The Academic Minute for 2022.04.18-2022.04.22

The Academic Minute from 04.18 – 04.22

Monday, April 18th
Jeff Miller – SUNY New Paltz
Lessons on Democracy from Ancient Athens
Jeff Miller is a professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the State University of New York at New Paltz where he teaches political theory. He publishes mostly on Ancient Greek political thought with a particular recent emphasis on democratic theory and Athenian comedy. His articles have been published in leading journals including Political Theory, Journal of Politics, and History of Political Thought. His newest book is Democracy in Crisis: Lessons from Ancient Athens (Imprint Academic, 2022).

Tuesday, April 19th
Deena Burris – University of North Carolina Asheville
Funding Global COVID-19 Vaccines through Bond Issuances
Dr. Deena Burris is a tenured Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. She received a Ph.D. in International Development from the University of Southern Mississippi, an M.A. from the University of Denver’s Graduate School of International Studies, and a B.A. in Business Administration and English from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.  Her research interests include development finance and equity financing for microfinance institutions. Prior to joining the faculty at UNC Asheville, Dr. Burris was a tenured faculty member at Guilford College in Greensboro, NC and was in international banking prior to academia.  She enjoys traveling around the world and lives in Asheville, NC with her husband and daughters.

Wednesday, April 20th
Nathan McNeil – Portland State University
Piloting A Transportation Incentive Program to Support Residents of Affordable Housing
Nathan McNeil is a Research Associate at Portland State University’s Transportation Research and Education Center. He conducts research on impacts of active transportation and transit equity, on new bicycle infrastructure and programs on travel behavior and attitudes towards cycling, on shared-use mobility programs including carsharing and bike-share, and on the connection between land-use and transportation. He was Co-Principal Investigator on recent national studies of bike share equity (Breaking Barrier to Bike Share and National Scan of Bike Share Equity Programs) and of protected bike lane implementations (Lessons from the Green Lanes). Nathan received a master of urban and regional planning from Portland State University (PSU) and studied history at Columbia University as an undergraduate. Prior to PSU, Nathan worked for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City as a performance auditor where he evaluated capital programs and contractors.

Thursday, April 21st
JT Torres – Quinnipiac University
How Conversations Help us Learn
JT Torres is director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Quinnipiac University. With Jill Flanders Crosby, he co-authored the book Situated Narratives and Sacred Dance: Performing the Entangled Histories of Cuba and West Africa. The book chronicles a decade of research into the learning of Arará social memory. Torres is also the author of the novel Taking Flight, which follows a Cuban-American family struggling with the illusion of assimilation and identity.

His research into feedback is published in the Journal of Studies in Educational Evaluation and the Journal of the Scholarship into Teaching and Learning.

Friday, April 22nd
Laura Martin – Williams College
Designing Wild Nature
Author of WILD BY DESIGN: The Rise of Ecological Restoration, Laura J. Martin is a prizewinning historian and ecologist who studies how people shape the habitats of other species. Her writing and research have been featured in the New York Times, Scientific American, Slate, and The Atlantic. A former fellow of the Harvard University Center for the Environment and the Stanford Humanities Center, she is an environmental studies professor at Williams College.