Speakers

Manchester area local Colleges and Universities provide a wealth of information on a variety of topics and specialties. The following is a partial listing of speaking topics and/or professors/staff that are locally available for speaking engagements or for discussions. Please contact each individual College or University to learn more. Contact information is listed next to each College or University.

Franklin Pierce University, Manchester
Contact: Loraine Hobausz
Director of Manchester and Salem Campus
670 North Commercial Street, Suite 206
Manchester, NH 03101
(800) 325-1090, x3
(603) 626-4972

Franklin Pierce University staff and faculty would be willing to speak on a range of topics including:

• Creative Career Planning: Your Attitude In Action!
• Career Networking: Developing & Sustaining Employer Relationships
• Resumes & Interviews: Communicating Your Skills, Knowledge, Values & Goals On Paper & In Person

Granite State College
Contact: Karol LaCroix
President
Granite State College
8 Old Suncook Road
Concord, NH 03301
(603) 513-1304

Granite State College staff and faculty would be willing to speak on a range of topics including:

• Trends in higher education
• Trends in online learning
• Academic integrity of online learning
• Adults returning to college
• How to finance college
• Learning styles and course delivery
• Value of a bachelor's degree
• Electronic information literacy
• The under-prepared student
• Balancing work-family-college
• Other education related topics available upon request

Hesser College
Contact: Jennifer Landon
Director Career Services
Hesser College
3 Sundial Ave.
Manchester, NH 03103
(603) 668-6660

The faculty and staff of Hesser are available to present on a wide variety of topics related to employability skills, job search, resumes and cover letters, interviewing skills, email etiquette, choosing a college, financial management, and understanding credit. Also available are speaker on various career topics related to the programs offered by Hesser College.

New Hampshire Institute of Art
Contact:Jessica Kinsey
Director of Development
NH Institute of Art
148 Concord Street
Manchester, NH 03104
(603) 623-0313, x547

New Hampshire Institute of Art staff and faculty would be willing to speak on a range of topics including:

• Fine Art
• Art collecting
• Galleries
• Art Schools
• Artistic endeavors
• Emerging artists
• Ceramics
• Photography
• Illustration
• Painting
• Printmaking
• Digital Imaging

Saint Anselm College
Contact: Barbara LeBlanc
Director of News and Information
St. Anselm College
100 St. Anselm Drive
Manchester, NH 03102
(603) 641-7241

Saint Anselm faculty have spoken on a variety of topics, including the New Hampshire Primary and other facets of politics, both national and state; Catholicism, theology and ethics; and business and economics; New Hampshire demographics.

Southern New Hampshire University
Contact: Michelle Strout
Corporate Liaison
Southern New Hampshire University
2500 North River Road
Manchester, NH 03106
(603) 668-2211, x2093

Southern New Hampshire University's highly qualified faculty members bring extensive academic, professional and life experience into their classrooms.

Outside the classroom, they are Fulbright scholars, management consultants, prize-winning authors, professional chefs, small business owners, community builders, researchers and more.

SNHU's Office of Marketing and Communications has compiled faculty expert directories, organized alphabetically by subject and by name, to assist members of the print and broadcast media.

Click here to obtain a listing of Southern New Hampshire University's Faculty Experts.

University of New Hampshire at Manchester
Contact: Ginger Lever
Director College Relations and
Enrollment Management
University of New Hampshire
at Manchester
400 Commercial Street
Manchester, NH 03101-1113
(603) 641-4122

University of New Hampshire staff and faculty would be willing to speak on a range of topics including:

Thomas Birch, associate professor of economics, Ph.D. Indiana University at Bloomington
Professor Birch's teaching and research has spanned fields such as public finance, history of economic thought and monetary economics. His publications include topics in government spending and taxation as well as articles on major economic thinkers. Professor Birch teaches in both the business and humanities programs.

• General macroeconomic trends
• Economic thought contained in American literature
• Current economic issues such as federal government spending and tax policies
• Historical perspective on general economic issues

Deborah Brown, associate professor of English, Ph.D. University of New Hampshire
Professor Brown has been teaching literature, writing, and poetry for over twenty years. In the classroom, Professor Brown conveys to her students the value of close reading and analysis. She emphasizes the conscious decision each writer makes with their choice of words and use of commas. Professor Brown also holds an M.F.A. in poetry and has many published works.

• Contemporary Poetry
• New Hampshire Poetry and Fiction
• Women's Poetry and Fiction

John Cerullo, associate professor of history, Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania
Professor Cerullo's area of expertise is modern European cultural and intellectual history. Within that field, his general research interests include the nature of moral reasoning in secularizing cultures, and the relationship between cultural and political change. His recent scholarship has focused on the political activities of the French intellectuals around the turn of the 20th Century. Prior to that, his work addressed topics in the history of the social sciences; and the effect of scientific on religious thought. An ancillary interest of his is the history of higher education in America, especially the evolution of the concept of academic freedom.

