentrates in Rhetoric and is working on a dissertation tentatively entitled "Rhetoric at Work: Language Arts Education and American Vocationalism, 1820-1920." In addition to her research and teaching, for the past four years she has served as Community Programs Coordinator for the UT Humanities Institute, where she has launched and implemented public humanities programs that serve constituencies within and beyond the University's walls. These programs include a city-wide life-writing initiative and anthology (Writing Austin's Lives) and the Community Sabbatical Program, which grants area non-profit employees sabbaticals during which they research a problem relevant to their organization and the people it serves, with the aid of UT faculty members. She is currently directing the Free Minds Project, a free, two-semester, college-level humanities seminar for adults who face financial barriers and have never been to college. Since 2003, Sylvia has also served as director of Imagining America's "Publicly Active Graduate Education" initiative, working to create a national network of graduate students in the arts, humanities, and design who are engaged in public practice.
Sandra Hansen is the Executive Director of Iowa Campus Compact. Previously she served as the Leadership in Civic Engagement Coordinator for Wartburg College, where she facilitated an intergenerational program designed to connect college students, adult volunteers and elementary students in the surrounding community. Prior to working in higher education, Sandra taught fifth grade in the New York City public schools. While in NYC, Sandra also worked closely with the Arabic neighborhoods of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where she coordinated youth programs & ESL classes, provided technical support to the staff, and contributed to the Unity Task Force, a coalition of Arab Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders in the area, to promote peace in turbulent times.
Dr. Susan R. Johnson received her B.S., M.D., and an M.S. in Preventive Medicine and Environmental Health from the University of Iowa. She completed residency training in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics and then joined the faculty of that Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, where she is now Professor. In 1999 she received a secondary appointment in the Department of Epidemiology in the College of Public Health. She was the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs in the Carver College of Medicine from 1994 to 2003, and in 2005 was appointed as Associate Provost for Faculty for the University of Iowa. Dr. Johnson's clinical and research interests are in the areas of menopausal health issues, particularly the use of hormones and other drugs for prevention in post menopausal women, and premenstrual syndromes. She is active on the state and national level in the licensing and credentialing of physicians; she currently serves on the Iowa Board of Medical Examiners, on the Executive Board of the National Board of Medical Examiners, and on several committees of the Federation of State Medical Boards. Her avocation is time management and personal work productivity for academic faculty, and she is a frequent invited speaker and consultant in this area.
Emma Jordan is a second year MD/PhD student in the Medical Scientist Training Program in the Carver College of Medicine. She is a member of the Executive Committee for the UI Mobile Clinic, a student-run organization associated with the UI Health Science Programs. The clinic was founded by an interdisciplinary team of health sciences students and funded by a grant from the Association of American Medical Colleges approximately six years ago to provide free health screening, prevention, education, and basic health services to underserved populations in and around Iowa City. Emma coordinates bimonthly clinics in locations around Iowa City and Columbus Junction.
Craig Just is an associate research scientist at IIHR Ð Hydroscience & Engineering at the UI where he received his Ph.D. in 2001 and is Vice President for Research and Development at Ecolotree®, Inc. With graduate degrees in environmental science and chemistry, Dr. Just has excelled at the interface of environmental analytical chemistry and applied engineering in support of and leading top-quality research projects the areas of: phytoremediation of explosives; water quality and sustainable land use; fate determination of contaminants during wastewater treatment; and poverty reduction and community building in developing countries such as Guatemala, Mexico and Haiti
Michelle McQuistan, D.D.S., M.S., is an associate professor in the Department of Community and Preventive Dentistry at the UI College of Dentistry. She is the director of the extramural programs, which is a mandatory 10 week community-based clinical experience for all senior dental students. Additionally, she teaches and provides care within the Geriatrics and Special Needs clinic, and she provides care at the Free Dental Clinic in Iowa City. Her research interests include longitudinal outcomes of the extramural program, dental workforce, cultural competency and health literacy.
