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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Christopher Adler, Ph.D., is a composer, performer and improviser. His music draws upon over a decade of research into the traditional musics of Thailand and Laos and a background in mathematics. He is a foremost performer of new and traditional music for the khaen, a free-reed mouth organ from Laos and Northeast Thailand. As pianist and composer-in-residence with NOISE and co-founder of the soundON Festival of Modern Music he is active in commissioning and performing new works, and he performs and records as an improviser on piano in many ensembles.

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Michael Agnew, Ph.D., came to the University of San Diego in 2007 from Columbia University. He has taught numerous courses on Spanish and Latin American literature and culture, film, comparative literature, and Spanish philology (historical and general linguistics). He also teaches all levels of Spanish language. His research focuses on the late medieval and early modern periods, in particular on the intersections between historiography and ideology and on book history. He is an advisor for the Medieval-Renaissance minor and is also the on-campus academic advisor for the Madrid-Toledo study abroad program.

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Thomas W. Barton, Ph.D., joined the faculty in 2007. He offers a wide sweep of undergraduate courses, including The Medieval World, The Pacific World, Europe’s Discovery and Conquest of the World, Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Spain, Renaissance Europe, and Historians’ Methods. His research concerns the social history of Europe and contacts between Europeans and non-Europeans in the medieval and early modern periods, with a current focus on the case of eastern Iberia and the western Mediterranean.

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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.

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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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Bahar Davary, Ph.D., has been a member of the faculty at USD since 2005. She is an associate professor of Religious Studies and an affiliate member of the Ethnic Studies program. Davary offers undergraduate courses on world religions, Islamic faith and practice, diversity courses and Honors courses, as well as preceptorials. She has team-taught a study abroad course Negotiating Religious Diversity in India. At the graduate level she has taught Comparative Religious Ethics at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice. She will be team-teaching an Honors course, Women in Confucianism and Islam.

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Delavan Dickson, Ph.D., has taught at USD since 1987 in the department of Political Science and International Relations.  He teaches Introduction to Political Science and a variety of upper division law courses, including Constitutional Law, Judicial Behavior, Comparative Law, and International Law.  His research focuses on the U.S. Supreme Court, justice in common law countries, lay justice, and the relationship between law and democracy.

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Robert N. Dutnall, Ph.D., is a biochemist and structural biologist. He teaches lecture and laboratory courses in biochemistry, biophysical chemistry, general chemistry and also genetics. His research focuses on understanding how proteins can manipulate packaging of genetic material in a eukaryotic cell to control gene expression that, in turn, drives cellular functions involved in the development and well being of complex multicellular organisms.

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John Glick, Ph.D. has been a member of the faculty at USD since 1993.  He also currently serves as chair of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science.  Glick teaches both computer science and mathematics courses.  He does research in the areas of optimization and parallel algorithms.

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James O. Gump, Ph.D., was appointed associate dean for advising and curriculum  in January 2009.  He previously served as associate dean of the college, chair of the history department , and director of the Honors Program.  He has been a member of the faculty since 1981 and is a professor of History. Gump has been the recipient of fellowships from Fulbright, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Newberry Library in Chicago, and the Beinecke Library at Yale University. He is also the former recipient of a Davies Chair at USD.

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Lawrence M. Hinman, Ph.D., has been a member of the faculty since 1975.  He i currently serves as the co-director of the Center for Ethics in Science & Technology (http://ethicscenter.net). Hinman offers undergraduate courses on ethics, including ethical theory, applied ethics, and ethics and contemporary science.  His research focuses on ethical issues in emerging science and technology, including search engines, privacy and surveillance, stem cell research and therapy, neuroscience, and robotics. He has been very active in bring ethics-related resources to the Web, founding Ethics Updates in 1994 and Ethics Videos in 2000.  He has also done extensive work in academic integrity and ethics across the curriculum.

