New College of Florida Media Guide
to Faculty Experts/Sources

This handbook is a guide to New College of Florida faculty who can offer expert analysis and commentary on a range of subjects and contemporary issues.

Founded in 1960, New College of Florida is the State of Florida's "honors college for the arts and sciences" and is dedicated to producing self-reliant, independent, lifetime learners. New College's academic program is highly accelerated and independent, enabling students, in close consultation with faculty mentors, to develop programs of seminars, tutorials, and independent research that are designed to meet each student's personal educational interests and goals.

Nearly 100 percent of New College full-time faculty members hold the Ph.D. or terminal degree in their fields. They come to New College from the finest universities nationally and abroad, drawn by an environment that emphasizes excellence in teaching and fosters a close-knit community of scholars.

Enrollment: 750

Accreditation: New College of Florida is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (1866 Southern Lane, Decatur, Georgia 30033-4097; Telephone number 404-679-4501) to award the Bachelor of Arts degree.

Carnegie Classification: Baccalaureate College - Arts & Sciences

2007-2008 Tuition: $3,850 Florida residents, $20,575 non-Florida residents

Room & Board: $7,077 (double occupancy, standard meal plan)

Student-faculty ratio: 11:1

Academic year: 4-1-4 academic calendar with January interterm

Notable facts:
Campus architecture includes Charles Ringling mansion, Hester Ringling Sanford mansion, Ralph Caples mansion, and residence halls designed by I.M. Pei.

Rated as the nation's #1 ranked public liberal arts college by U.S. News & World Report, (America's Best Colleges, 2007 Edition) and as the nation's #1 best value among public colleges and universities by The Princeton Review, (America's Best Value Colleges, 2005, 2007 and 2008 editions). 

Located on a 110-acre bay front campus along Florida’s Gulf of Mexico coast in Sarasota, noted for its beautiful public beaches, theater, art and music.

Out of all graduates, 25 percent have gone into education; 23 percent into business; 21 percent into professions; 10 percent into the arts.

New College students have received 25 Fulbright Scholars since 2001, placing the College among the nation's leaders in per capita Fulbright production during that period.

Notable alums include Field Medal winner William Thurston, Rhodes Scholar Gregory Dubois-Felsmann, United States Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Chatham College president Esther Barazzone, Film and television producer Carol Flint and NASA scientist Thomas Bell. 

New College of Florida Address:

New College of Florida
5800 Bay Shore Road
Sarasota, FL 34243-2109
941-487-5000
www.ncf.edu

Administration:
President, Gordon E. Michalson, Jr.
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Samuel Savin
Vice President for Finance and Administration, John Martin

Student Government:
Student Alliance Co-Presidents, Anthony Circharo and Isaac Duerr

Academic Divisions (all 941 area code):
Humanities                    487-4360
Natural Sciences            487-4370
Social Sciences              487-4380

Other phone numbers (all 941 area code):
Admissions                  487-5000                       
Alumnae/i Association   487-4900
Business Office            487-4625
Environmental Studies   487-4365
Finance & Administration  487-4444
Housing                      487-4259
Library Administration    487-4300
Library Circulation         487-4301
Library Association        487-4600
Marine Biology Lab        487-4453
NC Foundation             487-4800
President’s Office          487-4100
Provost/Academic Affairs 487-4200
Public Affairs                 487-4150
Registrar                      487-4230
Student Affairs              487-4250

Selected Faculty Fields of Expertise
New College of Florida has more than 70 full-time faculty with expertise in a wide variety of disciplines.  The faculty members listed below according to their areas of expertise have agreed to be contacted directly by the media.  For additional contact information on faculty members in other disciplines, please contact the New College Office of Public Affairs at (941) 487-4150 or email PublicAffairs@ncf.edu and we will be happy to assist you in locating the best faculty expert to suit your editorial needs.

AGRICULTURAL/PLANT SCIENCES

Amy Clore
Assistant Professor, Biology
Office:  941-487-4543
E-mail: clore@ncf.edu

B.A., Kenyon College; Ph.D., University of Arizona

Professor Clore received her Ph.D. in plant science with a minor in molecular and cellular biology. She is interested in how plant cells perceive extracellular signals and transduce these signals into intracellular changes in biochemistry, gene expression, and cytoskeletal architecture. Her current research focuses on maize pulvini, specialized organs found along the maize plant stem that sense when the plant has been tipped, and reorient growth. She is also researching how carpel epidermal cells redifferentiate during carpel fusion in Madascar periwinkle. Professor Clore teaches Cellular Biology (lecture and laboratory), Topics in Plant Development, Plant Physiology, Developmental Biology, Topics in Cell Signaling and General Biology: from Molecules to Organism.

Elzie McCord, Jr.
Associate Professor, Biology
Office: 941-487-4646
E-mail: mccord@ncf.edu

B.S., Savannah State College; M.S., Ph.D., University of Florida.

