Michael S. Bassis, Ph.D
Michael S. Bassis, Ph.D.
President,WestminsterCollege
Expertise:
- organizational transformation
- collaborative leadership
- teaching/learning
- promoting increased effectiveness and efficiency in higher education
In addition to leading WestminsterCollege, he serves as senior fellow for the Institute on the Future of Higher Education. Recently, Dr. Bassis served as a core staff member of the Association of American Colleges and Universities' Institute on Campus Leadership for Sustainable Innovation. Earlier, he served as chair of the undergraduate education section of the American Sociological Association and as editor of the journal Teaching Sociology. He has 30 years' experience as a teacher, scholar and administrator.
Bonnie Baxter, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor and Chair of Biology
Expertise:
- genetics (including cloning)
- hereditary colon cancer
- skin cancer
- DNA mutation
- DNA binding proteins
- molecular evolution
- biochemistry
- microbiology
Dr. Baxter studies DNA repair in various systems. In human cells, she has examined Nucleotide Excision Repair and its interface with chromatin structure. Currently, Dr. Baxter's interests lie with DNA repair in extreme environments. In particular, she is studying these processes in solates of halophilic (salt-loving) from the hypersaline environment, the Great Salt Lake.
Alan Bowes, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Communication
Expertise:
- new media
- website planning
- design
- production
- maintenance
- usability testing
Bowes is a well rounded "New Media" generalist, comfortable with both traditional and digital/electronic media. He taught, worked, and/or consulted in commercial photography, graphics, and educational media, in both traditional and digital formats. He has strong background in technical writing and documentation management, primarily in the computer/high-tech sector. Bowes is also a generalist in historical archaeology, with experience in ancient Near East, as well as 19th and 20th century America.
Gaylen K. Bunker, M.B.A.
Associate Professor of Accounting
Program Director of Business
Expertise:
- financial aspects of healthcare
- health care planning and marketing
- health care administration
Bunker was recently appointed to the Medical Education Council for the State of Utah. An expert on the old masters of money, Bunker also studies the history of finance and the great financiers throughout history from Pasion of Athens to Mayer Amschel Rothschild, Charles Soong and others. What made them great and some of their techniques and rules for success. He worked as director of finance in the health care system prior to becoming an educator. Bunker has also written a number of articles on the financial aspects of health care.
Susan Cottler, Ph.D.
Professor of History
Expertise:
- pop culture
- rock and roll
- rhythm and blues
- Elvis Presley
Historical topics: U.S. history since 1945, race relations and the Sixties; Imperial Russia; Jacksonian America; Latin American history; U.S.-Latin American relations; the phenomenon of revelution; colonial Latin America. Recently produced a twenty-minute documentary on Elvis Presley titled "Elvisly Yours."
Janet Dynak, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Education
Expertise:
- the mentoring of novice teachers
- literacy
- portfolio assessment for teachers and teacher-education students
- team teaching
- co-teaching
Dynak is currently working on a literacy research project "Critical Language Awareness in a Balanced Literacy Classroom." Previous courses she taught include Reading and the Young Child, School/Community Collaboration and Elementary Integration of Language Arts. She has previously done extensive research on portfolio assessment and mentoring. Dynak has also published several education articles in a variety of journals and books.
Fred Fogo, Ph.D.
Professor of Communication
Expertise:
- social aspects of the sixties
- popular culture of the sixties
- John Lennon and the Beatles
- writing for the mass media
- media ethics
- media law
- media history
- communication ethics
- the democratic process
He is the author of I Read the News Today: The Social Drama of John Lennon's Death. Also, The Cultural Turn in Media Studies, Mass Communication Review.
Eileen Patricia Gay, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
Expertise:
- epilepsy
- predatory aggression
- mental retardation
She has lectured on numerous related topics including: epilepsy development disabilities; drugs which modify behavior; behavior genetics of mental retardation; behavioral and social issues in epilepsy. Gay has also done extensive research on epilepsy, with particular emphasis on behavioral effects of antiepileptic drugs and drug interactions. She has an equally impressive research record on brain mechanisms in predatory aggression and has presented numerous papers on this topic at meetings of the American Psychological Association, the Eastern Psychological Association and Federated Societies for Experimental Biology, to name a few.
