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Ann-Marie Conrado
Assistant Professor
Art, Art History, and Design
Industrial Design
Ann-Marie Conrado is assistant professor in Industrial Design of the Department of Art, Art History, and Design. Conrado’s research focuses on using design to address social and humanitarian concerns. She has worked primarily in Nepal with fair trade artisans to design and develop products more in line with contemporary lifestyles. Her interventions have significantly increased demand and sales for traditional handicraft and artisan communities struggling to compete in the global marketplace. At Notre Dame, Conrado brings that ethos to the classroom, engaging students in social design projects and bringing students to Nepal to work on various research projects. She was recently awarded the inaugural Young Educator of the Year Award by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) for her significant contributions to educating the next generation of designers in realizing the potential of design to advance the common good.
As faculty fellow, Professor Conrado will further develop her work in Nepal working with Rachel Tomas Morgan and the Center’s International Summer Service Learning Program (ISSLP). Their collaboration will make sustainable discipline- based ISSLP placements for students in the Design Program.
John M . Duffy
Francis O'Malley Director of the University Writing Program
Associate Professor English
John Duffy studies and writes about the convergences of rhetoric, literacy, ethics, disability, and education. He is the author of the award-winning book, Writing from These Roots, which charted the development of writing in a Hmong refugee community in Wisconsin, and he has published essays and editorials on a variety of topics in academic journals, newspapers, and on-line publications. He is the co-editor of the forthcoming book of essays, Literacy, Economy, and Power, and edited the special issue of the Disability Studies Quarterly on rhetoric and disability. He serves on the editorial boards of Written Communication and the Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and he is a Fellow of the Institute for Educational Initiatives. Duffy is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. He teaches courses in rhetoric, writing, and literature.
As a Faculty Fellow, Professor Duffy will work closely with Connie Mick and Annie Cahill-Kelly on community-based writing projects, looking at ways to develop, assess, and promote these.
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Rev. Hugh R. Page, Jr.
Dean of The First Year of Studies
Associate Professor of Theology and Africana Studies
The Reverend Hugh R. Page, Jr. is an Episcopal priest, poet, musician, photographer, martial artist, and certified tennis professional. He strives to live according to the Renaissance Ideal of broad learning and full engagement in life. Dr. Pages’s research interests are in early Hebrew poetry; the cultural content of ancient epic; theories of myth; African American biblical interpretation; poetry as medium for theological expression; the use of religious traditions and sacred texts in the construction of individual and corporate identity in the Black community; and the role of mysticism and esoterism in African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and Afro-Canadian spirituality. As a Faculty Fellow, he will lead an initiative outlining a vision of meaningful community engagement for the first-year experience.
Kevin Whelan
Michael Smurfit Director of The Keough-Naughton Notre Dame Centre in Ireland
Kevin Whelan is one of Ireland’s best known and widely published scholars of history. Since 2009, he has incorporated a community-based learning [CBL] component into his required Introduction to Ireland course for students to examine and engage in social issues in Dublin during their semester abroad. Whelan has written or edited 15 books and over one hundred articles on Ireland’s history, geography, and culture.
As a Faculty Fellow, he will deepen his collaboration with Center staff member Rosie McDowell to foster student engagement in contemporary social issues in Dublin through CBL. He will provide oversight to the pilot program of the Dublin Social Concerns Internships in summer 2012 and he will consult with Center staff on initiatives to promote
CBL as a salient component of the study abroad experience. He will also chair a panel on CBL at the Forum on Education Abroad conference in Dublin in December 2012, and present at its 2013 conference in Chicago (April 3-5).
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Lisa M. Anderson
Fifteen years ago, Lisa Anderson and her husband received the chilling news that their son, Chris, had been diagnosed with mental illness. Since then, she has sought to learn and share all
she can about the disease. In 2006, Ms. Anderson assisted the Center for Social Concerns with its Social Concerns Seminar: Understanding Mental Illness. Now, as Community Fellow, Ms. Anderson will again work with a Center seminar, titled In their Shoes: Understanding Mental Illness, funded through the generous support of the Hersh Foundation. She will also be assisting faculty members to integrate into their classes student community engagement with local organizations addressing mental health concerns, in collaboration with the Center’s community liaison, Annie Cahill Kelly. Ms. Anderson has worked in higher education for over 15 years. Most recently, she was associate director of the Notre Dame Career Center and director of graduate student career planning and placement.
