Graduate Study: Promises, Purposes, Potentials - Speakers
Speakers
Robert Weisbuch
Robert Weisbuch joined the Foundation after 25 years at the University of Michigan, where he served as Chair of the Department of English, Associate Vice President for Research, and Associate Dean for Faculty Programs and Interim Dean at the Rackham School of Graduate Studies. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and holds his Ph.D. in English from Yale University. He has received awards for both teaching and scholarship at Michigan, and is the author of books on Emily Dickinson and the stormy relations between British and American authors in the 19th century.
While dean of the School of Graduate Studies, he established a fund designed to improve the mentoring of graduate teaching assistants, created humanities and arts awards for faculty, and made diversity an integral criterion in evaluating program quality. He also headed up a two-year initiative to improve undergraduate education.
Weisbuch says of the Foundation, "We want to be the place where educators will bring their most adventuresome and thoughtful ideas. We've always extended opportunities to terrific students so that they can reach their potential; now, with a changing American population, we can work to insure that no group of people is left out, that we get the best from all for the good of the whole culture. And more than ever we will be a no-compromises voice for excellence in education."
Malaina Brown
Malaina Brown has been the Assistant Director of Graduate Services for the University of Chicago Career and Placement Services since July 2000. In this capacity, she offers advice to graduate students and postdocs about the academic job search, the interview process, and junior faculty appointments. She also helps students and postdocs devise strategies for turning their interests and skills into challenging careers outside of academia.
Brown earned a B.A. in Anthropology and History from the University of Michigan, and has completed graduate training in paleoethnobotany at Washington University in St. Louis. Brown's experience in the nonprofit arena includes serving as Employment Concerns Coordinator for the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students and working in student services administration at Columbia University. She also taught anthropology courses at Washington University, where she was active in developing career services programming for graduate students.
Denise Roth Allen
Denise Roth Allen is a cultural anthropologist and a second-year EIS (Epidemic Intelligence Service) officer in the Division of Reproductive Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. While at CDC, her research interests have centered around maternal health issues among immigrant women in the U.S. She recently co-authored a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that examined state-specific trends in U.S. live births to immigrant women from 1990 and 2000. She is currently conducting an analysis of maternal health care issues among immigrant women using data collected through CDC's Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System.
Allen received her Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology from Illinois in 1996. As part of her doctoral training, she conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Tanzania that explored rural women's pregnancy-related concerns. Upon completion of her doctoral studies, she held two postgraduate fellowships. From 1996-1998, she served as a University of Michigan Population Fellow in the Department of Reproductive Health at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. From 1999-2000, she was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. Her book Managing Motherhood, Managing Risk: Fertility and Danger in West Central Tanzania was recently published by the University of Michigan Press.
Gardner Rogers
Gardner Rogers is an English doctoral candidate (ABD) writing a dissertation provisionally entitled "Many Souths: Problems of Southern Representation, 1935-1976." His areas of specialization include 20th-century literature of the American South, British fiction between the two world wars, visual theory and visual rhetoric, and composition theory. Gardner earned a B.A. from the University of Kentucky in 1993, and an M.A. from the University of Kentucky in 1996. Classes he has taught include Rhetoric 105, Rhetoric 143, and English 103 as stand-alone classes. He has also served as a TA leading discussion sections of English 255 for Professors Nina Baym and Bruce Michelson. Rogers grew up on a farm in central Kentucky, and has had such varied jobs as a tobacco farmer, a cab driver, and a restaurant health inspector. Rogers also worked for thirteen years in the costume jewelry industry, doing everything from bench work to inventory and production control to warehouse managing to customer service to purchasing to sales.
Rashid Robinson
Rashid Robinson is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois. His dissertation will examine American public institutions of higher education as sites of cultural conflict, backlash, and leadership in the 20th century. He has earned master's degrees from the University of Michigan and Arizona State University, and has taught composition, literature, and creative writing at several colleges and universities.