Professor McCord received his Ph.D. in entomology, studying the toxicology of insecticide resistance in insects. He worked at DuPont Agricultural Products for 25 years in a variety of positions including Senior Research Biologist and Senior Research Chemist. His research interests include insecticide resistance mechanisms in insects, plant allelopathy, and the effects of plant allelochemicals on non-target hosts.

ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY

Gordon Bauer
Division Chair, Social Sciences
Peg Scripps Buzzelli Professor of Psychology
Office: 941-487-4394
E-mail: bauer@ncf.edu

B.A., George Washington University; M.A., George Washington University; M.S. Bucknell University; Ph.D. University of Hawaii.

Professor Bauer is a biological psychologist specializing in the sensory processes, cognition, and behavior in dolphins, whales and manatees. He is currently studying vision, touch and hearing in manatees. In the past, he has investigated a variety of clinically relevant topics, including the effects of pesticides on behavioral development, the behavior of autistic children, and post-traumatic stress disorder. He teaches courses in biological psychology, sensation and perception, animal learning, and statistics.

Heidi Harley
Associate Professor, Psychology
Office: 941-487-4328
E-mail: harley@ncf.edu

B.A., University of Colorado at Boulder; M.A. and Ph.D., University of Hawaii at Manoa. 

Professor Harley's research has been covered in Science, as well as on CNN the Canadian Broadcast Corporation and other leading U.S. and international media outlets.  She teaches courses in cognitive psychology and comparative cognition and conducts research with dolphins at Disney’s Living Seas in Orlando, FL and the Mirage Hotel’s Dolphin Habitat in Las Vegas. She has investigated questions concerning echolocation, dolphin whistles, spatial memory, rhythm processing, and imitation.

ARCHAEOLOGY

Anthony Andrews
Professor, Anthropology
Office: 941-487-4327
E-mail: andrews@ncf.edu

B.A., Harvard University; M.A., Ph.D., University of Arizona.

Professor Andrews is a widely published Maya archaeologist and ethnohistorian who has done extensive fieldwork in Mexico and Central America. In addition to archaeology and physical anthropology, he supervises studies in cultural ecology and Latin American ethnography, ethnohistory and urban anthropology. He is author and co-author of several books and monographs in both English and Spanish.

Uzi Baram
Associate Professor, Anthropology
Office: 941-487-4217
E-mail: baram@ncf.edu

B.A., State University of New York at Binghamton; M.A., Ph.D., University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Professor Baram's research as part of the Looking for Angola project, searching for the remains of a maroon colony of escaped African-American slaves and Native American inhabitants along the Manatee River in Florida, has received state and national media attention.  He is an anthropologist whose studies revolve around material culture, power, and social identity, particularly as those elements relate to the emergence of the modern era and representations of peoplehood. As a Historical Archaeologist, his principle area of research has been the Middle East, focused on the period the Ottoman Empire ruled Palestine. The primary focus has been on artifacts of Ottoman Palestine analyzed in terms of commodities and consumption. Recent research involves the politics of the past, including the intersection of archaeology and heritage tourism, and post-colonial investigations of the accounts of Western travelers to the eastern Mediterranean. Baram has engaged in research in Israel and Cyprus and in fieldwork in the Northeast USA and Southwest Florida. Baram teaches a wide range of archaeology and cultural anthropology courses at New College.

ART

Kim Anderson
Assistant Professor, Art
Office: 941-487-4670
Email: KAnderson@ncf.edu

B.F.A., California College of Arts and Crafts; M.F.A., University of Florida
With an emphasis in painting and drawing Professor Anderson’s teaching is a synthesis of technical development, historical and theoretical concerns, and contemporary approaches. Her work examines relationships between painting and photography, and their combined effects on memory, identity, space, and time. Her paintings have been exhibited in both regional and national venues.

Barry Freedland
Assistant Professor, Art
Office: 941-487-4679
Email: BFreedland@ncf.edu

B.F.A., Arizona State University; M.F.A., Tufts University

Professor Freedland is a sculptor, performance artist, and photographer. Freedland’s language is a visual one. His observations and commentaries on culture and human nature are a mixture of humor -- an invitation for the public to read on -- and his own and his audiences self-awareness of the world around them. Freedland’s work has been exhibited at Arlington Museum of Art, TX; The Boston Center for the Arts; Real Art Ways, CT; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Santa Fe Institute of Contemporary Art; and Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York.

BIOCHEMISTRY

Katherine Walstrom
Associate Professor, Biochemistry
Office: 941-487-4493
E-mail:  walstrom@ncf.edu

B.S., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; Ph.D., Cornell University.

Professor Walstrom teaches biochemistry courses, laboratories and tutorials. Much of the information covered in her courses relates directly to modern biochemical research, both in her laboratory and elsewhere. Her research group studies RNA helicases, which are proteins involved in gene regulation. Students in her laboratory learn techniques such as cloning, protein purification, and enzyme assays.

