2011 New Faculty Introduction
It is no exaggeration to state that it is the faculty who form the very heart of the College of Arts and Sciences. The fact that you are here today testifies to your accomplishment and promise as a scholar, teacher and university citizen, as you join a distinguished and diverse WMU professoriate. Your dedication to your students, colleagues and disciplines will sustain and recreate the College of Arts and Sciences in the coming years. In fact, your individual success is inextricably linked to that of the College and University as a whole. In addition to the contributions you will make to the College and University, I am confident that you and your families will become vital members of the greater Kalamazoo community. I extend this warmest of welcomes, then, both to you, our newest CAS faculty colleagues, and to your loved ones.
Alexander Enyedi, Dean College of Arts and Sciences
Humanities
Leah Omilion-Hodges
Assistant Professor, Communication
Dr. Leah Omilion-Hodges earned a B.A. in professional writing from Grand Valley State University (2004). She continued her education at Wayne State University earning a Master of Arts (2007) in organizational communication and public relations and a Doctor of Philosophy (2011) in organizational communication with cognates in research methods and industrial/organizational psychology. While at Wayne State University, Omilion-Hodges earned several notable awards and fellowships including the King Chavez Parks Future Faculty Fellowship and the Thomas C. Rumble Fellowship. She was a repeat recipient of the Graduate-Professional Scholarship and also received the Department of Communication Arts Summer Research Scholarship and the Graduate Student Research Award. Her research focuses on workgroup relationships and the unique implications of the leader-member relationship. She has presented her work at numerous local, regional, and national conferences including National Communication Association Conference, Organizational Communication Mini-Conference, and Central States Communication Association Conference. She has contributed three chapters to Best Practices in Experiential and Service Learning in Communication and her work also appears in Group Communication: Cases for Analysis, Appreciation, and Application and Casing Organizational Communication. While completing her doctoral work, Omilion-Hodges held several professional appointments with her most recent tenure as a Public Information Officer for a metro Detroit hospital. Previously she worked in health care marketing, creating campaigns to encourage community members to engage in healthful behaviors.
Humanities
Stacey M. B. Wieland
Assistant Professor, Communication
Stacey M. B. Wieland became an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at Western Michigan University in August 2011. Prior to joining Western Michigan University, she worked as an Assistant Professor at Villanova University from 2007 to 2011. Wieland earned her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2007. She has also earned a B.A. in Communication Arts and Sciences from Calvin College and an M.A. in Communication Management from the University of Southern California. Wieland’s research draws upon qualitative methodologies to study organizational communication. Wieland’s research considers the role paid work and organizations have in communicatively constructing individual and collective identities as well as how the work/life relationship is constructed and managed through communication. She believes that asking such questions is important because it compels us to reflect on the role that work plays in our lives as well as alternative ways of living and working. Her dissertation won the 2008 W. Charles Redding Dissertation Award from the International Communication Association. It was based on nine months of ethnographic fieldwork that she conducted in a Swedish branch of multi-national company, funded by a grant from the Swedish Institute. In the dissertation she argued that the Swedish cultural value of lagom –moderation – enabled members to negotiate tensions between values of productivity and wellbeing as they constructed their identities. Wieland returned to Sweden in the Summer of 2010 to conduct follow-up interviews with participants, as they had recently learned that their branch was being eliminated. She is drawing on those interviews to research job loss, organizational closure, meanings of work, and identity. Wieland has published a half dozen journal articles and book chapters, which appear in journals such as Communication Monographs, Management Communication Quarterly, and Communication Theory. She also regularly presents papers at academic conferences such as the National Communication Association, the International Communication Association, and Organizational Communication mini-conferences. Wieland teaches courses in organizational communication, communication theory, leadership, and globalized work. In her courses, she aims to help her students develop as critical thinkers and problem solvers who are prepared to engage organizational life in a variety of contexts and positions throughout their careers. Wieland is originally from Grand Rapids and currently resides with her spouse Ryan and son Jonathan in Dowling.
