Six Converse Faculty Receive Tenure & Promotions
Converse’s Board of Trustees has recently promoted and awarded tenure to the following faculty members:
Dr. Doug Bush – Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies
Dr. Angela Elder – Associate Professor of History
Dr. Emily Harbin – Associate Professor of English and Director of the Writing Center
Dr. Shannon Martin – Associate Professor of Psychology
Dr. Sheri Strickland – Professor of Chemistry; Associate Chair for the Department of Biology, Chemistry, and Physics
Professor Jena Thomas – Associate Professor of Art
Dr. Doug P. Bush graduated from The Ohio State University in 2013 with a Ph.D. in Spanish, from the University of Western Ontario in 2006 with an M.A. in Spanish, and from Dalhousie University in 2004 with a B.A. in Spanish and a concentration in journalism. His research interests include Latinx & Latin American literature and culture, focusing on all things Mexico, queer Latinx literature, and Latinos in U.S. media. His first book, Capturing Mariposas: Reading Cultural Schema in Gay Chicano Literature, was released by The Ohio State University Press in 2019.
After graduating from the University of Georgia with a Ph.D in History, Dr. Angela Esco Elder became the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies postdoctoral fellow at Virginia Tech. Her dissertation, which explored the experience of Confederate widowhood, won the Southern Historical Association’s C. Vann Woodward Dissertation Prize and St. George Tucker Society’s Melvin E. Bradford Dissertation Prize in 2017.
Dr. Elder sees great value in learning through hands-on experiences, with pedagogy like Reacting to the Past. She won the Faculty Involvement and Collaboration Award, the Joe Ann Lever Award of Excellence, and the SCICU Teaching Excellence Award.
Dr. Emily Harbin received her Ph.D.from Vanderbilt University in nineteenth and twentieth-century British Literature. She teaches everything British from the Romantics to the Modernists, as well as literary criticism, composition in all its forms, and classes on literary dystopias. Her research interests are diverse, including popular culture, writing center theory and labor conditions. Dr. Harbin is the Director of the Writing Center at Converse University.
Dr. Shannon Martin received her B.A. in Business Management and Psychology from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul Minnesota. She earned her M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Minnesota State University and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Central Michigan University.
Her primary clinical and research interests fall within the domain of adult psychopathology. Dr. Martin’s research focuses on emotional expectation and current mood states on experience, behaviors, and emotional regulation in social anxiety and schizotypy conditions.
Dr. Sheri Strickland joined the Converse faculty in 2006 and has taught more than 30 different lecture and laboratory courses. She is the co-author of the 2019 textbook Foundations of Organic Chemistry: A Workbook Approach, Volumes I and II.
Dr. Strickland has won the Service to Students Above and Beyond Award, the Converse College Creative and Scholarly Achievement Award , and the Alpha Lambda Delta Favorite Professor Award. She co-directed CSI: Converse! with biologist Dr. Neval Erturk, a summer forensics workshop for high school students exploring chemical and biological methods to fictional forensic cases.
Professor Jena Thomas received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, MA and her Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, FL.
Thomas has exhibited at the Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Context New York, and Art Palm Beach. Her work has been featured in Studio Visit magazine, New American Painting and Creative Quarterly. Thomas is a recipient of the Ruth Katzman Scholarship from the Art Students League of New York, winner of the 701 Center for Contemporary Art Prize and a finalist for Miami University’s Young Painters Competition.