Directors

Howard Bossen

bossen [at] msu [dot] edu

Howard Bossen is a professor in the School of Journalism and the Adjunct Curator of Photography at the Michigan State University Museum. He has curated many exhibitions, is interested in the history and criticism of photography, cultural history and media. He has a Ph.D. and an M.A. from The Ohio State University and a B.F.A. from Philadelphia College of Art (now known as The University of the Arts). In addition to teaching School of Journalism courses in photojournalism, visual journalism and documentary research methods, Bossen has taught history of photography for the Department of Art and Art History and interdisciplinary special topics classes related to exhibitions he has curated and has been involved for over 25 years in photography and media-related study abroad courses.

Vincent Delagado

delgado1 [at] msu [dot] edu

An academic specialist for civic engagement at MSU’s Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, Vincent Delgado, speaks and writes frequently about creativity, engagement, and international and immigration issues. He has worked as a print journalist, covering conflict in Central America, labor in Mexico, and politics and local government in the United States. His work has appeared in major newspapers, travel magazines, and several Washington, D.C.-based political newsletters. Delgado regularly works with college students on international topics, maintains significant contacts with experts in the migration and humanitarian aid community and co-coordinated the 21st Century Chautauqua on Creativity, Economic Development and Justice. A partner with the Global Workshop, LLC, Delgado founded Lansing’s Refugee Development Center. He is the author of the documentary cookbook A Taste of Freedom: A Culinary Journey with America’s Refugees (2003), published by Global Workshop. He was named International Humanitarian of the Year for the American Red Cross Great Lakes Region in both 2005 and 2006. He co-coordinates the Creativity Initiative’s research cluster on Creative Processes and Organizations.

Pennie G. Foster-Fishman

fosterfi [at] msu [dot] edu

Pennie G. Foster-Fishman is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and a Senior Outreach Fellow with University Outreach and Engagement at Michigan State University. She received her Ph.D. in organizational/community psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research interests primarily emphasize systems change, particularly how organizational, inter-organizational, and community systems can improve to better meet the needs of children, youth, and families. Towards this end, she has investigated human service delivery reform, multiple stakeholder collaboration, comprehensive community initiatives, coalition development, community organizing, and youth and adult empowerment as vehicles for systems change. She has also worked with a variety of public sector agencies, not-for-profit organizations, and community and state-wide coalitions, aiming to improve their effectiveness, strategic alignment, and collaborative capacity. In her evaluation practice, she has conducted process and outcome evaluations of systems change efforts, comprehensive community initiatives, and coalitions. She often incorporates innovative (e.g., GIS mapping, social network analysis) and participatory (e.g., Photovoice) approaches in her research and evaluation efforts.

Jeff Grabill

grabill [at] msu [dot] edu

Jeff Grabill is a Professor of Rhetoric and Professional Writing and Co-Director of the Writing in Digital Environments (WIDE) Research Center. His research focuses on how groups inquire, learn, and communicate in order to engage publicly. As part of this focus, Grabill is interested in how groups and organizations innovate and invent, and he is interested as well in digital communication technologies as communication contexts. Grabill has published two books on community literacy and articles in journals like College Composition and Communication, Technical Communication Quarterly, Computers and Composition, and English Education.

 

Salah D. Hassan

hassans3 [at] msu [dot] edu

Salah D. Hassan is an associate professor in the Department of English and core faculty in the Muslim Studies Program at MSU. He is the coordinator of the www.imaje.msu.edu website. His areas of research include postcolonial literature and theory, mid-twentieth-century anticolonial intellectual movements, literatures of empire, and Arab North American studies. He has published articles in several journals, including Social Text, New Formations, Socialism and Democracy, Radical History Review, Research in African Literatures, and Middle East Report. Recently, Hassan co-edited (with Marcy Newman) a special of MELUS on Arab American literature. For CR, he has edited and co-edited special issues under the following titles: ?The Origins of Postmodern Cuba,? ?Terror Wars,? and ?Cultures of Occupation.? Currently, Hassan is completing a book tentatively titled Palestine in Theory.

