Faculty News
Faculty Named Provost Fellows
Thirty-three Seattle University faculty members were selected to serve one-year terms as Provost Fellows, who will represent and embed faculty leadership and scholarly expertise throughout the planning and implementation of Reigniting Our Strategic Directions. Of those, 22 are members of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Goal 1: Reimagine and Revise our Curriculum
Sustainability and Climate Change
- John Armstrong, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies
- Tanya Hayes, PhD, Professor and Director, Institute of Public Service and Program Director, Environmental Studies
Racial Injustice and Widening Economic Inequity
- Maureen Feit, PhD, Assistant Professor, Nonprofit Leadership,
- Hazel Hahn, PhD, Professor, History and affiliated with Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Asian Studies, and Film Studies
- Alex Johnston, Assistant Professor, Film Production
- Hye-Kyung Kang, MSW, PhD, Associate Professor and Chair, Social Work and Director, Master of Social Work
Rapid Technological Change and its Societal and Economic Impacts
- Julie Homchick Crowe, PhD, Assistant Professor, Communication and Media
- Matthew Rellihan, PhD, Associate Professor, Philosophy
- Matthew Whitlock, PhD, Associate Professor, Theology and Religious Studies
University Core
- Hilary Hawley, PhD, Senior Instructor, English and Director, Core Learning and Engagement Programs
- Kate Koppelman, PhD, Associate Professor and Acting Chair, English, and Associate Appointments in Medieval Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
- Nova Robinson, PhD, Associate Professor, International Studies and History
- Eric Severson, PhD, Senior Instructor, Philosophy
- Donna Teevan, PhD, Associate Professor and Department Chair, Theology and Religious Studies
Community-Engaged Learning
- Rebecca McNamara, PhD, Lecturer, Matteo Ricci Institute
- Estella Williamson, DSW, Field Director, Clinical Professor, Social Work
Goal 2: Strengthen Professional Formation for All
Scholarship Mission and Culture
- Nalini Iyer, PhD, Professor, Department of English
Faculty Performance and Evaluation
- Amelia Derr, MSW, PhD, Associate Professor, Social Work
Goal 3: Enhancing the Student Experience
- Patrick Schoettmer, PhD, Instructor, Political Science,
- Sarah Shultz, PhD, Professor and Chair, Kinesiology
Goal 4: Supporting LIFT SU Initiatives
- Hidy Basta, PhD, Director, Writing Center
- Rashmi Chordiya, PhD, Assistant Professor, Institute of Public Service
Provost's Celebration of Faculty Scholarship and Achievements
Granted the honorary rank of Emerita/Emeritus upon their retirement from Seattle University:
- Daniel Dombrowski, PhD, Professor, Philosophy
- Ki Gottberg, MFA, Professor, Theatre
- James Risser, PhD, Professor, Philosophy
- Marylou Sena, PhD, Associate Professor, Philosophy
Kirsten Moana Thompson, PhD, Professor and Director, Film Studies was one of two recipients of the 2021-2022 Provost’s Award for Excellence in Service for Tenure/Tenure Track Faculty,
Hilary Hawley, PhD, Senior Instructor, English, received the 2021-2022 Provost’s Award for Outstanding Service for Term Faculty.
Faculty Promotions
Dr. Sean McDowell in the English Department is promoted to Full Professor. Dr. McDowell joined Seattle University in 2002 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2008 is a scholar of early modern works, particularly metaphysical poetry and is a publishing poet himself. Among many roles at Seattle U, he served as Director of the University Honors program from 2012-2021, leading during the development of and transition to the three-track model we have today.
Dr. Hidy Basta, also in the English Department and Director of the Writing Center, is promoted to Senior Instructor. Dr. Basta joined Seattle University as the Writing Center Director in 2017. She led the Writing Center in enhancing services for graduate students through the pandemic, and serves as Board Member of the Pacific Northwest Writing Center Association.
Faculty News
Sonia Barrios Tinoco, PhD, Associate Professor and Chair, Modern Languages; Becky McNamara, PhD, Lecturer, Matteo Ricci Institute; and Zachary D. Wood, PhD, Assistant Professor, Institute of Public Service are three of four Seattle University faculty featured in “Community Engaged Teaching and Learning” in the Center for Community Engagement Annual Report.
