Dan Cozort |
Religion |
I am associate professor and chair of the Department of Religion, where I teach about the religions of India and Nastive America. I live in Carlisle with my wife and two children. A native of North Dakota, I earned degrees from Brown University and the University of Virginia, where I studied with Jeffrey Hopkins. I has written two books on Buddhist tantra, a catalogue for an exhibition on tantric art, a video documentary on sand mandalas, a book on the Prasangika-Madhyamika School, and a book on the schools of Indian Buddhism. I have also published several articles and book chapters on topics such as anger, Western Buddhist teachers, and Tibetan Buddhism in America and I am editor of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics. Before coming to Dickinson, I taught at the University of Virginia, James Madison University, and Bates College. I was one of the founders of the South India Term Abroad (SITA) study program, a collaborative effort of several small liberal arts colleges, and served as its director in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, in 1992-93. In 2003-2005 I directed Dickinson's program in humanities at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. |
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Pauline Cullen |
Sociology |
| I have a Ph.D. in Sociology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. I have taught at universities in Ireland, New York, and New Hampshire. I joined the Sociology department at Dickinson as an assistant professor in 2003. My research interests include political sociology, social policy, social movements, non-state actors and social stratification. My research has examined the transnational dimensions of social movements, international organizations, welfare states and globalization, in particular activism for political action on social rights beyond national settings. I have taught medical sociology and the sociology of health and illness for a number of years and have a specific interest in the global political economy of health and health, human rights and international multilateral policy making. My course on global inequality examines health status in the developing world and my courses on comparative social policy examine health systems in different welfare states. I am also investigating a new research focus on transnational non-governmental organizations working on public health issues. |  |
Mara E. Donaldson |
Religion |
| I am a Professor of Religion, specializing in Religion and Modern Culture. My interest in health studies relates directly to my course work in 'care of the soul,' women's issues in health in Africa, and religion and modern culture. My interest is specifically in alternative and complementary medical practices and how they are changing the way we think about health and illness. |  |
Marie Helweg-Larsen |
Psychology |
| I have a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from UCLA. I’ve taught at universities in Florida and Kentucky before coming to Dickinson 4 years ago. My research areas are in cross-cultural psychology, health psychology and social psychology. My main area of research investigates the causes, consequences, and correlates of the optimistic bias (people thinking they are less at risk than their peers) - that is, why do people do risky things that they know they should not. In addition, I have research interests in health communication, gender, and public health. |  |
Jim Hoefler |
Political Science, Policy Studies Program |
Health-related books/publications
Health-related Service
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Ebru Kongar |
Economics |
| I joined Dickinson College as an Assistant Professor of Economics in 2003. My research concentrates on the gender-differentiated impacts of macroeconomic developments, in particular, international trade, technological change, and industrial restructuring. I teach a variety of courses including Feminist Economics and Gender and Development in the Third World. In the Health Studies area, I am interested in differences in well-being by gender, race, class, nationality as well as other social stratifiers and national and international strategies to improve well-being for all peoples. |  |
David Kushner |
Biology |
I earned a Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Pennsylvania and was a Post-Doctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I have spent over 15 years studying the molecular and cellular biology of viruses (including adenovirus, brome mosaic virus, Epstein-Barr virus, herpes simplex virus, HIV, human papillomavirus, and turnip crinkle virus), generally examining the interactions between viruses and their hosts. I have been teaching in the Biology department at Dickinson since 2003. |
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Kim Rogers |
History |
I am Professor of History and American Studies at Dickinson College, and am interested in social movements, violence, and social change, and often–as an American historian–teach about war, other kinds of social conflict, and the consequences of violence. My research field has mainly been focused on oral histories and oral life-narratives. Most of my published work has focused on the African American activist communities in New Orleans and in the Mississippi Delta between the 1930s and the 1990s. The specific course that I will be working on at the ACCU meetings/seminar is “Catastrophe! War, Violence, and Lives,” a first-year seminar at Dickinson College which will be paired with Professor Jeremy Ball’s first-year seminar on war crimes and truth and reconciliation commissions. Many of the works in my seminar deal with the human costs of killing and violence–for perps as well as for victims and survivors. |
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Susan Rose |
Sociology |
| I have a Ph.D. (1984) and M.A. (1982) from Cornell University and a B.A. from Dickinson College (1977). I currently teach a range of courses in the Sociology department that focus on the impact of inequality on people's life choices and life chances in the U.S. and globally. My interests in the area of Health Studies are: social policy, access to health care, reproductive and sexual health, and domestic violence. I am particularly interested in how religion influences social policy, and how demography, political economy, and cultural values interact and influence the health of individuals and societies. |  |
David Sarcone |
International Business & Management (Coordinator for 2008-2009) |
| I am an assistant professor in international business and management. Prior to joining the Dickinson faculty six years ago I served in a wide range of financial and management roles in the health care industry for approximately twenty five years. I teach a broad range of courses in the business curriculum including the core courses of fundamentals of business, financial accounting, finance, and the senior seminar. My electives include health policy and management, small business management, and non-profit management. |  |
Dan Schubert |
Sociology (Coordinator for 2007-2008) |
| I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, where I teach courses in social theory and cultural studies. I regularly teach a course in the Sociology of Health and Illness in which we focus primarily on experiential aspects of health and illness. In particular, we look at the ways in which stories of suffering are told (or not told) by those who are ill. My current health-related research is on issues of chronic illness and life expectancy. I am involved in projects about the lives of adults living with cystic fibrosis and I have just begun a joint project with the Aids Community Alliance of South Central Pennsylvania on the lives of people living long-term with HIV/AIDS.
