Director of International and Global Studies
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Peter H. Hansen is Professor of History and Director of International and Global Studies at WPI. In this role, his administrative responsibilities include enhancing the curricular and academic components of WPI’s global projects, exploring new partnerships, and advising students in global programs. International and Global Studies brings together faculty from history, foreign languages, humanities, social sciences, business, and interdisciplinary studies. Courses on campus enrich the experience of students before, during, and after their international educational experiences. ... View Profile
W.A. Bland Addison
Associate Professor
Co-Director, Morocco Project Center
Email: addison@wpi.edu
Office: Salisbury Labs 238
Phone: 508-831-5190
I believe it is important for American students to understand the philosophical and intellectual foundations of their way of viewing the world and how those cultural perspectives are different from other peoples of the world. Therefore, I teach a variety of courses about Western and non-Western civilizations: Introduction to European Cultural History (HI1322), Topics in the Western Intellectual Tradition (HI3323), and Topics in Comparative Civilizations (HI3342). ... View Profile
Ulrike Brisson
Associate Teaching Professor of German
Email: ubrisson@wpi.edu
Office: Salisbury Labs 333
Phone: 508-831-5742
Coming from a family with a long teaching tradition going back at least to her great-grandfather, teaching has always been fundamental to Professor Brisson’s well-being. Being a German professor at WPI in particular has been a great privilege because the students are motivated, hardworking, and eager to learn. She feels that teaching German language and culture is particularly important at an engineering school with a strong focus on environmental technology and sustainability for a number of reasons. ... View Profile
Fabio Carrera
Associate Teaching Professor
Interdisciplinary & Global Studies
Email: carrera@wpi.edu
Office: Project Center
Phone: 508-831-6059
Fabio is the director of the Venice and Santa Fe Project Centers, as well as the founder and director of City Lab, an interdisciplinary research laboratory dedicated to Urban Technology and Information Systems. In addition to a number of scientific papers, his work has been repeatedly featured in National Geographic magazine (most recently in the August 2009 issue), MIT’s Technology Review magazine, the Smithsonian magazine, Wired, New Scientist and Science. ... View Profile
I come to WPI from Philadelphia, where I completed my PhD in German with a dissertation on the reception and appropriation of Dante’s Commedia by German Romantic writers around 1800. The project encompasses my many academic interests, which reside at the intersection of literature, religion, and aesthetics. This particular nexus of fields reflects a motley background that includes international study in Germany, Austria, and Italy, as well as two years in divinity school. ... View Profile
Laureen Elgert
Assistant Professor
Social Science & Policy Studies
Email: lelgert@wpi.edu
Office: Salisbury Laboratories
Phone: 508-831-5452
Laureen's interest in environmental studies grew as she traveled through Southeast Asia and South America, noticing that local resource users' idea of environmentalism often bore little resemblance to familiar interpretations. She has since been particularly interested in the environment-development nexus, examining how politics shapes global environmental policy that can, and often does, have profound impacts on local livelihoods. ... View Profile
I enjoy teaching because it gives me an opportunity to influence young minds. My main goal is to have them think critically. The WPI projects allow me to work with students who are transitioning from the classroom to a place in society. My research interests include industrial engineering applications, decision analysis, and management applications—most recently focusing on airport security systems. ... View Profile
J. Scott Jiusto
Associate Professor
Director, Cape Town Project Centre
Interdisciplinary & Global Studies
Email: sjiusto@wpi.edu
Office: Project Center, 2nd Fl
Phone: 508-831-5393
My teaching, research, and community engagement is integrated through my participation in WPIs Global Projects Program, where I help students prepare for and conduct projects in places such as London, Venice, Puerto Rico, Denmark, Washington and Worcester. Through the WPI Cape Town Project Centre, especially, I see my work as an exercise in Shared Action Learning (SAL), which I describe to students and others is a way to think about and engage in partnerships for sustainable community development. ... View Profile
Robert Krueger
Associate Professor
Director, Environmental and Sustainability Studies
Co-Director, London Project Center
Director, Worcester Community Project Center
Social Science & Policy Studies
Email: krueger@wpi.edu
Office: SL 223C
Phone: 508-831-5110
Robert Krueger is the founding director of WPI's Environment and Sustainability Studies Program. He has been a Co-Principal Investigator on two U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants focused on environmental justice issues in Worcester. He serves as co-chair of the EPA’s Environmental Justice Working Group. He is also board president of the Regional Environmental Council. A broad, international audience recognizes Krueger’s scholarship on urban sustainability. He has published dozens of papers in prestigious internationally peer-reviewed journals. ... View Profile
Aarti Smith Madan
Assistant Professor
Email: amadan@wpi.edu
Office: Salisbury Labs 003
Phone: 508-831-6587
Aarti Smith Madan is an Assistant Professor of Spanish & International Studies in the Department of Humanities and Arts at WPI. Her research centers on the ways spatial practices inform the production and consumption of literature, film, and art in Latin America. In her first book, Lines of Geography in Latin American Narrative: National Territory, National Literature (under contract, Palgrave Macmillan), Professor Madan unearths the literary roots of the discipline of geography in nineteenth-century Latin America. ... View Profile
Ingrid E. Matos-Nin
Assoc. Teaching Prof.
