Melissa Chessher
Associate Professor and Chair, Magazine Journalism
S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications

Professor Melissa Chessher has more than 20 years of experience in the magazine field as both a writer and an editor.  She worked on the launch of Real Simple, the largest magazine launch in Time Inc. history, and Gusto, a healthy living magazine for Latin American women. 

She also has held several magazine-staff positions, including fitness editor and staff writer at Cooking Light; executive editor of Weight Watchers magazine, and senior editor of American Way, the in-flight magazine of American Airlines.  She has written on women's issues, health, travel, and food for more than a dozen national consumer publications, including Self, Health, Marie Claire, Fitness, Men's Health, and Parents magazines.  She is also the co-editor of Looking for Lockerbie, a collection of images and essays that seek to redefine the site of the Pan Am 103 Disaster, a terrorist act that claimed 35 Syracuse University students’ lives. 

She is the chair of the magazine department and director of the graduate program in magazine, newspaper and online journalism at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.  She teaches classes in magazine writing and editing and received the Senior Class Award for Teaching Excellence in 2006.  That same year her investigative feature for Self magazine on the challenges faced by women who work while undergoing treatment for breast cancer was part of a special issue publication that earned a National Magazine Award in the category of personal service.  A native Texan, she received her M.S. in international journalism from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where she also earned a B.S. with a double major in English and journalism.

Melissa Chessher's webpage at S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications

Gerardine M. Clark
Professor of Drama
College of Visual and Performing Arts

Meredith Professor of Excellence

Professor Clark has served for thirty years as a faculty member in the Department of Drama.  She has recently been named to the Celia and Issac Hieman Chair. 

In 2004 she was named Syracuse University Scholar/Teacher of the Year, and in 1998 was named a Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor for Excellence in Teaching. She has a B.A. from Missouri University an M.A. from St. Louis University, and a Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1977.   She has been a professional actor, director, and playwright for over thirty years, and was a founding member of the Indiana Repertory Theatre where she acted, directed, taught, and served as director of educational programs over a four year tenure.  

Her areas of expertise include acting, directing, dramatic literature, play analysis, and playwriting; her scholarly publications include Contesting the Boundaries of Liberal and Professional Education, Practical Poetics, and Unnatural Acts. Original plays, adaptations, and translations include The Final Adventures of Don Juan, The Quack (The Doctor in Spite of Himself), A Christmas Carol, and The Wind in the Willows (book and lyrics).   The last of these was commissioned by Syracuse Stage.   She directed that production and subsequent productions at the New Victory Theatre in New York City; the play has also received multiple other professional productions.  

She is presently completing a new play about the new phenomenon of second lives with the working title of The Last Meeting of the First Fifty Club and has begun a musical adaptation of Moliere’s Tartuffe.  Among her many directing credits are Hamlet, West Side Story, The Threepenny Opera, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Arcadia, and The Sea Gull, which won the American College Theatre Festival Award and was performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.   Last year she directed Lanford Wilson’s The Rimers of Eldritch for the S.U. Drama season.  A movie she has helped produce, If You Could Say It in Words, premiered in Philadelphia in fall 2007 and is now making the festival circuit.  

Professor Clark has held an Eli Lilly Post-Doctoral Fellowship, was for five years an Andrew Mellon Fellow and was for many years a Gateway Fellow.   She has also served as an on-site auditor for the National Endowment to the Arts.  Among her former students are Aaron Sorkin, Evan Weinstein, Taye Diggs, Vanessa Williams, Tom Everett Scott, Kristin Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Ignaciao Serricchio and Paul James.

Gerardine Clark's webpage at the College of Visual & Performing Arts

Samuel Gorovitz
Professor of Philosophy
College of Arts and Sciences

Founding Director of the Renée Crown University Honors Program

Professor Gorovitz, former dean of Arts and Sciences, led in the development of the field of medical ethics.  He has also published extensively on other topics in philosophy and public policy.   His advice on college governance and on health policy has been widely sought, and he has given more than 200 invited lectures in many countries in five continents.  

He led an NEH summer seminar for college teachers in 1984, an NIH regional workshop on research with human subjects in 1989, and several other summer seminars and institutes.   He has been a consultant to PBS, the World Health Organization, and many federal agencies.  Professor Gorovitz has often been interviewed on programs such as All Things Considered, the Larry King Show, the Studs Terkel Show, and has been quoted in magazines ranging from Ladies’ Home Journal to The New Yorker.  His publications include more than 130 articles, reviews and editorials in philosophical journals, medical journals, public policy journals, and newspapers.  He is a co-author of Philosophical Analysis (Random House, 1964, 1969, 1979) and an editor of several other books.  His two most recent books are Doctors' Dilemmas: Moral Conflict and Medical Care (Oxford, 1985) and Drawing the Line: Life, Death, and Ethical Choices in an American Hospital (Oxford, 1991; Temple 1993). 

