Faculty Highlights
The College of Charleston boasts a diverse, accomplished faculty with over 500 full-time members, more than 85% of whom have obtained either a Ph.D. or the equivalent degree in their field. These professors aren’t just distinguished by their credentials, but by their devotion to teaching. Independently and collectively, they challenge students to pursue original inquiry and utilize creative expression. Not only do faculty members challenge and motivate students in the classroom at the College of Charleston, but they also engage students as partners in research projects, providing opportunities for scholastic growth that are normally not available to undergraduates. Additionally, in many departments, students accompany faculty to conferences, where they are often given the opportunity to serve as presenters, panelists or speakers.
Members of the College of Charleston’s faculty have been honored with numerous distinctions, including Fulbright Fellowships, Guggenheim Fellowships and a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation. Anthony Varallo (assistant professor of English), for example, received the Drue Heinz Literature Prize in January 2008. This is one of the nation’s most prestigious awards for a book of short stories. Varallo’s manuscript, Out Loud, was selected from a field of nearly 300 entries. The work will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in the fall of 2008. And Pam Riggs-Gelasco, an associate professor in Chemistry and Biochemistry, received a Henry Dreyfus Teacher/Scholar Award that provides an unrestricted grant of $60,000 for research.
Current Fulbright Fellows among the College of Charleston faculty include:
Joyce Barrett, Adjunct Professor of Communication. Barrett will travel to Burkina Faso during March 2008, where she will work with advanced students in the Department of Journalism at the University of Ouagadougou. Barrett also will make presentations to several large audiences on government communication in crisis situations, in addition to collaboration with professors in the Department of Communications on the development of new course materials. Her Fulbright experience also will include senior professional training seminars with the Directors of Communication within the Burkina Faso government. Barrett joined the Department of Communication in 2007. She teaches introductory and advanced courses in media and media writing. She was also a Fulbright Fellow in 2003.
Giacomo DiTullio, Associate Professor of Biology. He will be pursuing
research that pertains to the effects of global climate change at Zoological Station
of Naples in Naples, Italy.
Mary Beth Heston, Associate Professor of Art History. She will spend her
fellowship at the University of Kerala in India, researching murals for her book entitled “The Book of War: A Commentary on Kingship in the Ramayana Murals, Mattancheri Palace."
Dr. Steven Litvin, Professor of Hospitality and Tourism Management. He will spend the fall semester of 2008 as the Guelph University Research Chair in Sustainable Commerce at Guelph’s College of Management and Economics in Canada. Specifically, Dr. Litvin will study sustainable tourism development, focusing on the inevitable tension that exists between tourism growth and livability in communities whose economies are based on tourism.
Former Fulbright Fellows among the College of Charleston faculty include:
Richard Bodek (History) Fulbright Fellowship to participate in the German Studies Seminar "Germany and Jewish Studies Today" (1996)
Marianne Mazonne (Art History) Studied and taught at the National
University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Kyiv, Ukraine (2005)
Jack Parson (Political Science) A Senior Fulbright Scholar in Botswana (1984-’85) and a Summer Fulbright Fellow in 1990.
Former Guggenheim Fellows include:
Professor Michael Phillips (Studio Art)
Former MacArthur Fellows
Ted Rosengarten, an author and historian, received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1989. Rosengarten is an adjunct professor at the College. He teaches history and religious studies.
Relevant Links
Focus on the Faculty is a sampling of faculty profiles that have been written by students from the College’s Department of Communication.
Faculty Bookshelf, a list of works that faculty members have written and had published, offers an additional measure of the quality of the College’s faculty. The works listed here are simply representative; they include books only, written or edited by College of Charleston professors in the past dozen years. This list does not include the many works published in magazines and scholarly journals, nor the many papers presented at symposiums or conferences.
