Dr. Kevin Archer teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in human geography with an emphasis on urban development issues including impacts on the natural environment. He also teaches courses on Latin America and Social Science perspectives in the Honors College. He has published research in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Economic Geography, the Journal of Geography, the Florida Geographer, The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (University of Southern Mississippi Press), Geography and Autobiography: History, Method, Analysis (Syracuse University Press), Local Economic Development in Europe and the Americas (Mansell Press), and other edited volumes.
Roger Ariew
Ph.D. Illinois, 1976. Joined the Philosophy Department faculty at USF in 2004 after many years at Virginia Tech. His principal interests concern the relations between philosophy, science, and society in the early modern period. Ariew is the author of Descartes and the Last Scholastics (Cornell University Press, 1999), coauthor of Historical Dictionary of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy (Scarecrow Press, 2003), editor and translator such works as Descartes, Philosophical Essays (Hackett, 2000) and Pascal, Pensées (Hackett, 2005), and editor of the quarterly journal Perspectives on Science: Historical, Philosophical, Social (MIT Press). He is currently working on a variety of topics, including the reception of Descartes' philosophy and science in late seventeenth-century France, a handbook of Leibniz's philosophy and science, a chapter on Modernity for the Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, and the entry on Pierre Duhem for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
Nagwa Dajani
Assistant professor of pediatrics, and of medical microbiology and immunology. She earned her medical degree from Cairo University with honors, and then completed her Ph.D. from the University of South Florida, Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology with distinction. She was trained with the world-renowned immunology pioneer, Dr. Robert A. Good as a graduate student then as a postdoctoral fellow. Her research in the field of bone marrow transplantation was supported by fellowship and grants from the American Heart Association. Her publications and current research interests are in the fields of stem cell biology and therapy for autoimmune diseases.
Dr. Dajani enjoys interaction with and supervision of many bright, aspiring scientists. She teaches a section of Honors Natural Sciences with the theme "Making of a Scientist", and always looks forward to learning and discovering the faculties that contribute to the formation of the great minds and great achievements in our times.
Dell DeChant
Selected Recent Publications:
- "New Thought," in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd. ed., ed. Lindasy Jones. Macmillan, 2005.
- "The Economy as Religion: The Dynamics of Consumer Culture," The Civics Arts Review 16:2 (Fall 2003): 4-12.
- "Religions Made in the U.S.A. II: Christian Science and Theosophy," in World Religions in America, 3rd ed., ed. Jacob Neusner. Westminster/John Knox Press, 2003.
- "Easter" and "Christmas," in Encyclopedia of Religion and American Cultures, eds. Gary Laderman and Luis León. ABC-CLIO, 2003.
- "Religiosity and The Sacred in Postmodern America: Rethinking Ellul's Theory on The Role of Technology," The Ellul Forum no. 29 (Fall, 2002).
- The Sacred Santa: Religious Dimensions of Consumer Culture, The Pilgrim Press, 2002.
- Comparative Religious Ethics: A Narrative Approach, with Darrell Fasching, Blackwell, 2000.
Emanuel Donchin
Emanuel Donchin received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1965. Between 1965 and 1968 he was a research associate at Stanford's Department of Neurology and at the Neurobiology Branch at NASA-Ames Research Center. In 1968 he joined the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign as an Associate Professor. He remained at the UIUC till 2001, serving as head of the department between 1980 and 1994. He is currently a Professor Emeritus at the UIUC and a professor and Department Chair in the University of South Florida Department of Psychology. His field of professional interest is cognitive psychophysiology.
Sherman Dorn
Sherman Dorn has devoted his adult life to questioning our central assumptions about education. Do we think clearly about education, or are we confused? Whether the topic is today's school accountability policy or the history of dropping out, Professor Dorn brings a unique perspective to examining the history and politics of education. His work points out how inconsistent we are in education policy, demanding that we face those inconsistencies and talk more openly and clearly about what we expect from schools and how schools can change.
Sherman Dorn's books trace how our society defines school problems and how those definitions shape education policy. In Creating the Dropout (1996), he points out that dropping out became defined as a crisis in the 1960s when the proportion of teens graduating from high school had been rising for years. In Accountability Frankenstein (2007), he explains how we have come to distrust schoolteachers but trust test scores. In each case, he documents the inconsistencies in education policy and how popular thinking leads to unproductive education policy.
