MPEI 2016 Cohort
Mark Bourgeois

Mark Bourgeois

is a postdoc at the Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values at the University of Notre Dame.  His PhD in Philosophy is from Loyola University Chicago with a dissertation on the concept of normative function in the philosophy of biology.  Prior to his doctoral studies, he was an engineer with Lucent Technologies and he holds undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois in both Physics and Philosophy.  He has taught design thinking, biomedical ethics, engineering ethics and more at Northwestern University. 

At Notre Dame, he is responsible for the implementation of the NSF-funded Social Responsibilities of Researchers program, a 3-year EESE award designed to provide training in ethics, communications and social engagement to PhD students in STEM.  He also teaches Philosophy of Technology and the ethics sequence of the entrepreneurship Masters’ program at Notre Dame.


Mark Bracher

Mark Bracher

is Professor of English and Director of the Neurocognitive Research Program for the Advancement of the Humanities (NRPAH) at Kent State University.  His teaching and research center on the question of how literary study in particular and humanities education in general can help students become more fulfilled individuals and more productive and socially responsible members of society.  More specifically, by employing the methods and findings of social, cognitive, and affective neuroscience, Bracher works to formulate educational and other practices for reducing social injustice, including not only racism, colonialism, sexism, and homophobia but also the growing disparities in wealth and well being within both American society and the world at large. His research investigates, and his teaching attempts to foster, the development of capabilities of perception, judgment, and feeling that are necessary for recognizing these forms of social injustice, understanding their root causes, formulating effective interventions to counter them, and being motivated to ameliorate them. His most recent books include Literature and Social Justice: Protest Novels, Cognitive Politics, and Schema Criticism (2013), Educating for Cosmopolitanism: Lessons from Cognitive Science and Literature (2013), Social Symptoms of Identity Needs: Why We Have Failed to Solve Our Social Problems, and What to Do about It (2009), and Radical Pedagogy: Identity, Generativity, and Social Transformation (2006).


Melissa Burchard

Melissa Burchard

is professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Asheville. She regularly teaches courses in ethics, feminist/gender studies, ancient philosophy (mainly Greek) and Africana philosophy. Her most current research includes a forthcoming book chapter on the meanings and importance of traumatic testimony from both adults and children, and an article on the need to shift from rule-based models of decision-making in ethics to models that facilitate greater imaginative engagement, such as ethics of caring. She is working on a book project using a perspective informed by engagement with serious traumatic experience to reconsider philosophical issues in ethics, epistemology, identity, narrative theory and popular culture. She takes very seriously the research showing the health benefits of needlework and finds interesting hats compelling.  


Michael Burroughs

Michael D. Burroughs

is Associate Director of the Rock Ethics Institute, Senior Lecturer of Philosophy, and Affiliate Faculty Member in the College of Education, at Penn State University. His research lies at the intersection of philosophy, education, psychology, childhood studies, and moral development. Michael recently published a co-authored book (with Jana Mohr Lone) entitled Philosophy in Education: Questioning and Dialogue in Schools (Rowman and Littlfield, 2016). This book focuses on the theory and practice of doing philosophical and ethical work with young children. Michael is also PI on a mixed methods research project entitled "Philosophical Ethics in Early Childhood" (PEECh) that focuses on the impact of philosophical discussion and related activities on ethical development in early childhood. Michael works regularly with teachers and administrators to introduce philosophy and ethics programs in Pre-K - 12 schools and has published several articles and book chapters in the areas of ethics, education, critical philosophy of race, and social epistemology. Michael is also incoming Vice President of the Philosophy Learning & Teaching Organization (PLATO), a national non-profit devoted to supporting philosophical education in US schools. 


Martin Coleman

Martin Coleman

is associate professor of philosophy and editor and director of the Santayana Edition at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. He regularly teaches Introduction to Philosophy and courses in Classic American Philosophy. He participates in the Inside Out Prison Exchange program, which brings together students from inside and outside a correctional institution for a semester-long college course. He has edited books on or by George Santayana and published articles on figures in American philosophy and American literature.