BIOLOGY

Alfred Beulig, Jr.
Professor, Biology
Office: 941-487-4374
E-mail: beulig@ncf.edu

B.S., M.S., University of Wisconsin; Ph.D., City College of the City University of New York.

Professor Beulig specializes in vertebrate biology, animal behavior, behavioral ecology, coral reef ecology, and neurobiology. His current research is in the area of psychoneuroimmunology. This emerging field centers around the interactions among the endocrine, nervous and immune systems that control behaviors to prepare the organism to withstand stress and involves “mind-body” phenomena. He is using marine organisms including fish as model systems to study the evolution and function of these mechanisms. Recently, he has been investigating the effects of chronic stress on cognition. He teaches courses in organismic biology, animal behavior, neurobiology, immunobiology, and coral reef ecology as well as teaching the vertebrate section of the general biology course. Professor Beulig is also involved in marine ecology and conservation in Central America. Under the auspices of the Institute for Tropical Ecology and Conservation, (ITEC) he teaches a field course in coral reef ecology during the summer in Panama.

Amy Clore
Assistant Professor, Biology
Office:  941-487-4543
E-mail: clore@ncf.edu

B.A., Kenyon College; Ph.D., University of Arizona

Professor Clore received her Ph.D. in plant science with a minor in molecular and cellular biology. She is interested in how plant cells perceive extracellular signals and transduce these signals into intracellular changes in biochemistry, gene expression, and cytoskeletal architecture. Her current research focuses on maize pulvini, specialized organs found along the maize plant stem that sense when the plant has been tipped, and reorient growth. She is also researching how carpel epidermal cells redifferentiate during carpel fusion in Madascar periwinkle. Professor Clore teaches Cellular Biology (lecture and laboratory), Topics in Plant Development, Plant Physiology, Developmental Biology, Topics in Cell Signaling and General Biology: from Molecules to Organism.

Leo S. Demski
Leonard S. Florsheim, Sr. Professor of Biology
Office:  941-487-4386
E-mail: demski@ncf.edu

B.A., Miami University (Ohio); Ph.D., University of Rochester.

Teaching and research in the areas of neurobiology and reproduction are Professor Demski’s primary emphasis. Although his main interest is brain and hormonal control of sexual physiology and behavior of freshwater fishes, he also supervises similar studies in the cephalochordate amphioxus as well as in dolphins and other toothed whales. Teachniques used in the research vary from underwater observation of mating activity to immunocytochemical localization of neuropeptide hormones within nerve cells. Professor Demski is also active in conservation biology, especially concerning the reproduction of sharks and other fishes in captivity. He and his students participate in programs at several major zoos, aquariums, and marine laboratories. His courses and/or tutorials are in the areas of comparative neurobiology and behavior, reproductive biology and comparative endocrinology, fish biology, zoo biology, biology of marine mammals, and functional morphology.

Sandra L. Gilchrist
Division Chair, Natural Sciences
Professor, Biology
Office: 487-4377
E-mail: gilchrist@ncf.edu

B.S., Florida State University; M.Sc., Old Dominion University; Ph.D., Florida State University.

Professor Gilchrist integrates genetics, invertebrate zoology, biomathematics, and statistics, in experimental ecology. With training in biology as well as oceanography, Dr. Gilchrist stresses understanding of "the big picture" in science. Her courses in genetics and invertebrate zoology apply evolutionary and ecological principles. These courses complement her own research interests in crustacean biology.

Elzie McCord, Jr.
Associate Professor, Biology
Office: 941-487-4646
E-mail: mccord@ncf.edu

B.S., Savannah State College; M.S., Ph.D., University of Florida.

Professor McCord received his Ph.D. in entomology, studying the toxicology of insecticide resistance in insects. He worked at DuPont Agricultural Products for 25 years in a variety of positions including Senior Research Biologist and Senior Research Chemist. His research interests include insecticide resistance mechanisms in insects, plant allelopathy, and the effects of plant allelochemicals on non-target hosts.

CLASSICS

David Rohrbacher
Associate Professor, Classics
Office: 941-487-4213
E-mail: rohrbacher@ncf.edu

B.A., Tufts University; M.A., Ph.D., University of Washington.

Professor Rohrbacher teaches Latin at all levels and Classical Civilization in all periods. His scholarly interests include Latin literature, Roman history and historiography, and Late Antiquity. He is the author of The Historians of Late Antiquity (Routledge).

COLLEGE LIFE

Wendy Bashant
Dean of Students
Office: 941-487-4250
E-mail: WBashant@ncf.edu

B.A. Middlebury College (Phi Beta Kappa); M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester

Bashant, who was formerly Chair of the English Department at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, became Dean of Students at New College in 1995 and has been involved actively in both academics and student life throughout her career. While at Coe, she served as Chair of the English Department, Vice President for Student Affairs, as a member of the Student Judicial Review Board, and as Director of Study Abroad Programs in London and Florence. She also chaired the Gender Studies Committee at Coe. She is a specialist in Modern British Literature and former Director of Residential Life at Middlebury College.

