Honors Interdisciplinary Seminar Faculty

Fall 2013

Michael Patrick MacDonald:
Honors Program, Writer in Residence

The Northeastern University Honors Program is pleased to announce Michael Patrick MacDonald will return as the 2013-2014 Honors Writer in Residence.

Michael Patrick MacDonald is the author of national bestseller “All Souls: A Family Story From Southie” (Ballantine, October 2000). He is the recipient of the American Book Award, New England Literary Lights Award (2000), and The Myers Outstanding Book Award administered by the Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America. He is currently writing the screenplay of All Souls for director Ron Shelton. MacDonald was also awarded an Anne Cox Chambers Fellowship at the The MacDowell Colony, a Bellagio Center Fellowship through the Rockefeller Foundation, residencies at Blue Mountain Center and Djerassi Artist Residency Program. Currently he lives in Brooklyn.

This fall, Michael will teach HONR 3310-01 – Social Justice: The Role of Reading Writing and Understanding Non-Fiction.

Emily Mann
Department of Human Services

Dr. Emily Mann is a faculty member in the Human Services Program. Her research and clinical practice background has focused on issues of prevention and early educational interventions. Dr. Mann spent two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Clinical Research Training Program (CRTP) at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and was a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow. She has presented and published papers on topics such as preschool intervention, predictors of special education, and the role of early interventions on academic and social outcomes. She primarily teaches courses on social policy, social research methods, and child intervention and treatment.

This fall, Professor Mann will teach HONR 3310-02 – Promoting Success Through Prevention Science.

David A. Rochefort
Department of Political Science

David A. Rochefort is an Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Political Science. A recipient of the university’s Excellence in Teaching Award, he teaches courses on health and welfare policy and has published several books in this area, including From Poorhouses to Homelessness: Policy Analysis and Mental Health Care (1997). Each year Professor Rochefort offers a course on leadership for members of the Northeastern University Student Government and other campus leaders. He also conducts a community research seminar in which he collaborates with his students on applied research projects focusing on local social issues and problems.

This fall, Professor Rochefort will teach HONR 3310-03 – Can There Be Morality In Politics?.

Jeffrey Burds
Department of History

Jeffrey Burds is an Associate Professor in the Department of History, and a member of the core faculty in International Affairs. Prof. Burds completed his Ph.D. in 1990 in Russian and Soviet history. He taught at the University of Rochester for five years, and joined the NU faculty in 1998. The recipient of numerous grants and awards–and a finalist for the Excellence in Teaching Award in both 2004 and 2007–Professor Burds has published widely on the history of the Soviet secret police and Soviet espionage during the early Cold War. In 2007, he published a study tracking Soviet infiltration of foreign espionage networks in the 1930s. Currently, he is finishing a book manuscript on espionage and nationalism in Soviet Ukraine, 1944-1950.

This fall, Professor Burds will teach HONR 3310-05 – A History of Espionage & Covert Operations in the Cold War.

Waleed Meleis
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering

Waleed Meleis received his B.S.E degree in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University in 1990, and the M.S and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1992 and 1996. In 1996 he joined the Computer Engineering Group of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University.

Professor Meleis’s research is on developing and evaluating algorithms and bounds for combinatorially difficult optimization problems. He has made contributions to the following areas:

- Optimal scheduling and register allocation, with spill code, for multiple-issue processors
- Microprocessor-aware scheduling algorithms for modern compilers
- Algorithms for weighted-completion time scheduling
- Design and analysis of tight lower bounds on schedule length
- Backtracking acyclic schedulers
- Parallel and scalable processing systems and programming toolsets.
- Computational infrastructure for seamless, inter-site Grid computing
- Applications of combinatorial optimization to switching, testing, and reconfigurable computing
- Multi-agent machine learning for distributed combinatorial optimization

This fall, Professor Meleis will teach HONR 3310-06 – Limits on Scientific Knowledge: Chaos, Complexity, and Computability .

