George Coggeshall

Dr. Coggeshall joined the Simmons College PT Faculty in 2008.  He has over 35 years of physical therapy practice with experience in a variety of settings.  George’s primary teaching responsibilities at Simmons College include Cardiovascular and Pulmonary PT and Physical Therapy Management.  His background includes; PTA Program Chair at Bay State College, Director of Rehabilitation Services at Massachusetts Respiratory Hospital and he has owned and managed a private practice.   Dr. Coggeshall continues to actively practice physical therapy at the Brigham and Women's Hospital with a primary clinical focus of cardiovascular and pulmonary physical therapy. George’s extensive professional service includes; President of the Massachusetts Chapter of the APTA 2010-2013 and continues to serve as a national delegate to the APTA House of Delegates.

George’s academic degrees include; BS Biology - University of Rhode Island, MSPT - Boston University and DPT - Sacred Heart University.

Catherine Paden

Catherine Paden (PhD, Northwestern University) is Associate Professor and Chair of Political Science at Simmons College. Her research and teaching interests focus on racial politics, social movements, interest groups, and how underrepresented groups gain political representation. She is the author of Civil Rights Advocacy on Behalf of the Poor (2011, pb 2013), which assesses whether, and how, low-income African Americans gain representation in anti-poverty legislative battles. Her current research examines the impact of local civil rights and economic justice organizing on national policy and interest group priorities. She has published her research in the DuBois Review and has contributed research on the Nation of Islam to a volume on religion and American politics (University of Virginia, 2012). At Simmons, Paden serves as the Faculty Assistant to the Dean on Diversity Initiatives, on the Dean's Diversity Task Force, and on the President's Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council (PDIAC).

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 College 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.

Pamela Bromberg

Pam Bromberg began her academic career as a Blake scholar and has migrated over the years to teaching and scholarly work on a broad variety of writers, including contemporary women and post-colonial novelists. Recent publications include essays on Blake's visual art, but also on the work of Margaret Drabble, Margaret Atwood, Lillian Hellman, and Buchi Emecheta. She has also contributed essays on teaching Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Emma to the MLA's Approaches to Teaching volumes; a new essay on “Mansfield Park:s Austen’s Most Teachable Novel” has just been published in the series. She has recently presented work on Margaret Atwood at international conferences, leading to the publication of an essay in Margaret Atwood: The Open Eye.

Her interest in Austen has inspired a seminar on Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf, a course that provides in depth study of the development of two of England's greatest novelists. In recent years she has been teaching exciting new seminars on the Postcolonial Novel and The Colonial Legacy in Africa: History and Literature. In both of those courses students have the opportunity to work on novels of their choosing for final projects.

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.

Alister Inglis

Alister Inglis is the Freeman Associate Professor of Chinese Language and Literature. Prior to joining Simmons, he taught at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

His research focuses on Chinese traditional short stories of the Song (960-1276) and Yuan (1276-1368) dynasties. Inglis is best known for his translations of classical Chinese literature and also for his extensive research on Hong Mai's (1123-1202) Record of the Listener (Yijian zhi). This famous twelfth century text has become an essential primary source for historians conducting research on twelfth century society given the attention its short narratives pay to the lives of ordinary people; i.e., material that is often ignored by official history. Inglis' first monograph, Hong Mai's Record of the Listener and its Song Dynasty Context (NY: SUNY Press, 2006), is the first monograph-length study in English about this famous text.

Inglis is furthermore interested in fine art and practices various styles of Chinese calligraphy. He specializes in the "slender-gold" script which was made famous by emperor Huizong (r. 1100-1126) of the Song dynasty.

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 College 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 GSLIS Professor Jeannette Bastian.

Donna Webber's Curriculum Vitae

Tamara Cadet

Tamara J. Cadet, Ph.D., L.I.C.S.W., M.P.H., is an Assistant Professor at the Simmons School of Social Work. She holds a faculty appointment at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine in Oral Health Policy and Epidemiology. Dr. Cadet chose Simmons to launch her academic career in July 2012, despite multiple...