ECONOMICS

Richard Coe
Associate Professor, Economics
Office: 941-487-4329
E-mail: Coe@ncf.edu

A.B., Kenyon College; M.A., J.D., Ph.D., University of Michigan.

Professor Coe teaches introduction to economic analysis, as well as upper-level courses in law and economics, poverty and redistributive policy, and government expenditures and taxation. He has published several articles on poverty and welfare programs, and is currently researching topics regarding the interrelationship between the legal and economic systems, particularly with respect to the dividing line between public and private interests

Frederick Strobel
Selby Professor of Economics
Office: 941-487-4278
E-mail: Strobel@ncf.edu

B.S., M.B.A., Northeastern University; M.A., Ph.D., Clark University.

Professor Strobel's teaching and research interests are in monetary theory, banking and financial markets, international trade and commerce, the macroeconomics of developed countries, and political economy. In the latter field he has recently focused on how the political process over- or under-represents some economic groups, and the resulting macro-economic consequences of middle class economic decline in the US and Britain.

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE/ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Margaret Lowman
Director of Environmental Initiatives
Professor, Biology and Environmental Studies
Office: 941-487-4648
E-mail: MLowman@ncf.edu

B.A., Williams College; M.Sc., University of Aberdeen; Ph.D., University of Sydney

Professor Lowman specializes in canopy ecology, science education, and conservation biology. Her research on tropical rain forests spans over 30 years in Australia, Peru, Africa, the Americas, and the South Pacific. She has written over 95 peer-reviewed publications. In the treetops, she pioneered work on plant-insect interactions as well as to develop new methods of canopy access. These techniques have included ropes, walkways, hot air balloons, construction cranes, and ladders. She co-edited the definitive textbook, Canopy Biology (second edition published in 2004), and chaired the first two international canopy conferences in 1994 and 1998.

Lowman previously taught at Williams College and also served as CEO of Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Florida, an institution that specializes in tropical plants. During her tenure at a botanical garden, she became involved in science education including service to the Jason Project, NEON committee, Explorers Club, and TREE Foundation. Her book, Life in the Treetops, aimed to educate the lay audience, earned a cover review in the NY Times Book Review. Her newest book, It’s a Jungle Up There (co-authored with her two children) uses their jungle adventures to advocate a conservation ethic for families. She continues to combine research and education with student outreach projects both in southwest Florida and in tropical countries around the world. She is working with Sarasota County to develop a biological field station for scientists and New College students, and a Center for Progressive Land Use as a collaborative Florida-wide institution.

Julie Morris
Co-Director, Environmental Studies Program
Assistant Vice President, Academic Affairs
Office: 941-487-4527
E-mail: morris@ncf.edu  

B.A., New College of Florida

Morris is an expert on wildlife policy and conservation issues. Currently, she is a member of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, one of eight regional boards nationwide that prepare fishery management plans for federal waters off the coast. Morris previously served two terms on the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Elzie McCord
Associate Professor, Biology
Office: 941-487-4646
E-mail: mccord@ncf.edu

B.S., Savannah State College; M.S., Ph.D., University of Florida.

Professor McCord received his Ph.D. in entomology, studying the toxicology of insecticide resistance in insects. He worked at DuPont Agricultural Products for 25 years in a variety of positions including Senior Research Biologist and Senior Research Chemist. His research interests include insecticide resistance mechanisms in insects, plant allelopathy, and the effects of plant allelochemicals on non-target hosts.

HISTORY

David Harvey
Associate Professor, History
Office: 941-487-4511
E-mail: dharvey@ncf.edu

B.A., Rice University; M.A., Ph.D., Princeton University.

Professor Harvey’s primary area of interest is in the history of modern France and Germany. His recent book concerned the interplay of class and national identities among the workers of Alsace. He is currently pursuing a project on occultism and politics in post-Revolutionary France. His course offerings include Modern European History I and II, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, Contemporary French History, Modern German History, and The Age of Imperialism.

Robert M. Johnson
Assistant Professor, History
Office: 941-487-4347
E-mail: RJohnson@ncf.edu

B.A., Albion College; M.A., University of Montana; Ph.D., University of California, Irvine

Professor Johnson spent a year employed by the Soros Foundation teaching English as a second language in Bulgaria and Moldova before entering the graduate history program and receiving his Ph.D. from the University of California – Irvine. He also received a two-year postdoctoral fellowship from University of California – Santa Barbara and spent a year working on the "Teaching American History Project" at UC-Irvine. His research interests focus on race relations and environmental politics in the American Progressive movement.

LITERATURE

Andrea Dimino
Associate Professor, Literature
Office: 941-487-4608
E-mail: dimino@ncf.edu

B.A., Jackson College of Tufts University; M.Phil., Ph.D., Yale University.

Professor Dimino offers a wide variety of courses on American literature and on women writers. Her interests include African American literature, the city in American literature and film, intertextuality, the portrayal of motherhood in literature, and American humor. Professor Dimino’s research centers on nineteenth- and twentieth-century American fiction and on the study of narrative, and she has published numerous essays on William Faulkner.

