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Kasturi Haldar
Center for Rare and Neglected Diseases
Kasturi Haldar holds the Julius Nieuwland Chair of Biological Sciences and is the director of Notre Dame’s Center for Rare and Neglected Diseases. As a Fellow, she and Mary Beckman, Center for Social Concerns associate director, in collaboration with the Ara Parseghian Medical Research Foundation, are in the beginning stages of developing a health network to provide services for families in the state and region affected by Niemann-Pick type C. This is a genetic disease that usually appears in early childhood for which no known cure currently exists. So far this initiative has engaged two undergraduates and two graduate students in a new course through which they are compiling information for several area families that will be useful to them as they work with physicians and other providers in the care of their affected children.
Professor Haldar’s research seeks to understand the common principles of vacuolar biogenesis of emerging and re-emerging infections and their links to chronic disease pathologies in animal models and human populations.
Benedict Giamo
American Studies
Benedict Giamo is an associate professor of American Studies. Giamo’s interests include literary and cultural studies, poverty and homelessness, and creative nonfiction. As a Fellow, he will combine those interests by working with Connie Snyder Mick, Center for Social Concerns assistant director, to develop a creative nonfiction workshop for selected students enrolled in the Social Concerns Seminar on Appalachia. Giamo will mentor students on the art of interview and the genre of creative nonfiction as a mode of research, reflection, and response to the injustice they witness in Appalachia.
Giamo’s most recent book, Kerouac, the Word and the Way, examines the prose art of Jack Kerouac as an expression of an ever shifting spiritual quest. He has recently completed a book-length manuscript in the genre of creative nonfiction entitled “Homeless Come Home: An Advocate, the Riverbank, and Murder in Topeka, Kansas.”
Dan Lapsley
Psychology
Dan Lapsley is Professor of Psychology at Notre Dame and Fellow at the Institute for Educational Initiatives where he is facilitating a comprehensive initiative to build the field of Catholic education. As a Faculty Fellow, Dr. Lapsley is leading, with Jay Brandenberger of the Center, the Notre Dame Study of Moral Purpose. This funded investigation is following the Notre Dame class of 1994 to examine the impact of service-learning and civic engagement during the college years on later moral commitments and well-being. The research team, which includes both graduate and undergraduate students, is analyzing data from over 1000 respondents from 1994 seniors, of whom 450 have submitted to intensive surveys in 2007. Preliminary findings have already been reported at professional meetings. Dr. Lapsley's overall research focuses on various topics in adolescent cognitive and personality development. He also examines the moral dimensions of personality including moral identity and character development. He is the author or editor of seven books, and he currently serves on the Executive Board of the International Association for Moral Education and on the editorial boards of various journals.
First Graduate Student Fellow
Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, M.A.
Graduate Student
Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, M.A., the Center’s first Graduate Student Fellow, will work with Center staff to develop a model for connecting graduate students in the Department of Sociology with community-based teaching opportunities. It is intended that this model will be useful in the Center’s collaborations with other departments as well. Mr. Choi-Fitzpatrick will also begin development of a course to be titled "Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking in Global Perspective." This class will address the global nature and scope of human trafficking and modern slavery as well as contemporary efforts to address the issue. As part of the course, students will work with Free the Slaves, an international human rights non-profit organization located in Washington D.C., where Mr. Choi-Fitzpatrick is the National Outreach Coordinator and directs Faith in Action, an interfaith initiative against slavery. Mr. Choi-Fitzpatrick has a master's degree in International Administration, with concentrations in both Human Rights and International Security.
Jennifer Warlick
Chair of the Economics and Policy Studies Department and Associate Professor of Economics
As Center Fellow, she will lead an initiative aimed toward the development of a poverty studies minor, in collaboration with Center Associate Director Mary Beckman and several faculty members from across the campus. Also, she will collaborate with Center Seminar Director Angela Miller McGraw to create complementarities between and her own economics course on rural poverty, and the Center Appalachia Seminar, through which almost 300 students travel to nineteen sites in the region over fall or spring break. Professor Warlick’s scholarly interests are in the area of poverty policy and the effect of income taxes and transfers on low income families and the elderly. Her course offerings include economics of poverty and the economics of education.