Email: imatos@wpi.edu
Office: Salisbury Labs 05
Phone: 508-831-5356
R. Creighton Peet
Assoc. Teaching Professor
Director, Namibia Project Center
Director, Hong Kong Project Center
Project Coordinator
Interdisciplinary & Global Studies
Email: cpeet@wpi.edu
Office: Salisbury Labs 331
Phone: 508-831-6730
After spending many years working in international development and humanitarian assistance, as well as in international social and environmental education, and anthropological field research, Creighton Peet joined WPI in 2000 as part of its Interdisciplinary and Global Studies Division. He loves teaching at WPI and sharing what he has learned over the years through its project-based curriculum; this style of teaching is a way of learning for him, directly and indirectly, and it satisfies his own research interests in the sustainable management of natural resources, especially water. ... View Profile
, Michael J. Radzicki
Associate Professor
Social Science & Policy Studies
Email: mjradz@wpi.edu
Office: Salisbury Labs 310C
Phone: 508-831-5296, 508-831-5767
Professor Radzicki is an economist, creator of WPI’s program in system dynamics, and co-creator of WPI’s program in trading and investment system development. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Notre Dame and his training in system dynamics computer simulation modeling from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition, he is a certified Rapid-I Predictive Analytics Analyst.
Professor Radzicki’s research focuses on predictive analytics, simulation science, and the application of techniques from these areas to problems in economics, finance, and management. ... View Profile
Kent J. Rissmiller
Dean of IGSD, ad interim
Dean ad interim, Interdisciplinary and Global Studies Division
Director, Washington Project Center
Interdisciplinary & Global Studies
Email: kjr@wpi.edu
Office: Project Center
Phone: 508-831-5019
Kent Rissmiller completed studies in political science at Muhlenberg College (AB) and Syracuse University (PhD). Along the way, he also completed a JD at the University of New Hampshire Law School, where he worked in the Energy Law Institute. Professor Rissmiller also worked for three years as an attorney for the Public Service Commission of Nevada, where he was involved in setting rates and policies for electric and water utilities. At WPI, Professor Rissmiller teaches government, law, and public policy. He also directs the Pre-Law program and oversees the Law and Technology minor. ... View Profile
Angel A. Rivera
Associate Professor
Email: arivera@wpi.edu
Office: Salisbury Labs 016
Phone: 508-831-5779
Professor Rivera has been conducting research on 19th- and 20th-century Spanish Caribbean literature and theories related to the exploration of limits or borders (i.e., the edges or places where multiple cultures touch or come into contact). He has been exploring how Caribbean traditional modes of representation have been restructured to significant changes in cultural, literary, and historical contexts. ... View Profile
Thomas B. Robertson
Associate Professor
Email: tbr@wpi.edu
Office: Salisbury Labs 234
Phone: 508-831-5871
(ON LEAVE 2016-2017 US Agency for International Development).
I specialize in environmental history, international development, 20th-century America, and the Himalayas. I am particularly interested in American relations with the developing world. My first book, The Malthusian Moment, focuses on post-World War II American debates about population growth, both at home and globally. My current research examines the environmental history of U.S. ... View Profile
Jennifer Rudolph
Associate Professor
Email: jrudolph@wpi.edu
Office: Salisbury Labs 408B
Phone: 508-831-6739
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
, Khalid Saeed
Professor
Director System Dynamics Program
Director System Dynamics and Innovation Management Program
Social Science & Policy Studies
Email: saeed@wpi.edu
Office: Salisbury Labs 312-D
Phone: 508-831-5296, 508-831-5563
Khalid Saeed is professor of economics and system dynamics. ... View Profile
Ingrid K. Shockey
Associate Teaching Professor
Director, India Project Center at the Indian Institute of Technology-Mandi
Co-director, New Zealand Project Center
Interdisciplinary & Global Studies
Email: ishockey@wpi.edu
Office: Project Center, 209
Phone: 508-831-6635
Ingrid Shockey is an environmental sociologist whose work focuses on natural literacy and the interplay of human-wilderness boundaries--an interest sparked by a summer job she once held at Yellowstone National Park. From there, her research concerns have grown to include the extent to which people rely on substitutions for authentic experiences in the wild. This includes tracking diminishing environmental literacy and documenting dynamics in how knowledge and perception of nature determine the depth of our engagement with the environment. ... View Profile
Patricia A. Stapleton
Assistant Professor
Director of the Society, Technology, and Policy Program
Social Science & Policy Studies
Email: pastapleton@wpi.edu
Office: Salisbury Laboratories, 223B
Professor Stapleton’s research focuses on food regulation, particularly the role of technology in food safety and security. Her interest in agricultural biotechnology regulation and the differences between the American and European approaches to risk assessment and management for genetically modified organisms were the foundation of her doctoral research. She has continued this work on agricultural biotechnology regulation in the European Union, as well as expanded her focus to include how biotechnology regulatory frameworks impact food production and trade. ... View Profile
Seth Tuler
Associate Teaching Professor
Co-Director, Bangkok Project Center
Co-Director, Boston Project Center
Interdisciplinary & Global Studies
Email: stuler@wpi.edu
Office: Project Center 211A
Phone: 508-831-6444
Seth has been part of the Interdisciplinary and Global Studies Division since 2002, as teacher, advisor, and co-director of project centers. He is the co-Director of the Bangkok Project Center and co-Director of the Boston Project Center, where he enjoys exposing students to contemporary problems in environmental and public health policy making and challenging them to apply insights emerging from research to practical applications. ... View Profile
Richard F. Vaz
Director, Center for PBL
Director, Center for Project-Based Learning
Director, Bangkok Project Center
Interdisciplinary & Global Studies
Email: vaz@wpi.edu
Office: Project Center, 2nd Fl
Phone: 508-831-5344
As Director of WPI’s Center for Project-Based Learning, I work with colleagues across campus to help advance project-based learning at colleges and universities around the nation and the globe. We also support project-based learning here on the WPI campus. Most of my scholarly and professional activity centers around experiential and international education. Through my involvement in organizations such as the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the American Society for Engineering Education, I work to promote WPI’s approach to undergraduate education as a national model. ... View Profile