Critical and Creative Thinking Faculty Profiles
Suzanne Clark
Suzanne Clark is an Associate Professor, Berklee College of Music who has performed with Corey Eisenberg, Mickey Julian, Suzanna Sifter, Klaus Suonsaari, and Frank Texiera. Her recordings include “All the Nights Magic” with Pat Drain, and “Nordic Voices” and “Red Wine and Strawberries” with Stambandet, conducted by Allen LeVines. From her Berklee faculty bio:”I’m teaching a course called the Creative Flame. I developed it because I felt a class like this would have been helpful for me as an undergraduate-to learn what it means to be a creative artist and how to work at a creative process. These issues go hand in hand with technical skill. There are external components to your craft and there are internal components. You need a mixture of both, in my opinion, not just to be successful, but to sustain that success.”
Associate Professor, Berklee College of Music
Areas of Expertise: Music
Degrees: MA, Critical and Creative Thinking, University of Massachusetts Boston
Olen Gunnlaugson
Olen Gunnlaugson, PhD, is an Associate Professor in Leadership and Organizational Development, in the Faculty of Business Administration, Department of Management at Université Laval, Québec City, Québec, Canada. His areas of specialization, research, and teaching include the following: Dynamic Presencing and Theory U; 21st Century Leadership Training and Capacity Development; Collective, Complexity and Consciousness-Based Leadership; Development of Management Skills; Communication & Presencing Processes; and Executive & Leadership Coaching.
He is author of upcoming book Dynamic Presencing: A Journey into Presencing Leadership, Mastery and Flow, set to be published in 2018 by Trifoss Business Press: Vancouver.
Associate Professor in Leadership and Organizational Development, Université Laval
Areas of Expertise: Organizational Development, Dialogue Processes
Degrees: PhD, Educational Studies, University of British Columbia
David S. Martin
David S. Martin, Ph.D. is Professor/Dean Emeritus from Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. He is an experienced teacher, school administrator, curriculum administrator, university administrator, and professor of education. He has taught several graduate courses for graduate programs at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, including Critical Thinking, Metacognition, Curriculum, Educational Evaluation, and the Supervision of Student Teaching. He resides on Cape Cod, MA.
Dean Emeritus, Gallaudet University
Areas of Expertise: Cognitive Skill Acquisition, Metacognition, Cognitive Intervention
Degrees: PhD, Curriculum and Instruction, Boston College
Rhoda Maurer
Rhoda Maurer became Director of Horticulture at Cornell Botanic Gardens of Cornell University in February of 2015. Prior to this appointment, she managed the grounds and research greenhouses of Cornell University’s NY State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, NY. She previously served as the Assistant Curator at the Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, and has held other positions at The Elisabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden in Washington and the Royal Horticulture Society’s Garden at Wisley in the United Kingdom. Maurer holds degrees in Anthropology from the University of Washington, Horticulture from Edmonds Community College, and a Masters of Arts in Science in a Changing World from the University of Massachusetts at Boston. Maurer’s main responsibilities at Cornell include directing the horticulture program at Cornell Botanic Gardens, curating more than 40,000 plants representing over 5,000 different taxa across 450 acres of arboretum and botanic gardens, setting a vision for the program with an eye towards conservation and sustainability, and the management of horticulture staff including curators, gardeners, IPM practitioners, landscape architects, arborists, greenhouse staff and seasonal garden staff. With a mission to inspire people – through cultivation, conservation, and education – to understand, appreciate, and nurture plants and the cultures they sustain, the collections are the foundation of a world in which the interdependence of biological and cultural diversity is respected, sustained, and celebrated.
Arthur Millman
Arthur Millman (Associate Professor of Philosophy) teaches in the Philosophy Department as well as in the CCT Program. For CCT, he regularly teaches “Critical Thinking” (CCT 601) as well as “Foundations of Philosophical Thought” (CCT 603/Phil 501). He is in the process of developing a new course that explores recent developments and controversies and relates critical and creative thinking to applied and professional ethics. Arthur’s research is in both the philosophy of science and applied ethics, and he has worked to help students with the integration and application of critical and creative thinking in a wide range of areas including elementary and secondary education and business. [UMB Profile]
Bobby Ricketts
International Performing Artist; Cultural & Arts Envoy of the U.S. Dept. of State
http://bobbyricketts.com
Areas of Expertise: Applied Critical & Creative Thinking; Processes of Creative Realization; Production, Performance, Improvisation & Mastery in Music and the Performing Arts; Broadcast
Media, International Cultural & Arts Development & Outreach; Creative Entrepreneurship
Degrees: MA, Critical and Creative Thinking, University of Massachusetts Boston; BMus, Berklee College of Music
Mark Robinson
Mark Robinson is a visiting scholar at the Science Technology and Society Center at University of California, Berkeley and is completing doctoral research in anthropology at Princeton University. His general interests include medical anthropology, bioethics, the social study of science (STS). His research explores issues in pychopharmaceuticalization, contemporary biomedicine and neuroethics. His specific research questions focus on emerging innovations in neuroscience and biomedicine (especially relating to pharmaceuticals and technologies) and the attendant, emerging ethical implications. His additional research interests pertain to theories of human morality generally, the role of the social sciences in ethics, and the problem of language in the biosciences. Under a fellowship from Princeton”s Center for the Study of Religion, Mark conducted research regarding metaphor-use in neuroscience research. Mark is active with Princeton’s Program in American Studies and is a member of the Technology and Ethics Working Group at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center on Ethics. His work has received acknowledgments from the Institute for Humane Studies, The Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the National Science Foundation, the National Academies of Science and Princeton’s Institute for International and Regional Studies.