Kathy Cooke

Kathy J. Cooke

is founding director of the University Honors Program and Professor of History at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. She is an American historian and historian of science with a PhD from the University of Chicago.  Kathy studies the history of biology and agriculture in American history, especially breeding and social reform movements—like how chicken breeders used their science to cope with the uncertainty of social change in late nineteenth century, in part by supporting a program to breed human beings, the American eugenics movement. Her work has been funded and supported by the National Science Foundation as well as many academic institutions, such as California Institute of Technology, the American Philosophical Society, Yale, and Cornell, and she has published in academic journals including Isis (the Journal of the History of Science Society), Journal of the History of Biology, Mt. Sinai Journal of Medicine, Agricultural History, and the Journal of the History of Sexuality. 

In addition to her ongoing work in the history of sexuality, breeding, and agriculture and their relationship to social reform, Kathy studies behavioral and cognitive psychology and neuroscience. She is currently affiliated with the Clinical Affective and Neuroscience Laboratory at Brown University, headed by PI Willoughby Britton.  In this work, Kathy measures the neurophysiological effects of different meditation practices in a NIH-funded clinical trial.  She also has an article on this in the National Collegiate Honors Council journal Honors in Practice.


Emily Cox

Emily Cox

is a Humanities Librarian at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) Libraries.  She works with the Department of Philosophy and Classics and the Department of Music to support research endeavors among students and faculty.  She is currently pursuing a MA in Philosophy from UTSA.  Prior to her position in San Antonio, she was Librarian for Instruction and Research Services at Longwood University.  Her research interests include the philosophy of education, information literacy, digital pedagogy, and the research habits of faculty and students, particularly in the humanities. She has presented on using social networks to build and engage a virtual library community.  She received her BA in Human Relations from High Point University and her MSLS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.     


Paul Croce

Paul Croce

stopped taking American culture for granted when he left the country as an undergraduate exchange student in England; he now researches and teaches American cultural and intellectual history in the History Department at Stetson University, DeLand, Florida, where he also directs the American Studies Program and the Student Research in Science and Religion (2SR) Program.  His prime academic research deals with science, religion, and William James, the founder of American psychology, popularizer and refiner of pragmatic philosophizing, keen observer and theorist of religious experiences, and advocate for social justice. 

Paul has been Chair of the Forum for History of Human Science, Senior Lecturer in American Intellectual History at the Università Roma Tre in Italy, Scholar in Residence at the William James Center, Universität Potsdam in Germany, and President of the William James Society; in cooperation with citizens in Chocorua, NH, and Harvard’s Houghton Library. Inspired by James’s commitment to public intellectual work, Paul teaches on issues in American history related to major values questions (topics many grandparents urge not bringing up at the dinner table) including Darwinism and the Divine, War and Peace, Nature and the American Marketplace, USA: The Natural Experiment, History of American Health Care, Political Campaigns and Cultural Ideologies, and The 1950s and 1960s: First Years of Our Own Time.  Before arriving at Stetson in 1988, he earned a BA, cum laude, from Georgetown and a PhD from Brown University. 

Paul’s dozens of articles for newspapers and magazines on politics, culture, and values questions have served as a kind of public classroom; in fact, he recently started a blog, The Public Classroom, to make scholarly insights more available for public discussion.  His opening essay, “Dreaming in Translation,” https://pubclassroom.com/category/why-pubclassroom/, expresses his dream to translate between these worlds that generally have had little to do with each other, but that could generally benefit from more connection.

In addition, Paul has two wonderful children in their mid-twenties, Peter and Elizabeth, and has enjoyed taking improv comedy classes, puttering in the garden and house of their century-old home, and playing sports with them, including walking, running, biking, swimming, basketball, soccer, racquetball, or tennis—moving is a good complement to reading, teaching, and writing! 


Katelyn Delvaux

Katelyn Delvaux

is an adjunct writing instructor splitting her time between the University of Missouri—St. Louis, St. Louis Community College, and East Central College. She received her BA in Creative Writing from Columbia College (2010) and her MFA in Poetry from Wichita State University (2013). During this time, she was also the recipient of Wichita’s Fellowship for Writing, and her work was nominated for the AWP Intro Journals Award.

As a poet, Katelyn’s research interests encompass a variety of subjects such as African and Native American literatures, labor and reform, ethics in literature, community organizing, and gender parity. Presently, she serves on the editing staff for the San Francisco-based publisher, Red Bridge Press. Her most recent publications and interviews may be found in Driftwood Press, Barn Owl Review, Off the Coast, and Slice magazine.