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Sister Mary Hotz, a member of the Society of the Sacred Heart, came to USD in 1996. She received her Ph.D. from The University of Chicago in 1997, with a concentration in Victorian literature. Her central interests include nineteenth-century British literature and culture, Native American literature, and the development of the novel. Her most recent project, Literary Remains: Representations of Death and Burial in Victorian England, explores the unexpectedly central role of death and burial in Victorian England by locating corpses at the center of a surprisingly extensive range of Victorian concerns: money and law, medicine and urban architecture, social planning and folklore, religion and national identity.

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Professor Jiang has been a member of the faculty since 1998. He teaches a variety of courses including object-oriented design and programming, data structures and algorithms, numerical analysis, and neural networks. His research focus has been on information retrieval, machine learning, parallel and scientific computing, and Web mining.

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Kenneth D. Keith, Ph.D., joined the University of San Diego faculty in 1999. He  served as department chair from 1999 to 2007. He was chair of the Academic Assembly of the College of Arts and Sciences from 2003-2005.

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Evelyn Kirkley, Ph.D., has been teaching at USD since 1995.  She is an advisor to PRIDE, USD’s organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, queer, and questioning undergraduate students and allies.  She has also served as co-director of the Gender Studies Program and director of the Faculty and Curriculum Development Program.  She teaches about the history of Christianity and other religious movements, especially in the United States.  Her research focuses on alternative religious movements (often called "cults" or "sects") in the United States and intersections between religion and gender, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation. 

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Jeremy Kua, Ph.D., teaches courses in physical chemistry, general chemistry and computational chemistry. His current research interest is investigating the dynamics of self-assembly in a variety of chemical systems.

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Mary Sue Lowery, Ph.D., joined the biology faculty in 1990.  She teaches preparatory courses for biology majors, as well as biological oceanography and interdisciplinary team-taught honors courses.  Lowery is a comparative biologist with particular interest in the effect of endurance swimming on the development of muscle in juvenile marine fishes.

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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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Michael Mayer, Ph.D., came to USD in 1994 and teaches general biological topics and more specialized courses in botany and evolutionary biology. He conducts research in plant systematics, which is essentially the study of plant diversity. It involves deciphering the evolutionary relationships among plants, and then using these patterns to infer the processes by which plants evolve, speciate, and produce new lineages. Mayer has conducted several projects involving plants of the southern California landscape, and maintains collaborations with colleagues at San Diego State University and the San Diego Natural History Museum.

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Stephen A. Mills has been a member of the faculty since 2006. He is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, where he teaches organic and biochemistry. His research focuses on the role of metals in proteins. Currently, he is focusing on two protein families: the Ferric Uptake Regulator family and the Copper Amine Oxidase family.

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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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Noelle Norton, Ph.D., joined the USD faculty in 1994. She is currently serving as chair of the department and formerly was the USD Honors Program director from 2001-2008. She teaches classes on American politics, legislative politics, urban politics, and gender politics. Norton’s most recent publications have been on welfare policy, the White House Office of the President, and the institutional position of women legislators. She is very excited to extend her work into international issues with her current research project about congressional handling of international women’s rights legislation between 1990 and 2010.

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Cameron Parker, Ph.D., has been at USD since 2003.  In addition to his teaching and research, Parker is the Math Area Coordinator and has served in the Arts and Sciences Faculty Academic Assembly.  He co-organizes the Math Modeling Club and serves as an advisor for the Math Modeling Team.

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Linda L. Peterson, Ph.D., has been a member of the faculty since 1985.  She routinely teaches classes in thehHistory of medieval philosophy and the philosophy of human nature.  Her research area of specialization is in the history of medieval philosophy with particular emphasis on the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Her research focus also includes philosophy of religion and metaphysics.

Peterson enjoys traveling and has traveled extensively including trips to Europe, Asia, Australia, South America, the Arctic Circle and Antarctica.  She particularly enjoys visiting cites of interest to the history of medieval philosophy.  She has traveled throughout Italy, visiting the birthplace of St. Thomas Aquinas and the monastery where he died. 