Anne-Marie Barron

Anne-Marie Barron PhD, RN, PMHCNS-BC, FNAP is Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Students and Curriculum in the School of Nursing and Health Sciences at Simmons College. Dr. Barron received her B.S. in nursing from Boston College, her M.S. in Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and her PhD from Boston College. Dr. Barron has taught across the undergraduate curriculum in a number of courses: Psychiatric Nursing; Leadership and Management; Nursing Research, and Caring at the End of Life. As well, she has integrated psychosocial content across the undergraduate and graduate curricula. Dr. Barron’s teaching, practice, and research interests are focused on meaning and illness and the understanding and alleviation of suffering. Her central goals in nursing education are to guide and support students as they develop perspectives and skills that enable them to offer healing presence in the lives of their patients.

Since 2006, Dr. Barron has served in academic leadership roles at Simmons. She has been in the roles of Associate Chair and Chair for Baccalaureate Nursing, President of the Simmons College Faculty Senate, and currently serves as Associate Dean.  

Dr. Barron currently practices part-time as a Psychiatric Clinical Nurse Specialist on the Inpatient Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplant Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital where she consults with the staff on the psychosocial dimension of oncology care. Dr. Barron holds an appointment as Faculty Nurse Scientist at the Yvonne Munn Center for Nursing Research at Massachusetts General Hospital. The focus of her research agenda has been on understanding integrative interventions, with an emphasis on Therapeutic Touch, that promote caring and comfort, and address the management of distressing symptoms for oncology patients. 

Since 2009 Dr. Barron has had the privilege of consulting on nursing education in Bangladesh as part of a larger interprofessional initiative with Simmons and colleagues from Massachusetts General Hospital. The overall goals of the team’s work in Bangladesh are to elevate the healthcare of the people of Bangladesh and to enhance the education and image of nurses in Bangladesh.

Dr. Barron was recently inducted as a Distinguished Scholar in the National Academies of Practice. 

Expertise
Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, Nursing Education, Academic Leadership, Psychosocial Care of Oncology Patients and Families, Therapeutic Touch as a Complementary Nursing Intervention, Nursing Consultation

Marianne Williams

Susan Duty

After obtaining her doctoral degree in occupational epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2002, Dr. Susan Duty joined the nursing faculty in the nursing program at Simmons College. She is an associate professor and teaches across the baccalaureate, master’s and doctoral curriculums. She is also certified as an Adult Nurse Practitioner with specialization in Occupational Health.

In addition to her teaching responsibilities at Simmons, Susan works clinically at South Shore Hospital as a Nurse Research Scientist and is a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her research agenda explores environmental exposures to plasticizers including phthalates and bisphenol A and works collaborative with students and multidisciplinary faculty on studies exploring Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus colonization of people, pets and surfaces. She has many peer reviewed publications and has presented her work regionally, nationally and internationally. She has more recently extended her scholarly activity into clinical research translation aimed at reducing 30-day readmissions, enhancing mammography compliance, improving satisfaction with patient care and reducing hospital acquired adverse outcomes.

Grant funding has been secured from highly competitive National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety, the National Institute for Environmental Health and Safety, as well as from the Simmons College President's Fund and from private foundations like the Passport Foundation and the New England Deaconess Hospital School of Nursing Alumnae Association.

Dr. Duty is a member of the Organization of Nurse Leaders Research Council. She also serves as a peer reviewer for many top tier journals. Dr. Duty received The Theresa LaPlante Award for Excellence in Administration from Sigma Theta Tau and is President of the Theta-at-large Chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International.

Katherine Jungreis

I am delighted to be beginning my fifth year as a full time faculty member after 23 years as an adjunct here at Simmons School of Social Work. When then Professor Sophie Freud initially suggested that I teach the Psychopathology course (now Assessment and Diagnosis) while I was a doctoral candidate at Simmons, I told her that I had never really considered teaching and wasn’t sure it was such a good idea. She countered with, “this is an offer you can’t refuse” and her wisdom was clear as I quickly found that teaching became one of the greatest pleasures of my social work career. 

Following graduation from Smith School for Social Work, I worked for almost twenty years at a community mental health center in a poor and working class town. My clinical work was with adults, families, groups and emergency services and I dealt with a variety of issues including many people with severe mental illness and their families. During that time Cambodian refugees moved into the community and we were actively involved in trying to provide culturally meaningful mental health services to them.

Like many others in our field, the direction of my work has been constantly evolving. Initially after graduation, I received training and became very involved with family therapy. Later, as I became more attuned to connecting the various parts of myself in my work, I wove in my curiosity about integrating spiritual/religious issues and psychotherapy. I joined the Jewish Therapists Network and taught in the Certificate Program for Jewish Communal and Clinical Social Work at Simmons. Other areas of special interest to me have included social work ethics, working with couples, mindfully connecting theory to practice and the use of movies as a powerful learning tool. Appreciating the meaning of work and the workplace was a central focus during the ten years that I consulted to the staff at the Federal Employee Assistance Program.