Miriam L. Wallace
Associate Professor, British and American Literature
Office: 941-487-4335
E-mail: MWallace@ncf.edu

B.A., Swarthmore College; M.A., Ph.D., University of California, Santa Cruz

Professor Wallace teaches the British novel and Literary Theory, with a particular interest in feminist and gender theories. She has published articles on topics ranging from aesthetics and politics in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves to figurative aspects of British law in the 1794 London Treason Trial of the novelist Thomas Holcroft. Her book, Revolutionary Subjects in the English “Jacobin” Novel, 1790-1810, which examines the evolving citizen-subject in late eighteenth-century radical novels, is in progress. Her edition of Mary Hays’s 1796 Memoirs of Emma Courtney and Amelia Alderson Opie’s 1804 Adeline Mowbray was published in 2004. Professor Wallace is also interested in British travelers and their tales from the Grand Tour to the early Romantics. Her course offerings include Critical Theory in the U.S., Romanticism and Revolution, Home and Empire in Victorian Literature, and British Modernist Fictions. With Professor Van Tuyl, she won the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Shirley Bill Teaching Award for a co-taught course on “The French Revolution in the Cultural Imagination” in 1997, and continues to publish on teaching and pedagogical issues.

French

Amy Reid
Associate Professor, French Language and Literature
Office: 941-487-4215
E-mail: reid@ncf.edu

A.B., Colgate University; M.A., Ph.D., Yale University

Professor Reid offers courses and tutorials on a wide range of topics in French and francophone literature: the Renaissance; nineteenth-century literary movements; contemporary drama; and francophone writing from Québec, the Caribbean, and Africa. In addition, she teaches courses at all levels of French language and tutorials on translation. She is also active in the Gender Studies Program and offers tutorials on women's writing and feminist theory. Her publications include articles on the representation of women and women's relationships in the Naturalist novel and on the structure of memory in the works of the Québécoise author Anne Hébert. Her current research considers language and politics in contemporary novels from Cameroon. Her translation of Temps de Chien [Dog Days], a novel by the Cameroonian author Alain-Patrice Nganang, was published by the University of Virginia Press in 2006.

Jocelyn Van Tuyl
Associate Professor, French Language and Literature
Office: 941-487-4607
E-mail: vantuyl@ncf.edu

B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Yale University.

Professor Van Tuyl teaches all levels of French language and offers courses and tutorials on French literature and culture, critical theory and Anglophone children’s literature. A frequent presenter at national and international conferences, Professor Van Tuyl is an internationally recognized specialist in the works of 1947 Nobel Laureate Andre Gide. Presently, completing a book entitled A Novelist’s Occupation: Andre Gide and the Second World War, Professor Van Tuyl is also pursuing research on Saint-Exupery, Leiris, Celine, and Conrad, with a special focus on colonial-era travelers in Africa and the emergence of HIV.

German

Glenn Cuomo
Professor, German Language and Literature
Office: 941-487-4360
E-mail: cuomo@ncf.edu

B.A., State University of New York College at New Paltz; M.A., University of Georgia; Ph.D., The Ohio State University.

In addition to teaching all levels of German language, Professor Cuomo offers courses and tutorials on a variety of topics in German literature, film, and cultural studies. While he has a generalist background in German literature and philology, Professor Cuomo’s research interests and publications have focused on German literature and cultural history from 1890 to the present. He is the author of Career at the Cost of Compromise: Gunter Eich’s Life and Work in the Years 1933-1945, and the editor of and a contributor to National Socialist Cultural Policy. His current projects involve postwar German film and contemporary drama.

Russian

David Schatz
Associate Professor, Russian Language and Literature
Office: 941-487-4316
E-mail: schatz@ncf.edu

A.B., Princeton University; M.A., Harvard University; Ph.D., University of Michigan.

Professor Schatz teaches the full sequence of Russian language courses – elementary to advanced – and standard courses in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian literature, as well as more specialized tutorials as required by student interest and need. His research interests include various problems of literary theory and genre, and the evolution of Russian literature from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century.

Spanish

Jose Alberto Portugal
Associate Professor, Spanish Language & Literature/PepsiCo Professorship
Office: 941-487-4458
E-mail:  portugal@ncf.edu

Egresado del Programma de Estudios Generales Letras, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú; Bachiller en Humanidades, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú; Ph.D., University of Texas.

Professor Portugal’s teaching and research interests include twentieth-century Spanish American Narrative, Indianismo e Indigenismo in Spanish American Literature from the sixteenth  through nineteenth centuries; and literature of the Spanish Golden Age. He has written articles on Mario Vargas Llosa and Jose Maria Arguedas, and will be publishing a book on José María Arguedas.

MATHEMATICS

Patrick McDonald
Professor, Mathematics
Office: 941-487-4375
E-mail: mcdonald@ncf.edu

B.S., M.S., The Ohio State University; Ph.D., MIT.