Marcelo Mena is a PhD candidate for the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research. He works on air quality forecasting for field campaigns measuring pollution in Mexico, the US, and Asia. He received the NASA Group Achievement award in 2005. As an activist he has led students in efforts to save energy at the UI. An active member of Engineers for a Sustainable World, Marcelo has catalyzed collaborations in energy conservation with the University, Iowa Department of Natural Resources, and universities in Latin America. ESW received a national EPA Sustainable Design Award in 2006 for the P3X Program. Since 2002, he's also worked as a DJ and Music Director at KRUI. He produced and conducted over 30 interviews with internationally recognized artists, such as David Harrington from Kronos Quartet and Ira Kaplan from Yo La Tengo. Marcelo is married to Loreto and father to Vicente. His father and sister have both been UI PhD students.
Alisa Meggitt joined the teaching profession five years ago. Previously, she worked in environmental policy, including positions at the White House Task Force on Recycling and for US Environmental Protection Agency grants and contracts. She left Washington DC to volunteer in the Peace Corps in Senegal, West Africa as an environmental educator. Alisa has taught 5th and 6th grades in two Iowa City elementary schools, and this year became the 7th grade Global Studies instructor at North Central Junior High. Her students organize and attend candidate forums and legislative forums. They have invited dozens of elected officials to visit their classrooms and have attended and spoke out at meetings with local elected officials. Likewise, Alisa's students have organized around social issues, ranging from hunger in Senegal, to child labor and many animal issues. Alisa organizes after-school clubs for her students to apply their civic skills in a service capacity. Her students have collaborated with local businesses, government, organizations, institutions and the UI in constructing their programs.
Bryan Moore completes his MFA-Dramaturgy degree this spring. He earned his BA at Cornell College and his MA at UNI. Bryan has worked in various areas of production and technical theatre in academic and professional settings over the past 12 years. At Iowa, he is the director of the Theatre Department's outreach group, Darwin Turner Action Theatre; he also co-facilitated workshops with Norma Bowles for Fringe Benefits Theatre.
Susan Murty is Associate Professor in the School of Social Work and coordinates the School's Master's in Social Work Program and the End-of-Life Care Field of Practice. She serves on the Advisory Board for the Civic Engagement Program at the University of Iowa. In 2004-2005, she spent a sabbatical year in Mexico where she did oral history research with elders in rural Michocán. She is continuing similar research with Latino elders in Iowa. She is involved in developing service learning courses and immersion travel seminars related to the curriculum at the School of Social Work. She worked with Lorraine Dorfman, Professor at the School of Social Work, to develop a service learning course focused on work with elders for students in Basic Aspects of Aging and for students in Human Behavior in the Social Environment. She has been active in the areas of rural social work and inter-organizational networks, domestic violence, aging, and end-of-life care. She has written articles on the future of rural social work (Advances in Social Work, 2005, 6(1), 132-144; on rural community practice (in M. Weil (Ed.), Community Practice Handbook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.); and on mapping rural community assets (In L. Scales & C. Streeter, Rural social work: Building assets to sustain rural communities (pp. 278-289). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole/Thomson Learning.) She has also co-authored several articles evaluating the service learning course she developed with Professor Dorfman.