Humanities
Brian Gogan
Assistant Professor, English
Brian Gogan joins Western Michigan University’s Department of English as an Assistant Professor in Rhetoric and Writing. He looks forward to contributing to the proposed undergraduate major and minor in Rhetoric and Writing, as well as working with colleagues on projects that support the university’s goals of interdisciplinarity, diversity, civility, and community. His research interests include public writing, professional writing, letter writing, grant writing, critical theory, and Baudrillardian rhetoric. His work has appeared in College Composition and Communication and Who Speaks for Writing: Stewardship for Writing Studies in the 21st Century. Gogan holds a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Writing from Virginia Tech. At Tech, he taught courses in college composition, business writing, and technical writing. In 2011, he received the Composition Program Award for excellence in teaching. He also served as assistant director, research assistant, and research affiliate in the Center for the Study of Rhetoric in Society. In these capacities, he collaborated on grant applications to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the United States Department of Education, the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety, and the Michigan Humanities Council. In 2009, he was an inaugural fellow to the Blue Ridge Writing Project, a local site of the National Writing Project. His other degrees include a Master of Arts degree from Marquette University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Xavier University. Gogan enjoys swimming, running, cooking, watching movies, and attending art exhibitions. He resides in Kalamazoo with his wife Amanda.
Humanities
Sam Cowling
Instructor, Philosophy Sam Cowling completed his Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2011. His dissertation, “Identity and the Limits of Possibility”, focuses on issues in the metaphysics, epistemology, and semantics of modality and modal concepts like necessity and possibility. His primary fields of research are metaphysics, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and their intersections. He has published articles in Analysis, The Philosophical Quarterly, and Philosophy in Review. His current research is focused on the metaphysical and scientific status of abstract entities like numbers, propositions, and possible worlds. In addition to metaphysics, he has taught courses on Biomedical Ethics, Environmental Ethics, Critical Reasoning, American Philosophy, and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Sam was born and raised on Vancouver Island, home of the Nanaimo Bar. After earning his B.A. from the University of Victoria in 2004, he received an M.A. from the University of Manitoba in 2005 and began his Ph.D. program at UMass in 2006. Prior to joining Western Michigan University, his previous jobs have included cafeteria worker, gas station attendant, trailer park attendant, roadie, pawnshop employee, and teaching assistant. As you might expect, he is very excited to join the Department of Philosophy. When he’s not teaching, reading, or writing philosophy, he’s running, reading comics, or drinking far too much coffee. Cowling will serve a one-year term position.
Humanities
Social Sciences
James Cousins
Faculty Specialist II, History
I was born in King of Prussia but raised in Haverford, a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I earned my undergraduate degree from The Ohio State University and my M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky. As a Ph.D. student I focused on the history of education in early America; my dissertation “Children of the Western World: The Illusion of Religious Control and the Making of Higher Education in Kentucky, 1780-1818,” explored long-held assumptions regarding America’s earliest trans-Appalachian educational institutions. While a graduate student, I worked as an adjunct faculty member for Eastern Kentucky University’s Department of History and was also the full-time academic advisor for the University of Kentucky’s College of Arts and Sciences. At Eastern Kentucky, I taught an array of on-campus courses and was instrumental in the development of online curriculum. At the University of Kentucky, I advised hundreds of liberal-arts majors, assisted in on and off-campus recruiting efforts, participated in departmental assessment initiatives, facilitated programs of faculty mentorship, and worked with student organizations in the development of community service projects. My most recent publications concern the sociocultural evolution of education in the early American west. In an article titled “Lexington’s ‘Established Order’ and the Creation of Transylvania University” I seek to establish a new concept of pedagogy that sees education as both a social mirror and rhetorical center of communal identity. In “Kentucky’s ‘Free and Easy Generation’ and the War of 1812,” I examine the causal connections between patriotic rhetoric, capitalism, and mythologized frontier aggression. I am a former recipient of the Filson Historical Society Fellowship, the Kentucky Historical Society Summer Fellowship, and was recently named the 2012 “Scholar-in-Residence” of Transylvania University (Lexington, Kentucky). This award is in support of archival research for my first book, a biography of Horace Holley who served as president of that institution from 1818 to 1827. I was recently hired as a faculty member and Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS) for Western’s Department of History. I will be teaching courses in the history of education and historical research methods. As DUS, l will oversee the advising of students with majors and minors in history, public history, and secondary history education. This fall I will also be serving as faculty facilitator in Western’s First Year Experience Program and as co-principal investigator for a grant received through Western’s Office of Assessment.
