John Reeder

Elizabeth Metallinos-Katsaras, PhD, RD

Originally from Sonoma, California, I have been a faculty member of the Nutrition Department, for the past 16 years. I grew up on a farm in Sonoma, and am a first generation college graduate; my parents were of Greek descent, my Dad being a Greek immigrant. Food and good nutrition was always emphasized in my family, which was likely the inspiration for becoming a nutrition professional.

I completed my doctorate and dietetic internship at University of California, Davis and then came to Boston. I gained valuable public health experience by working at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health as a nutrition project manager. There I oversaw data management, research and evaluation activities for a variety of nutrition programs, such as WIC, The Growth and Nutrition Program, Food Stamp Outreach, and the Pregnancy and Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance Systems. My work there became the foundation of my future research agenda which centered on health of low income women and children.

My teaching philosophy has evolved into a pedagogy that emphasizes not only knowledge acquisition but application of learned principles and generalizations to new problems and situations, synthesis and integration of new information and ideas and application of this synthesized information to the solution of public health problems. I firmly believe in the power of good communication, both written and oral and have sought to emphasize these in my courses.

I have received several grants for my research from USDA and CDC. Most recently I was awarded the President’s Fund for Faculty Excellence grant, in which I am examining factors that affect gestational weight gain in a diverse sample of low income women. For about 14 years, I was the Director of Simmons Didactic Program in Dietetics and have recently become the Ruby Winslow Linn Endowed Chair of the Nutrition Department. I love working with my wonderful colleagues and students to continue to be the visionary Nutrition Department we’ve always been.

Heather Hole

Heather Hole is Associate Professor of Art History and Director of the Arts Administration Program at Simmons, and a former curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. She teaches courses on American, Modern, and Mexican art; arts administration; gender and visual culture; and the arts in Boston and New York. Her current research focuses on the forgotten exhibition spaces of early twentieth-century New York, including Colonial American period rooms in Wanamaker's department store and the miniature art gallery, filled with work by artists including Marcel Duchamp, in Carrie Stettheimer's Doll House. Dr. Hole is the author of the book Marsden Hartley and the West: The Search for an American Modernism, published by Yale University Press, and the curator of the traveling exhibition of the same name. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University and her B.A. from Smith College.

Eduardo Febles

Professor Febles, a native of Puerto Rico, received a B.A. in French and Political Economy from Tulane University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in French Studies from Brown University. He also studied at L'École Normale Supérieure, L'Institut d'Études Politiques, and La Sorbonne in Paris. Before coming to Simmons, he taught at Goucher College and Brandeis University. His research focuses on the intersections between politics and literature, especially in 19th century France. He is the author of Explosive Narratives: Anarchy and Terrorism in the Works of Emile Zola, published by Rodopi Press in 2010. He also edited with his mother, Dr. María Vega de Febles, a collection of articles written by his grandfather entitled Crónicas Ejemplares and published by Ediciones Universal in 2010. He is presently working on a project about the connections between homophobia and anti-Semitism during the Dreyfus Affair. He is also the author of several scholarly articles, book reviews, and short stories.

Kelly Hager

I've been at Simmons since 2001, teaching in the departments of English and Women's & Gender Studies, in the undergraduate Honors Program, and in the graduate programs in English, Children's Literature, and Gender/Cultural Studies. I was awarded the Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2006. I served as Director of the Graduate Program in Gender/Cultural Studies from 2003-2007, as interim Chair of the D epartment of Women's & Gender Studies in 2010-11, and as Chair of the Department of English from 2011-2014. Before coming to Simmons, I was Head Preceptor in the Expository Writing Program at Harvard and Lecturer and Mentor to new graduate student teachers in the English Department at Yale.

I co-chair the Victorian Literature and Culture Seminar at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard, and I'm on the editorial board of The Lion and the Unicorn. I'm the author of Dickens and the Rise of Divorce: The Failed-Marriage Plot and the Novel Tradition (chosen by CHOICE as a highly recommended book), the co-author of the Instructor's Guide for the Norton Introduction to Literature, and I co-edited a special issue of Victorian Review on "Extending Families." I've also contributed invited pieces to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature, the Oxford Handbook of Children's Literature, Keywords for Children's Literature, BRANCH (Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History), and The Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature (Wiley-Blackwell).

Beverly C. Sealey

Valerie Leiter

Val Leiter teaches courses on medical sociology, research methods, and sociology of childhood and youth—these topics dovetail with her research on children and youth with disabilities, medicalization, and gender and health. She received the Irving K. Zola award for Emerging Scholars in Disability Studies in 2004 for her work on "Parental Activism, Professional Dominance, and Early Childhood Disability." Her first book, Their Time Has Come: Youth with Disabilities on the Cusp of Adulthood, was published in 2012, a result of her William T. Grant Foundation Scholars project on the “Transition to Adulthood Among Youth with Disabilities.” The Sociology of Health & Illness: Critical Perspectives (9th edition), co-edited with Peter Conrad, was also published in 2012.

