Faculty & Staff

I compose, perform, record, mix and produce electroacoustic music; I am interested in how we can use the tools and techniques of audio production to explore new musical territory. I build mechatronic and robotic musical instruments; I am interested in how we can free electronic music from the world of speakers through computer-controlled automatic mechanical instruments. I conduct research and experiments that explore how our cognitive and perceptual processes affect our musical experience; I am interested in how we can use such research to guide our compositional and analytic activities. ... View Profile

Roshanak Bigonah has studied Education and Technology, and Media with concentration in Video Production and Advertising. For the past 13 years, she has taught a wide range of courses in Digital Arts including  Graphic Arts, Web Design,  Photography, Videography and 3D Design. Roshanak Bigonah has worked as a freelance graphic and web designer.  In addition to her teaching interests Roshanak Bigonah, is a poet and has published four poetry books in her native language, Farsi. A collection of her works has been translated and published in Dutch and German. ... View Profile

My research interests include literature and culture, humanities and STEM integration, and engineering education. These areas are unified by broad concerns for justice, inclusion, and social progress. My literary scholarship considers the ways literature helps to advance social progress and justice, while my educational research investigates educational environments and works to develop pedagogies and content that open STEM education to broader populations by bringing the humanities and arts to scientific and technical subjects. ... View Profile

Steven C. Bullock is professor of history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he was a recipient of the Trustees' Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Scholarship. He has also served as a Fulbright Lecturer in Okinawa, Japan. ... View Profile

In research and in teaching, Jim Cocola focuses on intersections between geography and the humanities, primarily in the field of modern and contemporary American literature and culture. His most recent study examines place making in American poetry and poetics through a comparative, multiethnic, and transnational lens. His newest project reflects on cultural production by Americans and others of Mediterranean descent, looking mainly at literary and visual artifacts. He is also interested in experiential and experimental forms of writing. ... View Profile

Althea started teaching English as a second language in 2000, when she moved to West Africa. Over the next seven years she lived and taught in Senegal, Niger and Benin. In 2007 she moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she taught ESL to immigrants and refugees at the Hubbs Center and developmental reading at St. Paul College. Her teaching passions include integrating culture and social justice issues in the classroom, building critical thinking skills in her students, and teaching with technology. ... View Profile

Jennifer deWinter has long been interested in how culture (which is local) moves internationally. She has spent a number of years analyzing anime, comics, and computer games as part of global media flows in order to understand how concepts such as "art," "culture," and "entertainment" are negotiated. In 2003, Professor deWinter joined the Learning Games Initiative, a group of scholars and game designers dedicated to the general study of games and the use of games to teach concepts and skills in particular. ... View Profile

I am an historian of 19th- and 20th-century U.S. history, with a special focus on imperialism, capitalism, and the Pacific Ocean. In my forthcoming book, Coconut Colonialism: Workers and the Globalization of Samoa (Harvard University Press, Dec. 2021), I argue that the globalization of Samoa at the turn of the twentieth century was driven by a diverse group of working people on and off the islands. Currently, I am doing research for my next book, "War Workers," which tells the global story of non-citizen civilians working for the U.S. military from the Civil War to Iraq. ... View Profile

Mohammed El Hamzaoui teaches academic writing to native and non-native speakers of English, Arabic as a foreign language to non-native speakers and ISE (Integrated Skills of English) courses to international students. Mohammed adopts an eclectic approach to teaching languages; he uses a communicative and interactive methodology to help students overcome persistent fears related to learning, speaking and writing in foreign languages. ... View Profile

Brenton Faber studies medical writing and the human factors that influence medical diagnosis, treatment, and patient care. He is a practicing paramedic who volunteers with a rural ambulance squad and at a free urban clinic. I am currently interested in the concept of "allostasis" and "allostatic load." The terms have been used to describe a continued activation of the body’s neural, neuroendocrine, and immune systems as an adaptive response to prolonged stress. ... View Profile

