MSU Honors College

Scott Becker is a mental health advisor in Residence Education and Housing Services. Becker is also a licensed psychologist in private practice in Okemos, Michigan. Over the past 24 years, he has worked at several universities as a staff psychologist, faculty member, director of training, and most recently as the Director of the MSU Counseling Center. He is currently writing a book on the combined impact of globalization, climate change, digital technology, and political propaganda, entitled “Facing Monsters.” Becker earned his doctorate from Miami University.

Clare Luz is an assistant professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine. Luz is a gerontologist who has conducted research on health services delivery for older adults, optimal functional ability and quality of life, and the intersection of the arts and health. She us founding Director of AgeAlive, a program to foster age-related networking, information exchange and partnerships across MSU. Prior to MSU, she worked for 20 years as a geriatric social worker and consultant in long-term care settings. Luz earned her doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

William J. Chopik is an assistant professor in the Michigan State University Department of Psychology. Chopik is a social-personality psychologist interested in how relationships and the people in them change over time. His research focuses on how factors both inside (such as biological and hormonal) and outside (such as social roles and geography) of people influence their approach to social relationships. His work examines phenomena as broad as how relationships and social institutions shape development and as focused as the hormonal mechanisms that underlie love and intimacy. Chopik earned his doctorate from the University of Michigan.   

Mary A. Bedikian is professor of law in residence and director of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Program in the Michigan State University College of Law. Bedikian is the former district vice president for the Detroit Region of the American Arbitration Association, where she worked for 28 years. Her extensive experience in alternative dispute resolution spans many sectors, including labor, commercial, construction, international, and employment. In 1987, Bedikian created one of the first interactive alternative dispute resolution courses in Michigan and was instrumental in ADR Section of the State Bar of Michigan. Bedikian earned her juris doctorate from Michigan State University.

Heather Howard is an associate professor in the Michigan State University Department of Anthropology with affiliation to the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program, and Native American Institute. Howard’s research interests are the politics of knowledge production in cultural, heritage, health, and social service delivery organizations; community-driven methodologies; medical anthropology; indigenous peoples’ health and technologies of chronic illness management. Indigenous people and urbanization is a central focus of her research, in which she examines the evolution of urban indigenous epistemologies of community, including authority-making structures, and the production of knowledge itself as a dynamic process which intervenes in the production of politics, ethical practice, and the social order. Howard earned her doctorate from the University of Toronto.

Noah Kaye is an assistant professor in the Department of History at Michigan State University. Noah is an ancient historian and archaeologist focused on the eastern Mediterranean in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, with an interest in the relationship between economic and cultural change. His first book will be a study of the political economy of the Attalid kingdom of Pergamon. In Spring 2020, Noah will be teaching HST 481: The Holy Land in the Graeco-Roman Period. He earned his doctorate from UC-Berkeley.

Sharon Leon is an associate professor in the Department of History at Michigan State University. Sharon is an historian of American religion with a concentration on U.S. Catholicism. She also specializes in digital methods with a focus on public history. With support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, she is analyzing experiences of the cohort of people enslaved and sold by the Maryland Province Jesuits in the 18th and 19th Sharon’s first book was, “An Image of God: the Catholic Struggle with Eugenics.” She earned her doctorate from the University of Minnesota.

Stacey Camp is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Michigan State University and director of the Campus Archaeology Program. Stacey researches how social inequality manifests through material culture and environment. Her current research project involves archaeological and archival research on a World War II internment camp in Idaho, where first-generation Japanese migrants were imprisoned as enemy aliens by the United States government. Stacey’s first book, “The Archaeology of Citizenship,” examined how different marginalized groups, especially migrants, in the United States made claims to nationality and citizenship via material culture. She earned her doctorate from Stanford University.