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Joseph A. Buttigieg
English
Joseph A. Buttigieg, is the William R. Kenan Jr., professor of English, director of the Ph.D. in Literature Program, director of the Hesburgh-Yusko Scholars Program, and co-director of Italian Studies at Notre Dame. His main interests are modern literature, critical theory, and the relationship between culture and politics. In addition to numerous articles, Buttigieg has authored a book on James Joyce's aesthetics, A Portrait of the Artist in Different Perspective. He is also the editor and translator of the multi-volume complete critical edition of Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, a project that has been supported by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. As a Center Faculty Fellow, he will work closely with Connie Snyder Mick, director of Social Concerns Seminars and Community-Based Learning, to consult on community engagement within the Hesburgh-Yusko program and on Center-based faculty development initiatives.
Juan Carlos Guzman
Institute for Latino Studies
Juan Carlos Guzman is assistant professional specialist with
Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, where he is the director
of research. As a Center Faculty Fellow, he will be mentoring
undergraduates in the Poverty Studies Interdisciplinary Minor
(PSIM), which Center faculty member Connie Snyder Mick co-directs.
Under his guidance, PSIM students will be engaged in
community-based research that focuses on increasing the institutional
capacity of community organizations to deal with health
issues such as obesity and chronic disease. Dr. Guzman will also
be assisting, along with the Center’s Naomi Penney, in the design
of community-based participatory research being undertaken by
the Monroe Park Food Co-op in collaboration with other organizations
in the area that are addressing issues of food security. Dr.
Guzman’s research focuses on socioeconomic issues that affect
vulnerable populations such as women and children. His publications
have centered on the state of Latinos in Chicago, how gender
shapes adolescence, and the impact of remittances and gender on
household expenditures in Ghana.
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Jim Frabutt
Alliance for Catholic Education
Jim Frabutt, Ph.D. is an Associate Professional Specialist in the Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program, part of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education. As a concurrent Associate Professor of Psychology and a Fellow in the Institute for Educational Initiatives, Dr. Frabutt has partnered with teachers, principals, schools, social service providers, and government agencies to conduct action-oriented, community-based research. As a CSC Fellow, he will work closely with Center for Social Concerns colleagues Mary Beckman and Jay Brandenberger, as well as Arts and Letters Associate Dean Stuart Greene, and Jay Caponigro, the Director of the Robinson Community Learning Center, to foster and deepen community engaged scholarship among faculty and staff on campus. He will assist in framing a strategic plan for community-engaged scholarship that illustrates how such work will advance the comprehensive mission of Notre Dame. As part of this effort, he will serve as a core team member in writing the University’s application to the Carnegie Foundation for classification as a community-engaged institution.
Paul Kollman
Department of Theology
Paul Kollman, CSC, assistant professor of Theology, has been assisting Rachel Tomas Morgan with the academic and theological content of the International Summer Service Learning Program (ISSLP) at the Center for Social Concerns since 2004 and has been part of the Center’s theology working group. In 2009, Kollman and Tomas Morgan co-authored an article published in New Theology Review on the challenges and opportunities of service-learning at Catholic universities. As a CSC Fellow, Kollman will work with a newly formed faculty learning community on fostering global citizenship at Notre Dame. Additionally, he will continue to work with Tomas Morgan to integrate theological concepts and constructs of global citizenship through their work in the ISSLP. Kollman’s research focuses on African Christianity, mission history, and world Christianity. He has carried out research in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. He has published articles and reviews in a variety of journals in theology, religious studies, and African studies; his book The Evangelization of Slaves and Catholic Origins in Easter Africa (Orbis) came out in 2005.