Todd D. Whitmore
Associate Professor of Theology, Concurrent Associate Professor in the Masters in Nonprofit Administration, and the Director of Notre Dame’s Program in Catholic Social Tradition
As a Center for Social Concerns Faculty Fellow, Professor Whitmore will be working with Bill Purcell, the Center’s Associate Director for Catholic Social Tradition and Practice, to deepen the integration of Catholic social thought within Center community-based learning opportunities and to incorporate Catholic social thought into the Center’s strategic plan for justice education. Also, the Center will collaborate with Professor Whitmore to enhance the university Program in Catholic Social Tradition. Professor Whitmore is the author of numerous articles on Catholic social teaching as it relates to economic life, war and peace, civil society, and education. His most recent work takes him to northern Uganda to investigate the possibilities of peace and reconciliation in war-torn districts.
Carl Ackermann
Associate Professional Specialist in the Department of Finance
For the last six years, he has collaborated with the Director of Summer Service Learning Programs at the Center for Social Concerns on ACCION, a micro-lending program that seeks to reduce poverty and create employment in the Americas. Through ACCION, Notre Dame undergraduates travel to sites across the country to participate in microlending programs as part of a three-credit course for which credits are assigned both through the College of Business and through the Department of Theology. Professor Ackerman will continue this work and will also now team with several local organizations to address financial literacy with the goal of educating and empowering those in greatest financial need. Professor Ackerman studies and writes on the mutual fund industry, and his scholarly work has appeared in the Journal of Finance and the Journal of Business Ethics.
Susan Ohmer
William T. and Helen Kuhn Carey Assistant Professor of Modern Communication
Department of Film, Television and Theatre
Susan Ohmer teaches classes on film and television history, media industries, and digital culture. Dr. Ohmer also serves as the Director of Debate at Notre Dame. Through the generous support of the Careys, Notre Dame has reintroduced a program in Policy Debate which offers students the opportunity to research and argue one focused topic each year. Through her faculty fellow position at the Center for Social Concerns, Professor Ohmer and her students will make this research available to policy makers around the country through an effort initiated through the Bonner Foundation and a grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service titled Policy Options.
Agustin Fuentes
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Flatley Director of the Office of Undergraduate and Post-Baccalaureate Fellowships
As Fellow, Fuentes will be assisting the Center in linking undergraduates with community-based research opportunities, and in providing information about community research to the campus and area community through speakers and other means. Fuentes has written extensively in the areas of human evolution and behavior, primate behavior, conservation , and the importance of collaborative research and undergraduate teaching.
Darcia Narvaez
Associate Professor of Psychology.
Darcia Narvaez directs the Center for Ethical Education. She works on lifespan moral character formation. As a Center Fellow, she will be working with Jay Brandenberger to conduct an ethics audit of the campus. Professor Narvaez is a member, with Center Executive Director Fr. Bill Lies, CSC, of the Faculty Learning Community on integrating Catholic Social Teaching into university instruction. She will be assisting the Center to review its courses and programs for how ethical skill development can be incorporated. Professor Narvaez has published more than 40 articles, books and chapters.
Michael C.F. Wiescher
Freimann Professor of Physics and the Director of the Joint Institute of Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA) at the University of Notre Dame and Adjunct Professor of Physics at Michigan State University.
As Faculty Fellow he will expand his one-credit interdisciplinary course "Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Warfare" into a three-credit class with research opportunities for undergraduate students that utilize the community links of the Center for Social Concerns. He will also create, with the assistance of Suzanne Coshow, Director of Educational Outreach for JINA, a special outreach program through which physics undergraduates and graduate students develop computer games and movies for presentations at local schools on topics of general interest in nuclear physics and astrophysics. Wiescher also will plan a public lecture series on Nuclear Weapons and Aspects of Non-Proliferation to provide opportunities for a broad audience to learn about the legal, political, historical, and physics aspects.
Don Pope-Davis
Professor of Counseling Psychology and Assistant Vice President and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies
Don Pope-Davis is working with the Center for Social Concerns to enhance the role of graduate students in its work. Through his facilitation, graduate students are now eligible for small grants to develop community-based learning courses. Pope-Davis also is helping the Center expand its efforts in multicultural contexts. For example, post-docs in multicultural studies under his direction work with Center staff on research projects and other activities related to their areas of expertise. Pope-Davis’s primary research interests are in multicultural psychology, counseling, and education. He is a research fellow of the American Psychological Association.