Kevin Quinn
Kevin Quinn is currently a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois. His research interests lie in Diaspora based sexual and gender inequalities. A native of Los Angeles, California, Quinn graduated in 1984 from the Otis Institute of The Parson's School of Design in New York, and spent the next fifteen years rising through the ranks of the Men's Wear fashion world, ultimately becoming the Senior Designer and Merchandiser for a multinational manufacturer. Quinn entered graduate school at DePaul University in 1998, and before graduating in 2001, undertook a graduate teaching assignment in Hong Kong and co-authored a book on gay men who become fathers.
Richard Wheeler
Richard Wheeler received his Ph.D. in English from the State University of Buffalo in 1970. He joined the Department of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1969 and has been on the Illinois faculty ever since. From 1987 to 1997 he was Head of the Department of English, and in 1999-2000 he was Acting Head of the Department of Anthropology. He became Dean of the Graduate College in 2000. He serves on the MLA Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities, the Executive Committee of the Midwest Association of Graduate Schools, and the Board of Directors of the Council of Graduate Schools. He chairs the Council of Graduate Schools' selection committee for the Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities.
His major publications include Shakespeare's Development and the Problem Comedies: Turn and Counter-Turn (U of California P, 1981), The Whole Journey: Shakespeare's Power of Development (co-authored, U of California P, 1986), Creating Elizabethan Tragedy (ed., U of Chicago P, 1988), Critical Essays on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure (ed., G.K. Hall, 1999), and articles on Shakespeare, renaissance drama, and modern British literature. His scholarship has been centrally concerned with identifying key psychological patterns that shape the development of Shakespeare's work and, more recently, plausible links between the plays and the life of their author. Listings include the Directory of American Scholars and Who's Who in America.
William Kelleher
William F. Kelleher serves as director of the graduate program in the Department of Anthropology. His research interests include colonialism, work and class, ethnicity, social transformation, political violence, and Northern Ireland. His book, The Troubles in Ballybogoin: Memory and Identity in Northern Ireland, will be published next month. Kelleher is also the chair of the Graduate College Career Advisory Committee and a member of the Graduate College Executive Committee.
Debe Deeb Williams
Debe Deeb Williams has been the Director of Placement and Student Services for the School of Chemical Sciences at Illinois since 2000. She has been working as an academic advisor with students on this campus since 1981 and finds them to be delightful people. Williams attended Indiana University, the University of Kentucky and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , attaining a degree in Dental Hygiene, a bachelor's degree in Allied Health, Education and Research, and a master's degree in Counseling Psychology. She is currently A.B.D. in Education, Organization and Leadership from Illinois.
Williams has worked as a dental hygienist, personal counselor, instructor at Parkland College, academic advisor, and career counselor. She appreciates those who have had a long and winding road of professional experiences. In her spare time she is raising two teenagers with her husband in Mahomet and is actively involved in her community as President of the Mahomet Rotary Club and as a member of the Mahomet-Seymour Science Cadre. She has presented professional workshops for the National Academic Advising Association and Midwest-Association of Colleges and Employers. She currently serves as the chair of the Career Services Council on the Illinois campus.
John Lammers
John Lammers directs the master's program in Applied Communication in the Department of Speech Communication. Lammers' current research bridges interests in organizational communication and health communication by studying communication in health care organizations, including hospital teams, managed care practices, surgical teams, and public health organizations. Recent projects have examined national and sectoral differences in hospital climate, quality improvement in health care, group dynamics in health care teams such as surgical teams, and ways of improving health care delivery in multinational public health organizations. He came to Illinois from the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he directed and helped design a certificate program on non-academic careers for Ph.D. alumni.
Melba Velez
Melba Velez is a doctoral student in the Institute for Communications Research. Her studies are concentrated in the area of Latin American Intellectual History, with a special interest in Puerto Rico Philosophy. Velez was born in Caguas, Puerto Rico, a small city outside of San Juan. She attained both a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in Rhetoric from Purdue University before starting her doctorate at the University of Illinois. She currently serves as a Graduate Assistant in Minority Affairs in the Graduate College. Velez hopes to one day find a job teaching at a university in her native country, Puerto Rico.