Clare Luz

Clare [dot] Luz [at] hc [dot] msu [dot] edu

Clare Luz, PhD, Assistant Professor, MSU Department of Family Medicine, Geriatric Division, College of Human Medicine and the Geriatric Education Center of Michigan.

Dr. Luz recently joined the department following seven years in the CHM Associate Dean’s Office of Research where she served as the Director of Research Education and Community Outreach and the Lansing Campus Research Director. Prior to joining CHM in 1998, Dr. Luz provided clinical social work, consulting, and staff development services in nursing homes and medical settings. She received a degree in Social Work from MSU, her M.A. in Gerontology from the University of South Florida, and her PhD in Applied Gerontology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. While in clinical practice, she became acutely aware that the intractable nature of many of the challenges facing health providers, consumers, and families could not be addressed at the facility level because they are rooted in bigger social and economic systems. Her goal is to have an impact in this bigger context through teaching health care providers and conducting research that has practical application and policy relevance. The majority of Dr. Luz’ research has been cross-disciplinary and involved community and government partnerships. Her primary research interests are on aspects of functional health and long-term care that have an impact on optimal aging for vulnerable older adults. Specific projects have focused on the experiences of direct care workers, adult abuse, end-of-life, paid dining assistance, and falls. Recently funded projects relate to training personal care aides, hospice and palliative care. She is currently collaborating with bioengineers at MSU on a robotic walker that can recognize and move towards its owner; is Co-PI on the NSF funded, university-wide ADAPP-ADVANCE project with goals to increase the number of women and diverse faculty hired, retained, and promoted at MSU and to improve faculty quality and the work-life environment for all faculty; and she is actively developing research projects related to her strong interest in the intersection of health, health education, and the humanities which has led to her involvement in the MSU Creativity Initiative as co-chair of its research cluster devoted to Arts and Health.

Marsha L. Macdowell

macdowel [at] msu [dot] edu

Marsha L. Macdowell is Professor of Art and Art History, Michigan State University and Curator, Michigan State University Museum. My work, as a publicly-engaged scholar, is grounded in an interdisciplinary approach to material culture and is informed primarily by art historical, folkloristic, and ethnographic theories and methodologies. For many years, my work has been largely focused on the documentation and analysis of the production, meaning, and use of traditional material culture (especially that of Hmong-Americans, Native Americans, South Africans, and women); the analysis of the role of museums in contemporary society; the development of educational resources and public arts policies related to traditional arts; the development of curriculum materials related to community-based knowledge; and the creation of innovative ways, including digital repositories, to increase access to and use of traditional arts materials. The overwhelmingly majority of my work has, by design and philosophy, been developed and implemented in collaboration with representatives of the communities and cultural groups on whose cultural heritage is being focused. Outputs of work include exhibitions, curated festival programs, digital repositories of cultural materials, instructional programs, and presentations to scholarly, professional, and general audiences, and many publications.

Punya Mishra

punya [at] msu [dot] edu

Dr. Punya Mishra is Professor of Educational Technology at Michigan State University where he directs the Master of Arts in Educational Technology program. He is nationally and internationally recognized for his work on the theoretical, cognitive and social aspects related to the design and use of computer based learning environments. He has worked extensively in the area of technology integration in teacher education which led to the development (in collaboration with Dr. M. J. Koehler) of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK)  framework, which has been described as being “the most significant advancement in the area of technology integration in the past 25 years.” His current research has focused on how technologies can be used to enhance teacher creativity and the teaching of creativity.

He has received over $4 million in grants, has published over 45 articles and book chapters and has edited two books. Dr. Mishra is an award winning instructor who teaches courses at both the masters and doctoral levels in the areas of educational technology, design, and creativity. He is also an accomplished visual artist and poet. You can find out more about him by going to http://punyamishra.com/

David Sheridan

sherid16 [at] msu [dot] edu

David Sheridan is an Assistant Professor in the Residential College of Arts and Humanities and Michigan State University.  His interest include writing and technology, public rhetoric, and alternate learning spaces (such as writing centers, living-learning communities, and game spaces).  He is interested in pedagogies of activity that attend to a broad constellation of resources: networks of people, spaces, technologies, raw materials, and more.