James Ross
School of Journalism

Professor Ross is the author of three books, most recently Fragile Branches: Travels Through the Jewish Diaspora (Riverhead Books, 2000), and one of the editors of From the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to Holocaust Denial Trials: Challenging the Media, Law and the Academy (Vallentine Mitchell, 2007). He also is the author of Escape to Shanghai: A Jewish Community in China (Free Press, 1994) and Caught in a Tornado: A Chinese-American Woman Survives the Cultural Revolution (Northeastern University Press, 1994). He served as a reporter and bureau chief for the Hartford Courant for eight years. He also served as a Fulbright professor in Ecuador, and as a visiting journalism professor at the Shanghai Foreign Languages Institute.

Professor Ross received his B.A. in American Studies from Yale University, and his M.A. in Journalism and Public Affairs from American University.

Professor Ross has served as the Stotsky Professor of Jewish Historical and Cultural Studies at Northeastern and director of the Jewish Studies Program. He also has received a grant from the U.S. Institute for Peace to run a three-week seminar for Israeli and Palestinian journalists on ways to improve coverage of the Middle East conflict.

Professor Ross recently served as a Fulbright lecturer at Nanjing University, where he taught two graduate courses in journalism. He also delivered guest lectures at Henan University in Kaifeng, Nankai University in Tianjin and Yunnan University in Kunming.

This fall, Professor Ross will teach HONR 3310-07: The Art of Narrative Non-Fiction: From the Survivors of Hiroshima to the Garbage Pickers of Mumbai .

Sara Doris
Department of Art + Design, College of Arts, Media, and Design

Sara Doris is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art in the Department of Art + Design. Her research interests include investigating the origins and evolution of contemporary visual art and culture after 1960, the intersection of fine art and popular culture, and the impact of class, politics and gender on contemporary visual culture. These interests inform her books Pop Art and the Contest Over Culture (2007) and Roy Lichtenstein (forthcoming 2012) as well as her current book project, Obsolete Modernism: The Visual Culture of the American Pavilion at Expo 67. She has received numerous grants and awards including two residencies as a Sara Roby Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution–and has presented her research at many conferences in the U.S. and abroad. Professor Doris teaches a survey of post-1945 art and design as well as seminars in contemporary art and visual culture.

This fall, Professor Doris will teach HONR 3310-08 – After the War: American Visual Culture Since 1945

Anthony De Ritis
Music Department

Composer Anthony Paul De Ritis is Professor and Chair of the Music Department at Northeastern University in Boston. His compositions have been called “absorbing,” “bracingly imaginative,” “highly infectious,” “engaging,” “undeniably arresting,” and “really cool.” He has have received performances nationally and internationally; most notably, the Prague Philharmonic premiered his Melody for Peace for Western and non-Western instruments at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, a concert reprised by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, New York.

De Ritis is perhaps best known for his Concerto for DJ and Symphony Orchestra, Devolution, which features Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid as soloist; and his compositions for the Chinese pipa commissioned by virtuosi Min Xiao-Fen and Wu Man.

De Ritis received his Ph.D. in Music Composition from the University of California, Berkeley; his M.M. from Ohio University; and his B.A. in Music with a concentration in Business Administration from Bucknell University; he also holds an M.B.A. in High Tech from Northeastern University.

De Ritis contracted and managed 112 musicians for the American premiere of John Cage’s Ocean 1-95 with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company; scored the music for the Macintosh computer game, Step On It, winner of the 1997 MacWorld Arcade Game of the Year; and was the founder and lead developer of the Online Conservatory, a collaboration between the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Northeastern University, which was declared a “best practice” in “integrated” or “left-brain” marketing by Forrester Research in 2006.

From 2007-2009 De Ritis was awarded nearly $1 million to lead the Fusion Arts Exchange program in Music Composition and Performance by the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs of the U. S. Department of State. “NU-FAX” was an intensive summer institute on American music and performance with participants from Mali, India, Brazil, Ireland, South African and the United States at Northeastern University, including educational tours to New York City, the Tanglewood Music Center, and Washington, D.C. www.music.neu.edu/nufax.

