Faculty Spotlight
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Kim Nielsen
Social Change and Development
After many years, historian and Helen Keller expert Kim Nielsen realized that she, along with other historians and biographers, had failed Anne Sullivan Macy. While Macy is remembered primarily as Helen Keller's teacher and mythologized as a straightforward educational superhero, the real story of this brilliant, complex, and misunderstood woman, who described herself as a "badly constructed human being," has never been completely told. Nielsen’s new book Beyond the Miracle Worker complicates the typical Helen-Annie "feel good" narrative in surprising ways. By telling the life from Macy's perspective-not Keller's-the biography is the first to put Macy squarely at the center of the story. It presents a new and fascinating tale about a wounded but determined woman and her quest for a successful, meaningful life. More information at: http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2048. Professor Nielsen is currently chair of Social Change and Development and teaches courses in that program as well as in History, and Women’s and Gender Studies. Other publications include: The Radical Lives of Helen Keller and Helen Keller: Selected Writings (both by New York University Press) and Un-American Womanhood: Antiradicalism, Antifeminism, and the First Red Scare (Ohio State University Press) and was the recipient of the Founders Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2005.
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Michael Kraft
Public and Environmental Affairs
Professor Kraft is an internationally known environmental policy scholar that has published numerous books, articles, and reports on environmental, nuclear waste, and population issues. He is the recipient of the Founders Award for Excellence in Research and is the Herbert Fisk Johnson Professor for Environmental Studies.
Prof. Kraft published three books during 2009 as part of his spring sabbatical leave. Toward Sustainable Communities: Transition and Transformations in Environmental Policy (MIT Press) is the second edition of an edited volume of original scholarship originally released in 1999, co-edited with Daniel Mazmanian (released in March). Environmental Policy: New Directions for the Twenty-First Century (CQ Press) is the seventh edition of an edited collection of original chapters that has been widely used in college classrooms since the early 1990s. It is co-edited with Norman Vig and will be released in July. Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives, third edition (CQ Press) is a textbook for the introductory public policy course, co-authored with Scott Furlong, and it has become one of the leading texts in the field. It too will be released in July.
All three books are closely related to Prof. Kraft’s teaching and reflect his experience in a number of courses, particularly Environmental Politics and Policy 301 and Public Policy Analysis 408. He uses Environmental Policy in the former course as one of the core texts. Over the past decade, Public Policy has been used by a variety of instructors in Introduction to Public Policy 202. Kraft is currently at work on a new edition of his Environmental Policy and Politics text (Pearson-Longman Publishers), which he also has used in his course Environmental Politics and Policy. During the summer of 2009, he will be completing a book with two other scholars that reports on his research on information disclosure as an environmental policy strategy, focusing on the federal Toxics Release Inventory program and its effects on businesses and communities.
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Phil Clampitt
Information and Computing Sciences
Professor Clampitt (Hendrickson Professor of Business) worked with his students to address a unique but frequent communication problem encountered by executives and managers. He coined the term “decision downloading” to set apart those special situations in which decision-makers communicate a decision that has already been made. The communicators cannot, for whatever reason, keep everyone informed in real-time about the decision-making process. The research determined that “downloaders” can double the amount of employee buy-in if they abide by the following checklist in their communication: a) how the decision was made b) why it was made c) what alternatives were considered d) how it fits in with the organizational mission e) how it impacts the organization f) how it impacts employees. Professor Clampitt now uses the checklist as an integral part of discussions on strategic communication in his classes. MIT Sloan Management Review recently published his definitive article on this issue. “Decision Downloading.” MIT Sloan Management Review, 48 (2), 77-82, Winter 2007. (co-authored with M.L. Williams). He is the author of Communicating for Managerial Effectiveness (3rd edition), and Embracing Uncertainty: The Essence of Leadership (with R. Dekoch and M. Williams) as well as numerous articles.
Professor Clampitt teaches courses in Organizational Communication, Small Group Communication and Theories of the Interview. He was the recipient of the Founders Award for Excellence in Research. He is the Hendrickson Professor of Business.
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Kristy Deetz
Arts and Visual Design
Professor Deetz is Chair of the Art Discipline and teaches painting and drawing classes. Her recent paintings revise traditional images of drapery and reweave Deleuze’s ideas of internal versus external and virtual verses actual. The Veil series challenges and plays with expectation of what painting does. The product lies on the crease of representation and abstraction, nature and culture, and painting and object. Carved wooden reliefs painted with encaustic, her "book" series are visual metaphors of the book form and autobiographical explorations. Playing off of concepts such as palimpsest, aporia, and table of contents—these pieces operate as visual puns and connect ideas of language to body and earth.
