Dartmouth SigEp Announces Faculty Fellows
Hanover, NH – SigEp New Hampshire Alpha is proud to announce three faculty advisors for the coming terms: Government Professor Brendan Nyhan, Engineering Professor Vicki May, and Comparative Literature & Spanish Professor Rebecca Biron.
Adding female faculty advisors was one of the important recommendations in President Hanlon's "Moving Dartmouth Forward" initiative, and while many organizations have struggled to meet this requirement, SigEp's positive relationship with the faculty is well-reflected in the strong level of engagement the fellows have already had with the chapter.
The faculty fellows of the NH-Alpha chapter of Sigma Phi Epsilon are passionate about finding learning opportunities with students outside of the classroom, and will help brothers bring these values to their academics. A brother’s journey through the chapter towards becoming a balanced man contains many challenges; these fellows are charged with supporting this journey and helping brothers overcome these challenges through advice and support, both academic and institutional. In addition, these fellows will promote an academic atmosphere and high academic achievement within the chapter. Included in their responsibilities are opening their office hours for brothers to visit, whereby they can provide one-on-one assistance to brothers, and help connect them with the proper resources if needed. Additionally, they will attend academic events of the chapter, giving the fellows opportunities to better understand the academic climate of the chapter and work to improve this through extensions from and connections to these events. Lastly, they will communicate with new member educators and the Academic chair to promote study skills and high performance. In this role, they may assist the Academic chair through consultation on chapter issues, or the Educators through easing transition of new brothers to life as a member of the Greek system from an academic perspective. The faculty fellows will be able to share knowledge of campus resources and academic policies with the undergraduate brothers. Current Academic chair Thomas Palladino is excited to begin working with the faculty fellows: “Each fellow brings a unique area of expertise to the table, so now SigEp will be even more capable of assisting with the brotherhood’s wide range of academic needs and interests.”
The New Hampshire Alpha Chapter of Sigma Phi Epsilon seeks to live up to its founders’ vision that “This fraternity will be different,” and be an organization that is a valued partner in Dartmouth’s educational mission to “prepare students for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge,” and we are excited to begin working with our faculty fellows.
Brendan Nyhan
Professor Nyhan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. He received his B.A. from Swarthmore College and received a Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Duke University in 2009. He served as a RWJ Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan from 2009-2011. His research, which focuses on political scandal and misperceptions about politics and health care, has been published or is forthcoming in journals including the American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Political Analysis, Political Behavior, Political Psychology, Pediatrics, Medical Care, Vaccine, Journal of Adolescent Health, and Social Networks.
Previously, he was a marketing and fundraising consultant for Benetech, a Silicon Valley technology nonprofit, and Deputy Communications Director of the Bernstein for US Senate campaign in Nevada.
He is a contributor to The Upshot at The New York Times (March 2014-). He previously served as a media critic for Columbia Journalism Review (November 2011-February 2014). He also blogs at brendan-nyhan.com and tweets at @BrendanNyhan. He’s been called "one of the most thought-provoking writers about politics on the web", part of "a new breed of conscientious political science bloggers" who are "creating reputational hazards to seat-of-the-pants punditry," and a "political science shaolin warrior".
From 2001-2004, Ben Fritz, Bryan Keefer, and Professor Nyhan edited Spinsanity, a non-partisan watchdog of political spin that was syndicated in Salon (2002) and the Philadelphia Inquirer (2004). In 2004, they published All the President's Spin, a New York Times bestseller that Amazon.com named one of the ten best political books of the year.
Source: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/
Vicki May
Professor May is an Associate Professor at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. She received her B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in Civil/Structural Engineering from Stanford University. Her research interests include seismic engineering and inquiry-based learning.
She began her academic career in the Department of Architectural Engineering at the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, where she was awarded tenure in 2003. Upon relocating to the east coast, Professor May served as an Associate Director for Science, Math, and Engineering with the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning. In this role, she worked with faculty and graduate students across campus to improve and assess their teaching. A passion for teaching drew her back to the classroom. Professor May was named the NH Professor of the Year in 2013 by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. May is currently a Public Voices Fellow as part of the OpEd Project.
Sources: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vicki-may/
http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/people/faculty/vicki-may/
Rebecca Biron
Rebecca E. Biron is a Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College. She chaired the Dartmouth program in Latin American/Latino/Caribbean Studies from 2010-13, and has served as Graduate Director in Comparative Literature. Before moving to Dartmouth in 2006, she was an Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Miami. There she served for three years as Associate Master of Pearson Residential College, and one year as Coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Studies Programs. She directed the degree programs in Latin American Studies from 2001-2006, and was the founding director of a five-year, dual degree (B.A/M.A.) honors program in Latin American Studies. She also served as director of undergraduate studies in Spanish, and associate director of graduate studies in Romance Languages.
Professor Biron's research and teaching interests focus on Latin American literary and cultural studies, literary theory, gender studies, and Mexican cultural criticism. She is the author of two books: Elena Garro and Mexico’s Modern Dreams (Bucknell UP, 2013) and Murder and Masculinity: Violent Fictions of 20th-Century Latin America (Vanderbilt UP, 2000). She is editor of City/Art: the Urban Scene in Latin America (Duke UP, 2009). She has published articles in PMLA; Latin American Literary Review; Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies; Discourse; Revista hispánica moderna; Género, Cultura y Sociedad; Revista de Estudios Hispánicos; Letras Hispanas; Curare: Espacio crítico para las artes; Feminist Studies; La palabra y el hombre; and various essay collections.
At Dartmouth, Professor Biron has taught in Spanish and Portuguese, Comparative Literature, Women’s and Gender Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and in the Humanities I-II sequence. Her course titles have included "Modernismos latinoamericanos" (SPAN80), "The Boom in Latin American Narrative" (SPAN), "Cien años de soledad (SPAN), "Narconarrativas" (SPAN80), "Latin American MegaCities" (LACS), "Latin American Testimonio and Truth" (SPAN and LACS), “Latin American Masculinities” (WGST), “Read the World" (COLT1), "Cultures of Surveillance” (COLT), and "Meaning...An Introduction to Literary Theory" (COLT).