This fall, Professor De Ritis will teach HONR 3310-09 – Hearing the Movies: Music, Dialogue, and Sound Effects

Summer 2013

Jeffrey Burds
Department of History

This summer, Professor Burds will teach HONR 3310-01 – A History of Espionage & Covert Operations in the Cold War.

David A. Rochefort
Department of Political Science

This summer, Professor Rochefort will teach HONR 3310-01 – Can There Be Morality In Politics?.

Spring 2013

Jeffrey Burds
Department of History

This spring, Professor Burds will teach HONR 3310-01 – A History of Espionage and Covert Operations in the Cold War.

Carol Paronis
Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences

Professor Paronis’ research is primarily concerned with the interplay between pharmacology and behavior in the expression of tolerance to drugs. The acute or chronic effects of drugs are evaluated using behavioral or physiological assays appropriate for the drug class. Behavioral procedures used in her laboratory include operant responding, drug discrimination, and drug self-administration; changes in the physiological responses to drugs are assessed using assays of antinociception, diuresis, or thermal regulation. The goal of this work is to add to our interpretation of pharmacological activity by delineating contextual influences that modify responses to drugs.

This spring, Professor Paronis will teach HONR 3310-02 – Contemporary Issues of Substance Abuse.

Kristin Madison
Department of Health Sciences

Professor Madison holds a joint appointment in the School of Law and the Bouvé College of Health Sciences. Her primary research is in the areas of health economics, health law and health policy.

After receiving her undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley, Professor Madison worked for two years as a research assistant with the health care consulting firm now known as the Lewin Group. She contributed to several articles assessing the impact of the delivery of mental health services. She then received a JD from Yale Law School and a PhD in economics from Stanford University before joining the University of Pennsylvania law faculty in 2001; she came to Northeastern University in 2011.

Much of Professor Madison’s recent work evaluates the implications of health care quality reporting and related trends for patients, providers and regulators. In two early articles published in the journal Health Services Research, she used Medicare data to analyze the relationships between the presence of health provider affiliations (including multihospital systems and physician-hospital organizations) and patient treatment. In “Regulating Health Care Quality in an Information Age” she argues that the information revolution within health care will produce a shift from more traditional market-displacing regulatory approaches to market-channeling and market-facilitating regulatory approaches. She considers ways to reshape health care regulation in light of the greater availability of health care information. The article “Hospital Mergers in an Era of Quality Improvement” examines the use of quality measures in the Evanston Northwestern antitrust litigation and comments more generally on the relationship between mergers and health care quality. In “The Law and Policy of Quality Reporting,” Professor Madison explores the health care quality reporting phenomenon, reviewing empirical findings on its effects and discussing the New York attorney general’s settlement with health insurers concerning their provider rating mechanisms. Several other of her recent works focus on related topics.

Professor Madison has also co-authored a chapter on health policy and regulation in the forthcoming 6th edition of Shortell and Kaluzny’s Health Care Management: Organization, Design, and Behavior with Peter D. Jacobson and Gary Young.

This spring, Professor Madison will teach HONR 3310-03 – Health Policy in an Era of Reform.

David A. Rochefort
Department of Political Science

This spring, Professor Rochefort will teach HONR 3310-04 – Social Fact from Fiction: Using Novels to Explore Contemporary Social Problems and Public Policy.

Dennis Miller
Department of Music

Dennis Miller received his Doctorate in Music Composition in 1981 from Columbia University and, since that time, has been on the Music faculty of Northeastern University where he is now a Full Professor. Miller initially developed both the Music Department’s Music Industry and Music Technology programs, as well as creating and writing the text for its required course, Principles of Music Literature.