Before joining the University of Iowa Press as an acquisitions editor, Joseph Parsons was the editor of the National Humanities Center's journal, Ideas, and a manuscript editor at the University of Chicago Press. At Iowa, he is responsible for the evaluation and acquisition of the humanities titles published by the Press. He has also worked extensively as a freelance editor, writer, and consultant. He holds a master's degree in political science from the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign, and a bachelor's degree in Russian and East European studies from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Katie Roche likes to describe her self as "an artist with a mind for business," or a "bohemian with a palm pilot." Roche is the Executive Director for Summer of the Arts (SotA), the 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization that oversees the production of over 100 diverse, free cultural events from May through September, including The Iowa Arts Festival, The Iowa City Jazz Festival, The Friday Night Concert Series and The Saturday Night Free Movie Series. SotA recently won the "Economic Development Award" through the Iowa City Area Chamber of Commerce for the public sector. The innovation needed to run these volunteer staffed, donor supported events have caused Roche to fundamentally re-approach her main duties of fundraising, marketing and organizing as cultural advocacy and community building. Roche's diverse background includes many entrepreneurial efforts including the creation of music and film festivals, working as a performing artist and artist representative, and freelance writing in many areas of interest, most recently focusing on the "creative class" and our local economy.
Mark Sidel is Professor of Law and Faculty Scholar at the University of Iowa. His work focuses on international and comparative law, philanthropy and the nonprofit sector, and human trafficking and involuntary servitude. Sidel has published More Secure, Less Free? Antiterrorism Policy and Civil Liberties after September 11 (University of Michigan Press, 2004, rev. ed. forthcoming 2006), Philanthropy and Law in South Asia (co-edited with Iftekhar Zaman, APPC, 2004), and has several volumes forthcoming, including Law and Society in Vietnam (Cambridge, forthcoming 2007), and Cinema, Law and the State in Asia (co-edited with Corey Creekmur, Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2007). He has served as consultant to the U.S. Justice Department on a large human trafficking case in American Samoa, to the U.S. State Department on labor trafficking and export from Vietnam, to the British government on Vietnamese criminal law, to the Canadian government for an ongoing terrorism investigation commission, as well as work with the Ford Foundation, United Nations Development Programme, Oxfam, Aga Khan Development Network and other institutions. Before joining the University of Iowa, Sidel served in program positions with the Ford Foundation in Beijing, Bangkok, Hanoi and New Delhi.
Karen Smith is a PhD candidate in American Studies. She focuses her research on museum studies and American domesticity and is a Graduate Assistant for the Center for Ethnic Studies and the Arts. Karen recently worked with the Obermann Animal Studies Group on "Animals Among Us," a traveling photo-essay exhibition that encourages dialogue about human-animal interaction in Iowa. She also conducted research, wrote, and helped design the Iowa Children's Diaries Project at the Old Capitol Museum in Iowa City. Before attending graduate school, Karen volunteered as an AmeriCorps VISTA and worked for as a volunteer manager and marketing specialist for a nonprofit organization that serves women and their families.
Jim Throgmorton's work focuses primarily on the roles of rhetoric and narrative in planning, especially with regard to making city-regions more just and ecologically sustainable. A Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, he is the author of Planning as Persuasive Storytelling: The Rhetorical Construction of Chicago's Electric Future (University of Chicago Press, 1996), co-editor (with Barbara Eckstein) of Story and Sustainability: Planning, Practice, and Possibility for American Cities (The MIT Press, 2003), and author of many articles in a variety of scholarly journals. Currently he is working on a critical history of planning in Louisville, Kentucky, from 1890 to the present.
Pamela White Trimpe is Director of the UI Pentacrest Museums: The Natural History Museum and Old Capitol. She is also the Director of the Museum Studies Program at the UI. She teaches “Introduction to Museums” and co-teaches “Art, Law, and Ethics.” This is the third year that she has used Service Learning in her Intro course. She was the guest editor for the May 2006 edition of Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archival Professionals focused on legal issues and is the new general editor for this publication. Previously, she was curator of Painting and Sculpture at the UI Museum of Art. Among numerous exhibitions and catalogues, in 1997 she curated "Victorian Fairy Painting,” the first international exhibition to review this genre, and is the author of an essay on fairy illustration for the accompanying publication. In 2001, her book George John Pinwell: A Victorian Artist and Illustrator, 1842-1975 was published by Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York, as part of their American University Studies series. She received her J.D. from the University of Missouri at Kansas City and her Ph.D. in art history from the University of Kansas.