I am the Coordinator of the Health Studies Certificate Program at Dickinson College for the 2007-2008 academic year, and I am teaching the first Introduction to Health Studies in Spring 2008. |
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Andy Skelton |
Psychology |
I study the influence of our pre-existing knowledge and beliefs, mental representations of illness, on the way we react to our own bodily feelings and to other people’s health problems. For example, when we experience bodily feelings we interpret them in light of what we already know about our recent activities and stress levels, and about which feelings "go with" which diseases. Depending on the explanations they evoke, such knowledge and beliefs can send us to the doctor or make us decide to wait and see. Mental representations also affect our reactions to others who are sick. For example, thinking that an illness is caused by “stress” can make us doubt the suffering of people who have it; we think, they should just manage their stress better! Some of my experimental research looks at factors that affect the devaluing of illness complaints and the person who makes them. The representational metaphor also illuminates the way people communicate about health problems. When we ask, “Does that hurt?,” or “How often do you have headaches?”, people's answers depend not just on how they feel but also on what they think is the purpose of the question, what they remember, and the response options we provide. My lab has looked for several years at consequences of factors such as these for how people reply to health surveys. |
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Wendell Smith |
Spanish & Portuguese |
| I earned a Ph.D. in Spanish literature from the University of Texas in 2000, specializing in late medieval books of chivalry. My experience with health-related themes comes from what began as a distraction from writing my dissertation—volunteer work that led to training and paid employment as a medical interpreter in Washington, D.C. My Dickinson class, Spanish for the Health Professions, uses this knowledge base to teach linguistic competence in health care related Spanish, and also to approach the broader issues of mediating health care delivery across a cultural gap between provider and patient. In this way we use a specifically focused issue—English-Spanish/Spanish-English medical interpretation--to explore broader topics such as folk health beliefs, public policy about language barriers to health care access, and demographic components of disease among U.S. Latinos. A topic of particular interest to me is the modeling of the body and ideas of illness among Mexican immigrants to the United States, and how those beliefs are based on concepts of physiology that have deep roots in the Hispanic culture of past centuries. |  |
Shalom Staub |
Academic Affairs Fellow |
| In my capacity as Academic Affairs Fellow, I work with faculty members to develop service-learning courses that integrate community-based service and research experiences with their courses. I also oversee the campus-community partnership on Improving Health, Education and Environmental Conditions for Families Living in Poverty in the Greater Carlisle Area, which is the focus of Dickinson's AmeriCorps VISTA position. I hold a B.A. (1977) and M.A. (1978) in Anthropology from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife (1985) from the University of Pennsylvania. Before coming to Dickinson on 2004, I held a number of positions in the governmental and private non-profit sectors: Pennsylvania State Folklorist (1982-1987), Executive Director of the PA Heritage Affairs Commission (1987-1995), and founding President/CEO of the Institute for Cultural Partnerships, Harrisburg (1995-2004). These professional experiences related to health studies in a number of ways. As State Folklorist, I have conducted ethnographic fieldwork on aspects of vernacular health beliefs and behaviors, focusing on ethnic/religious dimensions of health and healing. As director of the state agency addressing cultural diversity in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I worked with state agencies on the cultural dimensions of health-related state policies and programs. In the non-profit sector position, I frequently worked as a trainer and consultant to health care providers on issues of cultural diversity in health care provision, "cultural competence" in service delivery, and on organizational conflict and communication in the health care workplace. |
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Jeremy Vetter |
History |