Dennis Miller’s professional interests involve the application of processes drawn from music composition into the visual realm (animation, for example), a genre known as Visual Music. He was the founder and artistic director of the 2007 and 2009 Visual Music Marathons, which featured over 100 abstract video works from some 34 countries. His own mixed-media compositions are regularly performed throughout the world, most recently at Design Indaba Africa (Cape Town, South Africa), the New York Digital Salon Traveling Exhibit, Abstract International Abstract Cinema Exhibition (Cairo, Egypt), Images du Nouveau Monde, CYNet Art Festival (Dresden, Germany), Videoex Festival (Zurich Switzerland), the Cuban International Festival of Music, the Magmart International Festival of Video Art (Naples, Italy) and the Gijon International Festival of Video Art (Gijon, Spain), and can be found at his web site, www.dennismiler.neu.edu. He is also an avid photographer.

This spring, Professor Miller will teach HONR 3310-05 – Unraveling the Beatles.

Dennis Shaughnessy
Department of Entrepreneurship & Innovation

Dennis Shaughnessy is an Executive Professor of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Group. His teaching interests include business planning, small business management, innovation and entrepreneurship, intellectual property, law and ethics, and social enterprise. He also teaches executive education in enterprise growth and acquisitions, and management of life sciences/biotechnology enterprises.

Professor Shaughnessy was a senior executive for many years in a local life sciences technology company, where he was a principal in numerous acquisitions, financings and other strategic transactions, including a leveraged buy-out and initial public offering. He also has extensive experience in strategic planning, international business development, corporate governance, technology licensing, and management of technology-driven operations. Professor Shaughnessy was chief legal officer of a New York Stock Exchange company, responsible for global legal affairs. He was also in private legal practice representing venture capitalists and technology entrepreneurs, and prior to that, in public service.

This spring, Professor Shaughnessy will teach HONR 3310-06 – Social Impact Investing: Connecting Compassion and Capital.

Daniel Faber
Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Daniel Faber is Professor of Sociology at Northeastern University and Director of the Northeastern Environmental Justice Research Collaborative (NEJRC). His research is focused in the areas of political economy and crisis theory, environmental sociology and policy, social movements, classical and contemporary social theory, environmental justice, philanthropy, Central America and underdevelopment, climate change, and globalization. He co-founded and worked as Research Director for the Environmental Project On Central America (EPOCA), Earth Island Institute (1984-90), and has published numerous works on the political ecology of Central America. He is also a co-founding editor of the international journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, and a participating editor with Latin American Perspectives. He is the author of Environment Under Fire: Imperialism and the Ecological Crisis in Central America (Monthly Review Press, 1993), recognized by Choice Magazine as an “1993 Outstanding Academic Book of the Year on Latin America.”

Dr. Faber’s most recent work is concerned with problems of environmental injustice and equity in America, and includes the edited collection, The Struggle for Ecological Democracy: Environmental Justice Movements in the United States (Guilford Press, 1998) and Capitalizing on Environmental Justice: The Polluter-Industrial Complex in the Age of Globalization (Rowman & Littlefied, 2008), which was a finalist for the prestigious C.W. Mills Award in 2009. Dr. Faber has produced a number of major research reports relating to environmental justice, including Green of Another Color, which assesses relations between the foundation community and the U.S. environmental justice movement. Another major study includes Unequal Exposure to Ecological Hazards 2005: Environmental Injustices in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the co-edited collection Foundations for Social Change: Critical Perspectives on Philanthropy and Popular Movements (Rowman & Littlefied, 2005).

Dr. Faber is a board member of the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow (AHT), a coalition of scientists, health professionals, environmental advocates, and labor unions working for a precautionary approach to environmental policy in Massachusetts. In 2006, Dr. Faber received the “Champion for Justice Award,” granted by the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow (AHT), and the “Friend of the Earth and Environmental Justice Award” from Salem State College and HealthLink for his “path-breaking leadership and work in Environmental Justice in Massachusetts and beyond.” In 2010 he received the Environmental Sociology Practice and Outreach Award from the Environmental Sociology and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association. He has also received recognition for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and many other organizations for his work in advancing a more transformative environmental justice politics. He is currently working on a new report on climate justice, ecological refugees, and equitable policy approaches for dealing with global warming. Dr. Faber is also a co-founding Board member of the Massachusetts Environmental Justice Alliance (MEJA).