Trained formally both as an historian and a demographer, Sherman Dorn spent three years as a postdoctoral researcher at Vanderbilt University, assisting special education researchers in Tennessee classrooms as well as conducting his own research in the history of special education. Since 1996, he has taught social-science and humanities perspectives on education at the University of South Florida. Today, he is editor of Education Policy Analysis Archives, one of the main peer-reviewed education policy journals in the United States and a pioneer in electronic publication.
In addition to writing books on dropping out and accountability, Sherman Dorn is the coeditor of books on school communities and Florida education policy, the author of several articles and book chapters on the history of special education, and several pieces on academic freedom in higher education.
John Evans
As manager of business services for a multi-specialty group practice, he worked daily with physicians and surgeons from 18 clinical departments. His experience also includes work with single specialty practices as well as hospital and satellite based physicians.
As chief executive officer for a large eye center, he served in a medical practice with several million in sales, an Ambulatory Surgery Center (ASC), and a tax-exempt research foundation.
Mr. Evans has also worked in a consulting capacity with a regional Certified Public Accounting firm.
Complementing his professional career is a master of business administration (M.B.A.) earned from Vanderbilt University and a bachelor of science (B.S.) in business administration, organizational behavior earned from the University of Illinois.
Silvia Fiore
Education: Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh; Post-doctoral work, Universita per Stranieri, Perugia, Italy; Fulbright Research Fellow, University of Rome.
Research and Publications: Professor Fiore has published four books, numerous refereed articles and book chapters in English and Italian, and has presented over 200 papers at scholarly conferences worldwide. She has received several grants and fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Humanities award for $65,000 for her work on Niccolo Machiavelli. Currently she is writing on the education of women in the Italian Courts, Machiavelli's use of imagination, the humanities in contemporary society, and the concept of genius in the early modern period.
Teaching: Professor Fiore specializes in classical, medieval, and early modern comparative and interdisciplinary literary studies. She has received several teaching awards from the State of Florida and USF as well as the Professorial Excellence Program Award in recognition for her accomplishments as a full professor. In the Honors college she teaches Acquisition of Knowledge and Arts and Humanities.
Svetozar Ivanov
Pianist Svetozar Ivanov has made numerous appearances as recitalist and orchestra soloist in Europe and North America. Recent venues include Seiler Piano Festival in Crete, Association Philomuses in Paris, “Salon des Arts” in Bulgaria, North Netherlands Conservatory, Zurich Conservatory in Switzerland, Vicenza Conservatory in Italy, Robert Helps International Competition and Festival at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City, Fox River Chamber Music Festival in Wisconsin, Chautauqua Music Festival in New York, Sequoia Concerts in San Francisco, The Steinway Series and the Encore Series in Florida and numerous concert series at universities throughout the US. He records for Gega New.
Svetozar Ivanov is on the Piano and Chamber Music Faculty at University of South Florida, serves as Artist Faculty at Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Vermont and is the Artistic Director of the Steinway Piano Series at USF and the newly established International Piano Trio Seminar in Sofia, Bulgaria. He is also a Jury member at the Konzerteum International Piano Competition in Greece, the Seiler International Piano Competitions in Crete, the International Youth Music Festival and Competition in Bulgaria and the Chautauqua Music Festival Piano Competition. He has previously served on the piano faculty at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan and the Morfova School of Music in Bulgaria and has served as co-director of the Stuart-Ivanov Duo Seminar at USF and guest faculty at Festival “Peter de Grote” in The Netherlands.
Mr. Ivanov holds degrees from the Bulgarian National Conservatory and University of Michigan (Doctor of Musical Arts).
Rick Oches
My research and teaching interests center on the reconstruction of past climates and the human and environmental response to climate changes in different regions of the world. I focus mainly on land-based records of the Quaternary Period, which extends from about 2 million years ago to the present. This period of recent Earth history includes the climate oscillations associated with repeated glacial-interglacial cycles and is marked by the evolution of modern humans and complex societies, as well as our ability to alter Earth’s environments at rates that are unprecedented in Earth history.
As part of my integrated research-teaching effort, I co-direct (with Peter Harries) an NSF-funded REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) site at USF, where students conduct field and laboratory investigations reconstructing marine environments and sea-level history of the last several million years using Florida’s rich sedimentary and paleontological record.
In the Honors College, I teach a section of IDH 3350 – Honors Natural Science. In that class we explore the geologic record of natural climate variability, study indicators of changing climate over the last century and examine the role of humans as an agent of climate change, and examine predictions for regional and global climate shifts under various global warming scenarios. During the 2007-08 academic year, I am coordinating the Honors Colloquium, focusing on water resource issues as our theme.