Professor McDonald's research centers on partial differential equations, microlocal analysis and geometry. His published work includes results concerning analytic surgery, analytic torsion, infinite dimensional Morse theory, statistics, geometric aspects of Brownian motion, spectral geometry and overdetermined boundary value problems. His most recent results are in mathematical physics, where he works on Lorentz violating field theories and quantum gravity, and mathematical biology, where his work centers on microtubule dynamics. He enjoys teaching analysis, probability, and geometry.

David T. Mullins
Associate Professor, Mathematics
Office: 941-487-4378
E-mail: mullins@ncf.edu

B.A., New College of the University of South Florida; M.S., Ph.D., Stanford University

Professor Mullins' research centers on low-dimensional topology. He enjoys teaching algebraic topology, knot theory, point set topology, and dynamical systems, as well as more classical mathematics. Professor Mullins has outside interests in all card games, pool and computers. As a New College alumnus, he is active in student life.

MUSIC

Stephen Miles
Director, New Music New College
Associate Professor, Music
Office: 941-487-4664
E-mail: miles@ncf.edu

B.M., University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music; M.Mus., D.M.A., University of Illinois-Champaign.

Professor Miles is active as a composer, performer, and scholar. In all his work Professor Miles probes the dynamic relationship between musical and social structures, drawing on critical theory, historical styles, and experimental techniques of composition. His music has been performed throughout the United States, and he regularly presents papers at the Conference of Social Theory, Politics, and the Arts and the annual meetings of the Society of Composers and Music Theory Southeast. Professor Miles is the director of New Music New College, a group that performs cutting-edge compositions (including compositions by members of the group).

PHILOSOPHY

Aron Edidin
Chair, Division of Humanities
Professor, Philosophy
Office: 941-487-4248
E-mail: edidin@ncf.edu

B.A., New College; Ph.D., Princeton University.

Professor Edidin works widely in analytic philosophy, especially on matters concerning knowledge and the nature of philosophy itself, and in the philosophy of music. His courses cover most of analytic philosophy, which is the philosophy produced in the English-speaking world over the past 80 years

Douglas Langston
Professor, Philosophy and Religion
Office: 941-487-4249
E-mail: langston@ncf.edu

A.B., Stanford University; M.A., Princeton University; M.A., Ph.D., University of California, Irvine; Ph.D., Princeton University.

Professor Langston, holding doctorates in both philosophy and religion, teaches in these two areas. He specializes in the philosophy of religion and in medieval philosophical and religious thought. He offers courses also in nineteenth century thought, focusing on such figures as Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard.

PHYSICS

Don Colladay
Associate Professor, Physics
Office: 941-487-4221
E-mail: colladay@ncf.edu

B.S., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; M.S., Ph.D., Indiana University.

Professor Colladay received his Ph.D. in theoretical high energy. He has done research on the question of modifications to the equations of basic physics due to so far undiscovered effects at very small length scales. Professor Colladay is a specialist primarily in quantum mechanics. In addition to teaching a number of courses in the traditional physics curriculum, Professor Colladay offers a course directed at the general student on basic high energy physics, and its connection to modern cosmology.

Mariana Sendova
Associate Professor, Physics
Office: 941-487-4384
E-mail: sendova@ncf.edu

M.Sc., Ph.D., Sofia University.

Professor Sendova received her Ph.D. in experimental solid state and laser applied physics. She has done research in the areas of pulsed laser-plasma deposition of thin films and laser assisted surface modification. She has studied the structural, electrical, and optical properties of novel narrow gap semiconductor materials. Professor Sendova has several publications in the area of biophysics and magnetochemistry as well. In addition to teaching a number of courses in the traditional physics curriculum, Professor Sendova offers a course directed at life sciences students interested in applying principles of physics to biological systems. 

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Frank Alcock
Assistant Professor, Political Science
Director, Marine Policy Institute of Mote Marine Laboratory
Office: 941-487-4483
E-mail: FAlcock@ncf.edu

B.A., State University of New York at Binghamton; M.A., George Washington University; Ph.D., Duke University

Frank Alcock a political scientist who teaches courses on world politics, international law, and sustainable development. His current research focuses on environmental politics, oceans governance, seafood markets and fisheries management. In addition to publications dealing with global fisheries problems Frank has co-authored articles on science-policy relationships in environmental issue areas with an emphasis on marine policies. He will be serving as the Director of a new Marine Policy Institute, a collaborative project between New College and Mote Marine Laboratory. Prior to obtaining his Ph.D. Frank spent five years as an international policy analyst/economist at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Keith Fitzgerald
Associate Professor, Political Science
Office: 941-487-4325
E-mail: fitzgerald@ncf.edu

B.A., University of Louisville; Ph.D., Indiana University.