Brian K. Jorgensen, Ph.D.; J.D.
Associate Professor of Marketing
Expertise:
- marketing and consumer behavior
- consumer behavior
- crisis management
- company and brand image
- consumer reaction to negative information
- legal and ethical issues in advertising and promotion
He has worked in the areas of law, financial planning, software development, and marketing research and analysis. His current research focuses on the reactions toward the practice of downloading digital products (i.e., music files) from the Internetthe motivations and ethics of the practice and its impact on the music industry.
Aric W. Krause, Ph.D.
Interim Dean, Bill and VieveGoreSchool of Business
Assistant Professor of Economics
Expertise:
- information technology
- international trade and finance
- imports and dumping
- multinational corporations
- market assessments
- patents
- research and development
- start-ups
- bankruptcy
Krause recently said, "New ways in which firms are using information has totally changed the production environment, which could lead to a complete turnover in power in every industry. No firm's competitive position is safe any more." Dissertation: Information Infrastructure and Economic Growth. Presentations include: Hot Money: The Economics of International Investment; Technology Transfer and Economic Growth.
Jeffrey Nichols, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of History
Professor Nichols' research interests include the nineteenth century American West and the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. He also specializes in the study of polygamy and prostitution in Salt Lake City and has been quoted in prominent SaltLake publications.
Nancy Panos Schmitt, M.B.A.
Associate Professor of Marketing
Expertise:
- marketing management and strategy
- international market advertising
- marketing mistakes
- branding
- automotive marketing and advertising
- marketing regional products nationally
- consumer spending
- marketing advice for small business
She has conducted marketing workshops, and written a host of papers and publications on marketing topics.
Michael A. Popich, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Philosophy
A nationally known Holocaust scholar, Popich has numerous publications on the topic. He teaches ethics and has written on bio-medical ethics as well as environmental ethics. Other topics include hate and torture in a post-9/11 world, genocide in Africa and comparison of Jewish and Catholic religions and religion and violence in the Middle East. The problem of evil and the perfect moral agent - Popich argues neither of the current or traditional solutions to the problem of evil deal convincingly with the Holocaust. Popich was one of 20 scholars selected by the American Philosophical Association to participate in a seminar on "Ethics After the Holocaust: Key Issues for Philosophy and Religion," held at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. In the summer of 2003 he presented at two international conferences: "Is There a Moral Duty to Intervene in Genocide?" at the International Association of Genocide Scholars in Ireland; and "Is There Distributive Economic Justice Without Violence?" at the Colloquium on Religion and Violence at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.
Paul Presson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Expertise:
- illusion of control
Topics include: Inaccurate judgment about personal control; conditions under which we make judgments; conditions under which people feel they have more control, for example, picking your own numbers in the lottery, even though the odds remain the same, or wearing that lucky shirt when gambling; belief systems that tie into the illusion of control, for example, whether people believe they are lucky; are luck and chance the same? Presson's research notes that if you give someone a task that results in many correct outcomes in the beginning, they will think they are luckier than if they get the same amount of correct outcomes later in the task. "People will accept any explanation before they will accept random outcomes. They want a cause," says Presson.
James Seidelman, Ph.D.
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Specialization: International economics; development economics; and economic doctrines. Numerous papers and talks on NAFTA. Seidelman recently returned from Thailand where he taught graduate economics. He spent two months steeped in the Southeast Asian economy, observing the effects on Thailand first hand, and discussing the economy with other academics. Seidelman recently said: "The global economy hangs on to the unbounded optimism of the U.S. consumer and the continuing leadership of the U.S. as a proponent of free and open trade."
David Stanley, Ph.D.
Professor of English
Expertise:
- literature of the American West
- American folklore
- cowboy poetry
- American literature (pre-Civil War)
- nature writing
- environmental policy
- Henry David Thoreau
- ethnic folklore
- Asian literature and culture
Stanley has also researched and written on the culture, songs, poetry and stories of South America's gauchos, and explored the fiddle music and step-dancing traditions of the Scots-Canadians on Cape Breton Island. His edited collection of essays on cowboy poetry has gone into a second printing in both hardback and paperback, and won a runner-up award for nonfiction from Western Writers of America.