John Omlor
John Omlor was born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He played in his high school marching band and in a New Jersey drum and bugle corps before he went off to college in Florida. He attended the University of Tampa as an undergraduate in the late 1970’s, where he majored in English and philosophy and minored in drama and creative writing. Afterwards, he did graduate work in both philosophy and literature and finally received his Ph.D. from USF in 1991 in English, specializing in 19th and 20th century literature, critical theory, and film. He teaches Acquisition of Knowledge and Arts and humanities courses for Honor, in addition to Honors freshman English. He tries never to teach the same course the same way twice. Honors has been a source of great pride and honest joy for him.
Susan Pross
The research in which I am currently involved emphasizes the development of the immune response. Various parameters of immunity are compared using very young, adult and aged mice. The specific area within developmental immunity that is being focused on is the effect of a drug of abuse, marijuana, on the aging animal. In this regard, THC is given in vitro to cells of mice of differing ages in order to characterize the immunomodulation effect of this drug on immune systems which vary greatly according to age.
Dewey Rundus
Dewey Rundus is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering. He earned a BS degree in Mathematics from the University of California, Davis, in 1966, a PhD in Psychology from Stanford University in 1971, and a MS degree in Computer Engineering from the University of South Florida in 1985. He joined the faculty of the Psychology Department at USF in 1972 where he remained for 15 years. His research focused on the study of human memory. In 1987 Dr. Rundus moved to the Department of Computer Science & Engineering where his research interests have been in the area of human/computer interaction. Dr. Rundus has taught several courses for the Honors College, most frequently the Social and Behavioral science course.
Jeffrey Ryan
JEFFREY G. RYAN
Professor
Assistant Chair,
Geology Department
B.S. Western Carolina University, 1983
Ph.D. Columbia University, 1989
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Geochemistry and Petrology of Subduction Zones, Modern and Ancient
Geochemical Evolution of the Earth's Mantle
Petrogenesis of Ultramafic Rocks
Appalachian Geology and Tectonics
Meteoritic/Planetary Geochemistry
Geoscience Education
David Schenck
"David P. Schenck received his BA from Ripon College (1964) in biology, his MA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1968) in French, and his Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University (1971) in medieval French epic poetry. He has been at USF since 1974, first as a professor of French. But in 1980 his interests began to turn to the field of biomedical ethics. He has received training in that field from the University of Virginia (1986) and from Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics and Center For Clinical Bioethics (1993-2002). He is today Professor of English where his interests continue to be of an eclectic nature. He currently teaches half-time in world literature and half-time in biomedical ethics. His teaching in biomedical ethics includes courses in 'Spirituality and Medicine' in the Department of Religious Studies and an Honors seminar in 'Biomedical Ethics' in the Honors College. Dr. Schenck provides service to the medical community, serving on the ethics committees of both St. Joseph's Hospital and the James A. Haley Veterans' Administration Hospital. He also has a joint appointment in the USF Department of Otolaryngology's Head and Neck Surgery Program where he serves as that department's ethicist. His research interests in bioethics include communication issues between head and neck surgeons and their terminal patients as well as health disparities in the field of oral cancer. In 2005 he was the Principal Investigator on a study of oral cancer in migrant farm workers in eastern Hillsborough County, along with Tapan A. Padhya, M.D. of the Department of Otolaryngology's Head and Neck Surgery Program. They will continue their work in this challenging field in an effort to develop an intervention program designed to reduce risky behaviors that may cause oral cancers in this disadvantaged population."
Martin Schönfeld
Professor of Philosophy
Martin Schönfeld is an artist and a philosopher of Nature. He studies the matrix of environmental realities and the patterns of survival, sustainability, and cultural evolution. He explores designs for our post-carbon and post-consumerist futures. He regards global heating and the “long emergency” as market failures, but also as opportunities for social enlightenment. He co-created a course on Climate Change for the Honors College. The Mad Hun studied in Regensburg, München, La Rochelle, Taipei, and Athens, Ga. He earned his PhD from Indiana 1995. He learnt philosophy working blue-collar jobs, walking through Bavaria, kayaking the Missinaibi, and sitting still at a Zen school in rural Taiwan. His ideas are informed by Laozi, Master Eckhart, Kant, and Erich Fromm. Martin Schönfeld is definitely not a member of the ownership society.
