John Reeder

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.

Lisa Brown, PhD, RD, LDN

Dr. Brown is an Associate Professor of Nutrition who teaches general education courses, introductory nutrition, and the community nutrition track. In 2015, Dr. Brown became the director of the Simmons Dietetic Internship after serving as the internship coordinator from 2009-2015.

After earning her bachelor’s degree in developmental psychology and American government from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, Dr. Brown earned her master’s degree in Nutrition and Health Promotion from Simmons, and her doctorate in Medical Nutrition Sciences from Boston University School of Medicine. She completed her DPD certificate and dietetic internship at Simmons concurrent with her master’s training.

Dr. Brown specializes in both pediatric and geriatric nutrition and has held a variety of professional positions in dietetics including Senior Nutritionist of a local WIC Program, consultant dietitian in multiple long term care facilities, clinical dietitian for a small community hospital, and consultant dietitian for the development of a military food service management system. Dr. Brown continues to counsel clients and do group nutrition education at the MetroWest YMCA in Framingham, Massachusetts, and provides regular vacation relief coverage in a long term care/transitional care facility in Boston. She was appointed to the Massachusetts Licensure Board for Dietitians and Nutritionists in 2014 and continues to serve on the board. 

Dr. Brown won the Nutrition and Dietetic Educator’s and Preceptors Practice Group (NDEP): Area 7 Outstanding Educator of the Year, for a Dietetic Internship, in 2016. Dr. Brown’s dissertation research looked at dietary patterns and premature cardiovascular disease in women enrolled in the Framingham Heart Study. She continues to look at dietary patterns and a variety of health outcomes including cancer.

Dr. Brown currently focuses on a variety of topics that impact delivery of nutrition interventions in both community and clinical settings. 

James Corcoran

James Corcoran, an associate professor in the Department of Communications, is the author of two books on domestic terrorism. The first, Bitter Harvest: The Birth of Paramilitary Terrorism in the Heartland, examined the rise of the anti-tax movement in rural America embodied by extremists groups such as the Posse Comitatus. NBC-TV turned the book, which was based on Corcoran's Pulitzer Prize nominated coverage of the murders of three U.S. marshals by a militant tax protest group, into a made-for-television movie, starring Rod Steiger, entitled "In the Line of Duty: Manhunt in the Dakotas." Bitter Harvest received the Gustav Meyers Center's award for Outstanding Book on the subject of human rights and the Golden Pen Award. Penguin Press reissued it with a new foreword in 1995 following on the Oklahoma City bombing. A third edition was reissued in 2005.

His second book, Gathering Storm: America's Militia Threat, was co-authored with Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Written after the Oklahoma City bombing, it traced the growth and impact of hate groups, militias, and racist demagogues.

Corcoran is a member of the United Nations' "Roster of Experts on Terrorism and Related Phenomena" and a recipient of the Bush Foundation Leadership Award, which is awarded annually to no more than 20 people who are considered of "substantial standing" in their fields. During his 10-year career as a journalist, which included work for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead and Newsweek, Corcoran received more than 24 state, regional, and national writing awards.

Sarah Volkman

Sarah Volkman is a Professor of Nursing at Simmons who has been involved in preparing nursing students in the basic science content since 1989. She is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She holds a joint appointment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in Immunology and Infectious Diseases where she is a Principal Research Scientist. 

In addition to teaching at Simmons, she continues to teach Infectious Diseases at Harvard University, where her scientific research interests involve understanding population genetics and the mechanisms of drug resistance in the human pathogen, Plasmodium falciparum. Dr. Volkman is an international expert on malaria and works with the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Worldwide Antimalarial Drug Resistance Network, among other international groups focused on malaria. She is a Councilor for the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. She has received several awards including the Young Investigator Award by the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and was a Senior Teaching Fellow and a Christensen Fellow at Harvard University. Dr. Volkman has been recognized for both her research and teaching at the Simmons School of Nursing and Health Sciences.