| I came to Dickinson College in January 2007 as the Assistant Professor of Environmental History and History of Science. Environmental historians study the past interactions of humans and the natural environment; an exciting new area in the field is the historical relationship between the environment and health. The history of science includes the history of technology and the history of medicine/health, as well as the interconnections among them. I offer global courses in these fields, as well as courses that focus more specifically on North America. I also teach a course in the history of the American West. My research focuses on the environmental and field sciences in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains regions. I also work on the history of agriculture and food. I received my Ph.D. in History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania (2005). Before that, I received a B.A. from the University of Nebraska (1997), as well as an M.Phil. in Economic and Social History and an M.Sc. in Human Biology, both from Oxford University (1999). |  |
Karen Weinstein |
Anthropology |
I am a biological anthropologist with expertise in human biological variation, adaptation, and evolution. Humans are a unique species among primates in that, over the course of our evolutionary history, we have come to inhabit all regions of the world. My research examines the human body’s long-term evolutionary responses and short-term physiological adjustments to environmental stress, including high altitudes, cold climates, and poor nutrition. For the last several years, I have been identifying adaptations to high-altitude hypoxia and cold stress in ancient human populations of the South American Andes and in macaques, a genus of monkeys that inhabit many ecological zones in Asia. I am applying my work on the long-term evolutionary effects of environmental stress on human and other primate species as models for understanding geographic dispersal and the development of the modern human body form over the course of human evolutionary history, particularly during the Pleistocene epoch. I am in the throes of beginning a new research project in collaboration with Jim Ellison, a cultural anthropologist also at Dickinson College. We are examining changing agricultural practices in rural southwest Tanzania focusing on health and nutrition in the context of the region’s diverse microenvironments and complex history. As a biological anthropology component to this project, I plan to examine biocultural responses to economic, cultural, and environmental change in southwest Tanzania over the last thirty years. This research involves examining variations in diet, physical activity, and body composition among individuals who differ in age, gender, household size, and economic status. Jim and I plan to conduct this long-term research with the help of student researchers through the Anthropology Department’s summer ethnographic field school, which will take place in Tanzania every other summer. |
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Chuck Zwemer |
Biology |
I'm a broadly trained comparative physiologist with interests in respiratory and cardiovascular function. I went to Hope College as an undergraduate, earned my Ph.D. from the Medical Science Program at Indiana University and did a postdoctoral fellowship in cardiovascular physiology at the University of Michigan Medical School. At Dickinson I teach courses in vertebrate biology, microanatomy, and physiology. I became a physiologist because I enjoyed the way the discipline applied fundamentals of physics, mathematics and chemistry to the study of how animals work. My research interest is in hypothesis testing in the areas of cardiovascular, respiratory and renal function in normal, stressful and pathological states. The research direction in my laboratory is divided into two categories. On the critical care side, students and I investigate the role of exogenous compounds and techniques in extending the “first hour” of emergent treatment in settings of acute tissue injury. On the human performance side of the laboratory, students and I investigate the role of hemoglobin-oxygen de-saturation on aerobic performance in elite runners at power outputs close to VO2 max. All projects involve a synthesis of techniques in anatomy, microanatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and pathology. Recent peer-reviewed publications with students (* denotes student co-author) Song, M*, Zwemer, CF, Whitesall, SE and LG D’Alecy. (2006). NOS inhibition Increases Acute Hypoxic Tolerance in Mice. Accepted with revisions 18SEP06. The Journal of Applied Physiology. Zwemer, CF, Song*, M, Carello*, KA, and LG D’Alecy. (2006). Strain Differences in Response to Acute Hypoxia: CD-1versus C57BL/6J Mice. Epub ahead of print, PMID: 16916919 17AUG06 The Journal of Applied Physiology. Zwemer, C.F., Shoemaker, J.L. jr.*, Davis, R.E.*, Hazard, S.W. III*, Bartoletti, A.G.*, and C. Phillips. (2000) Hyperoxic reperfusion exacerbates postischemic renal dysfunction. Surgery 128:815-821. |
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