People

James Bolender, Ph.D., came to University of San Diego in 1996 after a post-doctoral experience in the department of Chemistry at Pennsylvania State University.  He currently serves as the director of USD’s Honors Program. Bolender has received more than $700,000 in grants to assist in the purchase of equipment and to support undergraduate research. Bolender was awarded the Davies Award for Teaching Excellence in 2007.

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Michel A. Boudrias, Ph.D.,has been on the faculty since 1996 and is currently chair of the department and Chair of the university's Sustainability Task Force.  Boudrias teaches classes that cover a wide range of topics from introductory marine biology to interdisciplinary coastal environmental science to classical invertebrate zoology.  He has taught Honors courses that combine traditional classroom concepts with intense field experiences. His research projects include long-term interdisciplinary projects combining marine ecology and marine chemistry in Baja California Sur and an integrated project studying the social, cultural and environmental impacts of tourism in Jamaica. 

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Michelle Madsen Camacho is Associate Professor of the Sociology Department at the University of San Diego.  She formerly held two postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California, San Diego, at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies and in the Department of Ethnic Studies. She is fluent in both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies and uses theories from interdisciplinary sources including cultural studies, critical race, gender and feminist theories. Her research examines questions of culture, power and inequality through both macro and micro lenses. She is affiliated faculty with the Ethnic Studies program and also teaches courses for the Gender Studies and Honors Programs.

Interests
Other interests include: technological innovations in teaching, community-based learning, participatory action research, public sociology and cultural studies.  She is also a mother of three children, an avid salsa dancer, and is currently training for a half-marathon.

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Leeva C. Chung, Ph.D., has been a member of the faculty since 1998. She is an associate professor of Communication Studies and also serves as an affiliate faculty member in Ethnic Studies. Chung has developed undergraduate courses and a research agenda based on her focus on ethnic identity development among minority groups in the U.S. and intercultural issues. In addition to her teaching and research efforts, she has been actively involved in the community, specifically with the San Diego Asian Film Festival. Thanks to Chung’s efforts, the festival premiered at USD in 2000. Since then, it has gained an international reputation as one of North America's leading Asian American film festivals.

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David O. De Haan, Ph.D., came to USD in 2001 from Lyon College. He teaches technology-rich courses in analytical and environmental chemistry.  His undergraduate research group is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the chemical changes occurring in clouds and aerosol.  As part of this project, USD students are identifying and quantifying new, previously unknown sources of urban haze.  He recently worked with USD’s Energy Policy Initiatives Center (EPIC) to create a greenhouse gas inventory for San Diego County and to outline ways to meet state targets for greenhouse gas reductions by 2020.

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Esteban del Río, Ph.D., an assistant professor in Communication Studies, centers his work on media and cultural studies, from a critical, qualitative perspective.  He teaches introduction to media studies, media and conflict, international media, interpretive methods, film &and cultural politics, and acoustic culture and communication.  His research examines the social construction of unity and difference in U.S. national and transnational contexts, focusing on the politics and processes of Latinidad in informational and entertainment discourses.  His current work examines the possibility of Latina/o coherence, with specific interest in the politics of positive representation for historically marginalized and subjugated groups in contemporary general market media.

Interests
Participatory culture, modernism, DYI, Chicanismo, cinema, music

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David Devine, Ph.D., has been an assistant professor in the Physics Department since 2005. He has taught a variety of introductory physics courses at USD as well as two preceptorial courses in introductory astronomy. His primary area of research involves observations of outflows driven by young stars. He is currently focusing on the potential relationship between the cessation of the protostellar outflow phase and planet formation.  Devine has been awarded time on a variety of telescopes at the Kitt Peak and Cerro Tololo National Observatories as well as the Hubble Space Telescope.

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Colin Fisher, Ph.D., conducts research in the field of U.S. environmental history. He offers classes in environmental history, history of the American West, and public history.

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Sarah Gray, Ph.D., teaches courses in geological oceanography, paleoclimatology, climate change, environmental geology, and earth science.  These courses include hands-on field and lab-based research experiences.  Gray conducts research in paleoclimatology, marine sedimentation, the geology of coral reefs and environmental proxies recorded in the geochemistry of coral skeletons.  Current research includes a study of the impact of watershed development on sedimentation on fringing coral reefs in the U.S. Virgin Islands and a synthesis of multi-century climate cycles preserved in the geologic record. Her Ph.D. dissertation was entitled “Late Quaternary History of Reef Growth, Sea Level, and Diagenesis from three Cook Islands Atolls”.

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Peter M. Iovine, Ph.D., became a member of the faculty in 2002,  His teaching interests lie in the areas of organic chemistry, organometallic chemistry and polymer chemistry.   In addition to formal classroom teaching,  Iovine is interested in how community service learning can be implemented into the chemistry curriculum.  Iovine’s research bridges organic and polymer chemistry, placing an emphasis on the organic chemistry of boron and the conversion of biomass into functional materials.

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Ron Kaufmann, Ph.D., joined the USD faculty in 1997 and currently serves as director of the Marine Science Graduate Program.  His areas of specialization are ecology and environmental biology, and his teaching includes courses in biology, environmental studies and marine science, as well as interdisciplinary courses that are team-taught with colleagues in the humanities. Kaufmann’s scholarship focuses on biological communities and their dynamics as well as their responses to changing environmental conditions. He has studied marine communities in extreme environments such as the Antarctic and the deep ocean.