Rahima Wade, Ed.D. is professor of elementary social studies in the Department of Teaching and Learning. She is author or editor of three books on service-learning and more than 30 journal articles. Rahima has directed four service-learning grants funded by the federal Corporation for National and Community Service and was chosen as the John Glenn Scholar for Service-Learning in Teacher Education.
Rachel Williams received an MFA and Ph.D. from Florida State University. Her research interests include prison studies, womens studies, visual culture, qualitative research, and graphic novels. Her research has appeared in the Journal of Art Education, Visual Arts Research, and The Journal of Arts Management Law and Society. In 2003, Northeastern University Press published an anthology she edited titled, Teaching the Arts Behind Bars. Currently, she is an associate professor of art education at the University of Iowa. She lives in a converted barn with her husband, two children, two dogs, two fish, and an undetermined number of mice.
Institute Co-Directors and Program Coordinator
David P. Redlawsk (Ph.D., Rutgers, 1997; MBA, Vanderbilt,
1982; AB, Duke, 1980) is Associate Professor of Political Science. His
research focuses on the emotional responses of voters to campaign information.
Redlawsk also studies citizens’ views of political corruption. Teaching
includes Local Politics, Voting Behavior, Political Psychology, and Decision
Making. While incorporating a "hands-on" component in most courses,
the Local Politics class has become a fully engaged course, where students
combine work in the classroom and the community into a better understanding
of the role of politics in our communities. Dr. Redlawsk has recently received
a UI Instructional Improvement Grant and a CLAS Curriculum Development
Grant to create a service-learning focused course on survey research. Recent
publications include two books to be published in 2006, How Voters
Decide: Information Processing in an Election Campaign, by Cambridge
University Press and an edited volume, Feeling Politics: Emotion in
Political Information Processing by Palgrave-Macmillan. Dr. Redlawsk
has significant experience in local government, having served as chair
of a planning commission and as an elected official in both Pennsylvania
and New Jersey.
Teresa Mangum (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
1990; M.A., North Carolina State University, 1979, B.S., Appalachian State
University, 1976) is Associate Professor of English who studies British Victorian
literature and culture, particularly the ways that popular fiction helped
Victorians to negotiate social change. This interest in social transformation
prompted two current projects. The first asks how anxieties about aging
find their way into literature and art; the second project turns to film
as well as fictional human and animal relationships. She is the author of Married,
Middlebrow, and Militant: Sarah Grand and the New Woman Novel (University
of Michigan Press, 1998) and is presently completing a second book, The
Victorian Empire of Old Age. In 2005, Mangum was awarded the President
and Provost Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2006, she received the Humane
Society of the U.S. Animal and Society Course Award for Innovation for a
service-learning course, “Capturing Animals,” in which students
worked in the local animal shelter as well as attending class. At the
Obermann Center, she has served as co-director of an Advanced Studies Summer
Seminar, “Late Life: Representations, Perceptions, Possibilities” and
co-director of an Interdisciplinary Research Semester, “Articulating
the Animal.” A past board member of the Domestic Violence Intervention
Program, she presently serves on the boards of the Women's Resource and Action
Center and the Friends of the Animal Center.
Jennifer New (M.A., University of Washington, 1988; B.A.
University of Iowa, 1984) is the Communications and Special Events Coordinator
at the Obermann Center. She is the author of two books, Drawing from
Life: The Journal as Art and Dan Eldon: The Art of Life.
Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Salon, Edutopia,
and The Boston Globe. Along with her husband, Andrew Epstein,
she was principle owner of Synapse Learning Design, an educational consulting
business that connected K12 schools with nonprofits. She has served on
the board of the Friends of Hickory Hill Park and started The Demeter Project,
a program for middle school girls and working women. Currently, she is
on the board of the Creative Visions Foundation which “merges the
power of media and the limitless creativity of the human spirit to effect
positive social change in the world.”