Siddharth Chandra is a professor in James Madison College at Michigan State University and director of the Asian Studies Center. Siddharth’s research interests include behavior and policy relating to addictive substances, the intersection of economics, health, and history in Asia, and applications of portfolio theory to fields outside finance. He has received funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for his research, which has been published in a variety of journals. At James Madison College, he teaches a senior seminar titled “Drug policy from Asia to America,” in which students learn about different approaches to drug policy in Asia and the USA. Siddharth earned his doctorate from Cornell University.

Aaron McCright is chairperson and professor in the Michigan State University Department of Sociology. Employing a range of methods and analytical techniques, Aaron explains the structure, strategy, tactics, and impacts of the US-based climate change denial countermovement; analyzes theoretically relevant patterns and trends in citizens’ climate change views; and investigates key predictors of public views of science and scientists. He is the author of “The Risk Society Revisited: Social Theory and Governance,” and “Community and Ecology: Dynamics of Place, Sustainability, and Politics”. He earned his doctorate from Washington State University.

Rick Wash is an associate professor in the Michigan State University Department of Media and Information. His work involves understanding how people think about their interactions with computers, and their interactions with other people through computers. His research has a particular focus on security and collaborative systems. He is currently the Primary Investigator on three NSF grants, including an NSF Early Faculty CAREER award. He earned his doctorate from the University of Michigan.

Kevin Elliott is an associate professor in Michigan State University's Lyman Briggs College, the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, & Department of Philosophy. His research lies at the intersection of the philosophy of science and practical ethics. His books include, “Is a Little Pollution Good for You? Incorporating Societal Values in Environmental Research,” “Current Controversies in Values and Science,” “Exploring Inductive Risk,” and “A Tapestry of Values: An Introduction to Values in Science”. He earned his doctorate from the University of Notre Dame.  

Georgina Montgomery is an associate professor in Michigan State University's Lyman Briggs College and the Department of History. Her research focuses on the history of field science, particularly the development of field methods and sites within primatology and animal behavior studies. Montgomery teaches a range of courses on the history of field science, gender and science, and the history of primatology and animal behavior studies. Montgomery’s publications include a book “Primates in the Real World: Escaping Primate Folklore, Creating Primate Science,” articles for the Journal for the History of Biology and Endeavour, book chapters for Teaching the Animal and a chapter on Darwin and Gender for Cambridge University Press’ encyclopedia on Darwin. She earned her doctorate from the University of Minnesota.

Carolyn Logan is an associate professor in the Michigan State University Department of Political Science. She is also deputy director of Afrobarometer, a collaborative survey research project that conducts public opinion research on the quality of democracy and governance in 20 African countries. Logan’s research interests are in democratization and political development in Africa, especially in East Africa, the Horn, and Somaliland. She is particularly interested in the role of “traditional” leaders and institutions in democratization, and in “citizen versus subject” attitudes among African publics. Logan lived and worked in Southern and Eastern Africa for nearly a decade before joining MSU. She earned her doctorate from Tufts University.  

Leo Zulu is an associate professor in the Michigan State University Department of Geography, Environment and Spatial Sciences. His research interests include political ecology; environment and development; community-based natural resources management in rural Africa; deforestation; food security; socio-spatial; temporal and biophysical processes of land use and land cover change in Africa and the techniques that permit their examination. Zulu is editor of the African Geographical Review – the official journal of the Africa Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers. He earned his doctorate from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  

Terrie Taylor is a University Distinguished Professor in the Michigan State University Department of Osteopathic Medical Specialties. Taylor’s battle against malaria, has been waged since 1986. An internationally recognized scientist and physician, Taylor spends six months of the year in Malawi, conducting malaria research and treating mostly pediatric patients. The Blantyre Malaria Project, established by Taylor and Malcolm Molyneux, has carried out outstanding research and patient care in the area of cerebral malaria, a syndrome in which the brain is involved. She earned her doctor of osteopathic medicine degree from the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine.  