Social Sciences
Amanda Grace Sikarskie Assistant Professor, History
Dr. Amanda Grace Sikarskie is a public historian specializing in museum studies, digital public history, and textile history. She received her Ph.D. in American studies in 2011 from Michigan State University. Her dissertation research focused on the practice of quilt history in the digital age and the nature of digital material culture studies. From 2008 to 2011, she worked as social media manager and project developer for the Quilt Index, www.quiltindex.org, an online database providing preservation and access to images and metadata for over 50,000 historic and contemporary quilts. Sikarskie has taught museum studies, history, and history of art at Michigan State University, worked at the Michigan State University Museum, Matrix: The Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online, and Kresge Art Museum, served as Senior Fellow in MSU’s Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, served a three-year term on the Associates Board of the Michigan State University Museum, and worked as an arts and entertainment contributor for City Pulse, Lansing’s alternative weekly newspaper. She also recently guest-edited a special issue of New Directions in Folklore on “Quiltmakers in the Digital Age” and has forthcoming essays in Winterthur Portfolio and an anthology on Women’s Cultural Experiences in Second Life. Her current research looks at historical research and writing, including curatorial work, done in social online spaces such as Facebook, Twitter, and Wikipedia. During this one-year term appointment at Western, Sikarskie will be directing the public history internship program and teaching undergraduate and graduate level courses in museum studies and public history, as well as a general education course on popular art and architecture in America. She plans to incorporate new media into her teaching, including the creation of a community blog for use by students in the WMU public history program. When not involved with these various pursuits, she enjoys frequent trips to northern Michigan and loves gardening, genealogy, hunting for antiques, listening to a wide variety of music (from recent indie music to British New Wave), and spending time with her husband Matt and their three cats, Prada, Gucci, and Boondocks.
Social Sciences
Anise Strong
Assistant Professor, History
Anise K. Strong studies Roman social history, gender and sexuality in the ancient world, and the reception of classical culture in modern mass media. She received her Ph.D. in Classical Studies from Columbia University and her B.A. ( cum laude) from Yale University in Classical Civilization. She has taught a wide variety of history and classics courses at both Stanford and Northwestern University. Professor Strong is currently revising her book manuscript, titled “Roman Women and the Construction of Virtue: Wicked Wives and Good Whores.” Recent articles include Roman toleration of ancient incest, sexuality in the HBO series “Rome,” the treatment of ethnic intermarriage in Herodotus’s Histories, and a comparison of mothers who prostitute their daughters in ancient legal and literary texts. She also has presented at multiple major conferences, including five times at the American Philological Association annual meeting. Strong focuses on the intricacies of Roman social structure and the roles played by marginal figures and social outcasts in the Roman world. Her source material has ranged from Roman bedroom paintings to graffiti fragments, love poetry, and pedagogical handbooks, as well as more traditional works of literature. Strong was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, and is a member of the seventh generation of college-educated women in her family. She grew up in San Diego, California, and still misses good fish tacos. She has traveled to 34 nations so far and hopes to double that number in the next few decades; highlights have included being trapped in a blizzard in the Nepali Himalayas at 12,000 feet and hiking up Mount Olympos in Turkey in pitch darkness. In her spare time, Professor Strong enjoys baking, European strategy games, hiking, throwing balls for her golden retriever, and reading alternate history novels.