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 University. 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 University 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

Judith Aronson

Judith Aronson has been teaching graphic design at Simmons for seventeen years and has been a practicing designer and photographer for more than thirty years. Prior to Simmons she taught at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the New England School of Art and Design at Suffolk University. Earlier in her career she was a program analyst in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department in Washington, DC, served as a VISTA Volunteer in East Harlem, and worked as a city planner for the New York City Environmental Protection Administration. For fifteen years she lived overseas: three years in South East Asia and twelve in England where she was a photojournalist. Aronson holds a BA in American Studies from the University of Michigan and a MA in City Planning and a MA in Fine Art/Graphic Design, from Yale University.

Her special interests are typography, environmental design, and photojournalism. In 2003 she received a grant from the Colleges of the Fenway to teach the course Wayfinding: Design, Information Architecture and Public Spaces. Wayfinding is a specialty that applies design principles to information systems that help people move through complex urbanscapes — hospitals, airports, college campuses and the like. In 2006 Aronson had a one person retrospective in Boston of her color photographs, TACTILE |MERCANTILE, with pictures ranging from the young Mick Jagger, to the slums Harlem and the exotic scenery in South East Asia. In 2010 she published LIKENESSES, with the Sitters Writing About One Another, a book of black and white portraits of writers and artists. The book led to a number of exhibitions both in the US and England including at the Picture Gallery, Christ Church, Oxford, The Poetry Society, London and the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol. A poetry competition sponsored by Bristol University in conjunction with the last show produced thirty poems each responding to one of her photographs. In 2015 the exhibition will move to the Cambridge University Library in England for twelve months.

Aronson’s photographs are held in collections at The National Portrait Gallery, London; Christ College, Cambridge; Keble College and Christ Church, Oxford University; Brotherton Library, Leeds University; and the National Portrait Gallery (Smithsonian Institute), Washington, DC. Her work has been published in The Sunday Telegraph, England, the New York Review of Books, The Threepenny Review, Ms. Magazine, and the Boston Globe.

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.

Rebecca Koeniger-Donohue

Rebecca Koeniger-Donohue is a Professor of Practice in the Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) program and Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) programs at Simmons School of Nursing and Health Sciences, in Boston, MA. Dr. Koeniger-Donohue has published numerous peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, as well as a case study review book for board certification. She gives frequent professional presentations, regionally and nationally, on both health information technology tools and Women’s Health in Primary Care. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Clinical Nursing; an international journal based in the United Kingdom and is a fellow in both the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners (FAANP) and the interdisciplinary National Academy of Practice. She is dedicated to the global advancement of nurse practitioners and the high-quality health care they deliver. 

Dr. Koeniger-Donohue maintains an active clinical NP practice and is an investigator in several applied clinical research projects.

Rachel Galli

Nobel prize winning geneticist Barbara McClintock wrote, “Everything is one. There is no way to draw a line between things.” This is certainly true in my own field of Neuroscience, where the study of brain and behavior integrates many areas of study and emphasizes the connection between mind and body. It is also true of my work here at Simmons. It is difficult to draw a line between my teaching, research, and mentoring efforts, in part because they are intertwined around a central theme of increasing the participation of women in the sciences. I traveled a nontraditional path in finding my passion and vocation, and I especially enjoy helping others explore their interests and career possibilities. Sometimes you’ll be surprised where life takes you, and it is the life skills and education you acquire in college that can help you make the most of your opportunities. I love to teach, and here at Simmons I’m able to work closely with students as they become active participants in a learning process that occurs in the classroom, in the research lab, and in advising relationships and extracurricular activities.

Megan Lambert

Megan Dowd Lambert holds an MA in Children's Literature from Simmons University (2002) and received her BA from Smith College (1996), double majoring in Government and African American Studies. She is a full-time Senior Lecturer in Children's Literature at Simmons, teaching the undergraduate Survey of Children's and YA Literature as well as courses in the graduate programs in Boston and at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, MA. She also coordinates mentorships for MFA students in the program. She has also served as a Visiting Lecturer in the English Department at Mt. Holyoke College, the School of Education at Boston University, and at several other schools throughout the northeast.

