07-08 CASTL Fellows
Tami Draves
Music Education
dravesta@msu.edu
Tami Draves is a doctoral candidate in Music Education at Michigan State University, where she teaches music education classes, supervises student teachers, and is the assistant director of the New Horizons Band at the MSU Community Music School. A Georgia native, Tami relocated to East Lansing to pursue her doctoral degree following eight years of successful public school music teaching in South Carolina, New Mexico, and Georgia. Tami received a BME from Auburn University and an MM from the University of New Mexico. Her current research interest is music teacher preparation. Tami has presented her research at music education conferences in Arizona and Michigan and presented research from a pilot study for her dissertation at the Society for Research in Music Education Research Symposium in Lawrence, Kansas in July 2007.
Kathryn Edney
American Studies
tremperk@msu.edu
Kathryn Edney is a PhD student in MSU's American Studies Program. Her dissertation, entitled “Gliding through our Memories: American Musical Theater Does History, 1940s-2000s,” focuses on the ways in which U.S. history has been both represented and used within the context of the live event that is a staged musical show. Kathryn has presented at many regional and national conferences on such topics as representations of the past on the musical stage, Brecht and the modern musical, early cinema, and documentary film. She is also the managing editor for the Journal of Popular Culture, the leading journal in that field.
Igor Houwat
Music Performance
houwatig@msu.edu
Igor Nunes Houwat is a first-year master’s student in Saxophone and Music Theory at MSU. He also serves as a teaching assistant for oral skills under Prof. Bruce Taggart in the College of Music. After graduating from the University Saint-Esprit de Kaslik in Lebanon, Igor spent three years in Paris, where he studied classical saxophone, conducting, musical formation, and composition. His other interests include film, film music, oriental music, politics (he holds a BA in Political Sciences and a minor in Public Administration from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon), and mythology and its relation to art and society. Igor has taught and performed in Lebanon and France, also participating in the European premiere of “Fantasmi” by Marilyn Shrude. He recently won the 2007 UFAM Chamber Music Competition with the Quatuor International de Cergy-Pontoise.
Eric Jessup-Anger
Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education
eranger33@gmail.com
Eric Jessup Anger is pursuing a PhD in MSU's Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education. His previous educational experiences include degrees in Educational Policy Studies and English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and in Student Affairs Administration from Bowling Green State University, and a graduate certificate in Women’s Studies from Colorado State University. He has served as an administrator and instructor at a number of universities throughout the United States while focusing his efforts on developing collaborative partnerships between academic and student affairs to promote student learning and engagement. Current research interests include organizational change, academic leadership, and the scholarship of teaching, learning, and engagement. He is fascinated by questions of how and why learners vary in their activation and use of the knowledge and skills they develop in traditional learning environments throughout their lives.
Van Kalbach
History
kalbachv@msu.edu
Van Kalbach is a doctoral student in history, working on 19th-century history of science in Western Europe. Van was a graduate assistant for the Residential Option in the Arts and Letters (ROIAL) 2001-2007, assisting in providing enriching learning experiences on and off campus for freshmen and sophomores. Among others, these included opportunities for student engagement with performers from the Stratford Festival in Ontario and visitors hosted by the Quebec Center, along with art and service projects. From these experiences it has become clear how important a shared living environment is for this age group. Van is an advocate of learning beyond the classroom and campus, and hopes to contribute to the Residential College of Arts and Humanities’ stimulation and facilitation of such learning this year.
Stefanie Kendall
Teacher Education
kendal55@msu.edu
Stefanie Kendall is in her third year in the Teacher Education doctoral program. She started teaching young children with fetal-alcohol and fetal-cocaine syndromes in 1993 and in 1997 became certified to teach High School English. Stefanie worked in Bath, Maine three years and then moved to Kuwait in August 2001, where she remained until 2004. Her experience there led to an interest in the spaces between teacher and student, the school and its community, particularly when sociocultural and political pressures reach a critical point. In Kuwait, she and her students worked to create a classroom atmosphere focused on unity rather than division by concentrating on curriculum that captured all of their interests, though for different reasons.
This year Stefanie intends to build curriculum that deeply involves various media, art, film, music, etc. to create an active, creative classroom with engaged teachers and learners that moves students and teachers to act beyond the classroom, shifting curiosity into their communities, be they local or global.
Aimee Knight
Rhetoric and Writing
knightai@msu.edu
Aimée Knight is in the doctoral program in Rhetoric and Writing. Her teaching and research interests include the intersections of digital and cultural rhetorics, and her dissertation focuses on aesthetic engagement in the integrative arts and humanities. Aimée teaches courses in English; Writing, Rhetoric and American Culture; and Integrative Arts and Humanities. Currently, in her role as CASTL fellow, Aimée will conduct a SoTL research project that promotes student portfolios as a method of program assessment.
Before attending Michigan State University, Aimée served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Poland and earned her master’s degree from Jagiellonian University’s Programme in Central and Eastern European Studies in Krakow, Poland.
Jill McKillips
Teacher Education
mckilli5@msu.edu
Jill McKillips is a PhD student in Teacher Education. She also holds a B.A. in Art Education and an MA in Curriculum and Teaching from MSU. Her research interests include the influences of popular culture on/in a student’s art world, how art is taught in both Eastern and Western cultures, and the development of a global art education curriculum with a focus on teaching beyond the artifact and incorporating more issues of culture and social justice. Jill’s research has taken her to several countries to investigate how art is taught in diverse public educational systems. She is a regular presenter of art educator portfolio preparation at both the Michigan (MAEA) and National (NAEA) Art Education Association’s Annual Conferences. She has also presented at the Comparative and International Education Society’s (CIES) 2007 Conference on the development and implementation of a socially just art curriculum. Before pursuing her PhD, Jill taught elementary art for two years in Grand Ledge, Michigan. She is currently teaching TE 802/804, Methods in Art Education, and is also working as an art education field instructor for intern teachers in the MSU Teacher Certification Program.
