Honors Faculty

The Frederik Meijer Honors College features eight permanent full-time faculty, four half-time Faculty-in-Residence, the Meijer Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship & Innovation, and dozens of exceptional faculty drawn from departments and programs across campus.

Full-time Honors Faculty

These faculty all teach the majority of their classes in Honors and have their offices in the Niemeyer suite.

Coeli Fitzpatrick

Chair and Professor of Philosophy in Honors

Office Address: 125 Niemeyer

Phone: (616) 331-3748

Email: [email protected]

Coeli Fitzpatrick is Professor of Philosophy in the Frederik Meijer Honors College and Chair of the Honors Faculty. Originally from Phoenix, Arizona, Professor Fitzpatrick received her B.A. in Philosophy from Regis University in Denver, Colorado and her Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Binghamton. She teaches several courses in the program, including two first-year sequences, The Middle East Beyond the Headlines and The Making of Meaning, and an integrative seminar on Islamophobia. Her publications include the award winning edited volume Muhammad in History, Thought and Culture as well as writings on Edward Said and Orientalism. Professor Fitzpatrick's current research focuses on the transmission of Arab intellectual history in the West, Muslim Spain and Orientalism.

Ellen Adams

Associate Professor of Art History, Honors College

Office Address: 126 Niemeyer

Phone: (616) 331-8134

Email: [email protected]

Ellen Adams is Associate Professor of Art History in the Frederik Meijer Honors College. Originally from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Professor Adams received her B.A. in Art History from the University of Delaware, her M.A. from Hunter College (City University of New York), and her Ph.D. in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She teaches several courses in the program, including the first-year interdisciplinary sequence Dangerous Ideas, The Bloodiest, Darkest Hour, and I Love the 80s. Her publications and presentations concentrate primarily on modern and contemporary artists. Prof. Adams’ current research project focuses on American women artists active during the New Deal.

Jeremiah Cataldo

Associate Professor of History in Honors

Office Address: 121 Niemeyer

Phone: (616) 331-3470

Email: [email protected]

Jeremiah Cataldo is Associate Professor of History in the Frederik Meijer Honors College. He earned his Ph.D. from Drew University, a Master in Philosophy from Drew University, a Master in Ministry from Bethel College, and a B.A. in Religious Studies from Bethel College. He is the author of numerous books and journal articles, including Biblical Terror (Bloomsbury, 2017) and A Social-Political History of Monotheism (Routledge, 2018). A strong supporter of cultivating well-roundedness in mind and body, he enjoys woodworking, backpacking, running ultramarathons, and training in Taekwondo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He teaches The Powers That Divide Us, Prophetic Critique, Textual Tease, and Social Media and Belief.

Maria Cimitile

Professor of Philosophy in Honors

Office Address: 132 Niemeyer

Phone: (616) 331-2838

Email: [email protected]

Maria Cimitile is Professor of Philosophy in the Frederik Meijer Honors College. Professor Cimitile earned her A.B from the College of the Holy Cross, her M.A from Villanova University, and her Ph.D. from the University of Memphis. Trained in European philosophy, her scholarly and teaching interests are in feminist philosophy, political theory and logical thinking. Professor Cimitile is a GVSU award-winning faculty member for teaching excellence and has held a number of leadership positions at the university. Professor Cimitile teaches first year interdisciplinary sequences The Powers that Divide Us and The Making of Meaning.

Kurt Ellenberger

Professor of Music in Honors

Office Address: 123 Niemeyer

Phone: (616) 331-8075

Email: [email protected]

Kurt Ellenberger is a pianist, composer, and author whose work includes music for a wide range of ensembles. His writings include a jazz theory book, other pedagogical writings, and many essays that appear in his arts blog entitled Also Sprach FraKathustra, which was published by The Huffington Post–Arts and Culture until 2017. He is currently a Contributing Writer and Editor at All About Jazz, and is also the Managing Editor for the International Association of Schools of Jazz’s “Journal of Applied Jazz Research."