Kristy gives encaustic painting workshops at nationally recognized art centers and her extensive exhibition record includes competitive, invitational, and solo exhibitions throughout the United States (a recent list is below).
- Miami University Department of Art Bicentennial Exhibition, Miami University Museum of Art, Oxford, OH.
- NEW, Penland Gallery, Penland School, Penland, NC.
- Art of the Planes, Museum of the Great Planes, Lawton, OK. (group exhibition of artists somehow connected to the Great Planes).
- Sculpting America, University of Southern Mississippi, Museum of Art, Hattiesburg, MS (six women artists from six parts of the United States).
- Conceptually Bound 3, An Exhibition of Artists Books, University Art Gallery, Cal State, Chico, CA and then Mohr Gallery, Community School of Music and Art, Finn Center, Mountain View, CA.
- The Iron Chefs and Divas of Contemporary Encaustic, eight person traveling exhibition, part of a multi-part venture of exhibitions, panels, and demonstrations, curated by Professor Reni Gower of Painting and Printmaking Department, Virginia Commonwealth University from a national call of artists.
In addition, her students have had great success as the following examples show:
- Scott Vanidestine, awarded Brooks Fellowship, 2008 (competing nationally) to attend Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado where he took an Advanced Painting Problems workshop with internationally recognized painter, Suzanne McClelland.
- First Art Winner, National contest to select the program cover art for the New York City Youth Symphony, 2007. Ryan Miller’s pen and watercolor illustration was the 11th commissioned artwork in the First Art Series.
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Regan A.R. Gurung
Human Development
Professor Gurung has three main areas of interest: Culture & Health; Impression Formation & Clothing; Pedagogical Psychology. Culture, broadly defined as a dynamic set of goals, beliefs and attitudes shared by a group of people, has a major impact on behaviors that influence our health. In the area of impression formation and clothing, building on and continuing with my previous interests, Professor Gurung is currently investigating sex differences in self-perceptions of body image, health, and fitness, and has initiated a research program on impression formation and how clothing influences how we are perceived. People use categories when describing others and learn what types of clothing are associated with categories or labels. What a person chooses to wear can say a lot about their personality and perhaps even their mood. Finally, in pedagogical psychology, Professor Gurung has begun a research program designed to answer the simple question: How can we optimize student learning? The first step towards answering this question involves gaining a thorough knowledge of extant attempts to understand how students learn. Any examination of how students learn necessitates a focus on three major components: Student behaviors (e.g., study techniques), Instructor behaviors (how is learning facilitated?), and the means content is transferred (textbooks and technology).
Professor Gurung is widely published and has authored Health psychology: A cultural approach. 2e, Exploring signature pedagogies: Approaches to teaching disciplinary habits of mind with N. Chick & A. Haynie, A. (Eds.), Getting Culture: Incorporating diversity across the curriculum with L. Prieto, (Eds.), Optimizing teaching and learning: Pedagogical research in practice with E. Schwartz, and Culture & mental health: Sociocultural influences on mental health with S. Eshun as well as numerous other articles and book chapters. He is the recipient of the Founders Award for Excellence in Research and the Founders Award for Excellence in Teaching. He teaches Introduction to Psychology, Health Psychology, and Gods, Ghosts and Goblins: Understanding Belief.
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Amy Wolf
Natural and Applied Sciences
One of Professor Wolf's research projects is on the Wabikon Forest Dynamics Project. This is an ambitious long term study aimed at understanding the ecological processes that underlie forest growth, regeneration, and biodiversity. The study area, located in northern Wisconsin near Crandon, is part of a global network of tropical and temperate forest plots organized by the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Tropical Forest Science. We hope to develop many projects at the site, including studies of trees, wildflowers, insects, birds, mammals, and other species groups. These projects will provide many opportunities for important ecological research by UW-Green Bay faculty and students.
Her teaching and mentoring of students follows a very simple principle: The best way to learn science is to do science - whether it be designing scientific experiments, analyzing data, or writing about results. I try to use lab experiences that provide hands-on learning opportunities that benefit students headed for all types of careers, not just those in science. UW-Green Bay is a place where students can find outstanding opportunities for problem-solving and learning outside the classroom, especially in the sciences. Professor Wolf teaches Principles of Ecology, Ecological and Environmental Methods Analysis, and Introduction to Environmental Science.