She is active in the Society for the Study of Social Problems and the American Sociological Association, where she has multiple leadership positions, including membership on ASA’s Committee on Professional Ethics and the Editorial Advisory Board of Social Problems. On campus, Val is the Co-Chair of the Institutional Review Board, Co-Director of the Public Health program, and a member of the steering committee for the Master in Public Policy program.

Val mentors several students each year on their independent research projects. Right now, she is working with Sidney Jean (Public Health) on her senior thesis on women’s body images, Renata Bule (Public Health) on her senior thesis on health care for refugees and asylees, Mary Harrington (Public Health) on the role of faith and spirituality in medical care, Sarah Hewitt (Master in Public Policy) on calorie count menu policies, Youjin Kim (Sociology) on youth culture in Korea, and Danielle Funk (Master in Gender and Cultural Studies) on STDs among women who have sex with women.

Val is also a dedicated student of Iyengar yoga, learning from multiple teachers in the Boston area.

Silvana Castaneda

Silvana Castaneda, MSW, LICSW is the Field Education of the Simmons online program at Simmons School of Social Work, she has been working at Simmons School of Social work since 2010 as a Field Education Coordinator, in that role she has most enjoyed getting to know and mentoring students. Ms. Castaneda graduated from Simmons School of Social Work in 1987. As a family and couples therapist of 20 years she has worked in community based settings with a particular interest in immigrant families impacted by separation and reunification. She was the Clinical Director at The Family Center Inc. until 2010 where she administered outpatient and home-based teams. In addition to her position as the online director of Field education at Simmons She is also an associate at the Family Centered Services Project in Watertown Ma where she provides training and organizational consulting to mental health and social services, health care agencies embrace and sustain family centered philosophy and practice.  She is also a member the CANS Training Collaborative, a public advisory group of the The Children’s Behavioral Health Initiatives (CBHI) and the CANS Training Program at UMass Medical School. This advisory group was established to provide guidance regarding training content, opportunities, and needs associated with the quality of CANS training resources.

Michelle Putnam

Dr. Putnam's research focuses on the intersections of aging and disability, with particular emphasis on understanding how public programs and public policy meets the needs of persons aging with disability. Within this area, her work examines collaborations between aging and disability service providers and their capacity to serve the aging with disability population, long-term care and support needs of persons aging with disabilities, the role of activity portfolios in fostering well-being among older adults, and the relationship of asset accumulation in fostering financial security and independent living among older adults and persons aging with disability. Dr. Putnam holds a Ph.D. in Social Welfare from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, a Masters of Gerontological Studies from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and a Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She served as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Public Health and Disabilities at the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Health and Wellness for Persons with Long-term Disabilities, Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland, OR. Dr. Putnam served on the faculty of the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis prior to joining the School of Social Work at Simmons University.

Dr. Putnam's scholarship is both independent and done in collaboration with colleagues across institutions and disciplines, and when possible with direct stakeholders. Funders of Dr. Putnam's research and/or research collaborations include the John A. Hartford Foundation, AARP Foundation, National Institute of Aging, National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, Administration for Community Living, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Productive Living Board of St. Louis County, and Council on Social Work Education. She is frequently engaged to speak about aging with disability and public policy to research, practice, and policy audiences.

Dr. Putnam is one of the few scholars in the field of social work studying aging with disability and is recognized for her leadership in this area. She has actively worked to build awareness of the distinctions between aging with long-term disability and incurring disability for the first time in later life as it relates to provision of supports and services and the overall experience of aging. Her work is both theoretical and empirical, but always related to public policy and the practical aspects of making aging and disability policies and programs work well for people aging with disabilities and their families. Dr. Putnam's current interest in capacity building within aging and disability service networks directly stems from her prior work. She believes that building capacity to meet unique needs of aging with disability populations has potential to compliment and move current discussions focused on institutional systems change to also include discourse what individuals and their families need to live independently, engage in their community, and experience positive aging.

In addition to her research, Dr. Putnam actively participates at the national and international level in building bridges across the aging and disability fields of policy and practice. She serves as a founding member of the Bridging Aging and Disability International Network (BADIN), is a Fellow of the Gerontology Society of America, member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, and member of the National Advisory Board on Improving Health Care Services for Older Adults and People with Disabilities, an independent board with funded by Anthem Inc., to provide expert opinion (including those contrary to industry) and guidance on the health care needs of persons with disabilities of all ages. Dr. Putnam also serves as Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Gerontological Social Work.