Michael Deschamp

Michael Deschamp

currently teaches English Composition at Southwestern Michigan College. He completed his undergraduate degree at North Dakota State University and did his graduate work in theology at Collegio Seraficum in Rome, the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley before completing his MA in English/Creative Writing at the University of Louisiana.  He also completed course work at UCLA, Indiana University, Fordham, and Catholic University.  This fall begins his 29th year of teaching. (He claims starting as a small child for those doing the math.)

Michael's interests vary from the creative intuition to male psychology and gender studies.  He practices what he preaches as a writer of short fiction.  His first memoir was published in 2006, An Education through Letters and his first short story collection was published a year ago, One Egg or Two.  His students write creatively in all his courses because Michael believes we all have a story to tell and rarely do others validate our voices.


Charles Guthrie

Clifton F. Guthrie

is Professor of Ethics and Humanities at Husson University in Bangor, Maine. He received his B.A. from Duke University, his M.Div. from Candler School of Theology, and his Ph.D. from Emory University. He taught for fifteen years in theological education at Emory University and Bangor Theological Seminary, during which time he published books and articles on practical theology and was a visiting scholar at Cambridge University’s Psychology and Religion project. In 2007 he joined the faculty at Husson University where he teaches ethics, philosophy, and religion and is the chair of the new Department of Humanities. His most recent publications include articles about smart technology and ethics. He is writing an ethics textbook and doing an increasing number of professional ethics workshops that build on insights from moral psychology.


Susanna Hoeness-Krupshaw

Susanna Hoeness-Krupsaw

is an associate professor of English at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville.  She teaches all levels of modern American literature, modern Canadian literature, as well as humanities and composition courses.  Her research interests include the family theme in the novels of E.L. Doctorow. Her interest in the role of family themes in American literature also informs her recent examination of the mother-daughter plot in the works of Kingston and Tan. She also studies the fiction of Margaret Atwood and other women writers, graphic narratives, and the pedagogy of online instruction. Her recent publications were on Marguerite Abouet’s Aya, Mary Gordon’s novels, and Amy Tan’s Saving Fish from Drowning.


Katherine Jo

Katherine Jo

is a fourth-year doctoral student specializing in Philosophy of Education in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests concern the possibilities for the ethical formation of students in higher education through liberal learning, especially through engagement with the humanities and with the classroom community. Her work engages with broader philosophical questions about the tensions between the ideals of autonomy, authenticity, and pluralism, on the one hand, and the formative roles of tradition and communities, on the other. She has presented papers on the value of the humanities, the relationship between liberal learning and hope, the roles of leisure and contemplation in liberal learning, and civic dialogue on religion. Prior to pursuing doctoral studies, she was a career counselor and internship program manager at Columbia University and a college advisor for first-generation students at East Boston High School. She received her AB in Sociology from Harvard University and her MA in Philosophy and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University.


Lisa Kretz

Lisa Kretz

is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Evansville. Her recent and forthcoming publications are at the intersection of areas such as: ecological selfhood, the theory-action gap, motivational framing for action, ecological emotions (with a special emphasis on hope), moral psychology, the politics of emotion, and activist pedagogy. She also has a number of publications that identify and argue against the immoral treatment of non-human animals. Her work can be found in journals such as the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, Ethics & the Environment, the Journal for Critical Animal Studies, Teaching Ethics, Ethics and Education, and Environmental Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Journal Dedicated to the Philosophical Aspects of Environmental Problems. She has three book chapters forthcoming, two of which are focused on ecological emotions as they intersect with motivation for positive action, and one of which is centered on the impact modern technologies have had on food production and consumption practices.


Theresa Lopez

Theresa Lopez

is currently the Chauncey Truax Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy at Hamilton College. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Arizona, where she also studied in the Cognitive Science Program. Prior to Arizona, she completed degrees in biology and philosophy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Spanning these areas, the general focus of Lopez’s research is the naturalistic study of moral judgment.

Her current work engages with scientific questions concerning the nature and origins of the cognitive processes involved in moral judgment, as well as related questions concerning the epistemic evaluation of moral beliefs and the role of empirical findings in normative moral theorizing. Lopez has work published or forthcoming in Mind & Language, Philosophical Perspectives, and the anthology Empirically Informed Ethics: Morality between Facts and Norms.