Professor Fitzgerald specializes in American politics with a focus on political institutions (such as Congress and the presidency), and public policy. His teaching and research use theoretical, comparative, and historical approaches to examine how institutions and ideas shape peoples' collective lives. He is the author of Face of the Nation: Immigration, the State, and the National Identity. In November 2006, Professor Fitzgerald was elected to the Florida House of Representatives. He continues to teach a limited number of courses at New College while fulfilling his legislative duties.

PSYCHOLOGY

Gordon Bauer
Division Chair, Social Sciences
Peg Scripps Buzzelli Professor of Psychology
Office: 941-487-4394
E-mail: bauer@ncf.edu

B.A., George Washington University; M.A., George Washington University; M.S. Bucknell University; Ph.D. University of Hawaii.

Professor Bauer is a biological psychologist specializing in the sensory processes, cognition, and behavior in dolphins, whales and manatees. He is currently studying vision, touch and hearing in manatees. In the past, he has investigated a variety of clinically relevant topics, including the effects of pesticides on behavioral development, the behavior of autistic children, and post-traumatic stress disorder. He teaches courses in biological psychology, sensation and perception, animal learning, and statistics.

Charlene Callahan
Associate Professor, Psychology
Office: 941-487-4320
E-mail: callahan@ncf.edu

B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Michigan State University

A former Provost for the College, Professor Callahan is a social psychologist whose research interests center on the perception of interpersonal equity – the ways in which people differ in what they perceive to be “fair,” and the impact of the built and natural environments on social behavior.

RACE RELATIONS

Uzi Baram
Associate Professor, Anthropology
Office: 941-487-4217
E-mail: baram@ncf.edu

B.A., State University of New York at Binghamton; M.A., Ph.D., University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Professor Baram's research as part of the Looking for Angola project, searching for the remains of a maroon colony of escaped African-American slaves and Native American inhabitants along the Manatee River in Florida, has received state and national media attention.  He is an anthropologist whose studies revolve around material culture, power, and social identity, particularly as those elements relate to the emergence of the modern era and representations of peoplehood. As a Historical Archaeologist, his principle area of research has been the Middle East, focused on the period the Ottoman Empire ruled Palestine. The primary focus has been on artifacts of Ottoman Palestine analyzed in terms of commodities and consumption. Recent research involves the politics of the past, including the intersection of archaeology and heritage tourism, and post-colonial investigations of the accounts of Western travelers to the eastern Mediterranean. Baram has engaged in research in Israel and Cyprus and in fieldwork in the Northeast USA and Southwest Florida. Baram teaches a wide range of archaeology and cultural anthropology courses at New College.

Robert M. Johnson
Assistant Professor, History
Office: 941-487-4347
E-mail: RJohnson@ncf.edu

B.A., Albion College; M.A., University of Montana; Ph.D., University of California, Irvine

Professor Johnson spent a year employed by the Soros Foundation teaching English as a second language in Bulgaria and Moldova before entering the graduate history program and receiving his Ph.D. from the University of California – Irvine. He also received a two-year postdoctoral fellowship from University of California – Santa Barbara and spent a year working on the "Teaching American History Project" at UC-Irvine. His research interests focus on race relations and environmental politics in the American Progressive movement.

Chavella T. Pittman
Assistant Professor, Sociology
Office: 941-487-4337
E-mail: CPittman@ncf.edu

B.Ph., Miami University; M.A., Ph.D., University of Michigan

Professor Pittman attended Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) as an undergraduate, where she received her bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies. She went to graduate school at the University of Michigan. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology in 2003 – her dissertation was titled “Do We Act the Way We Think? Multicultural Education and the Disconnect Between Racial Attitudes and Behaviors in College Students." While working toward her Ph.D. she also earned a Masters in Higher Education. She spent two years at UCLA as a University of California’s President’s Postdoctoral Fellow and was also chosen as a Research Scholar at UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women. Her research interests center on the social psychology of issues of social justice, with particular emphasis on racial, ethnic, and gender-influenced behaviors.

RELIGION

Douglas Langston
Professor, Philosophy and Religion
Office: 941-487-4249
E-mail: langston@ncf.edu

A.B., Stanford University; M.A., Princeton University; M.A., Ph.D., University of California, Irvine; Ph.D., Princeton University.

Professor Langston, holding doctorates in both philosophy and religion, teaches in these two areas. He specializes in the philosophy of religion and in medieval philosophical and religious thought. He offers courses also in nineteenth century thought, focusing on such figures as Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard.

Mike Michalson
President, New College of Florida
Professor, Humanities
Office: 941-487-4100
E-mail: michalson@ncf.edu

B.A., Yale University; Rel. M., Clarement School of Theology; Ph.D., Princeton University.

Professor Michalson specializes in Western philosophy of religion and theology from the Enlightenment to the present. His courses typically emphasize the impact of modern historical consciousness on the development of religious ideas. Among his publications are several books on such thinkers as Immanuel Kant, G.E. Lessing, and Søren Kierkegaard. He was the American consulting editor of the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought.