Professor Gorovitz received his B.S. from MIT in 1960 and his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1963.  In fall 1996, he served as the Baker-Hostetler Professor of Law at Cleveland Marshall College of Law, and in fall 1998 was Visiting Scholar in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University.   Since 1988 he has served, by gubernatorial appointment, on the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law.   He was Dearing-Daly Professor of Bioethics and Humanities at the SUNY Upstate Medical University from 2001-2004, and for 2004-05 was Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Bioethicist in Residence at Yale.  In 2007 he was appointed by New York’s governor to the new Empire State Stem Cell Board, which oversees a $600 million commitment to stem cell research in New York State.

Samuel Gorovitz's webpage in the Philosophy Department

Susan Henderson
Professor of Architecture
School of Architecture

Susan R. Henderson has been teaching architectural history at Syracuse since 1989.  She teaches courses in the fields of modern architecture, Asian architecture and urban history.

In 2005 she led a six-week study tour in China for SU Abroad; in 2006 she taught the School of Architecture Pre-Architecture Program in Florence, Italy.  Henderson holds a B.A. from the University of Washington, a Master of Architecture from MIT, and a Ph.D. in architectural history from Columbia University. 

Her research ranges in subject from the “New Frankfurt” initiative of Weimar Germany, to esoteric utopias in the 1910s, and, more recently, to experimental communities in the 1960s.  Her work has appeared in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, the Journal of Architectural Education, Planning Perspectives, the Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, Design Issues, Architronic, Housing Studies, and the Journal of Garden History. She has contributed chapters to Architecture and Feminism, Housing and Dwelling and Religion and Modern Architecture (forthcoming 2010).  Her forthcoming book is Designing for Democracy, Weimar’s New Frankfurt, 1926-1932  (2011). She is the former book review editor of the Journal of Architectural Education. She has received fellowships from the Wolfsonian, the National Endowment for the Arts, the German Academic Exchange Service, and the Graham Fund, and has been a visiting faculty member at the Phillips University in Marburg, Germany.

Henderson also has a vital interest in the developing fields of Asian and Middle Eastern architectural history.  She has taught a course in Islamic architecture for more than twenty years and has recently introduced new seminars on Asian architecture subjects.

In addition to the School of Architecture, Henderson serves on the faculties of Society and Religion, and the Middle Eastern Studies Program in the College of Arts and Sciences, and is a member of the Center of European Studies in the Maxwell School.

Susan Henderson's webpage in Architecture

Sandra Hurd
Associate Provost for Academic Affairs
Acting Dean, Graduate School
Professor of Law and Public Policy
Whitman School of Management

Sandra N. Hurd, professor of law and public policy in the Whitman School of Management and former interim dean, is Associate Provost for Academic Programs, and director of learning communities for academic affairs at Syracuse University.  Her primary area of research is international product liability and safety.  Professor Hurd’s publications appear in such journals as the American Business Law Journal, the Journal of Product Liability, the Journal of Legislation, the International Journal of Technology Management, the Maryland Journal of International Law and Trade, and the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Economic Law. 

Professor Hurd was named a Master Teacher by the Academy of Legal Studies in Business.  She is co-author of Using Student Teams in the Classroom (Anker Publishing, 2000) and Building and Sustaining Learning Communities: The Syracuse University Experience (Anker Publishing, 2004).  Awards include the School of Management Awards for Distinguished Service and for Excellence in Teaching, the Tankersley Leadership Award, and the Chancellor's Citation for Outstanding Contributions to the University's Academic Programs.

Sandra Hurd's webpage in the Provost's Office

Chris E. Johnson
Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering
L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science

Professor Johnson holds B.S. (Civil Engineering), M.S. (Statistics), and Ph.D. (Geology) degrees, all from the University of Pennsylvania.   He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi, and was a Fulbright Scholar in the Czech Republic in 1994.  

He has served as a visiting faculty member at Charles University in Prague and Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia.  Dr. Johnson is currently interim chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Syracuse University and is the director of the environmental engineering program.  He teaches courses in environmental chemistry, soil chemistry, data analysis, and surveying.  In the Honors Program, he teaches “Water for Gotham,” a course on the New York City water supply system, and “The Aqueducts of Ancient Rome.” 

Professor Johnson is involved in a number of research projects in the broad area of environmental chemistry, including work in the fate of trace metals (Pb, Zn, Cu, NI) in forest soils and landscapes; the effects of clear-cut logging on soils and drainage waters; and the changing acid-base chemistry of soils historically affected by acid rain.   He is also actively involved in research on the chemistry of natural organic matter, which plays an important role in soil fertility, trace metal transport, and the acid-base status of soils and natural waters.   He is particularly interested in the characterization of organic matter using advanced analytical tools such as nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, liquid chromatography, and capillary electrophoresis.

Chris Johnson's webpage in the College of Engineering & Computer Science

Johanna Keller
Associate Professor and Director
Goldring Arts Journalism Program
S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications

Professor Keller received a 2008 Meredith Teaching Recognition Award and a 2007 Excellence in Graduate Education Award from Syracuse University.   She writes about music and culture for The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education Review, London Evening Standard, Los Angeles Times, Opera News, and other publications in the U.S. and the U.K.