• Political involvement of intellectuals in 20th Century Europe
• Aspects of the history of psychology and the social sciences
• Aspects of the history and philosophy of higher education in the U.S.

Michael Contarino, associate professor of political science, Ph.D. Harvard University
Professor Contarino has held numerous teaching positions in the United States and Europe. In addition to teaching, Michael has served as an Economic Affairs Officer for the United Nations World Food Council in Rome, a consultant for Business International in Rome and as a freelance journalist for the Associated Press in Rome.

• US Foreign Policy
• European Politics
• Industrial Restructuring & Transformation
• Contemporary Italian Politics
• Comparative & International Political Economy

Barbara Jago, assistant professor of communication arts; Ph.D. University of Southern Florida
Professor Jago is Coordinator of the Communication Arts Program. Her research seeks to understand how we make sense of our selves and our relationships through storytelling, and how we can use that understanding to improve our individual and collective lives. In particular, her work focuses on identity and emotion within the contexts of the family and the academy. In 2004, she was honored with the UNH-Manchester Teaching Excellence award. Dr. Jago has been published in a variety of academic journals including Qualitative Inquiry, Journal of Loss and Trauma, and Journal of Contemporary Ethnography. Currently, she is working on a manuscript about the role of emotion in learning.

• Family communication
• Depression
• Learning

Roberta Kieronski, assistant professor of mathematics; M.S. University of New Hampshire
Professor Kieronski is the NH State Delegate to the American Mathematical Association of TwoYear Colleges. Her interests include integrating technology in the teaching and learning of calculus and pre-calculus, and issues related to math anxiety. She has given numerous talks to mathematics educators in New England.

• Everyone Can Learn Mathematics
• Successful Strategies for Combating Math Anxiety

Jeff Klenotic, associate professor of communication arts; Ph.D. University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Professor Klenotic's research focuses on the history of mass communication in the United States.

• American Film History - Social History of Film, Movie Theaters and the Changing Nature of Moviegoing, Hollywood as Historian
• Advertising and Society - Social History of Advertising, The Ideology of Advertising, How to Analyze Ads
• News and Society - Social History of News, Civic Journalism, Economic and Editorial Pressures on News Reporting
• Broadcasting and Society - Origins of the Commercial Broadcast System, The Debate Over Television Violence, Effect of Television on the Shaping of Human Consciousness

Robert Macieski, associate professor of history; Ph.D. BostonCollege
Professor Macieski's major fields are nineteenth and twentieth century social history with concentrations in urban, labor, immigration, race, and women's history. Professor Macieski also has extensive experience in public history. He is former curator and director of the Slater Mill Historic Site in Rhode Island and has worked on a variety of public history projects ranging from oral history workshops to curriculum development projects for social studies teachers.

• The history of child labor
• Industrial history in New Hampshire and New England
• New England urban history
• African American history in New England
• American social movements
• Museums and public history
• GIS and History
• Teaching with technology

S. Patterson, assistant professor of english; Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin
Professor Patterson teaches English literature, especially Shakespeare, early literature, drama; writing; grammar. Her research interests are Renaissance drama; Shakespeare and popular culture; conduct literature; information literacy; collaboration.

• Shakespeare
• England: sights & history

John Resch, professor of history; Ph. D. Ohio State University
Professor Resch's particular interest is early American history. His book Suffering Soldiers: Revolutionary War Veterans, Moral Sentiment, and Political Culture in the Early Republic was recently published. Professor Resch also serves on the Board of Directors for the NH Humanities Council and the Manchester Historic Association.

• The American Revolution in New Hampshire: The Creation of a People's Army - the role of family and community in encouraging men to volunteer for military service
• "The New Hampshire Way": Local Control and the American Revolution - the development of a stronger centralized government under the Constitution

Terry Savage, associate professor of philosophy; Ph.D Boston University
Professor Savage is the Coordinator of the Humanities program at UNH Manchester. His areas of interest include: philosophy of science, social and political thought, and social/philosophical implications of artificial intelligence. Professor Savage has several published articles about the relationship between multimedia and education and has also given numerous presentations about the subject.

Karla Vogel, assistant professor of computer information systems; M.A. Rivier College
Karla is supervisor of academic computing at UNH Manchester. Her interest in computers began with the first Apple and the recognition that the desktop computer could empower students and teachers in secondary education. As information technology has become more powerful, popular and connected, the opportunities for significant changes in the way we learn and work are being realized.