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Kasturi Haldar
Center for Rare and Neglected Diseases
Kasturi Haldar holds the Julius Nieuwland Chair of Biological Sciences and is the director of Notre Dame’s Center for Rare and Neglected Diseases. As a Fellow, she and Mary Beckman, Center for Social Concerns associate director, in collaboration with the Ara Parseghian Medical Research Foundation, are in the beginning stages of developing a health network to provide services for families in the state and region affected by Niemann-Pick type C. This is a genetic disease that usually appears in early childhood for which no known cure currently exists. So far this initiative has engaged two undergraduates and two graduate students in a new course through which they are compiling information for several area families that will be useful to them as they work with physicians and other providers in the care of their affected children.
Professor Haldar’s research seeks to understand the common principles of vacuolar biogenesis of emerging and re-emerging infections and their links to chronic disease pathologies in animal models and human populations.
Benedict Giamo
American Studies
Benedict Giamo is an associate professor of American Studies. Giamo’s interests include literary and cultural studies, poverty and homelessness, and creative nonfiction. As a Fellow, he will combine those interests by working with Connie Snyder Mick, Center for Social Concerns assistant director, to develop a creative nonfiction workshop for selected students enrolled in the Social Concerns Seminar on Appalachia. Giamo will mentor students on the art of interview and the genre of creative nonfiction as a mode of research, reflection, and response to the injustice they witness in Appalachia.
Giamo’s most recent book, Kerouac, the Word and the Way, examines the prose art of Jack Kerouac as an expression of an ever shifting spiritual quest. He has recently completed a book-length manuscript in the genre of creative nonfiction entitled “Homeless Come Home: An Advocate, the Riverbank, and Murder in Topeka, Kansas.”
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Dan Lapsley
Psychology
Dan Lapsley is Professor of Psychology at Notre Dame and Fellow at the Institute for Educational Initiatives where he is facilitating a comprehensive initiative to build the field of Catholic education. As a Faculty Fellow, Dr. Lapsley is leading, with Jay Brandenberger of the Center, the Notre Dame Study of Moral Purpose. This funded investigation is following the Notre Dame class of 1994 to examine the impact of service-learning and civic engagement during the college years on later moral commitments and well-being. The research team, which includes both graduate and undergraduate students, is analyzing data from over 1000 respondents from 1994 seniors, of whom 450 have submitted to intensive surveys in 2007. Preliminary findings have already been reported at professional meetings. Dr. Lapsley's overall research focuses on various topics in adolescent cognitive and personality development. He also examines the moral dimensions of personality including moral identity and character development. He is the author or editor of seven books, and he currently serves on the Executive Board of the International Association for Moral Education and on the editorial boards of various journals.
First Graduate Student Fellow
Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, M.A.
Graduate Student
Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, M.A., the Center’s first Graduate Student Fellow, will work with Center staff to develop a model for connecting graduate students in the Department of Sociology with community-based teaching opportunities. It is intended that this model will be useful in the Center’s collaborations with other departments as well. Mr. Choi-Fitzpatrick will also begin development of a course to be titled "Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking in Global Perspective." This class will address the global nature and scope of human trafficking and modern slavery as well as contemporary efforts to address the issue. As part of the course, students will work with Free the Slaves, an international human rights non-profit organization located in Washington D.C., where Mr. Choi-Fitzpatrick is the National Outreach Coordinator and directs Faith in Action, an interfaith initiative against slavery. Mr. Choi-Fitzpatrick has a master's degree in International Administration, with concentrations in both Human Rights and International Security.
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Jennifer Warlick
Chair of the Economics and Policy Studies Department and Associate Professor of Economics
As Center Fellow, she will lead an initiative aimed toward the development of a poverty studies minor, in collaboration with Center Associate Director Mary Beckman and several faculty members from across the campus. Also, she will collaborate with Center Seminar Director Angela Miller McGraw to create complementarities between and her own economics course on rural poverty, and the Center Appalachia Seminar, through which almost 300 students travel to nineteen sites in the region over fall or spring break. Professor Warlick’s scholarly interests are in the area of poverty policy and the effect of income taxes and transfers on low income families and the elderly. Her course offerings include economics of poverty and the economics of education.