Veronique Theriault is an assistant professor in the Michigan State University Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics. She is working with the Food Security Group on campus and on various in-country research and outreach projects. Reducing poverty and increasing food and nutrition security through improved rural and agricultural development policy in West Africa form the core of Theriault’s research agenda. Her recent research projects have focused on the gender and generation gap in technology adoption and new market opportunities in the agri-food sector. She earned her doctorate from the University of Florida.

Saweda Onipede Liverpool-Tasie is an associate professor in the Michigan State University Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics. Her research focusses on emergent issues related to smallholder productivity and welfare within dynamic and transforming food markets in sub Saharan Africa and alongside poorly functioning markets in the region. Her current research focuses on differential effects of policies and poverty reduction strategies on farmer behavior and welfare. In addition to evaluating the heterogeneous effect of poverty reduction strategies on rural household behavior and livelihood, she has a keen interest in understanding input use and input markets as well as evaluating input policies. She earned her doctorate from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Mark Wilson is a professor and program director of Urban and Regional Planning in the School of Planning, Design, and Construction. His research interests include the social, economic, and political implications of technical change, including the Internet and autonomous vehicles, with an emphasis on planning strategies and urban implications. His current projects include planning for industrial parks in Africa and the Middle East, mega event planning for world’s fairs and Olympics, innovation and information technology access in Michigan, and the planning of knowledge and innovation clusters. He earned his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.

Hayder Radha is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.   He is the director of MSU’s Connected and Autonomous Networked Vehicles for Active Safety, or CANVAS. Prior to teaching at Michigan State University, he was a research fellow and consulting scientist at Phillips Research. He was also a distinguished member of technical staff at Bell Laboratories. He earned his doctorate from Columbia University.

David Ferguson is an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology. One of his research interests includes a focus on the physiological stressed placed on automotive race car drivers and pit crews. He has worked in racing for over 10 years with the top teams in NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula 1, and IMSA. He earned his doctorate from Texas A&M University.

Tamara Reid Bush is an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. She’s a mechanical engineer with a focus in the field of biomechanics, applying engineering techniques and principles to the human body. In 2017, she was named a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. She is the founding director of the MSU Biomechanical Design Research Laboratory, where she and her students apply engineering techniques and principles to the human body. She earned her doctorate from Michigan State University.

Lisa Fine is a professor in the Department of History. She has authored two books: The Souls of the Skyscraper: Female Clerical Workers in Chicago, 1870-1930, and The Story of Reo Joe: Work, Kin, and Community in Autotown, USA. Her research interests include twentieth century U.S, gender and women’s history, and labor and working-class history. She earned her doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Sherman Garnett is a professor in and dean of James Madison College. His interests include the former Soviet Union, especially Russian foreign and security policy, Ukraine and comparative political and security issues for the post-Communist world. He was most recently a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he directed projects on security and national identity in the former USSR and Russian-Chinese relations. Before that, he worked for more than a dozen years on arms control and post-Communist security policy questions in a variety of positions in the U.S. government, finishing his government service as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia. He earned his doctorate from the University of Michigan.

Kyle Evered is an associate professor in the Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences. Trained to study geographies of the Middle East and North Africa and the former Soviet states of Eurasia, most of Evered’s research deals with topics associated with geographies of Turkey and its neighboring states. In particular, he has published on the cultural and historical geographies, political geographies, and cultural ecologies of the country and its wider regions. He earned his doctorate from the University of Oregon.

Matthew Pauly is an associate professor in the Department of History. Pauly was a U.S. Department of State Fascell Fellow at the American Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine prior to teaching. He is the author of Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education, and Power in Soviet Ukraine as well as numerous articles, essays, and reviews on early Soviet nationalities policy and the intersection between national identity, education, and childhood in late imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. At MSU, he is a core faculty member of the Center for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies and Peace and Justice Studies. He earned his doctorate from Indiana University.  