• Student Research on the Internet: Opportunities and Challenges - examine the benefits and difficulties students will encounter as they increasingly turn to the internet for research content as well as strategies for reaping the opportunities of this new digital library.
• Preparing Digital Media for Interactive Multimedia - introduction to the tools and techniques needed to create and edit text, images, sound, animation and video. This presentation is designed to acquaint the audience with the basic vocabulary, procedures and practical issues in acquiring digital media for a multimedia presentation.
• Demystifying the Internet: From Arpanet to AOL - this review of the development of the internet from its origins in ARPA to the world wide web identifies the variety of resource services that emerged on the Internet and looks to the future of a world on-line.

Hetty Startup, instructor/adjunct professor of art history & architectural history; M.Sc. University of London, M. Phil. University of Greenwich
Professor Startup's research has focused on late 19th and early 20th century British and American women's leadreship in cultural organizations, with specific emphasis on the arts and crafts and settlement house movements. She has also written and lectured on modern architectural and design history with a special emphasis on Frank Lloyd Wright and his American and European contemporaries.

• Progressive Women and their Cultural Leadership in Arts and Reform Organizations
• Settlement Houses and the Arts and Crafts Movement
• Frank Lloyd Wright and the Usonian House
• Housing, Hygiene and the Modern City: 1850-1940

Sue Walsh, associate professor of English; Ph.D. Duke University
Professor Walsh teaches a wide range of literature and writing courses. She specializes in Victorian literature and art, and teaches 18th and 20th century British literature in addition to courses in 19th century fiction, poetry and drama. She has presented papers on 19th century American and British literature at many conferences and currently serves as the Coordinator for the English program at UNH Manchester.

• Restoration and Eighteenth Century British Literature and Painting
• Nineteenth Century British Literature, Painting and Decorative Arts
• The Rise of Children's Literature in the 19th Century

Richard Zang, associate professor of mathematics; Ed.D. Rutgers University
Prior to teaching, Professor Zang spent twelve years in corporate America working as a research assistant at IBM's Glendale Lab Research and Development Center and RCA's David Sarnoff Research Center. He was also a visiting fellow at Princeton University. He is known to give entertaining and motivational lectures using his skills as a juggler.

• Mathematics Education and Related Topics - How Children Learn math, Cognitive Development and Mathematical Problem Solving
• Preparing for a Career in Engineering

Regina McCarthy, Director of Academic Counseling
Regina McCarthy is the Director of Academic Counseling at UNH Manchester. She earned her M.Ed. from Northeastern University. Regina brings twenty years of post-secondary academic and career advising experience to UNH Manchester's students. She leads workshops both on and off campus that provide practical career development assistance in areas such as resume writing, job search strategies, and interviewing.

• Resume Writing
• Career Exploration
• Developmental Education
• Competitive Interviewing

Jodi Abad, Associate Director of Financial Aid
Jodi Abad is the Asistant Director of Financial Aid. She has worked in the Financial Aid office for the past six years. Her work focuses on the many ways to fund higher education including a thorough understanding of the financial aid process and evaluating student aid packages.

• Finacial Aid Processes
• Loan/Debt Counseling
• Evaluating Student Aid Packages

Ginger Lever, Director of Marketing and Community Relations, MAOE and CAGS in Educational Administration, University of New Hampshire
Ginger Lever is the Director of Marketing and Community Relations. She oversees all marketing and public relations activities for the college and is liaison to the UNH Manchester Chapter of the UNH Alumni Association and advisor to the UNH Manchester Student Government.

• Strategic planning
• Leadership
• Organizational Effectiveness and Employee relations
• Adult education, recruitment and retention
• Strategic Marketing and Communication
• Successful Customer Service Strategies

Margaret Pobywajlo, Director of the Learning Center, Ph.D. UNH
Margaret Pobywajlo is the Director of the Learning Center at UNH Manchester. She has presented numerous workshops on study skills, learning styles, and teaching styles to students and teachers. Margaret holds an M.A. in English and is currently completing a doctorate in education.

• Successful Learning Strategies
• Essential Skills for Success in College
• Learning styles
• Adult developmental stages
• Writing workshops

Joanne Conrad, Academic Counselor
Joanne Conrad is an Academic Counselor at UNH Manchester. She received her M.A. in Human Behavior from Catholic University and is the Coordinator of the College Transition Program, a program for academically able but underprepared students.

• Thinking About College
• Career Opportunities for Specific Majors
• Preparing for College Through High School Courses
• Career Counseling

Carol Swiech, Academic Counselor
Carol Swiech is an Academic Counselor at UNH Manchester. She holds an M.P.A. and has over twenty year experience in counseling and training. Carol coordinates services for students with disabilities.

• Preparing High School Students with Disabilities for College
  • Differences between the laws for K-12 and post-secondary education
  • Whether or not to disclose a disability on an application
  • What to expect on campus
  • Typical services for students with disabilities
• Academic Preparation for Admission to College