For nearly ten years Megan worked in the Education Department at The Carle. This work began in the fall of 2001, a year before The Carle opened, when Megan earned the final four credits of her MA in Children's Literature at Simmons by conducting an Independent Study that was the genesis of her development of the Whole Book Approach and A Book in Hand, two interactive story time models designed to engage children with picture book art and design. This work evolved into professional development programs and outreach work with schools and libraries in which Megan reached over 25,000 participants during her tenure at The Carle. In 2009 she was named a Massachusetts Literacy Champion by the Mass Literacy in recognition of this work.

Megan is a frequent speaker at conferences and provides professional development training for teachers, librarians, and others who work with children and books. A guest reviewer and regular contributor to The Horn Book Magazine's "Books in the Home" column, Megan is also a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews, and her writing has appeared in numerous other journals including Children & Libraries, Bookbird Magazine, Riverbank Review, CREArTA, The Five Owls, Children's Literature, and The Children's Literature Quarterly. She served on the 2009 Geisel Committee, the 2011 Caldecott Committee, and the 2012 Boston Globe Horn Book Award Committee. Her first picturebook, A Crow of His Own, will be published by Charlesbridge Publishing in 2015 with illustrations by David Hyde Costello, and Charlesbridge will also publish her forthcoming professional title, Storytime Stories: The Whole Book Approach to Reading Picture Books with Children that year. A third title, Real Sisters Pretend, is under contract as a picture book with Tilbury House Publishers.

Megan Lambert's Curriculum Vitae

Kimberly O'Brien

Assistant Professor Kimberly O’Brien, LICSW, PhD, has a joint appointment as Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and holds a per diem clinical position as a psychiatric social worker in the Emergency Department at Boston Children’s Hospital. She recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University. She teaches clinical practice courses at Simmons and focuses her research on the development of interventions for adolescents with suicidal thoughts and behaviors and/or substance abuse problems.

Dr. Kimberly O'Brien's Curriculum Vitae

Dana Grossman Leeman

Program director and associate professor of practice Dana Grossman Leeman, MSW, PhD, is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Massachusetts Chapter of the International Association of Social Work with Groups (IASWG), and the co-chair of Symposia for the International Board of the IASWG. She is on the editorial advisory board of the journal Social Work with Groups and is a consulting editor for Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping. Dr. Leeman teaches Social Work with Groups, Advanced Clinical Practice, and Advanced Group Work with Vulnerable and Resilient Populations.

Denise E. Hildreth

“Live to do good and you will never tire of your employment.”  I read this quote at the age of 17 and, since then, have kept it pinned to my wall. Even before then, my career path was mapped out - I never really wanted to be anything other than a professional social worker.  Looking back more than 20 years later, there is still no career I would rather have and nothing more rewarding than watching students gain a passion for the work that I love. 

I began my career as a child welfare practitioner, working with children and families facing a host of what seemed like impossible challenges. I saw the ways in which their situations were impacted not only by their choices, but by their environmental context and social forces and injustices that impacted their ability to thrive and meet their goals. I learned early on that being a good social worker involved working alongside clients as they confronted personal challenges while also advocating for social change. My professional identity became strongly rooted in a social work strengths perspective and a commitment to social justice. 

I became a social work educator in 2002 out of a desire to share my knowledge and experiences and to be a mentor and guide for the generation of social work professionals that would go on to replace me in the field. As Director of the new BSW Program at Simmons, I have sought to develop a learning community where my students can develop the knowledge, values, and skills needed to become competent, ethical generalist social work practitioners. As a teacher, I look to create a learning environment that is based upon mutual respect and an appreciation for intellectual curiosity, challenge, professionalism, and lifelong growth.  In the classroom, I strive to assist students in developing strong critical thinking, writing, and professional practice skills that allow them not only to assist individual clients in locating needed resources and addressing specific problems, but to examine the critical role that the social environment and systems of power and oppression play in all of our lives. It is my hope that students not only become strong practitioners, but equally strong advocates and agents of social change.  

In addition to my passion for child welfare work, I am a homicide bereavement researcher, specifically examining the ways in which homicide bereavement impacts the employment of surviving family members.