Lisa Cook is an associate professor of economics in the Department of Economics and associate professor of international relations in James Madison College. She’s an economist primarily interested in macroeconomics, development economics, and economic history. Cook also studies the economics of innovation and financial institutions and crises, including Tsarist, Soviet, and Post-Soviet behavior of inventors in the territory that was once the Soviet Union. Prior to teaching, Cook served as Senior Advisor on Finance and Development in the U.S. Department of Treasury. She earned her doctorate from the University of California-Berkeley.

William Taylor is University Distinguished Professor in Global Fisheries Systems in the Michigan State University Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. He is an internationally recognized expert in Great Lakes fisheries ecology, population dynamics, governance, and management. Throughout his career, he has been active in the American Fisheries Society, serving as president of the society, the Michigan Chapter, and the North Central Division. Currently, he holds a U.S. Presidential appointment as a U.S. Commissioner (alternate) for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. He earned his doctorate from Arizona State University.

Jade Mitchell is an assistant professor in the Michigan State University Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering. Her research interests include risk assessment, understanding the chemical and microbial stressors from diverse environmental exposures including bioterrorism and food safety; doing quantitative analysis, decision analysis, Bayesian statistics, and systems analysis; conducting dose-response and exposure modeling including both exogenous and endogenous fate; and risk management and environmental policy. She has earned U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awards. She earned her doctorate from Drexel University.

David Hyndman is a professor in and chairperson of the Michigan State University Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. His research interests include developing novel methods to characterize the aquifers that store and transmit water supplies critical to human and ecological health, helping develop methods to clean contaminated aquifers using emerging technologies such as bioremediation, and quantifying the human impacts on changes in climate and land use on the water cycle. His research involves coupling novel models with high-resolution field data to explore the physical, chemical, and ecological processes in natural and anthropogenically altered systems. He earned his doctorate from Stanford University.

Joan Rose is the Homer Nowlin Endowed Chair in Water Research in the Michigan State University Department of Fisheries and Wildlife in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. She’s director of the Water Quality, Environmental Microbiology Laboratory, and co-director of the Center for Advancing Microbial Risk Assessment and the Center for Water Sciences. She is an international expert in water microbiology, water quality and public health safety, publishing more than 250 manuscripts. In 2016, she was awarded the Stockholm Water Prize – the world’s most-prestigious water award. She earned her doctorate from the University of Arizona.

Robert Montgomery is an assistant professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University. He is Director of the Research on the Ecology of Carnivores and their Prey Lab, which is designed to develop innovative solutions for wildlife conservation problems and train students from underrepresented backgrounds so that the future of wildlife conservation leadership can be a more diverse one. Robert is also a research associate at the University of Oxford. He earned his doctorate from Michigan State University.

Laura Apol is an associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. She teaches poetry, writing, and literature in face-to-face, international, and online environments.  In addition to numerous professional publications, she is the author of collections of her own poems: “Falling into Grace”, “Crossing the Ladder of Sun”, “Celestial Bodies”. And her newest collection, “Requiem, Rwanda” was drawn from her work using writing to facilitate healing among survivors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. She is currently working on a novel-in-poems for adolescents entitled Tutsi, based on the story of one survivor. Laura earned her doctorate from the University of Iowa.

Vaughn W.M. Watson is an assistant professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. Vaughn's research focuses on the interplay of literacy learning, reimagining identities, and envisioning civic imaginaries for Black youth, immigrant youth, and youth of color across socio-cultural contexts of English education, hip-hop and education, civic learning and action, and qualitative participatory research methodologies. He is a former public high-school English teacher of 12 years in New York City. Prior to teaching, Vaughn published numerous music reviews as former pop music writer for The Providence Journal, and freelance music reviewer for org. He earned doctor of education from Columbia University.