Social Sciences
Jessica Frieder
Assistant Professor, Psychology Dr. Jessica Frieder received her B.S. in Psychology from Allegheny College (2001). Coursework and guidance from her mentor there led to her decision to pursue a career in the field of Applied Behavior Analysis. In the summer of 2003 she completed her Master’s degree in Applied Behavior Analysis/Special Education at The Ohio State University (OSU). While there, Frieder was involved in a variety of research projects that included the development of effective interventions for individuals with severe problem behavior primarily motivated by escape as well as utilizing self-monitoring to increase on-task behavior in school-based settings. Her thesis concentrated on implementing self-monitoring across different social skills and classroom school-based environments for elementary aged children who were at-risk for school failure and expulsion. Following her training at OSU, Frieder worked as a behavior analyst for Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh, PA on a specialized multi-disciplinary program that provided consultative services to children/adolescents in crisis and/or in residential facilities. During her stint there, she designed, implemented, and trained residential staff to deliver behaviorally based interventions for individuals with dual diagnoses and multi-system involvement. In 2005, Frieder returned to school to pursue her doctorate degree. During her studies, she served as the project coordinator for an Institute of Education Sciences (IES) grant under principal investigator, Dr. Stephanie Peterson that examined the effects of concurrent schedules of reinforcement and adjusting demand requirements on the communication, compliance, and problem behavior of children with varying disabilities who displayed escape-maintained problem behavior in school-based settings. Frieder was also instrumental in conducting research on collaborating with educators to conduct functional analyses in order to design and implement reinforcement-based interventions via the use of web-based technology. Frieder completed her dissertation on examining the role of various dimensions of reinforcement in the role of response allocation in a concurrent operant paradigm for children with escape maintained problem behavior. In 2009, Frieder received her Ph.D. from Utah State University. Frieder’s current areas of research interest focus on language acquisition and augmentative communication systems for individuals with autism and developmental disabilities. She is also interested in effective social skills instruction, selfmonitoring and self-management procedures as they relate to both academic and social behavior. Other areas of research concentrate on the integrity with which behavioral strategies are implemented as well as effective training for teachers and other practitioners.
Social Sciences
Whitney D. Gunter Assistant Professor, Sociology
My degrees include a B.S. in Criminal Justice from York College of Pennsylvania, an M.S. in Administration of Justice from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in Criminology from University of Delaware. I will be an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, where I’ll be teaching courses primarily related to criminology, criminal justice, and statistics. My present research interests primarily include substance use, adolescent deviance, and digital piracy, but also include other topics under the broad category of criminology. My future plans include multiple projects that advance my research in several areas. Two of my more interesting research projects both relate to media. First, violent video games have been the target of recent legislation resulting from allegations that they cause violent behavior. However, most research has either failed to document an effect on real-life behavior or been limited to correlational relationships that cannot demonstrate causality. One of my ongoing research projects is to further examine this topic with an emphasis on testing for causality. The other major ongoing research interest involving the media is on issues of copyright. Having studied digital copyright issues in my dissertation, I have recently shifted my focus from examining digital piracy with a criminological lens to a broader interdisciplinary study of copyright law and issues surrounding digital media. In addition to these interests, I’ll also be continuing various other lines of research. These including empirical tests of the causes and correlates of cyberbullying, risk factors for suicide and self-injury, prescription drug abuse, post-imprisonment re-entry, and various other research projects. In recent years I have increasingly been making use of online surveys as a means of collecting data. One initiative I bring with me is to develop similar surveys here at WMU and to make such tools available to the other researchers. I look forward to joining WMU and hope over the coming years to further my current research projects, develop new interests, work with both undergraduate and graduate students, and become an important part of the University’s community.