 

Mark Sullivan

sullivan [at] msu [dot] edu

Executive Program Director;

Mark. Sullivan has had musical works performed in the US, Europe and Asia, has written a book on musical gesture that explores connections between music, language, and movement, and his music for film and video has been featured in recent conferences, programs, and festivals internationally. He has had photographs exhibited in the US and Europe, and published in several books and journals.   He has taught music composition, computer music, and courses on art’s role in society at MSU, in the College of Music, and the Residential College for the Arts and Humanities.

He have carried out various kinds of research relating to sound, music, and a wide range of acoustic phenomenon, with a particularly emphasis on ways to use computer technology to amplify, simulate, and extend the creative process of music composition. He has also worked on sound synthesis (particularly non-standard and algorithmic approaches), and in the creation of structural and referential models for acoustic events, as well as in modeling some aspects of the decision-making process involved in creating and evaluating music works. He continues to do research on the relationship between still images and music, on shared language and concepts found in music and video processes of creation.

As a teacher, he has been particularly active in the use of computer technology, and other forms of technology, in educational situations, particularly, with regard to arts education and creative activity for children (K-12 contexts).  He is specifically interested in the development of software tools that could be used to create multimedia documents and products that can be accessed and disseminated over the network (i.e. multimedia that includes text, high-resolution graphics, photographs, video, and audio), and is open source software that supports a wide range of creative activities.  He continues to be interested in cognitive research related to the use of technology in the creative process, again, with an emphasis on the construction of audio objects, or multimedia objects, but recently has begun to explore the role of digital composing to the pedagogy of creativity, and to the empowerment of “at risk” learners in a wide range of formal and informal educational contexts.

He has received a wide range of significant external grants to support the creation of teacher development programs connected with the creative arts, and to support the development of a range of programs involving teaching creative artistic activities using technology, largely to “at risk” student populations.

Dean Rehberger

rehberge [at] msu [dot] edu

Executive Administrative Director;

Dean Rehberger is the Director of MATRIX and also Associate Professor in the department of Writing, Rhetoric and American Cultures at MSU.  Dean specializes in using online technologies and developing educational resources for the World Wide Web.  He has run numerous faculty technology and workshops and given presentations for educators and cultural heritage workers from local, national and international audiences.

Dean oversees MATRIX project planning, research and development, coordinating many of the grant-funded projects for the Center. His primary areas of research include: information design and architecture; digital libraries, museums and archives; Internet technologies in the classroom; and hybrid learning environments.

Dean teaches course for a variety of courses at MSU for Professional Writing ProgramAmerican Studies, the Graduate Study in Rhetoric & Writing, and Museum Studies.  He also helps to design and develop a number of online course for the department of History.

Ethan Watrall

watrall [at] msu [dot] edu

Ethan Watrall is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Associate Director of Matrix: The Center for Humane Arts, Letters & Social Sciences Online at Michigan State University. Ethan also holds adjunct appointments in a wide variety of departments and programs at MSU including Museum Studies and American Studies. In addition, Ethan is coordinator of the Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative (chi.matrix.msu.edu) at Michigan State University.

Ethan’s primary area of research is in the domain of cultural heritage informatics, specifically serious games for cultural heritage learning, outreach, and engagement. Ethan is currently Principle Investigator of the NEH funded Red Land/Black Land: Teaching Ancient Egyptian History Through Games-based Learning project.  He is also co-editor of the forthcoming book Web 2.0 and Beyond: New Tools for Archaeological Collaboration and Communication (Cotsen, 2010).

Ethan also has a strong interest in all aspects of scholarly practice in the digital age.  Ethan is a regular contributor to the Chronicle of Higher Education’s ProfHacker blog (http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker), where he writes on the topic of open access, open courseware, educational technology, and digital scholarly practice.

In addition to his academic work, Ethan has written numerous technical trade books for publishers such as Wiley, Sybex, and O’Reilly on interactive design and user centered/user experience design. Ethan’s digital alter ego can be found at http://www.captainprimate.com. Ethan can also be found on Twitter at @captain_primate.

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