John C. Bean, PhD, Emeritus Professor, English, and June Johnson, Associate Professor of English, have recently provided a two-month series of Zoom consultations for a five-person faculty team from Westminster International University in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The team’s goal was to create a new undergraduate course focused on sustainable development in Uzbekistan using American pedagogical strategies for fostering critical thinking and argument. Employing principles of backward design, the faculty team will adopt pedagogical strategies modeled in Johnson’s textbook “Global Issues/Local Arguments” and in Bean’s “Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom.”
Andrew G. Bjelland, PhD, Emeritus Professor, Philosophy, published an op-ed in The Salt Lake Tribune, “Show tolerance for the religious orientation of American companies.”
Kathryn L. Bollich-Zeigler, PhD, Assistant Professor, Psychology, interviewed Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast for “Whatever Happened to Happiness?” as part of The Crosscut Festival.
Caitlin Carlson, PhD, Associate Professor, Communication and Media, was a presenter at "Fighting Hate Speech: Global Perspectives," a virtual event hosted by the United Nations on June 16.
Rebecca Cobb, PhD, LMFT, Assistant Clinical Professor and Clinical Coordinator, Couples and Family Therapy, published “Reimagining the application of systems theory via teletherapy interventions” in Family Therapy Magazine, American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.
Elizabeth Dale, PhD, Associate Professor, Nonprofit Leadership, published a chapter on “LGBTQ Philanthropy” in “Achieving Excellence in Fundraising, 5th Ed.”
Theresa Earenfight, PhD, Professor, History and Director, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, appeared on the “Talking Tudors” podcast, discussing her book, “Catherine of Aragon: Infanta of Spain, Queen of England.”
Christie Eppler, PhD, LMFT, Program Director and Professor, Couples and Family Therapy, was named co-editor of Springer's “Stepping into Socially-Just Teaching: Lived Experiences of Family Therapy Educators,” a forthcoming text (2023).
Rob Efird, Professor, Anthropology and Asian Studies, gave an invited lecture on April 15 at Willamette University entitled "Nature to Nurture: Nature Education and Urban Chinese Childrearing."
Maureen Emerson Feit, PhD, Director and Assistant Professor, Nonprofit Leadership, published “The Dissonance of 'Doing Good:' Fostering Critical Pedagogy to Challenge the Selective Tradition of Nonprofit Management Education.”
Carlyn E. Ferrari, PhD, Assistant Professor, English, has been named one of 28 Career Enhancement Fellows for the 2022-23 academic year by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars. The Career Enhancement Fellowship, funded by the Mellon Foundation and administered by Citizens & Scholars, seeks to increase the presence of underrepresented junior and other faculty members in the humanities, social sciences, and arts by creating career development opportunities for selected Fellows with promising research projects.
Brooke Gialopsos, PhD, Assistant Professor, Criminal Justice, Criminology, and Forensics, co-authored "Arming teachers seems an easy fix but are the possible costs worth the risks?" for the Columbus Dispatch.
Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, PhD, Professor, Modern Languages and Women Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Has published “¿How Many Indians Can We Be?” She published a chapter in “The Many Voices of the Los Angeles Novel” from Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Haejeong Hazel Hahn, PhD, Professor, History and affiliated with Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Asian Studies, and Film Studies, published “Feminism and Empire” in The Routledge Global History of Feminism, edited by Bonnie Smith and Nova Robinson, Abingdon, UK & New York: Routledge, 2022.
Tanya Hayes, PhD, Professor and Director, Institute of Public Service and Program Director, Environmental Studies, and Felipe Murtinho, PhD, Associate Professor and Director, International Studies, and Associate Appointments, Institute of Public Service and Environmental Studies, recently traveled to Costa Rica to visit colleagues working with Environment for Development (EfD) at CATIE (Center for Tropical Research Investigation and Higher Education.) The purpose of the visit was to begin collaboration on future projects on community water management. Learn more here.
Jacqueline Helfgott, PhD, Professor, Criminal Justice, Criminology, and Forensics and Director, Crime & Justice Research Center, co-authored “Measurement of Potential Over- and Under-policing in Communities” with Loren T. Atherley, MACJ, and Criminal Justice, Criminology, and Forensics faculty members Matthew J. Hickman, PhD, and William S. Parkin, PhD, published in “Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice.