Ann Folino White is an associate professor of Theatre Studies and associate chairperson in the Department of Theatre at Michigan State University. Her scholarship on U.S. popular performance, protest, and food culture and politics has appeared in numerous journals. Her book “Plowed Under: Food Policy Protests and Performance in New Deal America” received the CLR James Book Award from the Working Class Studies Association. Ann is recipient of the 2017 Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year award from the Michigan Association of State Universities. She earned her doctorate from Northwestern University.

Jeff Wray is a professor of English and Film Studies in the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. An independent filmmaker and screenwriter, Wray’s award winning feature films include “China,” made for PBS and broadcast nationally. His film “The Evolution of Bert” premiered in the Chicago International Film Festival and was screened at the Pan African Los Angeles Film Festival, among others. In his career, Jeff’s films have screened in more than 100 festivals around the world. He teaches film directing, screenwriting and capstone courses on narrative fiction film. Jeff earned his master of fine arts from Ohio University.

Johanna Schuster-Craig is an assistant professor of German and Global Studies in the College of Arts & Letters. Her research looks at German integration policies, which aim to incorporate immigrants and refugees into the nation. Johanna uses fieldwork methods with social work organizations in Germany to observe how local residents negotiate these policies. She earned her doctorate from Duke University.

Stephanie Nawyn is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Director of Academic Programs, Outreach, and Engagement, Center for Gender in Global Context. Her research and teaching areas of expertise are in gender and immigration, with a focus on forced migration, exclusion, and social inequality. Since coming to Michigan State, Stephanie has conducted research on community development among immigrants and the importance of social networks and social capital to immigrant and refugee incorporation, as well as the socioeconomic advancement of African-born immigrants in the United States. Through a Fulbright Fellowship in Istanbul, she studies the trafficking of migrants in Turkey, focusing on trafficking in sex and other types of labor. Currently she is working on the vulnerability of Syrian refugees to trafficking in Turkey. Stephanie earned her doctorate from the University of Southern California.

Sophia Koufopoulou is fixed term faculty member with the Department of Sociology at, where this semester she teaches international development and the refugee crisis, social stratification and family and society. In 1989 Sophia was one of the very first Greek scholars to pursue in-depth field research in neighboring Turkey through which she explored, described, and explained how individuals and families (Greek and Turkish) forcibly relocated through the terms and conditions of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne preserved their identity through the remainder of the 20th century. Since 2003, Sophia has led the MSU “Contemporary Culture, Politics, and Society in Greece and Turkey” study abroad program through which over 600 MSU undergraduates have traveled, lived and studied in Greece and Turkey. Most recently she was an invited participant on the European Union/Government of Turkey sponsored project “Women on the Move: Refugees in Turkey” where she spent time in Turkey visiting refugee camps on the Turkish Syrian border. She earned her master’s degree from the University of the Aegean.

David Thronson is associate dean for experiential education and a professor in the College of Law. Thronson is co-founder of the Immigration Law Clinic and also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. His research and writing seeks to develop frameworks and critical perspectives for analyzing the intersection of family and immigration, with a particular focus on children. He currently serves on the national Interagency Working Group on Unaccompanied Children and his past governmental appointments include service on the Nevada Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Commission, the Nevada Law Foundation, and the Nevada’s Governor’s Commission for National and Community Service. He earned his juris doctor from Harvard Law School.

Anna Pegler-Gordon is an associate professor of social relations and policy in the James Madison College and director of the Asian Pacific American Studies Program at MSU. Pegler-Gordon's teaching and research interests include: immigration, race, citizenship, visual culture and popular culture. At James Madison College, she has taught courses in Asian American history, immigration policy, comparative race and ethnic relations, and U.S. racial and immigration history. She has received fellowships for her teaching and research, including national awards from the Organization of American Historians, the Japanese Association for American Studies, and the Immigration and Ethnic History Society. At MSU, she has received a Teacher-Scholar award, as well as an Intramural Research Grant Program grant and a Lilly Teaching Fellowship. Pegler-Gordon earned her doctorate from the University of Michigan.  

