Paideia courses are taught by some of the same faculty who have made Southwestern University one of the top liberal arts universities in the United States. Faculty are accessible and eager to help students succeed. This page provides a quick glance at our Paideia Professors, contact information and links to their Paideia course Syllabi.

Erika Berroth is associate professor of German at Southwestern University. A native of Germany, she earned academic degrees from three countries and joined the Southwestern community in 2004 after teaching German language, literature, and culture at several US campuses--Oberlin College, Carleton College, Lewis & Clark College, Minnesota State University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her publications and research interests include issues of memory and identity narratives in contemporary German literature, especially in translingual and transnational writing, the works of Berlin author Monika Maron, and the works of the German classic Heinrich von Kleist, the subject of her 2003 book Heinrich von Kleist: Geschlecht--Erkenntnis--Wirklichkeit. In 2005 Dr. Berroth received a Southwestern University Teaching Award.

• Staatsexamen, Eberhard-Karls-Universitaet, Tuebingen, Germany
• PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara

Mark Bottorff is an assistant professor of physics. He is an astronomer and is the director of the Fountainwood Observatory on the SU campus. His research areas are Active Galactic Nuclei (supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies) and radiative transfer theory.

• BA, University of Colorado at Boulder
• MS, University of Colorado at Denver
• PhD, University of Kentucky

Glenda Carl is an associate professor of French and Latin. Her research interests include cultural and linguistic transformations of the Trojan Story as reflected in medieval French literature. She is chief editor in French and a member of the managing board of the REALIA Project, an archive of faculty-reviewed media for the teaching and study of modern languages and cultures. The REALIA Project has just received a grant of nearly $200,00 from the NEH.

• BA, MA, University of Kansas
• PhD, University of Wisconsin at Madison

Daniel Castro is professor of history at Southwestern University. A native of Peru, he received a B.A in political science from Loyola University in New Orleans, and an M.A. in Latin American Studies and a Ph.D. in History from Tulane University. He has been at Southwestern since 1997. He is the author of several articles and book chapters on the emergence of the New World and on the subject of revolutions and revolutionary movements in twentieth century Indoamerica. He is the editor of Revolution and Revolutionaries: Guerrilla Movements in Latin American History, (Scholarly Resources 1999) and the author of Another Face of Empire: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Indigenous Rights and Ecclesiastical Imperialism, (Duke, 2007). He is currently working on a book on the Colonial Peruvian Inquisition and another on the history and evolution of the MLN: Tupamaros revolutionary movement of Uruguay.

• BA, Loyola University
• PhD, MA, PhD, Tulane University

A native of Italy, Costola taught theatre history and dramatic literature at UCLA and at Loyola Marymount University before his arrival at Southwestern in 2003. His area of specialization is theatre history and historiography, with a particular emphasis on medieval and renaissance theatre. His main teaching areas include theatre history, dramaturgy, intercultural theatre, and critical methods. Costola has written various book reviews and articles, and presented papers at numerous conferences.

• Laurea, Universitá degli Studi di Bologna
• Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Cuevas came to United States to purse a college degree. After earning her Ph.D. she moved to Chicago where she was a post-doctoral fellow in Clinical Chemistry at Loyola Medical Center. She joined Southwestern University in 2000 as a visiting professor and in 2003 became an Associate Professor in the department of Biology. Her research interests lie primarily in two areas, reproductive endocrinology and toxicology. Cuevas has presented collaborative research with students at regional and national meetings. When not teaching she enjoys reading and cooking for family and friends.

• BS, Purdue University
• MS, Northwestern University
• Ph.D., Boston University

Dirk Early is an associate professor of economics in the Department of Economics and Business. His research deals with housing policy with an emphasis on the problem of homelessness. Recent publications have appeared in the Journal of Urban Economics, Advances in Economic Analysis & Policy, and the Journal of Housing Research. His teaching interests include public economics and microeconomics.

• BA, Miami University
• MA, PhD, University of Virginia

David Gaines is an associate professor of English. His research deals with twentieth century American writing, film studies and popular music. He has presente dpapers about Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and cultural politics as well as written for Texas Monthly, The Boston Globe and Third Coast magazine. He has served as department chair and was honored as a Southwestern University Brown Distinguished Teaching Professor, 2000-2003.

• BA, Stanford University
• MA, PhD, The University of Texas at Austin

Hal Haskell is professor and chair of the Classics Program. After a stint as assistant to the director at the American School of Classical Studies, he came to SU in 1984. His research areas are Greek Bronze Age trade and economy, and the pottery of Hacimusalar (Turkey); the latter project is connected with SU's excavation fieldschool. Haskell has published in a number of international journals, his work supported by grants from, e.g., the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright Foundation.

• BA, Haverford College
• MA, PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Dan Hilliard is William Carrington Finch Professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. His major teaching responsibilities are social problems, sociological theory, medical sociology and sociology of sport. He and his students have collaborated with local health care agencies for over a decade, studying local health care needs and issues. He is currently doing research on commercials shown during sports telecasts. He joined the Southwestern faculty in 1974 while working on his Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin.

• BA, Behavioral Science, Rice University
• MA, Sociology, University of Texas-Austin
• PhD, Sociology, University of Texas-Austin

Michael Kamen is associate professor of education. He taught elementary and middle school for 9 years. He came to Southwestern from Auburn University where he was an associate professor and elementary program coordinator. His research interests and publications include innovative practice, environmental education, creative dramatics in science teaching, assessment, and professional development through the Japanese Lesson Study model.

• BA, Elementary Education, The State University of New York at Stony Brook
• MS, Supervision and Administration, Bank Street College of Education
• PhD, Science Education, The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Mary Grace Neville studies and teaches business behaviors and relationships that create world benefit. She explores business success as measured by the creation of well-being, environmental care, and organizations' long-term financial stability. Neville's research focuses on positive change leadership, ways in which individuals and small groups do what they do. She believes positive actions shape larger social patterns that make a difference in the world over time. Hence, her research explores humanness in organizations, spirit in business, and the phenomenon of interconnectedness.

• BS, Northwestern University
• MBA, Wharton School of Business
• PhD, Case Western Reserve University

Bio forthcoming

• BS, The University of Alabama
• MBA, The University of Alabama
• PhD, The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Parks teaches a variety of business courses at Southwestern University where he is the holder of the John Shearn Chair in Business. Prior to his arrival at Southwestern, Don taught at the University of Wyoming, where he won teaching awards, including the University's John P. Ellbogen Outstanding Classroom Teacher award. He has also taught at Clemson and Texas A&M. He has provided consulting, training seminars, or invited lectures to a variety of organizations, including Seabrook Corporation, In-Situ, Inc.; the Wyoming Governor's Office and State Legislature, and the South Carolina Highway Department. In addition to his teaching and scholarly experience, Don has management experience from his time in industry at two manufacturing firms and an electric utility, during which he earned the Certified Purchasing Manager (C.P.M.) designation, for which he now holds lifetime certification. Prior to that, he served a tour of duty as a USAF T-38 instructor pilot. He earned his Ph.D. and BBA at Texas A&M. He received a Masters degree from the University of Northern Colorado.

• BBA, Texas A&M University
• MS, The University of Northern Colorado
• PhD, Texas A&M University

Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton, who wrote her dissertation on the modern American epic poem, teaches classes in American literature, including poetry, literature of the Vietnam War, the novel and the sense of place, and American nature writing. She also directs and teaches students to work as consultants at the Debby Ellis Writing Center. Her current scholarly interests include writing center theory and administration, post-Vietnam War representations in American literature, and emergent Vietnamese diaspora literature.

• BA, Kenyon College
• MA, University of Chicago
• PhD, The University of Texas at Austin

Rebecca Sheller is associate professor and chair of the Department of Biology. She has taught courses in physiology and cell biology at SU for the past ten years. She routinely involves SU students in her research of cellular neurobiology. She investigates questions in the areas of nerve degeneration and regeneration, heat shock proteins, protein degradation, glial-neuronal interactions, axonal cytoskeleton, biomedical engineering, and scientific pedagogy.

• BS, Southwestern University
• PhD, The University of Texas at Austin

Kim Smith's primary field of interest is modern art, including European and American art from the 19th and 20th centuries, and she maintains expertise in the art of Central Europe, including Germany and Austria, from the first decades of the 20th century. Her dissertation, written at Yale University, studied the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele, and analyzed the ways in which these images reveal both nihilistic and utopian aspects of Viennese culture before and during World War I. Unlike other disciplines in the humanities that are primarily text-based, the history of art concerns itself with the history of image-making. Smith Smith's aims to teach visual literacy, and to provide her students with the methodological and analytical skills necessary to understand and examine works of art.

• PhD, Yale University
• MPhil, Yale University
• BA, Duke University

Max Taub is Assistant Professor of Biology and also serves of the Environmental Studies program committee. His research deals with a wide range of topics in the interaction of plants with their environments, including responses to CO2, temperature, and nitrogen. In an earlier phase of his life he studied and worked in the field of archaeology.

• BA, Anthropology, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
• PhD, Ecology and Evolution, SUNY at Stony Brook

Patrick Veerkamp is professor of art. His work in ceramics ranges from functional tableware to forms that are essentially sculptural. He explores themes related to the interaction that takes place between humans and their environment, both the domestic and natural habitat. His primary teaching responsibilities are in the fields of ceramics and studio design. His work has been exhibited in numerous museums, galleries, and universities throughout the country.

• BA, Adams State College of Colorado (Art/Psychology)
• MA, University of Denver (History of Art)
• MFA, Colorado State University (Ceramics)