Audrey Hudgins, EdD, Clinical Associate Professor, Matteo Ricci Institute, contributed to the analysis and writing of “Análisis de contexto migratorio - Primer semestre de 2021,” a report produced by the Investigativo-Teórica Dimensión of and for the Red Jesuita Con Migrantes Centroamérica-Norteamérica. The report was published on October 6, 2021 and is available here.
Alexander Mouton, MFA, Chair and Associate Professor, Art, Art History, and Design, attended CODEX VIII International Art Book Fair & Symposium in Berkeley, CA. His artist book, “Reconfigured Families” (2020) was purchased for the Rhode Island School of Design Fleet Library. A second artist book, “To A Place of Time, Held Within Four Walls” (2022) was purchased for Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Carmen Rivera, MA, Criminal Justice, Criminology & Forensics, was featured in 425 Magazine’s “The List.”
Nova Robinson, PhD, Associate Professor, International Studies and History, published a volume she co-edited, “The Routledge Global History of Feminism,” edited by Bonnie Smith and Nova Robinson, Abingdon, UK & New York: Routledge, 2022.
Jeannette Rodriguez, PhD, Professor: Theology and Religious Studies and Couple and Family Therapy, and Director, Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture, presented “Cultural Memory, Resistance, and a Return to ‘Original Instruction’” at the Canadian Theological Society, organized by their Dignity, Equity, and Justice Committee.
James Sawyer, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Institute of Public Service, published “Are LDS ‘True Believers’ more likely to fall for conspiracy theories?”, an op-ed in The Salt Lake Tribune.
Tom Taylor, PhD, Acting Chair and Associate Professor, History, and affiliated with International Studies, is publishing a new book in June, “Modern Travel in World History”, (New York: Routledge, 2022). It is part of their “Themes in World History” series.
Kirsten Moana Thompson, PhD, Professor and Director, Film Studies, presented an invited keynote talk, “The Doors of Perception: Color, Surrealism and Disney Animation”, at The Third International Symposium for Color, Science and Art, The International Research Center for Color, Science and Art, Tokyo Polytechnic University, Japan. She reviewed Deborah Walker-Morrison’s book, “Classic French Noir: Gender and the Cinema of Fatal Desire,” in Projections, 16.2.
Charles M. Tung, PhD, Professor and Chair, English, presented the conference paper, “Modernist Clockwork and the Rescaling of Historical Possibility,” at the Modernist Studies Association Digital Conference, April 6, 2022. The paper was part of three panels on modernism and technology featuring contributors to the forthcoming volume, The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism and Technology.
Mariela López Velarde, Assistant Professor, PhD, Spanish, Modern Languages and Cultures, was an invited speaker at the series of conferences entitled The future of internationalization in Jesuit Universities. It was a forum organized by AUSJAL (Asociación de Universidades confiadas a la Compañía de Jesús de América Latina/ Association of Universities Entrusted to the Society of Jesus in Latin America) dedicated to the discussion and dialogue about the integration of the international dimension of the work done in Jesuit universities around the world.
Zachary D. Wood, PhD, Assistant Professor, Institute of Public Service, was interviewed for “‘Another tool for the toolkit’: Can social housing initiative help make Seattle more affordable?” on Dave Ross’s KIRO News Radio podcast.
On June 12 we celebrated our first in-person commencement since 2019. It was a joy to gather at Climate Pledge Arena with our graduates and their friends and families. You can watch the videos of the undergraduate and graduate ceremonies 
Core and University Honors Writing
Under Dr. Thompson’s leadership, it will serve as a platform for interdisciplinary engagement across multiple fields at a pivotal moment in the life of the university as the Strategic Directions invite us to revisit and reimagine our curriculum, enhance our interdisciplinary connections and foster the academic excellence and professional formation of our students and ourselves. As a broad collection of historical technologies, aesthetic practices and creative artforms, Dr. Thompson envisions using visual culture as a site of inquiry in which the University community can come together in cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary ways. Visual studies, within which film and media studies are situated, offers a broad horizon through which to understand the aesthetic modes, technologies and discursive frames by which images and visual forms are produced, circulated, and received, as well as those theories of seeing that make the visual world intelligible.
Featuring artists Jite Agbro, Marin Alexis Burnett, Aboubakar Fofana, Brian LaMar, and Moses Sun. Curated by Adetola Abatan.