Steven Specter
Dr. Specter received his BA in Biology (1969) and Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology (1975) from Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Albert Einstein Medical Center, Philadelphia, in Experimental Immunology and then served as Director of Clinical Virology at the same institution. Dr. Specter joined the faculty of the University of South Florida College of Medicine in 1979 as Assistant Professor of Medical Microbiology and Immunology. He became a Professor in 1991. Dr. Specter has served the College of Medicine as Secretary of the Faculty Council, Chairman of college committees on Space Allocation, Appointment, Promotion and Tenure, and Curriculum, and was appointed Co-Director of Curriculum and Medical Education in July, 1997, then Associate Dean for Pre-Clinical Education in 1998, he was appointed Associate Dean for Student Affairs in May, 2001 and for Admissions in 2002. He established the Annual Clinical Virology Symposium in 1985 and continues to Chair this internationally renowned conference. He has served as Chair of the Clinical Immunology Division of the American Society for Microbiology, was Editor-in-Chief of the Cumitech series for the American Society for Microbiology, was President of the Pan American Society for Clinical Virology, and is President of the Florida Branch of the American Society for Microbiology. Dr. Specter serves on numerous journal editorial boards and professional councils. His research spanned the fields of retrovirus induced immune deficiency and effects of abused drugs on the immune system. He is the author of more than 175 original scientific publications, review articles and book chapters and has edited a dozen books. Dr. Specter’s awards include 2 outstanding teaching awards (1991, 1996), the Theodore and Vanette Askonas-Ashford Distinguished Scholar Award by the University of South Florida in 1997,, a Professorial Excellence Program award in 1998, and the PASCV Diagnostic Virology Award (2004). Dr. Specter received an Award from CDC as Principal Investigator for a project on Capacity Building Assistance for Global HIV/AIDS Microbiology Laboratory Program Development in September 2005.
Joel Strom
Biosketch: Joel A. Strom, M.D. received his B.S. (1965) and M.Eng. (1966) in Engineering Physics from Cornell University and his M.D. degree from S.U.N.Y Upstate Medical Center (1970). He trained in Internal Medicine at the State University Hospital, Syracuse, N.Y., and in Cardiovascular Diseases at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In between his fellowship training, he was a Research Medical Officer at the School of Aerospace Medicine, Brooks AFB, TX. He then joined the faculty of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine where he was Professor of Medicine and Associate Professor of Radiology and Director of the Cardiac Noninvasive Laboratory of the Jack D. Weiler Hospital Division of the Montefiore Medical Center. In 1998, he was appointed Chief of Cardiology at the Brookdale Hospital and Medical Center and Professor of Medicine at the Health Science Center, Brooklyn. In 2000, he was appointed Professor of Medicine and Radiology and Director of the Division of Cardiovascular Disease, its fellowship program, and its clinical trials unit at the University of South Florida. He also initiated the program in cardiovascular engineering at USF, and he is currently Professor of Medicine, Chemical Engineering, and Honors College at USF and Visiting Professor of Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He directs over $3.3M in extramural funding. He also serves as co-chair of the committee overseeing the regionalization of STEMI care in Hillsborough County and he is also a member of the Florida AHA STEMI Task Force. Dr. Strom is an internationally recognized expert in echocardiography, valvular heart disease, and cardiovascular engineering and is author or coauthor of over 290 journal articles and published abstracts.
Inge Wefes
In the USA alone more than 4.5 million people are suffering from Alzheimer's disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that occurs primarily in older people. Since Alois Alzheimer described the pathological hallmarks of the disease for the first time in 1906, research has provided many insights into causes and mechanisms that might lead to the severe memory loss that represents the primary clinical symptom of Alzheimer's disease. However, a prevention and cure of Alzheimer's disease have still not been found yet. Dr. Wefes' research involves the identification of neuroprotective agents and mechanisms and the analysis of inhibitors of neurotoxicity to combat the disease.
Specifically, Dr. Wefes is overseeing projects to determine the role of cholesterol and the LDL receptor, inflammation, and amyloid promoting proteins in the development of pathology in transgenic mouse models of Alzheimer's disease. In addition, she is developing means to intervene in the pathology and cognitive decline in AD mice by introducing new preventive drugs directly into the brains.
Dr. Wefes is also involved in teaching and graduate program development. In this function, she has designed the Ph.D-PLUS Program and initiated and spearheaded the development of three new Master's Programs in the USF College of Medicine, i.e. the Master's programs in Bioethics & Medical Humanities, in Bioinformatics & Computational Biology, and in Biotechnology. She now serves as director of the Biotechnology Master's Program.