Donna Webber

Donna Webber worked for more than three decades as a professional archivist in Boston-area repositories, including the Schlesinger Library, MIT, and Countway Library at Harvard Medical School. She served as the Simmons University archivist for seven years. Webber began teaching as an adjunct at GSLIS in 2001 and joined the faculty full time in 2011. Webber is active in the Society of American Archivists and New England Archivists and recently co-authored Archival Internships: A Guide for Faculty, Supervisors and Students with SLIS Professor Jeannette Bastian.

Donna Webber's Curriculum Vitae

Candy Schwartz

Candy Schwartz is a green-card-carrying resident alien, born in Toronto and raised in Montreal. She has a BA (in linguistics) and an MLS from McGill University, Montreal, and a PhD in information transfer from Syracuse University.

Lena Zuckerwise

Lena Zuckerwise is a political theorist specializing in the politics of race in the United States, and contemporary democratic theory. Her forthcoming book brings together the unlikely subjects of Black political rebellion on plantations and in contemporary prisons, and Hannah Arendt’s renowned concept of "world." Professor Zuckerwise’s essays on traditions of white supremacy in American politics, and the work of Arendt have been published in the journals, American Political Thought as well as Social Theory and Practice. Her writings on the subjects of post-colonial feminism, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum, and the theory of foundationalism appeared in the Encyclopedia of Political Thought. Other interests include gender and feminist theory, Black feminism, and the political dimensions of art and architecture. Professor Zuckerwise teaches courses in historical political thought; contemporary feminist theory; gender politics; Black political thought; and modern and contemporary theories of justice. Prior to coming to Simmons, Professor Zuckerwise taught at Wellesley College and Mount Holyoke College in the political science and gender studies departments, respectively. She completed her Ph.D. in 2010 at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she was the recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award. Professor Zuckerwise lives outside of Boston with her partner, two children, and corgi, Olive, who has befriended many of her students. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking and cooking.

Gregory Slowik

Music courses cover a wide range, including music history, theory, and performance (through an inter-institutional agreement with the New England Conservatory of Music.) The music program at Simmons is an academically oriented one designed for liberal arts students who study music as a humanistic pursuit; examining prevailing musical, social and expressive influences from diverse eras and cultures.

My professional life has been divided into two areas, performer and teacher. Luckily, one enhances the other. For many years I performed a great deal of piano solo repertoire, a piano concerto and chamber music with colleagues in Boston, around New England and beyond. A solo concert at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, will always remain a highlight, closely followed by a number of chamber music concerts at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and a radio broadcast on Chamberworks, heard on WGBH Radio, Boston.

Teaching has always been my first love, however, and I have served on the faculty of a small, European-style conservatory, The Longy School of Music in Cambridge, and at a large research institution where I taught music theory for 10 years at MIT, also in Cambridge. But teaching music history and theory in a liberal arts college is my preferred academic venue and Simmons University and I have been together for many years.

Writings on music appear in the Journal of the Haydn Society of Great Britain and in Abafazi, a journal exploring women of African descent ("Marian Anderson: The Lady from Philadelphia Revisited.") I frequently judge piano competitions for private music schools, statewide piano competitions for the Massachusetts and New Hampshire Music Teachers Associations as well as national competitions for the National Music Teachers Association.

Justin Jones

License/Certifications/Awards

Massachusetts licensed physical therapist since 1999
Orthopedic Certified Specialist (OCS) American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties
Teacher of the Year award: Simmons School of Nursing 2012

Professional Organizations Membership

American Physical Therapy Association (1999-present)
MA Chapter APTA Shoulder special interest group (2008-present, served as treasurer from 1/09-1/13)

Growing up, and being involved in athletics, I have always been interested in how people maximize their functional potential as well as how they recover from injury and disease. Physical therapy has allowed me to pursue these interests from several perspectives. As a licensed physical therapist and board certified orthopedic clinical specialist, I treat patients with a variety of orthopedic conditions and have a specific focus and interest in complicated shoulder problems. Teaching at Simmons in the musculoskeletal sequence of the physical therapy program allows me to share my past and current clinical experiences with students in the classroom. This allows for a more dynamic and interactive lecture and lab experience, where I can utilize relevant clinical examples to highlight the content being taught. Additionally, working closely with research faculty, I have been able to look at the issues that I see clinically in combination with the material I teach and formulate research questions in collaboration with my colleagues who can put them into a laboratory based research study. I feel that this allows my clinical practice to inform my teaching, which informs my research. Ultimately, with the evolving technology and access to information that students have, my teaching philosophy is to maximize students time on campus with real life, hands on problem solving experiences that facilitate their growth as future clinicians and evidence based practitioners.