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Emily Reimer-Barry, Ph.D, has been a member of the Theology and Religious Studies faculty since 2008. She teaches undergraduate courses in Catholic theology, Christian ethics, sexual ethics, and ethical responses to HIV/AIDS. Her research interests include women’s experiences of HIV/AIDS, cross-cultural analysis of gender roles and marriage traditions, ethnography and ethical methodology, and the intersection of public health and Catholic social teachings.

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Sandra Sgoutas-Emch is a professor of psychology and director of the Center for Educational Excellence at the University of San Diego. She has been a professor at the university since 1992. During her tenure at USD, she has also been the director of the gender studies program. She teaches courses in health psychology and biopsychology. Dr. Sgoutas-Emch has research interests in the efficacy of alternative medicine, the impact of stress, and women’s health issues.

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Susannah Stern Ph.D., joined the department of Communication Studies in 2004, after teaching at Boston College for four years. Stern offers courses that investigate the role of media in contemporary life, particularly as they involve children, adolescents, and women, as well as courses on research methods.  Stern's research focuses on electronic media and youth culture, and she has conducted extensive research on the Internet as a site for cultural consumption and self-expression.

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Yi Sun, Ph.D.,  has been a member of the History Department at USD since fall 1997.  She teaches a number of undergraduate courses on East Asian history and U.S.-East Asia Relations.  Currently she also serves as the coordinator for the Asian Studies Minor program.  Her research interests include Chinese women and modernization, Sino-American relations, and globalization.  She has served on the executive board of several academic organizations, including the AsiaNetwork, Chinese Historians in the United States and the Association of Third World Studies, and presently is the associate editor of the Asian section for the Journal of Third World Studies.

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Debbie Tahmassebi, Ph.D., joined the faculty in 1999.  She is an organic chemist with interests in the synthesis and structural studies of molecules, primarily studying novel nucleosides and amino-acid derivatives.  She enjoys teaching the excellent undergraduate students at USD and working with them on collaborative research projects in the laboratory.

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Professor Taylor has been a member of the USD faculty since 1990. She teaches courses in introductory psychology, research methods and cognitive psychology. Her research interests currently focus on teaching-related issues, including student engagement and conceptual change of misconceptions. She received her Ph.D. in general experimental psychology in 1987 from the University of Southern California. Her specialty area was information processing cognitive psychology. She later completed a three-year postdoctoral training program at the Andrus Gerontology Center in Los Angeles, where she studied cognitive aging, specifically focusing on attention and memory.

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Karen Teel, Ph.D., has been a member of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies since 2007. Her courses in Christian and Catholic theology invite students to consider biblical, historical, and contemporary - especially liberationist - perspectives on the essential beliefs of Christianity.  Teel’s research interests focus on Christian anthropology and theological responses to racism, leading her to emphasize current liberation movements such as black and womanist theologies.

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Barton Thurber received his BA degree from Stanford and his AM and PhD degrees from Harvard. He teaches classes in poetry, Romanticism and 19th century British literature; his research interests include those areas as well as the impacts of digital technologies on narrative and on the humanities generally.

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Lori Watson, Ph.D., joined the USD faculty in 2007.  She is currently assistant professor of philosophy and director of the Gender Studies Program.

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J. Michael Williams, Ph.D., has been a member of the faculty since 1999.  He also currently serves as the faculty advisor for the Washington Center Internship and Seminar Program. In the department of Political Science and International Relations, Williams offers undergraduate courses on introduction to political science, comparative politics, politics in sub-Saharan Africa, and politics in South Africa. His research focuses on African politics, with special interests in democratization, indigenous political structures, local governance, rule of law, the courts and constitutionalism

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Jennifer Zwolinski has been a member of the faculty since 2001.  She is an Assistant Professor of Psychology. In the Psychology Department, Professor Zwolinski offers undergraduate courses in a variety of areas including Introduction to Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Theories of Personality, and Advanced Research Methods in Clinical Psychology.  Her research focus examines biopsychosocial factors associated with social/relational aggression and victimization.

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