Social Sciences
Kathryn Docherty
Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences
Sciences & Mathematics
Kathryn Docherty is a microbial ecologist with a particular interest in the responses of soil microorganisms to global climate change and environmental pollutants. Kathryn grew up in upstate New York, and received her Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science/Biology at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY in 2001. She performed her graduate research under an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship at University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Ind. Her graduate research focused on microbial biodegradability of novel green organic chemicals with potential for replacing more harmful industrial pollutants. After defending in 2007, Kathryn went on to University of Oregon, (Eugene, OR) where her work focused on the responses of soil microorganisms and processes to multi-factor global change. She was awarded an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship to continue this work in 2008-2010. Her projects were performed at the long-term Jasper Ridge Global Change Experiment and examined ammonia-oxidizing microorganisms and biogeochemistry. From 2010-2011, Kathryn worked as a research associate at the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) in Boulder, Col., investigating soil microbial ecology and biogeography at the continental scale. While there, Kathryn helped to build the United States’ first ecological observatory, which will provide data to inform global change biology at an unprecedented spatial and temporal scale. Kathryn is excited to begin building her lab group at Western Michigan University starting in fall 2011. Her research will focus particularly on seasonal changes in ammonia-oxidizing bacteria and archaea as they respond to increased nitrogen deposition, as well as whole soil microbial community responses to increased incidences of wildfire in an annual California grassland. Additionally, Kathryn will be teaching Microbiology in the Fall, and is looking forward to promoting active learning in the classroom and encouraging excitement about science and the importance of microorganisms to her class.
Sciences & Mathematics
Yan Lu
Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences
Dr. Yan Lu is a new tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Western Michigan University where she specializes in Plant Physiology. Yan Lu received her B.S. and M.S. degrees from Nanjing University in China. In 2000, she became a graduate student in the department of Botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During her Ph.D. research with Tom Sharkey, Yan Lu discovered that starch degradation is regulated by day length and circadian rhythm. She also found that a disportionating enzyme and a glucan phosphorylase in the cytoplasm are critical to starch breakdown at night. After receiving her Ph.D. in 2005, Yan Lu moved to Michigan State University for a research associate position in the laboratory of Rob Last. At MSU, she worked on a chloroplast functional genomics project which involves parallel phenotypic analyses of several thousand Arabidopsis mutants of nuclear-encoded, plastid-targeted genes. Along the line, Lu identified a number of novel genes that are important for photosynthesis, a vital step of biomass accumulation in plants. Lu’s laboratory research is focused on understanding the regulation of photosynthesis and the accumulation of photoassimilates in plants. In particular, her group studies photosystem II repair and reassembly under high light stress. Lu’s recent work revealed that proper repair of photosytem II requires a small zinc finger protein on thylakoid membrane. Other topics she studies include the biosynthesis of Aspartate-derived amino acids, which are essential for human nutrition. Yan Lu already has many publications in leading journals in plant sciences, such as Plant Cell. Her research has been recognized by a number of awards, e.g., Anton Lang Memorial Research Excellence Award from MSU (2009) and Young Investigator Award at the Gordon Research Conference on Photosynthesis (2011). Lu will teach undergraduate and graduate plant physiology courses. She is a member of the International Society of Photosynthesis Research, the American Society of Plant Biologists, and the American Society for Mass Spectrometry. She has been an ad hoc reviewer for journals such as Plant Physiology, BMC Systems Biology, and Cell Research. Yan Lu primarily resides in Kalamazoo and commutes between Kalamazoo and East Lansing during weekends. Her husband, Jian Yao, is a research associate at MSU–DOE Plant Research Laboratory. They have a lovely daughter Janelle. During her leisure time, Yan Lu enjoys biking and gardening. She loves being part of the WMU community, because WMU is a unique place that emphasizes the importance of both teaching and research.