Daniel Marangoni

Daniel Marangoni

is the Director of Research and Sponsored Programs at Rogers State University and serves as RSU's representative to the Institutional Review Board for the University of Oklahoma.  He is currently a doctoral student in educational psychology at Oklahoma State University, and teaches upper level psychology courses for Rogers State.  Daniel Marangoni is the Vice President of the Board of Directors for United Way of Rogers and Mayes Counties, a member of the Executive Council for the National Council of University Research Administrators region V, as RSU's Chair of the Staff Advisory Council.  His current research is on quantum cognition, decision making, and educational paradigms to support the development of intellectual virtue.  


Alan Preti

Alan A. Preti

is Director of the Institute for Ethical Leadership and Social Responsibility and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Rosemont College. He graduated from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville with a B.A. in music and an M.A. in philosophy, and earned a doctorate in philosophy from Temple University. His current research interests include applied ethics, Virtue ethics, and moral psychology. He also has interests in Asian philosophical traditions. Preti's work has been published in Philosophy East and West, International Journal of Ethics, and Rivista Internazionale di Filososofia e Psicologia. He has also contributed chapters to Handbook of Virtue Ethics in Business and Management (Springer, 2017) and Developing Moral Sensitivity (Routledge, 2015). He is an Executive Committee member of the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum and has served on the Board of Directors of the Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium since 2008.


Kara Ryan-Johnson

Kara M. Ryan-Johnson

is an Assistant Professor of English and Developmental Studies at Tulsa Community College. She earned a BA in history and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Ph.D. in English at the University of Tulsa. While at the University of Tulsa, she was an editorial assistant at Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature and the book review editor for The James Joyce Quarterly

In terms of literary scholarship, her recent work focuses on history’s effect on content and form, particularly nineteenth-century British and Irish women writers’ interventions in contemporaneous historiographies and philosophies. Her current project reads several novels by George Eliot (née Marian Evans) as uniting moral philosophy and history via their engagement with nineteenth-century German philosophy and philosophies of history. With respect to teaching, Kara is interested in the relationship among historical knowledge, empathy, and moral justice.

She has essays in New Essays on Maria Edgeworth (ed. Julie Nash) and Evangelicals and Catholics in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (ed. James Murphy), and reviews in Éire-Ireland, New Hibernia Review/Iris Éireannach Nua, and Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature.


Rommel Salvador

Rommel (Bombie) Salvador

is Assistant Professor of Management at California State University, Fullerton.  His scholarly interests revolve around socially responsible management, encompassing ethical decision-making, occupational health and safety, and managing diversity in the workplace.  He earned a B.S. in Applied Mathematics and a Bachelor of Secondary Education from De La Salle University Manila and an M.B.A. from the Australian Graduate School of Management at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. He earned his Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Central Florida. His research has been published in several leading journals in management including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Strategic Management Journal, and Business Ethics Quarterly. He serves as a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Management and the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, and as a regular ad-hoc reviewer for the Journal of Business Ethics and Business Ethics Quarterly.


Yujia Song

Yujia Song

is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University. She received her PhD in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and works at the intersections of moral philosophy, epistemology, psychology, and aesthetics, as Yujia's research focuses on the nature and value of understanding, empathy, appreciation, and related attitudes (such as non-judgmentalism and open-mindedness) and emotions (such as being moved).  

She teaches Ethics, Biomedical Ethics, Philosophy and Gender, Recent Ethical Theory, and Global Moral Issues at Purdue and is also developing a course on the philosophy of disability as part of the Critical Disability Studies Minor program.


Angelique Syzmanek

Angelique Szymanek

is Visiting Assistant Professor of Art & Architecture at Hobart & William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY where she teaches courses in Modern and Contemporary Art History. Her research interests include the intersection of art and activism, specifically around issues of sexual violence. Her recently defended dissertation, "The Fear of Rape, The Threat of Looking," traces the parallel rise of anti-rape activism and feminist performance art in the United States during the 1970s. Szymanek's essay, "Bloody Pleasures: Ana Mendieta's Violent Tableaux," is forthcoming in this summer's issue of Signs: A Journal of Women in Art and Culture. It addresses, in part, the ethical conundrums posed to makers and viewers of violent images through a close study of the early performative work of Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta. She is currently working on a book proposal based on her research on the community art projects of artists Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz-Starus, two of the first American artists to take on the subject of rape as a socio-political issue in their practice. 