Most recently, I have been intrigued with relational aspects of social work supervision. I have given presentations and consulted on this topic and in the summers I teach in the Certificate Program for Advanced Clinical Supervision at Smith School for Social Work. While I no longer supervise students and staff in an agency setting, I have been able to continue a significant amount of clinical consultation to practitioners as well as consulting to staff at South Shore Mental Health Center which afforded me the ability to work again in a community mental health setting.

I believe that to most effectively teach I need to be directly involved in the work and that my ongoing clinical experiences enrich the learning in the classroom. I have found Simmons to be a wonderfully supportive, interesting and committed community that truly cares about helping students to be skillful, thoughtful and caring social workers. I am excited to be part of this community and to contribute to the professional growth of future social workers.

Lowry Pei

I grew up in St. Louis, got my B.A. in English at Harvard (1967) and my Ph.D. at Stanford (1975). I was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam war. I came to Simmons in 1985 after teaching at the University of Missouri, UC San Diego, and Harvard’s Expository Writing Program. Despite having done a dissertation on Anthony Trollope’s Palliser novels, I didn’t become a Victorianist; instead I’ve spent my career teaching writing. At Simmons I was director of Freshman Writing, later called Writing and Thinking, from 1985 to 1996, and then directed MCC, the first-year core/writing course, from 1996 to 1999. In 2004-2006, I led faculty workshops and seminars on teaching writing as part of the “Writing Infusion” initiative, whose goal is to have writing-intensive courses offered in all majors. I chaired the English Department 2002-2007.

I currently teach creative writing, both fiction and non-fiction, and Approaches to Literature, otherwise known as spring training for English majors.

Judy Beal

Dr. Beal has had many leadership roles in her 40 years as a nurse. She currently serves as Professor and Dean of the School of Nursing and Health Sciences at Simmons College with responsibility for three nationally accredited academic programs. Prior to coming to Simmons in 1983, Dr. Beal taught at Boston University and Skidmore College. Dr. Beal has been a leader in nursing education since 1978. 

At Simmons she has been instrumental in building early innovative models of academic practice partnerships locally and then globally. In Boston, the unique model of "hospital as client” with the hospital financing the academic progression of employees in RN- BSN and RN-MSN programs grew from 1 partnership 5 years ago to 8 partnerships. With foundation funding, she partnered with the University of Cairo to replicate an accelerated second degree BSN program for unemployed university graduates. This effort significantly advanced workforce capacity and elevated the level of professional nursing practice in Egypt. With academic and practice partners in Saudi Arabia and with philanthropists in Bangladesh and Israel she is further replicating these programs.

As a RWJ Executive Nurse Fellow from 2008-2011, she created a national forum on academic-practice partnership by successfully engaging a national association to identify this issue as a strategic priority. She developed and co-led the AACN-AONE Task Force on Academic-Practice Partnerships. This group has significantly elevated the conversation on and strategy for developing academic-practice partnerships.

She has served as president, secretary, director and chair in many organizations including: Sigma Theta Tau International, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), the Massachusetts Association of Colleges of Nursing (MACN), Massachusetts Association of Registered Nurses (MARN), and Yale University Alumni Association. Most recently, she has served as a two term elected board member and is the newly elected secretary of AACN, secretary and vice president of MACN, chair of the MARN Nominations Committee, and co-lead of the RWJF Massachusetts Action Coalition.

Dr Beal is widely published with more than 100 peer reviewed articles. Her well- funded program of research focuses on role development of neonatal nurse practitioners and for the past 15 years on the development of a model of clinical nurse scholars. She is sought after as a regional and national speaker. Dr. Beal is on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Maternal Child Nursing as well as a peer reviewer for the Journal of Pediatric Nursing, the Journal of Professional Nursing, and Research in Nursing and Health. Dr. Beal is the Vice President of the MA Association of Colleges of Nursing, where she is active in the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education’s Nursing and Allied Health Initiative. 

Dr. Beal received her BSN from Skidmore College, her MSN from Yale, and DNSc from Boston University. She is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and the National Academies of Practice.