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Juliana Maxim, Ph.D., teaches the history and theory of art and architecture. Her work centers on 20th century art, architecture and urbanism in Eastern Europe and on the relation between representation and political regimes, as well as on the question of "other" modernisms. Her Ph.D. dissertation, "The New, the Old, the Modern:  Architecture and its Representation in Socialist Romania, 1955-1965" (MIT, 2006) examines how the architectural culture of postwar Romania sustained the regime's attempt to transform inhabitation and the city into a new collectivist environment.

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Dr. Dan Moriarty is Professor of Psychology and has been a member of USD’s Department of Psychology since 1973. His interests are in the area of comparative biological psychology, and he teaches courses in animal behavior and learning, research methods, statistics, evolutionary psychology, and behavioral genetics. As a director and animal behaviorist at the California Wolf Center, Dr. Moriarty is involved in research with, and management and breeding of, captive wolves, including the highly endangered Mexican Gray Wolf. His research has included studies of predator defense behavior, irrelevant drive effects, partial reinforcement and reward contrast effects, and conditioned taste aversion.

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Geoffrey Morse, Ph.D., came to USD in 2009 and teaches general biological topics and more specialized courses in entomology and evolutionary biology.  He conducts research in insect evolution and ecology, the goal of which is to understand how ecological interactons, environmental conditions, and geographic distributions have structured their impressive diversification.  This research involves reconstructing evolutionary relationships among insect species, examining patterns and mechanisms of speciation, understanding processes that link or separate populations, and understanding the adaptations that cause ecological specialization of insect species.  Morse works on these interactions at levels that span from local California landscapes to global patterns of diversification.

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Lance E. Nelson, Ph.D., is professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and chair of the department.  He teaches courses in world religions and religious traditions of Asia.  Nelson’s research specialization is in Hindu religious history, focusing on classical systems of Hindu theology and the relation between Hindu religious practice and environmental concern.

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Dr. Reifer serves on the Gender Studies Advisory Committee and is an Associate Fellow at the Transnational Institute, a worldwide fellowship of committed scholar-activists; formerly worked at Focus on the Global South in Asia and was Associate Director of the Institute for Research on World-Systems (IROWS) and the Program on Global Studies at UC Riverside. He is also currently a Research Associate at the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems & Civilizations at Binghamton University - where he received his MA & PhD - and IROWS. His specialty is the study of large-scale, long-term social change and world-systems analysis.

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Nathalie Reyns, Ph.D., teaches core and upper division courses in oceanography, marine ecology and how humans impact the oceans. Reyns’ research interests focus on identifying the factors that influence the dispersal of marine organisms, to better understand the population dynamics of these organisms and the implications for fisheries management and marine conservation. Reyns is also very interested in advancing marine science education and improving ocean literacy, and regularly provides research opportunities for undergraduate students.

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John Joe Schlichtman, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Community, Urbanization, and Culture Concentration within the Department of Sociology at the University of San Diego.  His research areas include urban political economy, globalization, urban change, small cities, and homelessness. Prof. Schlichtman is a recent recipient of the "Order of Omega" and the "Professor of the Game" awards.

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Daniel Sheehan has been a member of the faculty at USD since 1989 and is Professor of Physics.  His research interests include the second law of thermodynamics, retrocausation, nanotechnology, plantary formation, and plasma physics.

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Marie Simovich, Ph.D., has been at USD since 1986 and is the director of the Branchiopod Research Group. Her research is on the ecology and evolution of ephemeral pool organisms with a focus on endangered crustaceans.  She has a number of students in her lab working on grants.  She is a frequent consultant to the US Fish and Wildlife Service as a member of the Vernal Pool Multi-Species Recovery Team and is a member of the IUCN World Conservation Union Inland Water Crustacea Specialist Group.  She is also an adjunct professor at San Diego State University.

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Drew Talley, Ph.D., teaches a variety of courses including Introduction to Physical Oceanography, Biological Oceanography, Graduate Statistics and Experimental Design, and Life in the Sea. His overall research focuses on understanding connectivity across habitat boundaries, and assessing how that interdependence between systems changes with anthropogenic influence both locally (e.g., through habitat loss) and globally (e.g., through climate change).

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Mark Wood, Ph.D., has been teaching at USD since 1997.  In addition to teaching undergraduate philosophy courses, he has been an affiliated faculty member of the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies since the inception of the Master’s Program in Peace and Justice Studies in 2002.  He is also an affiliate of USD’s Ethnic Studies Program and co-chaired USD’s Gender Studies Program for four years.  Currently he is the secretary of the International Society for Environmental Ethics.  Originally from North Dakota, Professor Woods discovered philosophy while serving in the United States Marine Corps.

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Zhi-Yong Yin, Ph.D., came to USD in 2003 after teaching at Georgia State University in Atlanta for 12 years. He offers classes in earth science, geographic information systems (GIS), and remote sensing. His research focus is hydroclimatology, with special interests in recent and past climate variations and the impact on hydrological systems and water resources.

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