Trixie Smith is Director of The Writing Center and a member of the faculty in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric and American Cultures. Her teaching and research are infused with issues of gender and activism even as they revolve around writing center theory and practice, writing across the curriculum, writing pedagogy, and teacher training. She is also the director of the Red Cedar Writing Project. Trixie earned her doctorate from the University of South Carolina.

Manuel Chavez is Director of the Information & Media Ph.D. program and Associate Professor in the School of Journalism. His research focuses on risk and crisis communication, government relations with the news media, and international journalism. He teaches courses on research methods, crisis communication, media law and ethics, courts and the media relations, and the press in the Americas. Chavez earned his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.

Rick Sadler is an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine. Like Professor Furr-Holden, he engages in Flint public health research through the MSU College of Human Medicine’s Division of Public Health. Sadler’s research is aimed at strengthening the understanding between the built environment and health behaviors and outcomes, with the goal of shaping land use policy to build healthier cities. He earned his doctorate from the University of Western Ontario.

Debra Furr-Holden is the C.S. Mott Endowed Professor of Public Health in the College of Human Medicine. Furr-Holden is an epidemiologist with expertise in drug and alcohol dependence epidemiology, prevention science and environmental strategies and structural intervention for violence, alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. In the last decade, her work has focused in large part on developing environmental strategies and structural interventions for violence, alcohol, tobacco and other drug prevention in high-risk and urban settings. She earned her doctorate from Johns Hopkins University.

Mary Schulz is associate director for the MSU Extension Center for Local Government Finance and Policy and a Visiting Specialist in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics. Prior to joining the faculty at MSU, Mary was a Federal Affairs Representative for the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies & Crop Insurance Research Bureau She was also a Legislative Assistant to Congressman Nick Smith, in Washington, DC. Mary earned her master’s degree in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University.

Angela Hall is Assistant Professor in the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations, in the College of Social Science. Dr. Hall’s research interests include employee accountability and employee legal claiming. She has taught a wide variety of courses including business law, organizational behavior, human resources, leadership, and employee training and development. She earned her JD and her doctorate from Florida State University.

Kenneth Szymusiak is the Managing Director of theBurgess Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at the Eli BroadCollege of Business. Ken teaches coursework focused onentrepreneurial mindset, small business creation and management, and businessmodel development. Ken also serves as Director of the Hive. Prior to joining MSU, Ken served asCo-Director of the New Economy Division at the Lansing Economic AreaPartnership (LEAP). He earned his MBA from Northwood University.

Karl Gude is the Media Sandbox Director in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences. He is the former Director of Information Graphics at Newsweek magazine and The Associated Press. ·     Gude has been a faculty member of the School of Journalism since 2006. He also teaches a large, Media Sandbox class on creative thinking and problem solving. In 2013, Karl was recognized with the college’s Faculty Impact Award.  

Cheryl Sisk is a University Distinguished Professor in the Neuroscience Program, in the College of Natural Science.The common theme of research projects in the Dr. Sisk’s lab is the influence of steroid hormones on nervous system structure and function. This is directed toward understanding the neural, endocrine, and behavioral changes that take place during puberty and adolescence.Cheryl teaches Introduction to Neuroscience II in the Spring of every year.Sisk earned her doctorate from Florida State University.

Kenneth Merz is the Joseph Zichis Chair in Chemistry, in the College of Natural Science and Director of the Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research. Dr. Merz’s research focuses at the interface between the computational sciences and biology, including computer-aided drug design. Kennie came to MSU from the University of Florida where he was a UF Research Foundation Professor, the Edmund H. Prominski Professor of Chemistry and a member of the Quantum Theory Project. ·    Merz has worked in industry as senior director of the Center for Informatics and Drug Discovery at Pharmacopeia and senior director of the ADMET Research and Development Group’s Accelrys software division. He also is the founder of QuantumBio, a software company in State College, Pa. He earned his doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin.