President's Professors

James Blasingame

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Blasingame’s areas of expertise are young adult literature, indigenous education, secondary writing instruction and the education of pre-service teachers, in addition to cowboy poetry. He has authored books and 160 book reviews and interviews with poets and authors.

Sara Brownell

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Brownell’s research in biology education is internationally recognized. Starting from her education as a neuroscientist, she transitioned to discipline-based education research and is an expert on course-based undergraduate research experiences and making undergraduate science learning experiences, specifically active learning courses and undergraduate research experiences, more inclusive.

Sharon Jae Hall

Professor, School of Life Sciences
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Andréa Werneck Richa

Professor, School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence
Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

Thomas G. Sugar

Associate Dean, Barrett, The Honors College, Polytechnic campus
Professor, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

Heather Bimonte-Nelson

Department of Psychology
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Bimonte-Nelson leads research related to the cognitive and hormonal effects of transitional and surgical menopause. She is dedicated to diverse teaching projects at a community, university and national level. Founder of ASU’s award-winning Brain Fairs for Children, Bimonte-Nelson and her team of doctoral and undergraduate students organize the events to increase public awareness about the brain and to introduce children to neuroscience and the field of psychology.

Eileen Díaz McConnell

School of Transborder Studies
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Cynthia Lietz

School of Social Work
Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions

Lietz is fascinated by the complexity of family dynamics, especially when family members are confronted with challenges such as trauma or loss. As a vice dean and professor, she supports students through mentoring opportunities in the Watts College Undergraduate Research Program. She also oversees the Bridging Success program, which supports ASU students with a foster care background.

Ian Moulton

College of Integrative Sciences and Arts

Moulton is a cultural historian and literary scholar whose research focuses on the representation of gender and sexuality in early modern literature. His most recent work analyzes the role books played in circulating new notions about romance in early modern Europe. Moulton is a member of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Joni Adamson

Department of English
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Adamson directs the Environmental Humanities Initiative at ASU and created the university’s first undergraduate Environmental Humanities Certificate. She writes on the centrality of the environmental humanities to the sustainability sciences, the design of desirable futures, climate fiction and film, Indigenous literatures and scientific literacies, the rights of nature movement and the food justice movement. 

Michael Angilletta

School of Life Sciences
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Angilletta studies how animal populations adapt to changing environments and the ecological and evolutionary causes, costs and benefit of selfishness and cooperation in human societies. He has also has helped lead a “revolution in biology education” through the development of the adaptive-learning platform BioSpine which aims to align and reform the undergraduate curriculum in biological sciences.

Lara Ferry

School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences
New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences

Professor Ferry received strong testimony of her peers and students for her dedication and teaching style. She also is a mentor to other teachers, leading and participating in teaching-learning workshops and guiding young faculty. She has created a repository of information and resources for the faculty that they can access. When the Herberger Young Scholars Academy first opened, Ferry was an early participant, and has continued to be a frequent mentor of both students and teachers. Her dedication to teaching can also be seen in the wide array of courses she has taught, again with emphasis on student-driven learning.

Keith Hjelmstad

School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment
Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

Professor Hjelmstad has been a catalyzing force within the Fulton Schools, as well as nationally, in engineering education and research. His ability to engage, challenge and excite undergraduate students with his innovative curricula and courses has had a profound impact on undergraduate students. He has completely revamped the sophomore-level mechanics courses (CEE 210, CEE 212, and CEE 213) through an effort he calls “The Mechanics Project,” which “represents nothing short of a revolution in teaching.”

Douglas Kenrick

Department of Psychology
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Professor Kenrick is described as “an elite undergraduate (and graduate) educator. He is exceptionally knowledgeable, not only in his own sub-disciplines of social, personality, and evolutionary psychology, but in psychology more broadly and in related disciplines (i.e., anthropology, evolutionary biology). He has authored successful textbooks, including one text soon to be in its seventh edition. And he has been doing all this consistently for 40 years, all while being a renowned and productive scholar, responsible for seminal research findings and shaping the direction of his field.”

Steve Reynolds

School of Earth and Space Exploration
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Professor Reynolds is an outstanding and innovative teacher, recognized around the world. He has transformed the teaching philosophy of his scientific field and written the best textbooks available today.  His three introductory textbooks are among the most widely used texts in the world. These are innovative texts designed around cognitive and educational research. He is internationally known for interactive, student-centered instruction, even in large auditorium-style classrooms, having given nearly 100 talks and workshops about teaching and learning at national meetings, education workshops, symposia, and invited talks to universities and colleges. And he has provided significant guidance for many colleagues on their course design and teaching style.

Amber Wutich

School of Human Evolution and Social Change
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Professor Wutich is an inspirational instructor who has developed an exceptional teaching approach that combines hands-on instruction with sophisticated methodology to encourage undergraduates to make a real world impact. During the last seven years, she has received six teaching and/or mentoring awards within and outside of ASU: Outstanding Doctoral Mentor Award (ASU); Excellence in Teaching Innovation Award (SHESC); Carnegie CASE Arizona Professor of the Year; Faculty Achievement Award for Excellence in Classroom Performance (ASU); Zebulon Pearce Distinguished Teaching Award (CLAS); and Director’s Award for Innovation in Undergraduate Teaching (SHESC).

Mark Henderson

Henderson is a professor of mechanical engineering at the Polytechnic campus, an associate dean at Barrett, the Honors College, and is the co-founder and director of GlobalResolve, a social entrepreneurship program with projects in water, sanitation, energy, agriculture, health and discipline. Students have gone to Peru, Costa Rica, Mexico and Nepal. “When you say, I’m from ASU and I’m here to help, it’s an emotional and social commitment,” Henderson says. While most of his students in his program are engineers, the approach fostered is interdisciplinary, considering politics, economy, language and culture.

Matthias Kawski

Kawski is an expert in differential geometry and control theory and the founder of Math Circles in which high schoolers work on challenging math problems with university mathematicians. He works with students who can’t get enough math in school or want to do math fun working with real data. His involvement in the community also includes outreach in the Navajo Nation, offering math campus and teaching training. He encourages students to stretch themselves and believes in “lots of motivation, lots of fun and the students asking the questions.”

Mary Bates Neubauer

Neubauer is the head of sculpture in the Herberger College, a Fulbright Fellow and an expert in digital design. She encourages her students to get out into the world, to be open to professional opportunities and to travel. She takes students to Italy as part of the Digital Stone Project, a competitive program where students complete digital sketches of their sculptures, which programs robots to sculpt blocks of marble. She inspires drive, adventure and enterprise.

Bryan Brayboy

Educators are most successful when we work with students long enough to get them to do what we do — but better. Whether students pursue work around issues related to my particular areas of specialty is unimportant. What is important is ensuring students know how to ask questions, contextualize issues, and access relevant and reliable information in order to inform their opinions and professional and academic work. I teach students, at all levels, how to navigate the process of becoming an academic and professional. This means helping students understand how to ask meaningful questions, locate those questions within a larger body of literature or contemporary ideas, and find ways to answer their questions.

Kaye Reed

As an instructor, I feel that I’ve come a long way from that first class in 1997. Now there are 350 to 400 students sitting in front of me, viewing pictures and videos, discussing the concepts that I introduce in class, and watching me walk like a gibbon or an early ancestor. It seems that this latter activity makes me much more approachable, and students are emboldened to come and talk to me after class or in office hours. All of their senses are engaged if they let them.

Ricardo Alarcon

(video)

The involvement of undergraduates in forefront research at their home institutions is considered a crucial part of student education particularly in the sciences. Students can gain important insights if they have access to faculty doing forefront research. They can get valuable training on a particular technique or problem, they can learn to work in research groups involving graduate students and senior scientists, and they can get an early read of whether to proceed further study in the sciences.

Ariel D. Anbar

(video)

Democratic societies require that the public make sound decisions on scientifically infused issues such as climate change and renewable energy. To do so, it is imperative to understand that science is not an encyclopedic collection of facts. Rather, science is the process by which we explore important question […] This status quo of disciplinary, “lecture-lab” courses does not meet the needs of society […] The online revolution in higher education has the potential to constructively disrupt this status quo […] Online education has vast untapped potential to enhance excellence as well as access

Alexandra Brewis Slade

(video)

I like to focus on questions of why we want students to learn not just what we want them to learn, and consider the best ways to promote learning may not be the easiest, the most comfortable, or most obvious. I have worked very hard ever since to discover the myriad ways in which teaching best “works” and doesn’t, through working with my own mentors and then with students, keeping up with educational literature, staying in front of new technologies as much as possible, and rampant pedagogical experimentation. In all this, I always try to “think big.”

Jennifer Fewell

(video)

“Mentoring undergraduate and graduate students in research is one of the most important and rewarding aspects of my career, because it gives me the opportunity to form a long-term connection with my students. Research mentoring is a critical part of undergraduate training; it is the best way for students to truly understand science as a process rather than a collection of concepts. I also benefit from it, because the enthusiasm of my students is infectious. I am continuously reminded that research and discovery is exciting business.”

Glenn H. Hurlbert

(video)

“As soon as students enjoy what they are doing they become ripe for learning. The best teacher in the world cannot force anyone to learn, but a willing learner can learn from anyone. It is, therefore, my first task to create willing learners. The challenge then is to create a safe environment for thinking, guessing and questioning in which students can speak freely without fear of ridicule.”

Ileana Alexandra Orlich

(video)

“My mission is to make certain that the ASU Romanian program, which has benefited so much from ASU's extraordinary vision of global engagement, empowers our students in an ever-changing world. At the end of the day, I wait to catch up with news from our students. Their world is my world and my enthusiasm is only a small measure of their rich and rewarding engagement with the challenges for which ASU, the New American University, prepares them.”

Brad Allenby

(video)

“Several themes run through the entire set of courses (I have designed). Most broadly, leadership of any kind these days requires a deep understanding of technology systems, not as collections of physical artifacts, but as deeply cultural, social and institutional phenomena. The challenge is to develop courses that are able to open students up to the risks and opportunities of the world in front of them.”

Eric Kostelich

(video)

“My pedagogical interests are twofold: first, to implement compelling, 21st-century undergraduate programs in mathematics, and second, to create national models for undergraduate research programs that involve our best students in cutting-edge problems in atmospheric science, cancer modeling and prediction, medical imaging, and others. Additional funding from the National Science Foundation will expand our efforts to mentor outstanding mathematics students in the Maricopa County community colleges and facilitate their transfer to ASU.”

Manfred Laubichler

(video)

“I motivate my students with Clarence Darrow's statement, 'To think is to differ,' and Lenin's recognition that 'Learning is never done without errors and defeat.' Though some of my classes are large, I see teaching mostly as a personal mentorship between student and teacher, with the roles often reversed. I am fortunate that I have encountered many wonderful groups of students, who make teaching at ASU a very gratifying experience.”

Leona S. Aiken

(video)

Professor Aiken is a leading scholar in quantitative psychology and health psychology, and has authored one of the most-used texts in the field of quantitative psychology. It is a hallmark of her career that her research and teaching are inseparably intertwined, as her students are also engaged in the work that has established Professor Aiken as a preeminent scholar who has defined and refined important fields of study that cut across critical psychological domains. She is dedicated to the objective that every student truly learn from their experience, whether it is in the classroom, the lab or in thesis research. As a consequence, students flock to her courses and vie for the opportunity to work in her research lab.

Richard Creath

(video)

Professor Creath is an internationally recognized scholar and researcher in the philosophy of science. He is one of the world’s leading authorities on the work of two of the 20th century’s most important philosophers, Rudolf Carnap and W. V. O. Quine. That work is central to the most important developments in logic, epistemology and philosophy of science during the last century. Professor Creath uses his 35 years of classroom experience to inspire students to explore new and differing values, opinions and ways of looking at the world. He teaches students to evaluate the many perspectives of people around them, to fashion new perspectives and to communicate that evaluation to others.

Amy L. Ostrom

(video)

Professor Ostrom is the J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation Professor in Services Leadership in the Department of Marketing. Her research focuses on helping organizations strengthen customer satisfaction and loyalty. She applies this same focus to her students. She builds personal relationships and her accessibility is legendary in the school. Professor Ostrom is a passionate teacher who pushes her students to achieve all they can. Students, in turn, are devoted to her. Ostrom’s teaching pedagogy is based on student engagement and experimentation. She sets rigorous expectations and inspires her students to exceed their own expectations. Professor Ostrom spends countless hours with students and has participated in more than 60 honors theses, supervising more than 35 of them.

James B. Adams

(video)

Professor Adams believes that a successful undergraduate experience is tied to instruction that reaches far beyond the classroom. He is a professor of materials and the chair of the materials program in the School of for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. Professor Adams is an excellent teacher who has taught a wide variety of courses, created several courses, and created teaching materials with national impact. He is consistently assigned some of the most difficult/least popular courses to teach, and he consistently turns them into the most popular courses in the curriculum. He is extremely dedicated to undergraduate success, including recruiting, advising, research, and job placement.

Andrew T. Smith

(video)

Professor Smith believes it is possible to change the world, and so do his undergraduate students. He is a professor of conservation biology, population biology and mammalogy in the School of Life Sciences, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He has been the leader of the conservation biology program for over three decades and has successfully built the program based on his internationally recognized research, mentorship of graduate students, and through his dedicated support of undergraduate education. He worked to develop new courses, recruit new faculty and support staff to actively embrace undergraduate students and their goals. He has served as the Chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Lagomorph Specialist Group and as an advisor to the Chinese government on issues concerning biodiversity. 