Noah Thomas

Thomas Noah

is a member of the Penn Social Norms Group (Penn SoNG) and a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. Led by Cristina Bicchieri, Penn SoNG is an interdisciplinary research group that trains members of governments and partner organizations on how to make use of the group’s influential new theory of social norms, how to measure and diagnose social norms and other collective patterns of behavior, and how to monitor and create social change. A member of Penn SoNG since 2013, Thomas has provided training and technical assistance on a number of projects. He has served as a facilitator for the Penn-UNICEF Summer Program on Advances in Social Norms and Social Change from 2013-2015. During his tenure as facilitator, Thomas has worked with UNICEF officials on various projects, including but not limited to changing laws regarding corporal punishment, developing market-based solutions to water access in failed states, and ending child labor, social exclusion of children with disabilities, and female genital cutting. During the 2015 Penn-UNICEF Summer Program, he delivered the lecture on the relation between social norms and the law. In 2015, Thomas conducted social norms training workshops in Zimbabwe and Vietnam on the topic of violence against children as part of UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti’s Multi-Country Study on the Drivers of Violence, and he was instrumental in developing field manuals based on the social norms training. In 2016, Thomas provided training to UNICEF and partner organizations in Pakistan on social norm approaches for WASH programming and the sustainable elimination of open defecation, traveled to Kenya to conduct a workshop on social norm measurement for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Grand Challenge: Putting Women and Girls at the Center of Development, and provided training to the Gates Foundation on social norm approaches to the empowerment of women agricultural workers. In late May of 2016, Thomas will present on social norm measurement and theories of social change to the United Nations Population Fund and the European Commission at the Expert Group Meeting on ending gender-biased harmful practices within the context of the 2030 Development Agenda.

Thomas's dissertation is called "The Problems of Moral Psychology." In his dissertation, Thomas identifies sources of disagreement about the subject-matter, definition, and correct methodology for moral psychology and provides a method -- call it Minimal Moral Psychology -- that attempts to resolve the disagreement in a principled way. He received an AA from Cowley County Community College; a BA in Ethical, Social and Political Philosophy from UMass Boston; a Graduate Certificate in Ethics from Texas Tech; and a Graduate Certificate in Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience from Penn.


Sean Walsh

Sean Walsh

is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Ethics and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota Duluth.  He has been in residence as a visiting scholar at the University of Minnesota Institute for Advanced Study in Minneapolis in 2012, at the University of Melbourne in 2013, and at the UNC-Chapel Hill Philosophy Department in 2015-2016. In 2008, Walsh was at Wesleyan University for an NEH Summer Seminar on Comparative and Chinese Ethics.

Sean Walsh received his B.A. in Philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame (after having been an undergraduate at Notre Dame and a PhD student in philosophy at UNC-Chapel Hill). Walsh has also been an Interpretive Ranger in the National Park Service and a laboratory technician in HIV/AIDS research, Cystic Fibrosis research, and neurobehavioral pharmacology.


Charles Wright

Chuck Wright

teaches in the Philosophy Department at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University in central Minnesota.  He's been doing that for about 20 years.  He also teaches the Japanese martial art Aikido, which he's been practicing for almost as long as he's studied philosophy. 


Qin Zhu

Qin Zhu

is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Ethics Across Campus Program and the Division of Liberal Arts and International Studies at Colorado School of Mines (CSM) in Golden, Colorado. Qin is also managing the Daniels Fund Faculty Fellows Program that provides scholarly and grant support for CSM faculty to explore ways to integrate ethics into their applied science and engineering curricula. Qin’s research lies at the intersection of engineering ethics, engineering education, and Chinese philosophy (especially Confucianism). Qin’s work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Engineering Studies, History of Education, and Technology in Society. His recent work has been focused on introducing Confucian moral psychological concepts and theories (e.g., self-cultivation) to engineering ethics education and advocating an ontological dimension of moral education in the professions (focusing on “becoming” not simply “knowing” as an end in itself).     



Page last modified December 13, 2016