He has recorded on Innova Recordings, Ghostly International, and Challenge-A Records (the Netherlands), among others, and has been hailed as "a gifted pianist who combines the lyricism of Bill Evans with the energy of Keith Jarrett." He was a member of the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble, whose recordings of Terry Riley’s “IN C: Remixed” and Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians” were featured in The New York Times, as well as in many of the nation’s leading publications, including The New Yorker. Ellenberger is a faculty member in the Frederik Meijer Honors College at Grand Valley State University, where he has been teaching since 1999. He is also a Fulbright Scholar who taught in Austria at the Kunstuniversität Graz (University of the Arts in Graz).

Rob Franciosi

Professor of English and Faculty-in-Residence in Honors

Office Address: 131 Niemeyer

Email: [email protected]

Rob Franciosi earned his BA from New York University and his MA and PhD from the University of Iowa. His current research interests center on American cultural responses to the Holocaust. He is completing a study of John Hersey's epic novel of the Warsaw Ghetto, tentatively titled Imagining the Ghetto: Hersey's The Wall and American Holocaust Memory. He has also escorted groups of Honors students to Germany and Poland as part of a seminar on Holocaust museums, memorials, and sites.

Gary Greer

Professor of Biology and Faculty-in-Residence in Honors

Office: 127 Niemeyer

Email: [email protected]

Gary Greer earned his BA from the University of Northern Colorado, his MA from Humboldt State University, and his PhD from Ohio University. His research interests span a wide range of topics in plant ecology all centered on evolutionary process:

Factors influencing the structure of epiphytic communities;
Pteridophyte (seedless vascular plant) biology, ecology & evolution;
Invasive species ecology (principally that of Ailanthus altissima (“Tree-of-Heaven”)).

Barry Kanpol

Professor of Education in Honors

Office Address: 162 Lake Michigan Hall

Phone: (616) 331-3219

Email: kanpolb @gvsu.edu

A native Australian, Barry Kanpol earned his B.A. in English from Tel Aviv University in Israel before going on to earn an M.A. and Ph.D. in Education from Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. He was a professor and dean at Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne from 2003 to 2016. In 2016, he joined the Grand Valley faculty as Dean of the College of Education. Over the years, Dr, Kanpol has published over a dozen books, either as author or editor, including Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction (Bergin & Garvey, 1994), Teacher Education and Urban Education (Hampton Press, 2002), Foundations of Cultural Wards in Education (Kendall/Hunt, 2015), and Introduction to Community Engaged Impact (Peter Lang, 2022--with Danielle Lake).

Leifa Mayers

Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Faculty-in-Residence in Honors

Office Address: 134 Niemeyer

Phone: (616) 331-3219

Email: [email protected]

Faye Richardson-Green

Meijer Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Office Address: 129 Niemeyer

Phone: (616) 331-2493

Email: [email protected]

Faye Richardson-Green has influenced the strategic direction of numerous organizations in roles as diverse as co-founder, committee chair, facilitator, and board trustee. The organizations include public and parochial school systems, healthcare systems, leadership institutions, foundations, and not-for-profit human services. After beginning her professional career in banking branch management, Richardson-Green spent 33 years at Steelcase, finishing her career there in 2015 as Director of Global Learning & Development. She then started her own consulting firm. From 2016 to 2019, she also served as Interim Executive Director at Partners for a Racism-Free Community. She has received many distinguished local awards, including, in 2006, the Raymond Tardy Community Service “Giant” award presented by the Woodrick Diversity Learning Center at Grand Rapids Community College. In 2013, she received the Diversity Visionary Award from the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce. Richardson-Green earned her bachelor's degree from Oakland University in Rochester, MI. Through Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, she earned certificates in Diversity (2009) and Cultural Intelligence (2016).