Todd D. Whitmore
Associate Professor of Theology, Concurrent Associate Professor in the Masters in Nonprofit Administration, and the Director of Notre Dame’s Program in Catholic Social Tradition
As a Center for Social Concerns Faculty Fellow, Professor Whitmore will be working with Bill Purcell, the Center’s Associate Director for Catholic Social Tradition and Practice, to deepen the integration of Catholic social thought within Center community-based learning opportunities and to incorporate Catholic social thought into the Center’s strategic plan for justice education. Also, the Center will collaborate with Professor Whitmore to enhance the university Program in Catholic Social Tradition. Professor Whitmore is the author of numerous articles on Catholic social teaching as it relates to economic life, war and peace, civil society, and education. His most recent work takes him to northern Uganda to investigate the possibilities of peace and reconciliation in war-torn districts.
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Carl Ackermann
Associate Professional Specialist in the Department of Finance
For the last six years, he has collaborated with the Director of Summer Service Learning Programs at the Center for Social Concerns on ACCION, a micro-lending program that seeks to reduce poverty and create employment in the Americas. Through ACCION, Notre Dame undergraduates travel to sites across the country to participate in microlending programs as part of a three-credit course for which credits are assigned both through the College of Business and through the Department of Theology. Professor Ackerman will continue this work and will also now team with several local organizations to address financial literacy with the goal of educating and empowering those in greatest financial need. Professor Ackerman studies and writes on the mutual fund industry, and his scholarly work has appeared in the Journal of Finance and the Journal of Business Ethics.
Susan Ohmer
William T. and Helen Kuhn Carey Assistant Professor of Modern Communication
Department of Film, Television and Theatre
Susan Ohmer teaches classes on film and television history, media industries, and digital culture. Dr. Ohmer also serves as the Director of Debate at Notre Dame. Through the generous support of the Careys, Notre Dame has reintroduced a program in Policy Debate which offers students the opportunity to research and argue one focused topic each year. Through her faculty fellow position at the Center for Social Concerns, Professor Ohmer and her students will make this research available to policy makers around the country through an effort initiated through the Bonner Foundation and a grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service titled Policy Options.
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Agustin Fuentes
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Flatley Director of the Office of Undergraduate and Post-Baccalaureate Fellowships
As Fellow, Fuentes will be assisting the Center in linking undergraduates with community-based research opportunities, and in providing information about community research to the campus and area community through speakers and other means. Fuentes has written extensively in the areas of human evolution and behavior, primate behavior, conservation , and the importance of collaborative research and undergraduate teaching.
Darcia Narvaez
Associate Professor of Psychology.
Darcia Narvaez directs the Center for Ethical Education. She works on lifespan moral character formation. As a Center Fellow, she will be working with Jay Brandenberger to conduct an ethics audit of the campus. Professor Narvaez is a member, with Center Executive Director Fr. Bill Lies, CSC, of the Faculty Learning Community on integrating Catholic Social Teaching into university instruction. She will be assisting the Center to review its courses and programs for how ethical skill development can be incorporated. Professor Narvaez has published more than 40 articles, books and chapters.
Michael C.F. Wiescher
Freimann Professor of Physics and the Director of the Joint Institute of Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA) at the University of Notre Dame and Adjunct Professor of Physics at Michigan State University.
As Faculty Fellow he will expand his one-credit interdisciplinary course "Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Warfare" into a three-credit class with research opportunities for undergraduate students that utilize the community links of the Center for Social Concerns. He will also create, with the assistance of Suzanne Coshow, Director of Educational Outreach for JINA, a special outreach program through which physics undergraduates and graduate students develop computer games and movies for presentations at local schools on topics of general interest in nuclear physics and astrophysics. Wiescher also will plan a public lecture series on Nuclear Weapons and Aspects of Non-Proliferation to provide opportunities for a broad audience to learn about the legal, political, historical, and physics aspects.
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Don Pope-Davis
Professor of Counseling Psychology and Assistant Vice President and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies
Don Pope-Davis is working with the Center for Social Concerns to enhance the role of graduate students in its work. Through his facilitation, graduate students are now eligible for small grants to develop community-based learning courses. Pope-Davis also is helping the Center expand its efforts in multicultural contexts. For example, post-docs in multicultural studies under his direction work with Center staff on research projects and other activities related to their areas of expertise. Pope-Davis’s primary research interests are in multicultural psychology, counseling, and education. He is a research fellow of the American Psychological Association.