John Newman
Associate Professor, Religion
Office: 941-487-4317
E-mail: newman@ncf.edu

B.A., Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Professor Newman is a cultural historian specializing in Asian religions whose teaching and research interests lie in the relationship between religion and its cultural context, and in issues in cross-cultural study and dialogue. He offers courses in the various Asian religious traditions, surveys of classical Asian arts and literatures, and a seminar on the history of Western study of Asia. His research focuses on Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, and he has studied and traveled in Asia for extended periods of time.

SEX, GENDER, & DIVERSITY ISSUES

Amy Reid
Associate Professor, French Language and Literature
Office: 941-487-4215
E-mail: reid@ncf.edu

A.B., Colgate University; M.A., Ph.D., Yale University

Professor Reid offers courses and tutorials on a wide range of topics in French and francophone literature: the Renaissance; nineteenth-century literary movements; contemporary drama; and francophone writing from Québec, the Caribbean, and Africa. In addition, she teaches courses at all levels of French language and tutorials on translation. She is also active in the Gender Studies Program and offers tutorials on women's writing and feminist theory. Her publications include articles on the representation of women and women's relationships in the Naturalist novel and on the structure of memory in the works of the Québécoise author Anne Hébert. Her current research considers language and politics in contemporary novels from Cameroon. Her translation of Temps de Chien [Dog Days], a novel by the Cameroonian author Alain-Patrice Nganang, was published by the University of Virginia Press in 2006.

Miriam L. Wallace
Associate Professor, British and American Literature
Office: 941-487-4335
E-mail: MWallace@ncf.edu

B.A., Swarthmore College; M.A., Ph.D., University of California, Santa Cruz

Professor Wallace teaches the British novel and Literary Theory, with a particular interest in feminist and gender theories. She has published articles on topics ranging from aesthetics and politics in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves to figurative aspects of British law in the 1794 London Treason Trial of the novelist Thomas Holcroft. Her book, Revolutionary Subjects in the English “Jacobin” Novel, 1790-1810, which examines the evolving citizen-subject in late eighteenth-century radical novels, is in progress. Her edition of Mary Hays’s 1796 Memoirs of Emma Courtney and Amelia Alderson Opie’s 1804 Adeline Mowbray was published in 2004. Professor Wallace is also interested in British travelers and their tales from the Grand Tour to the early Romantics. Her course offerings include Critical Theory in the U.S., Romanticism and Revolution, Home and Empire in Victorian Literature, and British Modernist Fictions. With Professor Van Tuyl, she won the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Shirley Bill Teaching Award for a co-taught course on “The French Revolution in the Cultural Imagination” in 1997, and continues to publish on teaching and pedagogical issues.

SOCIOLOGY

David Brain
Associate Professor, Sociology
Office: 941-487-4338
E-mail: brain@ncf.edu

A.B., University of California, Berkeley; M.A., Ph.D., Harvard University.

Chavella T. Pittman
Assistant Professor, Sociology
Office: 941-487-4337
E-mail: CPittman@ncf.edu

B.Ph., Miami University; M.A., Ph.D., University of Michigan

Professor Pittman attended Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) as an undergraduate, where she received her bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies. She went to graduate school at the University of Michigan. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology in 2003 – her dissertation was titled “Do We Act the Way We Think? Multicultural Education and the Disconnect Between Racial Attitudes and Behaviors in College Students." While working toward her Ph.D. she also earned a Masters in Higher Education. She spent two years at UCLA as a University of California’s President’s Postdoctoral Fellow and was also chosen as a Research Scholar at UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women. Her research interests center on the social psychology of issues of social justice, with particular emphasis on racial, ethnic, and gender-influenced behaviors.

STEM CELL RESEARCH

Katherine Walstrom
Associate Professor, Biochemistry
Office: 941-487-4493
E-mail:  walstrom@ncf.edu

B.S., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; Ph.D., Cornell University.

Professor Walstrom teaches biochemistry courses, laboratories and tutorials. Much of the information covered in her courses relates directly to modern biochemical research, both in her laboratory and elsewhere. Her research group studies RNA helicases, which are proteins involved in gene regulation. Students in her laboratory learn techniques such as cloning, protein purification, and enzyme assays.

Amy Clore
Assistant Professor, Biology
Office:  941-487-4543
E-mail: clore@ncf.edu

B.A., Kenyon College; Ph.D., University of Arizona

Professor Clore received her Ph.D. in plant science with a minor in molecular and cellular biology. She is interested in how plant cells perceive extracellular signals and transduce these signals into intracellular changes in biochemistry, gene expression, and cytoskeletal architecture. Her current research focuses on maize pulvini, specialized organs found along the maize plant stem that sense when the plant has been tipped, and reorient growth. She is also researching how carpel epidermal cells redifferentiate during carpel fusion in Madascar periwinkle. Professor Clore teaches Cellular Biology (lecture and laboratory), Topics in Plant Development, Plant Physiology, Developmental Biology, Topics in Cell Signaling and General Biology: from Molecules to Organism.