José E. Náñez Sr.

(video)

Professor Náñez embodies his own guiding notion that faculty members should provide an “education of the heart,” to help students love their work, to work diligently, to become life-long learners and to give back to the communities in which they live. Professor Náñez is a professor of psychology in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and executive director of community outreach at ASU. A cognitive neuroscientist, Professor Náñez pursues research in visual perception and neuronal organization. As executive director of community outreach, he also creates and implements new strategies to advance the university’s student outreach agenda, a role that draws on his many years successfully engaging students in his classes and presenting recruiting programs for Hispanic and first-generation students in the community.

Margaret C. Nelson

(video)

Professor Nelson actively engages in teaching and mentoring in every aspect of her career–as a scholar, instructor and administrator. She is involved, caring, responsive and innovative in her teaching, and she displays outstanding leadership in improving educational opportunities and instructional quality for students. Professor Nelson is vice dean of Barrett, the Honors College, a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change and an affiliated faculty member of the Global Institute of Sustainability. She successfully combines thorough field research and archaeological analysis with deep and encompassing theoretical insights and inspires those around her to produce innovative ideas and solutions to theoretical and substantive problems.

Max Underwood

(video)

Professor Underwood has been a faculty member of the Design School in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts for 23 years. Few faculty members in the discipline of architecture in the United States are as highly respected and recognized as Professor Underwood, an extraordinary achievement. The focus of his scholarship intertwines the art of teaching with the realities of professional practice. Professor Underwood’s design studios are consistently considered some of the most inspiring among undergraduate and graduate students. He transmits his scholarship and genuine enthusiasm to his students. His commitment to the art of teaching, the strategies of instruction, expands design, architecture and the environment. He is a teacher’s teacher.

Janet "Jess" Alberts

(video)

Professor Alberts' goal as a teacher is to provoke her students to ask questions about the world around them. As a communications professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, her goal is to help them develop the skills to answer those questions. Alberts’ commitment to her students is evident not only in her frequent teaching of undergraduate courses, in addition to her graduate course load, but through her interactions with her students outside of the classroom. It is not unusual for students to go to her for coaching on job interviews and negotiations, as well as advice on solving conflicts.

Ted Humphrey

(video)

Professor Humphrey's studies concentrate on the philosophers, poets and revolutionaries of Latin America and nation-building in 19th century Latin America have earned him recognition for leadership and innovation in Barrett, The Honors College. His published scholarship includes numerous essays on problems of reason and will and space and time in classical modern philosophy, as well as Kant’s epistemology, late metaphysics, and moral and political theory. His translations of Kant’s Enlightenment writings have become standards in the field. Professor Humphrey chaired ASU's Philosophy Department from 1974-1983, and then directed ASU's Honors Program, guiding it to collegiate status, becoming the founding dean of Barrett, the Honors College in 1988, a position he held until 2003.

Jane Maienschein

Professor Maienschein focuses on the history and philosophy of biology and its role in society. Maienschein’s commitment to her field is exhibited through her extensive research and experimental analysis with the study of people, institutions, and changing social, political, and legal contexts. Also honored as a Parents’ Professor, she brings an equally broad and challenging transdisciplinary approach to her teaching that is fully appreciated by her students. Founder and director of the Center for Biology and Society, Maienschein promotes education and research at the intersection of biological science and society. She is also a fellow of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and was chosen as the Arizona Professor of the Year, by CASE and Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 2010.

Randall S. Cerveny

(video)

Cerveny is a professor of geographical sciences and one of the top climatologists in the U.S. A committed undergraduate teacher, he’s designed inventive courses based on the latest research and has established a successful climate-meteorology program at ASU.

Alice A. Christie

(video)

Christie is a versatile educator with a hands-on, creative approach to teaching. She has conducted research on gender differences in the uses of technology, scaffolding teachers as they integrate technology in their classrooms, and the use of electronic portfolios for assessment.

Ian R. Gould

(video)

Gould’s research interests are in organic geochemistry and geochemically inspired green organic chemistry. He has research programs in understanding student performance in organic chemistry courses and is developing an intelligent online tutoring system for organic chemistry with ASU colleague Kurt VanLehn.

Paul D. Rothstein

(video)

Rothstein received his award posthumously. He was recognized for his work in creating InnovationSpace, a transdisciplinary university research and development lab. In it, industrial and graphic design students and faculty work with those from business and engineering to commercialize product design concepts that solve significant social problems.