Edward R. Gutierrez comes to WPI from a long and illustrious career in the animated feature film industry; having worked on films such as The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), The Lion King (1994) and many others. With degrees in both 2D Traditional Animation and 3D Animation and Visual Effects he has transitioned into independent filmmaking and dedicating his life to sharing his knowledge, love, and passion for drawing with new generations of students interested in drawing and storytelling. ... View Profile

Peter H. Hansen is Professor of History and Director of International and Global Studies at WPI. In this role, responsibilities include enhancing the curricular components of WPI’s global programs, exploring new partnerships, and advising students in global projects. International and Global Studies brings together faculty from arts and sciences, business, and the global school to enrich students' experience of global engagement on campus and around the world. ... View Profile

When new acquaintances find out I teach writing, it’s not unusual for them to lament a broad decline in the nation’s writing skills. How does it make me feel, they ask, that students, say, don’t know the difference between adjectives and adverbs? Or, can I believe it that people hardly even know what apostrophes do, let alone where to put them? As someone who treasures good, careful prose, I’m sympathetic to these worries. But as an educator, I think it’s important to steer the conversation in a different direction. ... View Profile

One of the most rewarding pleasures of teaching at WPI is the diversity of cultures you find in and around campus. So, besides teaching Spanish, I make my goal to broaden my students’ knowledge of Hispanic countries and to promote cultural understanding inside and outside the classroom. I teach the importance of understanding different lifestyles and ways of expression in other parts of the world-differences that we can find in each of the Hispanic countries. ... View Profile

Jennifer McWeeny is Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Humanities and Arts Department. Her training in philosophy is pluralistic in nature, engaging work from a variety of schools and traditions including Continental philosophy, analytic philosophy, feminist philosophy, pragmatism, and Asian and comparative philosophies. ... View Profile

My scholarly and professional interests lie in three areas: new forms of narrative emerging in our multi-media age; comparative and environmental literature; and interdisciplinary pedagogy. Over the years, I have taught teaches a variety of writing and literature courses from The Elements of Writing and Introduction to Literature, to Moral Issues in the Modern Novel and The American Literature and the Environment. With Diran Apelian, I co-teach a Great Problem Seminar on Sustainable Development, currently focusing on Recycling of all classes of materials. ... View Profile

Dr. Joshua W. Rohde is the Director of Choral Activities at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he conducts all four of the university’s choral ensembles – Men’s Glee Club, Women’s Alden Voices, Festival Chorus, and the Chamber Choir. He is also the Music Director of both the Rhode Island Civic Chorale & Orchestra and the Quincy Choral Society, and performs as an active professional cellist throughout the Boston area. Dr. Rohde’s work spans multiple musical genres, with an emphasis on new music from living composers. ... View Profile

Jennifer Rudolph's main area of research is modern Chinese political history.  While her first book dissects institutional change in late imperial China, in her second, she explores identity politics in the Taiwan Strait. In it, Rudolph explores co-optations of a 17th-century pirate-merchant Zheng Chenggong. Through the centuries, Zheng has lived on, with regimes ruling, or desirous of ruling, Taiwan portraying him as a traitor, Confucian god, Chinese nationalist, Japanese nationalist, and the Moses of Taiwan. ... View Profile

William San Martín is an interdisciplinary scholar of earth-systems sciences and global environmental governance trained in history, international politics & relations, and science & technology studies (STS). His work focuses on international development; Latin America & the Global South; socio-environmental (in)justices; and science, technology & the human environment. ... View Profile

Lance Schachterle enjoys the excitement of the classroom--meeting new students each term, sharing ideas about works of literature that matter, and learning to communicate more effectively. He teaches courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels, mostly in modern literature, but also really likes interdisciplinary courses that involve science. WPI students work harder than most, and students pursuing their minor in literature often really get intellectually and emotionally involved in what they are studying. ... View Profile

I am an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Rhetoric. Before joining WPI, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. My work is animated by an intellectual curiosity with how ideas travel across time and space, and generate diverse practices of acting, seeing, and being in the world. I am especially intrigued by situations in which people come to ask new questions about themselves and others, in ways that require reconsideration of past experiences and imagining of future possibilities. ... View Profile