Joel Stillerman

Professor of Sociology and Faculty-in-Residence in Honors

Office Address: 124 Niemeyer

Phone: (616) 331-3129

Email: [email protected]

Joel is a Professor of Sociology and Faculty-in-Residence in the Honors College and is originally from Chicago. He received his BA (1986) in Philosophy and Political Science at Bennington College and PhD (1998) in Sociology and Historical Studies at the New School for Social Research. Prior to arriving to Grand Valley, he taught at the University of Arizona. Joel co-teaches (with Prof. Heather Van Wormer) an introductory sequence, "Culture, Power, and Inequality," a junior seminar, "The Sociology of Consumption," and several courses in the Sociology Department. He is the author of Identity Investments: Middle-Class Responses to Precarious Privilege in Neoliberal Chile (Stanford, 2023) and The Sociology of Consumption: A Global Approach (Polity, 2015) and coeditor of Qué significa el trabajo hoy?: Continuidad y cambio en una sociedad global (Catalonia, 2012). Joel's publications on labor activism, consumer culture, and middle classes in Chile and Latin America appear in Poetics, Latin American Politics and Society, Journal of Consumer Culture, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, and other journals and edited volumes.

Melba Vélez Ortiz

Professor of Communications in Honors

Office Address: 130 Niemeyer

Phone: (616) 331-3469

Email: [email protected]

Dr. Vélez Ortiz's areas of research are communication ethics and global environmental communication. Her work examines the ways in which the long-term success of conservation efforts depend upon fundamental shifts in cultural values, in aesthetic and moral communication, and in shared understandings of how the individual fits into social and ecological communities. In addition, Dr. Vélez Ortiz has researched and published in the area of Latin-American/Caribbean/Latina-o philosophy and intellectual history. She has published numerous articles and book chapters, and in 2020 her book, Maatian Ethics in a Communication Context, was published by Routledge Press.

Peter Wampler

Professor of Geology in Honors

Office Address: 134 Niemeyer

Phone: (616) 331-2834

Email: [email protected]

Peter Wampler is a broadly trained environmental geologist and geomorphologist with a background in both academic and government regulation of mining and storm water. He received his PhD in 2004 for work on human- and climatic-induced changes along the Clackamas River in Oregon. As a professor at GVSU, he has worked with undergraduate and graduate students on applied geoscience research: 1) evaluating GVSU’s storm water runoff footprint and assisting in designing Best Management Practices (BMP) for GVSU; 2) investigating water resources and groundwater contamination pathways in rural Haiti; 3) evaluating human impacts to river systems resulting from dams and other structures; and 4) Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to create household radon hazard maps for Michigan using geologic data. He has traveled to Haiti numerous times since 2007 to work on water resources issues and safe water interventions. He previously led GVSU students on a 4 week study abroad to Haiti.

Honors Associates

Honors also draws many exceptional faculty from around campus.

Majd Al-Mallah

Modern Languages & Literatures

Honors Faculty

Full-time Honors Faculty

Coeli Fitzpatrick

Ellen Adams

Jeremiah Cataldo

Maria Cimitile

Kurt Ellenberger

Rob Franciosi

Gary Greer

Barry Kanpol

Leifa Mayers

Faye Richardson-Green

Joel Stillerman

Melba Vélez Ortiz

Peter Wampler

Honors Associates

Majd Al-Mallah

David Alvarez

Brad Ambrose

Karen Amisi

Lora Bailey

James Bell

Steeve Buckridge

Lawrence Burns

Meghan Cai

Anne Caillaud

Grace Coolidge

Max Counter

David Crane

Jason Crouthamel

David Eick

Elizabeth Flandreau

Elizabeth Gansen

Charles Ham

Christopher Harper

Jason Herlands

Tara Hefferan

Azfar Hussain

Naoki Kanaboshi

Ryan Lafferty

Paul Lane

Yan Liang

Allison Metz

Charles Pazdernik

Tom Pentecost

Gabriela Pozzi

Eric Ramsson

Christine Rener

Jeremy Robinson

Dawn Rutecki

Medar Serrata

Eric Snyder

David Stark

Steve Tripp

Dwayne Tunstall

John Uglietta

Heather Van Wormer

John Weber

Jason Yancey