This spring, Professor Faber will teach HONR 3310-07 – Global Political Ecology: Environmental Justice & the Polluter-Industrial Complex.

Fall 2012

Jennifer Cole
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences

Jennifer Cole is an Assistant Academic Specialist and the Director of the Environmental Studies Program in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. She teaches a wide variety of introductory and advanced courses including Natural Disasters and Catastrophes, Environmental Science, Environmental Geology, Hydrogeology, Groundwater Modeling, and Groundwater Geochemistry. Her research interests include wetland systems, groundwater contamination, and nutrient cycling, and she has published several papers detailing the chemistry, biology, geology, and hydrology of the Glacial Lake Agassiz Peatland Complex in northern Minnesota.

Sara Doris
Department of Art + Design, College of Arts, Media, and Design

This fall Professor Doris will be teaching HONR 3341- After the War: American Visual Culture Since 1945

Lorna Hayward
Department of Physical Therapy

Lorna Hayward is an Associate Professor of Physical Therapy at the Bouve College of Health Sciences. Prof. Hayward has been a faculty member in the Department of Physical Therapy since 1996. Prof. Hayward is primarily responsible for teaching the following courses: Research Methods, Administration and Health Policy, Professional Seminar, and PT Project I. The courses Prof. Hayward teaches reflect her professional interests in curriculum design, technology, health promotion, and research. Prof. Hayward conducts research in the areas in which she teaches to remain current in the topic area and infuse class material with personal experience. Her most recent publication is in the Journal of Physical Therapy Education, ‘Standardized Patients and Communities of Practice: A Realistic Strategy for Integrating the Core Values in a Physical Therapist Education Program’.

This spring, Lorna will teach the Honors seminar HONR 3341-02 – Contemporary Issues in Health Care.

Emily Mann
Department of Human Services

This term, Emily will be teaching HONR 3343-01 – Promoting Success Through Prevention Science.

Michael Patrick MacDonald:
Honors Program, Writer in Residence

The Northeastern University Honors Program is pleased to announce Michael Patrick MacDonald will return as the 2012-2013 Honors Writer in Residence. Michael has taught the honors seminar HONR 3341-01, Social Justice: The Role of Reading, Writing and Understanding Non-Fiction.

This fall, Michael will be teaching HONR 3341-01 – Social Justice: The Role of Reading Writing and Understanding Non-Fiction.

Waleed Meleis
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering

Professor Meleis’s research is on developing and evaluating algorithms and bounds for combinatorially difficult optimization problems. He has made contributions to the following areas:

This fall, Professor Meleis will be teaching HONR 3302- Limits on Scientific Knowledge: Chaos, Complexity and Computability.

David A. Rochefort
Department of Political Science

This fall, Prof. Rochefort will be teaching the Honors seminar HONR 3343 Mastering the Language of Public Affairs: Theory and Practice: The 2012 Campaign Edition.

James Ross
School of Journalism

Professor Ross received his B.A. in American Studies from Yale University, and his M.A. in Journalism and Public Affairs from American University.

This spring, James will teach HONR 3343:The Art of Narrative Non-Fiction: From the survivors of Hiroshima to the garbage pickers of Mumbai.

Beryl Schlossman
Department of English

Beryl Schlossman specializes in modern literature, film, and the arts. She is the author of several published books and many essays on Anglo-Irish, French and Francophone, English, and comparative literature and the visual arts; poetry, short fiction, and artist’s books. Her book titles include Joyce’s Catholic Comedy of Language, The Orient of Style, and Objects of Desire: The Madonnas of Modernism. Her current projects include a book on poetry and modernity in the work of Charles Baudelaire, poet and art critic, and a project on the work of Samuel Beckett across disciplines. She teaches courses on literature and interdisciplinary courses on the arts in society.