Julie O'Connor
American Studies
oconn158@msu.edu
Julie Wendy O’Connor is a PhD candidate in the American Studies Program at Michigan State University. Her research interests include contemporary poetry and poetics, anti-racist and feminist pedagogy, indigenous studies of Canada and the United States, American and Canadian regionalism, and feminist and spatial theory. She is currently writing her dissertation on the transnational sense of ecofeminist community created by women through poetry, both literary and aural, in the Greater Niagara Region of Western New York and Southern Ontario. Julie has presented research on American and Canadian women writers and regionalist reading pedagogy at conferences throughout the United States and Canada. She has taught courses in integrative arts and humanities, composition, and women’s studies at Michigan State University, SUNY at Buffalo State College, and Niagara University.
Meghan Sullivan
Anthropology
sulli298@msu.edu
Meghan Sullivan is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in the Department of Anthropology. Before coming to MSU, she earned a BA in Sociocultural Anthropology from California State University-Northridge and worked in various educational settings both at home and abroad. While at MSU, she has worked as a research assistant with the Institute for Food and Agricultural Standards on a National Science Foundation funded project entitled “Building Capacity for Social and Ethical Research and Education in Agrifood Nanotechnology,” as a teaching assistant for ISS 215 and ISS 315, and held a Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship for Portuguese. Her current research interests include examining the connections between urban agriculture, civic engagement, and neighborhood vitality.
Tetyana Sydorenko
Second Language Studies
sydoren1@msu.edu
Tetyana "Tanya" Sydorenko is a second-year doctoral student in Second Language Studies. She received her BA in English Linguistics from Truman State University and her MA in English Linguistics from Eastern Michigan University. Her professional experience includes teaching TOEFL, general English, and academic English to ESL learners in the United States. Tanya’s main interest is the research and development of technology for language learning. She has presented on language software at the MITESOL conference and wrote a book chapter on technology enhanced language learning, and she is currently conducting research on captioned video. Tanya also is interested in the use of technology for language testing. She is now developing an online module for the teaching and assessment of pragmatics in Russian as a foreign language.
Robyn Tasaka
Rhetoric and Writing
tasakaro@msu.edu
Robyn Tasaka is a doctoral student in Rhetoric and Writing and holds a master’s degree in English from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Her interests include online self-representations (e.g., blogs and social networking sites), the influence of social class and region on racial/ethnic identity, teaching in computer classrooms, and language diversity. Robyn has worked as a tutor since 2000 and as a teacher since 2002, and has worked with students of various ages and abilities from diverse racial, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. She has worked for the Hawai’i Upward Bound program for four years and continues to teach in their summer program. At MSU Robyn has taught WRA 1004/ 0102 and WRA 150, and worked in the Writing Center.
Amanda Tigner
American Studies
tigneram@msu.edu
Amanda Grace Tigner is a PhD student at MSU in American Studies and Museum Studies. Her research interests are broad, ranging from museum practice to art and visual culture to natural history and environmental justice. She has served as a teaching assistant for various courses in Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities (IAH) and history of art at MSU. In the 2007-08 academic year, she is teaching a section of WRA 110 focusing on writing as a naturalist. She has also worked as a contributor for City Pulse, Lansing’s alternative weekly newspaper, developed public workshops for children through the MSU Museum, worked with the State Historic Preservation Office to list Morrill Hall on the National Register of Historic Places, and served as a Foreign Language and Area Studies fellow in Japanese through the MSU Asian Studies Center. When she is not involved with these various pursuits, Amanda loves traveling in northern Michigan, feeding squirrels, and spending time with her fiancé Matt and their cat Prada.
Cynthia Vagnetti
Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures
vagnett3@msu.edu
Cynthia Vagnetti is a PhD student in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultural Studies program at MSU. She also has an MS in Photography. Cynthia teaches tier one writing with an emphasis on service-learning. Her research interests are cultural rhetorics, engagement through public humanities, and “visual storytelling.” Cynthia has directed public humanities projects addressing food, farming, and land use issues across the United States. She recently co-curated a traveling exhibition with EXHIBITS USA titled “Voices of American Farm Women” and produced four documentary videos on Upper Midwest farm women. Her collection of oral history interviews, black and white photography, and video is the foundation for her dissertation, “Voices from the Field.” She is co-founder of the MSU Museum Voices Project, which recently produced What Will Be in the Fields Tomorrow, a script for reader’s theatre based on her collection. As a CASTL fellow she assists in program development for the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities.
Sophie Vick
Philosophy
vicksoph@msu.edu
Sophie Vick is a PhD student in Philosophy. Her main interests are feminist theory, ethics and development, and the connections between philosophy and the performing arts. Sophie’s current research involves the ways in which theater can promote and encourage engagement with philosophical concepts. She is particularly interested in how playwrights incorporate complex philosophical material into their work and how performers grapple with this material and its presentation as they prepare for a show. She is eager to understand and utilize theater as a means of keeping philosophy engaging and relevant outside of the discipline itself.
Ben White
Second Language Studies
whitebe5@msu.edu
Ben White is in the Second Language Studies PhD program. His interests include critical pedagogy, materials development, formal and cognitive linguistics, writing instruction, vocabulary acquisition, and grammar development among language learners. With an M.Ed. in ESL from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, he has worked in university and language school settings. Ben’s professional experience includes teaching and teacher training in the United States, the Czech Republic, Spain, and Croatia. Presently, he is an instructor at the English Language Center. His current research focuses on ESL learners’ acquisition of the English article system (a/an/the).