Mark also brings clinical and professional experience including work with the Black Coalition on AIDS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Public Health Foundation Enterprise, the San Francisco Department of Public Health, The Heartland Alliance for Health and Human Rights, the HIV Center for Clinical Behavioral Studies at Columbia University, the Department of Behavioral and Social Science at the University of California, San Francisco, Northwestern University’s Weinberg School of Medicine. Mark’s publications address topics spanning neuroscience, the history of antipsychotics and new developments in stem-cell research, genetics and prosthetics. Mark is a member of the Society for Medical Anthropology, the New York Academy of Science and the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities.
Areas of Expertise: Medical Anthropology, Anthropology of Society and Technology, STS, Social Studies of
Neuroscience, Neuroethics, Medical Ethics
Degrees: MA, Anthropology, Princeton University; MA, Religious Studies, University of Chicago;
MA, Social Sciences, University of Chicago
Ben Schwendener
Ben Schwendener is a composer and pianist who sustains a unique voice in contemporary creative music and is a leading authority on George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, which he assisted Russell in teaching at the New England Conservatory from 1986 to 2004. After Russell’s retirement, he has continued to teach the LCC at NEC to this day. He was (from 1986 on) an editorial assistant to the late George Russell, and is a certified teacher (and while Russell was alive, of teachers) of the Lydian Chromatic Concept, and has given lectures, workshops and seminars at Universities around the USA and at institutions around the world. Schwendener has helped to establish a new direction in natural pedagogy and dialogue-based arts education, establishing Organic Music Theory and Universal Musical Elements as primary creative sources.
A father to three children and living in Boston with his wife Shari Repasz, Schwendener is on the faculty at the New England Conservatory and the Longy School of Music of Bard College. He has also designed classes for non-musicians, based on the inter-discipline correspondences of Organic Music Theory, which he has taught since 2000 for the Creative and Critical Thinking Department in the Graduate College of Education at UMass Boston.
He has created music for small and large ensembles, dance companies, film, video and art installations, written volumes of piano music for children of all ages, released many recordings and performs frequently with ensembles and on solo piano throughout the U.S., Europe and Japan.
Schwendener founded and directs Gravity Arts, Inc., a nonprofit organization providing customized educational services and products for individuals, groups and corporations. Most recent projects are collaborations with Swiss choreographer Angelo Dello Iacono since 2012. The Mobile Trio and Iacono’s dance companyADN Dialect have created the international cultural exchange project No Plan B, an experimental jazz scenic event and most recently Zeitzone.
Director, Gravity Arts
http://www.gravityarts.org/
Areas of Expertise: Music, Lydian Chromatic Concept
Degrees: BMus, New England Conservatory
Jeremy Szteiter
Jeremy Szteiter is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University (Cognitive Science) and University of Massachusetts Boston (Critical and Creative Thinking) and now serves as the Assistant Director of the graduate program in Critical and Creative Thinking at UMass Boston. His work has centered on program and organizational development, particularly in adult education in community-based human services and has involved managing, developing, and teaching programs to lifelong learners, with an emphasis on a learning process that involves the teaching of others what has been learned and supporting the growth of individuals to become nonformal teachers of what they know. Jeremy’s work draws upon principles and practices of social change pedagogy, technology-enhanced collaboration, instructional design, and participatory theater.
Assistant Director, Critical and Creative Thinking
Areas of Expertise: Nonformal, Adult, and Community Education
Degrees: MA, Critical and Creative Thinking, University of Massachusetts Boston; BS, Cognitive Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Luanne Witkowski
Luanne Witkowski is an American artist working in a wide range of media and reflective and social practice, with works in collections throughout the United States and abroad. She is a member of the Kingston Gallery, Boston, MA; represented by Hutson Gallery and AMP Gallery both in Provincetown, MA. She exhibits regularly and produces environmental and site-specific installations. Luanne is a member of several artist organizations including the United South End Artists, Mission Hill Artist Collective, and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. More examples of her work can be seen in Contemporary Cape Cod Artists on Abstraction, (D.Forman, 2015, Schiffer Publishers) and on her website www.lewstudio.com. Her Basic Training for Artists and Creative People Workshops (Healthy Artist/Healthy Studio) are offered in collaboration with public and private institutions and individual consultation. In addition to her studio practice, she is the Communication Design Studio manager, adjunct faculty, and LR-MFA Mentor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design; she teaches Creative Thinking in the Critical & Creative Thinking (CCT) graduate program at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and is an internet entrepreneur and business owner. Honors include: Commonwealth of Massachusetts Lifetime Achievement in Art & Commerce Commendation; Massachusetts Statehouse Solo Exhibition; CAPS Faculty Award: Personal and Professional Development University of Massachusetts/Boston
Communication Design Studio Manager, Massachusetts College of Art
http://www.lewstudio.com
Areas of Expertise: Environmental and Studio Art, Social Practice, and Inspiring Change Through Wholistic
Practice, Creative Thinking and Sustainability Education
Degrees: MA, Critical and Creative Thinking, University of Massachusetts Boston