Sciences & Mathematics
Blair Szymczyna
Assistant Professor, Chemistry
Dr. Blair Szymczyna obtained his B.S. degree in Biochemistry from the University of Manitoba in 1996 and his Ph.D. degree in Medical Biophysics from the University of Toronto in 2004. His Ph.D. studies focused on the molecular structure and function of nucleic acid binding proteins and understanding how they assemble into complexes. As a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor James Williamson at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, he also studied the structure and dynamics of biomolecules that are associated with the assembly and maturation of viruses. The focus of Szymczyna’s research is to understand the mechanisms and specificity determinants involved in the formation and maturation of ribonucleoprotein assemblies, biomolecular complexes that contain proteins and RNA molecules. Aberrant formation, structure and function of ribonucleoprotein assemblies are implicated in numerous diseases, including cancer, and unique ribonucleoprotein complexes are often associated with the lifecycles of etiologic agents, such as viruses. The Szymczyna laboratory will use molecular biology and biochemical approaches, computational methods, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and other biophysical techniques to obtain key structural and dynamic information about these biological systems, which are important in the medical and nanotechnology fields. Szymczyna currently has 13 papers in peer-reviewed journals and has presented his research at many international conferences. Szymczyna was awarded a Medical Research Council of Canada Studentship to support his Ph.D. studies and a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Fellowship for his post-doctoral research.
Sciences & Mathematics
Megan L. Grunert
Assistant Professor, Chemistry and Mallinson Institute for Science Education Dr. Megan L. Grunert received a B.S. from the University of Indianapolis in 2004, majoring in Chemistry, Biology, and Spanish, where she was also an All-American swimmer. She obtained her M.S. in 2008 and Ph.D. in 2010 in Chemistry, both from Purdue University under Dr. George M. Bodner. Following completion of her Ph.D., she moved to Iowa State University to join the American Chemical Society Division of Chemical Education Examinations Institute as a post-doctoral researcher under the supervision of Dr. Tom Holme. While at Iowa State, she was also a lecturer for general chemistry. Grunert’s research interests include diversity in chemistry and other sciences, feminism and gender issues in science, motivational theories, educational psychology, and curriculum development to foster inclusive education. She is primarily a qualitative researcher, but incorporates mixed methods into her projects as well. Grunert has a paper accepted at and a paper submitted to peer-reviewed international science education journals and has numerous presentations at national and international conferences.
Sciences & Mathematics
Allan Bickle
Instructor, Mathematics
Allan Bickle is a native of Kalamazoo, Michigan. He was home-schooled and graduated from the Kalamazoo Area Math and Science Center in 2001. He graduated from Western Michigan University in 2005 with a B. S. majoring in mathematics and political science. In 2007, he received a masters in mathematics and in 2010 he received a Ph.D. in mathematics, both from Western. His area of research is graph theory, and his dissertation is entitled The k-Cores of a Graph. Bickle will serve a one-year term position.
Andrzej Dudek
Assistant Professor, Mathematics Andrzej Dudek (Ph.D. Emory University, Atlanta, GA) is Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Western Michigan University. Before he joined WMU he was Zeev Nehari Visiting Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. His broad research area is combinatorics, with emphasis on extremal combinatorics and random graphs. Extremal combinatorics studies how large or how small a collection of finite objects (e.g. numbers, graphs, sets) can be, if it has to satisfy certain restrictions. A random graph is a graph that is generated by some random process. The theory of random graphs lies at the intersection between graph theory and probability theory. His research has appeared in such journals as Combinatorica, Journal of Combinatorial Theory, and Random Structures and Algorithms. He has also presented his work at several prestigious conferences. Recently, he obtained the prize for the best Polish young combinatorialist "Open Mind", awarded biennially by the Program Committee of the Polish Combinatorial Conference.
Sciences & Mathematics
Robert Sutton
Assistant Professor, Chemistry Dr. Robert Sutton attended Cass Technical High School in Detroit, Mich. After graduation, he enrolled at Wayne State University as a chemistry major and graduated with a B.A. He was employed at the Detroit district of the Food and Drug Administration and began work on an Master’s of Science Education at WMU. Upon completion of the master’s degree, he enrolled in the doctoral program and received a Ph.D. in 1995. Sutton has held full- or part-time faculty positions at WMU, Eastern Michigan University, Kalamazoo Valley Community College, and Grand Rapids Community College. He will serve a one-year term appointment during the 2011-12 academic year.
Max D. Wyman
Faculty Specialist II, Physics I grew up in Swartz Creek, Mich., and graduated from Swartz Creek High School in 1997. After high school, I attended Michigan Technological University studying physics, graduating with a B.S. in 2000. For graduate school, I attended University of Wisconsin Madison. When not rock-climbing or mountain-biking, I worked on the Madison Symmetric Torus plasma device focusing on the fueling of hot fusion-grade plasmas with cryogenic pellets. In 2007, I graduated with a Ph.D. in Physics, specializing experimental plasma physics. For several years, I worked as a scientist at Tri Alpha Energy (TAE) of Foothill Ranch, Calif., a startup focusing on magnetically confining plasmas for nuclear fusion research. In 2010, I moved back to the Midwest and began teaching physics at Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills, Ill. I am serving a one-year term appointment at WMU.
Sciences & Mathematics
Lei Meng
Assistant Professor, Geography and Environmental Studies Lei Meng holds a Ph.D. degree in Geography from Texas A&M University (2009), an M.S. in Geology from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2005), an additional M.S. degree in Soil Science from China Agricultural University (2003), and a B.S. degree in Geology from Nanjing University (2000). Meng is a physical geographer with research interest and expertise in climate variability and climate change as well as their impacts on hydrological and terrestrial ecosystems. He uses the Community Earth System Model (CESM) to investigate hydrological and biogeochemical processes that are interactive with climate. Specifically, his research focuses on the following areas: 1) land-atmosphere interactions, 2) climate change and terrestrial ecosystem modeling, and 3) soil moisture modeling. During his doctoral studies, he examined the relationship between antecedent soil moisture anomalies and summer precipitation in the U.S. Great Plains. The goal of this research is to improve the predictability of drought. He used both statistical analysis and model simulations to identify how antecedent soil moisture conditions and sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies influence summer precipitation. He is planning to further investigate the role of soil moisture in the climate system in order to improve the understanding of the cause of drought. After completing his doctoral degree, he moved to Cornell University as a post-doctoral research associate. At Cornell, his research focused on developing a biogeochemical methane model (CLM4Me) in collaboration with others. This model helps understand environmental controls on methane emissions from wetlands. He also developed a rice paddy methane model. He will continue improving this model after he comes to Western. He is also interested in remote sensing of soil moisture and soil moisture modeling. He is actively looking for collaborators at Western for any of the above research areas. Meng has published many refereed journal articles and presented his research at regional and national conferences. Research results have been published in high-impact journals including Journal of Hydrometeorology, International Journal of Climatology, Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, and Biogeosciences. Meng has received several prestigious awards including the John Russell Mather Paper of the Year (POY) award from Climate Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers (2008) and the Mills scholarship from Texas Water Resources Institute (2007). Meng is a member of the Association of American Geographers and the American Geophysical Union.
Sciences & Mathematics
The College of Arts and Sciences is a dynamic and vibrant college within a learner-centered, discovery-driven, and globally-engaged university. Our collective activities create a challenging and intellectually vital learning community, engage students and faculty alike in a continuing discourse, and provide a focus for being active, informed, productive, creative, open-minded, and ethically responsible citizens in a complex, multicultural, and rapidly changing world. As the largest of the six academic colleges at Western Michigan University, the College of Arts and Sciences is home to over 320 full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty; enrolls 5,200 undergraduate students in one of its 68 major programs; and a graduate student enrollment that exceeds 1,000 students. The college is committed to the support and enhancement of undergraduate and graduate education, scholarly research, and public/professional service informed in all dimensions by a commitment to diversity, to collaboration, to social responsibility and to civility; and sustained by continuous development and recognition of the efforts of faculty, advising personnel, support staff, emeriti and alumni.
Western Michigan University College of Arts and Sciences www.wmich.edu/cas 2304 Friedmann Hall Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5308