For her essays in The New York Times, she received an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award and the Front Page Award from the Newswomen's Club of New York.   She has been a USC Annenberg Getty Fellow in Los Angeles and a journalism fellow at the Banff Centre in Canada.  Professor Keller teaches writing, arts criticism, and communications courses at Newhouse, and directs the Goldring Arts Journalism Program.  Her current project is editing a collection of essays about the musical pedagogue, Nadia Boulanger.  For her literary writing she received the annual Editor's Prize from The Florida Review, a Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), and a Grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation.  In 2007 she served as the first nonfiction editor of Stone Canoe, a new journal of arts and ideas from upstate New York, and she is a member of the journal's advisory board. 

Keller lived in Manhattan for three decades where she taught writing at Eugene Lang College at The New School University in Manhattan, edited the prize-winning magazine Chamber Music, and held administrative positions at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.  A nationally recognized arts journalism advocate, she was a principal organizer of the National Critics Conference that took place in Los Angeles in May 2005, and has served twice on the Pulitzer Prize Jury at Columbia University. She is married to the translator and poet Charles Martin.

Johanna Keller's webpage in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications

Alan Middleton
Professor of Physics
College of Arts & Sciences

Alan Middleton is Professor of Physics and serves as Associate Chair for educational matters in Physics. He has taught the interdisciplinary science lecture course "Science for the 21st Century," the Honors Course titled "Seeing Light," a number of advanced graduate and undergraduate physics courses, and the introductory methods course "Science and Computers." 

He also served as the Director of Undergraduate Study for Physics for seven years.  Professor Middleton received B.S. degrees with Distinction in Physics and in Mathematics from Harvey Mudd College, studied at Cambridge University on a Churchill Fellowship to earn a Certificate of Advanced Study in Maths, and completed his Ph.D. degree in Physics at Princeton University.  He worked for the NEC Research Institute before becoming a faculty member at Syracuse University. 

Professor Middleton's research primarily is in the study of materials that are disordered or are unusually complex: these materials have surprising dynamic properties, including "memory" and "rejuvenation."  This research has a strong interdisciplinary connection with optimization techniques developed in computer science (for example, those used to find shortest routes on a map). 

Professor Middleton has presented invited science lectures in the U.S., Europe, and China and has been a national co-organizer of both a summer school and a scientific workshop.  He gives physics demonstrations in local classrooms a few times a year and presents general interest lectures on subjects such as chaos and snow crystals.  He has also presented invited lectures at workshops on physics teaching.

Professor Middleton's webpage in the Physics Department

Ramesh Raina
Associate Professor of Biology
College of Arts & Sciences

Ramesh Raina is Associate Professor of Biology
and Co-Director of the Graduate Program in Biology.  He is also a member of the Structural Biology, Biochemistry and Biophysics graduate program (SB3).

He received his B.S. (with Honors in Chemistry) and M.S. (Biochemistry) degrees from the Banaras Hindu University, India, and Ph.D. (Molecular Biology) from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. He did his postdoctoral work at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Baltimore. Professor Raina teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in molecular biology and genomics. His research interests include molecular mechanisms regulating plants’ responses to environmental stresses (especially pathogens) and functional genomics of cell signaling in plants.

Professor Raina's webpage in the Biology Department

John Western
Maxwell Professor of Teaching Excellence
Geography

For a number of years he helped create and team-teach trans-disciplinary lower-division social science courses in the Maxwell School. He has won a number of teaching awards, in 1993 was elected an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa, and in 1999 was designated a Maxwell Professor of Teaching Excellence. From 1997 through 2000 he was Resident Director of Syracuse University’s SU Abroad program in Strasbourg, France, and then from 2000 through 2003 served as chair of the Geography Department.  He received a national award, the Distinguished Teaching Honors of the Association of American Geographers, in 2003.

After a two-year high school teaching stint in the British Peace Corps in Burundi, he lived in South Africa in the mid to late 1970s, pursuing interview-based research with "Coloured" [biracial] people.  His 1981 book Outcast Cape Town resulted, which documented apartheid's effect upon that city.  A new paperback edition of the book, with the addition of a Prologue and an Epilogue both composed after a post-apartheid return in 1996, was published by the University of California Press in 1997.  The British academic journal Progress in Human Geography featured it in their "Classics Revisited" series in 1999.  Outcast Cape Town finally went out of print during 2005, after a run of 24 years.  In 2004 his “Africa is Coming to the Cape” was awarded the Wrigley-Fairchild award of the American Geographical Society for the best article published during the three-year period of volumes 89 through 91 of The Geographical Review.

Since January 2004 John has been fieldworking off and on in Strasbourg. Two full-length articles, in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers and in The Geographical Review, have already appeared from this research. In February 2009 he completed the last of 162 semi-structured, open-ended interviews there.  The draft of a 15-chapter book, Speaking of Europe: Strasburger Identities, 1909-2009, was finished in May 2009.  He is presently seeking a publisher.

Professor Western's webpage in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs