Affiliated faculty

The Office for Veteran and Military Academic Engagement partners with Arizona State University faculty across many disciplines to present book talks, screen films, highlight faculty research, bring artists and authors to campus, conduct research about or with veterans, collaborate with community organizations, and engage veteran students and faculty in ways to understand the historic and contemporary landscapes and legacies of war and peace. If you have ideas for events, needs for research, or plans for performances please contact us.

Braden R. Allenby

Lincoln Professor of Engineering and Ethics, School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment

Braden R. Allenby is currently the Lincoln Professor of Engineering and Ethics, Professor of Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering, and of Law at Arizona State University where he is also the Founding Chair of the Consortium for Emerging Technology, Military Operations and National Security established in 2009 and Founding Director of the Center for Earth Systems Engineering and Management. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; a U. S. Naval Academy Stockdale Fellow for 2009-2010; an AT&T Industrial Ecology Fellow for 2008-2009; a Batten Fellow in Residence at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business Administration; a Fellow of the British Royal Society for the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce; and was a Templeton Research Fellow in 2008 and 2010. Professor Allenby has written extensively on emerging technologies, sustainable engineering, industrial ecology, and earth systems engineering and management.

Manú Avilés-Santiago

Assistant Professor, College of Letters and Sciences, Communication and Culture

Manú Avilés-Santiago obtained his Ph.D. in Media Studies at the Department of Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas-Austin. Born in Mayaguez and raised in Aguada, Puerto Rico, Avilés-Santiago holds a Bachelor Degree in Communications and a Master in Research in Communications from the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras. His most recent book, Puerto Rican Soldiers and Second-Class Citizenship: Representations in Media, examines the cultural history of the imaginary of the Puerto Rican soldier, from representations in traditional media to self-representations in digital/social media. His research interests are located within the areas of Oral History, Technology and Culture, Race/Ethnicity and Media, Latino/a Studies, and Military Studies.

Aviles-Santiago received the Ford Foundation Pre-doctoral Fellow administered by the National Research Council to conduct a three-year long online ethnography on Puerto Rican soldiers serving in the War on Terror. He has worked for several research centers such as Center for Communication Research and the Center for the Study of Latino Media & Markets. He also has worked as Research Assistant and Project Manager for the Voces: Latino and Latina Oral History Project under the advisory of Dr. Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez. As part of the project, Professor Aviles-Santiago had the opportunity to travel throughout several cities of the U.S. and Puerto Rico conducting interviews with hundreds of Latino veterans from World War II, the Korean and Vietnam War generations. Professor Avilés-Santiago grew up listening to stories from the battlefield as a son, nephew, and godson of former military members.

As an affiliate faculty member of OVMAE, Doctor Avilés-Santiago hopes to continue his efforts in oral history and digital story telling, particularly in the revisionist approach that the Vietnam Generation is articulating through digital/social media.

Steve Borden

Director, Pat Tillman Veterans Center

Steve Borden is a retired Navy captain and became the first director of the Pat Tillman Veterans Center upon his retirement in 2012, following 29 years of service. While in the Navy, he primarily served as a helicopter pilot, but also had the opportunity to be assigned as Naval Attache to the U.S. embassies in Quito, Ecuador, and Santiago, Chile. His final assignment was as the founding command officer of the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps at ASU. The Pat Tillman Veterans Center serves over 5500 military, veteran, spouse and dependent students at ASU. Beyond serving as a connecting point for veterans, the center is focused on helping veterans make successful transitions from military service to the academic environment and then on to their new careers.

Boyd Branch

Visiting Assistant Professor, Herberger Institute, School of Film, Dance and Theatre

Boyd Branch is a communications and digital media expert focused on training leaders to communicate effectively in complex environments. He has led national and international workshops and seminars on improvisation for scientists and engineers, developed new technologies for communications training with military veterans, sustainability engineers, and teaching artists, and created original theatrical experiences focused on STEM communication for festivals and theatrical events around the Southwest. He has an M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Digital Media from Arizona State University and an M.A. in Theatre Studies from the University of Utrecht, where he was a Fulbright Scholar.

Mary Davis

Professor of Psychology and Interim Director, ASU Veterans Wellness Research Center

Mary Davis obtained her PhD in psychology from the University of Pittsburgh, and then joined the faculty at ASU, where she is a Professor of Psychology. For the past 13 years, she has collaborated with colleagues at the Phoenix Veterans Health Care Center to develop and test psychological interventions to improve well-being for Veterans with chronic pain and/or post-traumatic stress. Davis is serving as the Interim Director of the ASU Veterans Wellness Research Center.

Karen Gallagher

Clinical Associate Professor, College of Health Solutions, Department of Health Solutions

Karen Gallagher is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science in the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University where she provides clinical training to graduate students. She has been a speech-language pathologist since 1998, working with adults and children with brain injury in a variety of settings. She is the primary researcher on the Veteran Cognition and Academic Success (VCAS) research project. Her research focuses on aspects memory and attention in military veterans as they enter or return to college. She provides workshops and cognitive coaching to veterans in college. Ms. Gallagher served in the U.S. Army in Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield as an Airborne Chemical Operations Specialist.

Jacquelyn Hettel

Assistant Research Professor, School for the Future of Innovation in Society

Jacqueline Hettel leads the Human Analytics and eXperience Engineering Laboratory (HAXEL) within the Center for Energy and Society; she is also affiliate faculty with the School for Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies. While her research primarily focuses on big data analysis and text mining, corporate communications in government-regulated industries, and best practices for leveraging, what she is most passionate about is operationalizing research-driven insights for higher education innovation. Specifically, Hettel is interested in how we can better engage veteran students in basic research projects to give them hands-on experience before transitioning from the university into their future careers. She is using her expertise in information science, project management, and curriculum design to develop systems for mentoring veteran students in developing skills for leading within cross-cutting teams, which is funded through the NEPTUNE program within the Office of Naval Research. Dr. Hettel holds a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in English Linguistics, a graduate certificate in Higher Education Instruction from the University of Georgia, and a graduate certificate in Business Innovation from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She is the Assistant Editor of the Linguistic Atlas Projects and is a certified Project Management Professional with Project Management International.

Erika Hughes

Assistant Professor, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, School of Film, Dance and Theatre

Erika Hughes is an assistant professor of theatre at Arizona State University's Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts in the School of Film, Dance and Theatre, affiliate faculty in the Office for Veteran and Military Academic Engagement and Jewish Studies, and honors faculty in Barrett Honors College. She has held fellowships at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Freie Universität Berlin, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Technische Universität Berlin, and the Universität Bonn. Her articles and reviews have been published in Youth Theatre Journal, the Journal of European Studies, the Brecht Yearbook, and Theatre Journal, as well as a number of edited volumes. As a director, her work has been seen on stages in the United States, Germany, Israel, and Pakistan.

Garth Johnson

Curator of Ceramics, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Ceramic Arts Research Center

Garth Johnson is a curator, educator and artist who investigates the intersection of craft, community and contemporary art. Before joining ASU as the Curator of Ceramics at the ASU Art Museum, Johnson became passionate about working with veterans while teaching in the California Community College system. In 2015, he oversaw the ASU Art Museum exhibition Statement Piece: Erik Gronborg and Ehren Tool, which juxtaposed the work of Gronborg, an 83-year old Danish pacifist and Tool, a Marine veteran of Operation Desert Storm who has made and given away more than 17,000 handmade ceramic cups over the past decade.

Marcy Karin

Clinical Professor of Law; Director, Work-Life Law and Policy Clinic

Marcy Karin is a clinical professor of law and director of the Work-Life Law and Policy Clinic at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. Professor Karin teaches courses on workplace flexibility law and policy, employment law and policy and legislation. As the clinic’s director she supervises and instructs student attorneys working on behalf of clients and causes via administrative litigation, legislative lawyering and community education. Since arriving at ASU in 2009, the clinic has tackled matters related to the employment, consumer and housing needs of members of the military community living in poverty. She has spoken about expanding public policy that supports our military families across the country, including on Capitol Hill. Her recent articles address the military’s employment law framework, improving pleading under the Americans with Disabilities Act and proposals to improve protections at work for members of the Guard and Reserves, family members and victims of domestic violence. In 2011, professor Karin was recognized with the Woodside Foundation Sustained Community Service Award for access to justice efforts related to supporting Arizona’s military families. She has an LLM (in advocacy) from Georgetown University Law Center, a JD from Stanford Law School, and a bachelor of arts from American University.

Peter Lehman

Director, Center for Film, Media and Popular Culture and Professor of English, Film and Media Studies

Peter Lehman is author of Running Scared: Masculinity and the Representation of the Male Body, New Edition; Roy Orbison: The Invention of an Alternative Rock Masculinity; and coauthor of Lady Chatterley’s Legacy in the Movies: Sex, Brains, and Body Guys; Thinking About Movies: Watching Questioning, Enjoying, Third Edition; Blake Edwards; Returning to the Scene, Blake Edwards, Vol. 2.; and Authorship and Narrative in the Cinema. He is editor of Pornography: Film and Culture; Defining Cinema; and Close Viewings: An Anthology of New Film Criticism and coeditor of The Searchers: Essays and Reflections on John Ford's Classic Western. He is a former president of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and the Founding Editor of Wide Angle: A Film Quarterly of Theory, Criticism, and Practice.

Kyle Longley

Snell Family Dean's Distinguished Professor, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies and School of Politics and Global Studies

Kyle Longley has written extensively on topics of war including American interventions in Latin America in his book "In the Eagle’s Shadow: The United States and Latin America (2nd edition, 2009)." His most recent works have focused on the experiences of American combat soldiers in Vietnam as he has conducted intensive research in the field including the compilation of oral histories. His new books include "Grunts: The American Combat Soldier in Vietnam (2008)," and " The Morenci Marines: A Tale of a Small Town and the Vietnam War (2013)." He is continuing his work in the field with a focus on the most recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Brenda Morris

Assistant Dean, College of Nursing and Health Innovation (COHNI)

Brenda Morris is one of the Principle Investigators for the sponsored project entitled "Phoenix VA Health Care System – ASU CONHI Partnership to Transform Nursing Education and Practice (PAP-NEP). This project was one of six academic-practice partnerships selected for funding by the Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration. The project is focused on transforming nursing education and practice by enhancing clinical practice initiatives that improve Veteran care, and for integrating a veteran-centric curriculum within the Bachelor of Science in Nursing.

Robert E. Page Jr.

Provost Emeritus, Foundation Chair of Life Sciences

Robert E. Page Jr. received his Bachelor of Science degree from San Jose State University and PhD from University of California-Davis. He joined ASU in 2004 after 15 years on the faculty of the UC-Davis where he served as chair of entomology. Page’s background is in behavior and population genetics and the focus of his current research is on the evolution of complex social behavior. Using the honey bee as a model, he has dissected bee’s complex foraging division of labor at all levels of biological organization – from gene networks to complex social interactions. An internationally recognized scholar, he has published more than 230 research papers and articles. Page received the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award (the Humboldt Prize), the highest honor given by the German government to foreign scientists. In 2010 he was elected to the Leopoldina – the German National Academy of Science, the longest continuing academy in the world. Page is also an Elected Foreign Member of the Brazilian Academy of Science, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

Bruce Pagel

Faculty Associate, College of Public Service and Community Solutions, and Faculty Associate, Military Science in the Center on the Future of War

Colonel Bruce A. Pagel (retired) served 28 years as a Judge Advocate in the U.S. Army - active and reserve - retiring from active service in 2014. He is also a retired federal prosecutor, retiring in 2007 after working in both Virginia and Washington, DC. Currently a professor of practice, he is teaching national security policy at Arizona State University, and works as a consultant on criminal justice and national security matters. He is also very active as a volunteer in veterans programs. Colonel Pagel served multiple tours in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. His last assignment was as the SJA at U.S. Central Command.

Melissa Pritchard

Professor, Department of English

Melissa Pritchard is the author of eight works of fiction, a biography and a book of essays. Her first book, Spirit Seizures, won the Flannery O’Connor Award, the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and Notable Book of the Year. The Instinct for Bliss, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, was awarded the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and the Claudia Ortese Prize in North American Literature; stories from the collection received Best of the West and Pushcart Prizes. Selene of the Spirits was a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection, and stories from Disappearing Ingenue were awarded Pushcart and O. Henry Prizes. Late Bloomer was a Chicago Tribune “Best Book of the Year,” and The Odditorium was a San Francisco Chronicle “Best Book of the Year,” an O, The Oprah Magazine “Book of the Week,” and a Library Journal “Small Press Best.” Palmerino was a Lambda Literary “New and Noteworthy Book,” a Publisher’s Weekly “Big Indie Book,” one of the ALA’s “Over the Rainbow” top LGBT selections, and a “Top Title” in O, The Oprah Magazine.She was honored with the Founders’ Day Teaching Award and a Faculty Achievement Award at ASU. As a journalist, she has traveled to India, Afghanistan, Ecuador and Ethiopia, and in 2009, established the Ashton Goodman Grant, working with the Afghan Women’s Writing Project to provide funding for the education and literacy of Afghan women and girls. See www.awwproject.org “Finding Ashton” published in O, The Oprah Magazine read “A Woman’s Garden, Sown in Blood” in The Collagist read

Robin Rio

Associate Professor, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts

Robin Rio is the director of the ASU Music Therapy Clinic, associate professor of music therapy, and a board-certified music therapist. After developing ASU’s Community Music and Wellness Program with local partners to establish greater accessibility to programs that utilize music for health, Guitars for Vets Chapter Coordinator Anthony Taddei, working with the VA, established its first Phoenix chapter. ASU student music therapists provide guitar instruction and peer support in a group setting under the supervision of ASU faculty music therapists. A long-standing relationship exists with music therapists and veterans with World War II veterans being some of the first recipients of music therapy.

Daniel Rothenberg

Professor

Daniel Rothenberg is professor of practice in the School of Politics and Global Studies and the Lincoln Fellow for Ethics and International Human Rights Law in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on human rights documentation, analysis and transitional justice with a focus on genocide, truth commissions and post-conflict reconstruction. Rothenberg designed and managed rule of law projects in Afghanistan, Iraq, central Africa and throughout Latin America including programs to train human rights NGOs, aid indigenous peoples in using international legal remedies, support gender justice and collect and analyze thousands of first-person narratives from victims of severe human rights violations. He is the author of "With These Hands: The Hidden World of Migrant Farmworkers Today (University of California)," "Memory of Silence: The Guatemalan Truth Commission Report (Palgrave)," as well as the forthcoming co-edited volume, "Drone Wars: The Transformation of Armed Conflict and the Promise of Law (Cambridge University Press)".

Brooks Simpson

Professor, Barrett the Honors College

Brooks D. Simpson is the ASU Foundation professor of history. He is a member of the faculty at Barrett, The Honors College, and the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. His work explores American political and military history, including courses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, war and American Society, and the American presidency. The son of one veteran and the spouse of a veteran, he is currently working on a project for the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey, Calif. His publications include "Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction (1991),"America’s Civil War (1996)," "Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity (2000)," and "The Civil War in the East: Struggle, Stalemate, and Victory (2011)." He has appeared on C-SPAN, NPR, The History Channel, CNN and FoxNews.

David Siroky

Assistant Professor, School of Politics and Global Studies

David Siroky is assistant professor of Political Science in the School of Politics and Global Studies at ASU, where he is a core faculty member of the Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity and a faculty affiliate of the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict and the Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies. Siroky's research and teaching is concerned with three themes. The first focuses on ethnic conflict, collective action and civil war dynamics; the second theme concerns democratization, state building and political instability; the third is methodology, especially efforts to integrate non-parametric statistical methods with formal theory, field research and experiments. His research has appeared in his forthcoming "Comparative Sociology, Defence and Peace Economics, Democratization, Ethnopolitics, International Organization, Nationalities Papers, Post-Soviet Affairs, Security Studies, Statistics Surveys" and the "Yale Journal of International Affairs."

Brian Smith

Professor, School of Life Sciences

Smith is a behavioral neuroscientist who studies how animals learn about odors in order to predict important events, such as an encounter with food, a mate or predator. His research employs detailed behavioral studies of learning and memory. He and his research team also use a combination of electrophysiological, bioimaging, molecular and computational techniques to directly link changes in behavior to changes in the brain. His research focuses on learning and memory in both insects (honey bees and fruit flies) and mammals (mice). He also applies his research to studies of human diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. With NSF, NIH, DOD, and DARPA funding he measures the negative effects of heavy metal poisoning on learning and memory, and develops improved methods for detection of odor signatures in the environment (e.g. explosives, casualties in disaster areas).

Michael Stanford

Honors Faculty Fellow

Michael Stanford is an Honors Faculty Fellow in Barrett, the Honors College at ASU. He holds a PhD in English from the University of Virginia and a JD from ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. A licensed attorney and former public defender, he serves as a volunteer lawyer with the Arizona Justice Project. As a scholar, Mike has published and spoken widely in the field of law and literature. In a long and varied teaching career, he has taught at four universities, two law schools, two programs for gifted high-school students, and aboard ship as a professor in the U.S. Navy’s Program for Afloat College Education. Mike was born into a Marine Corps family on Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. His father, Norman Stanford, was a career Marine officer who served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, retiring with the rank of colonel. Mike himself served in the Marine infantry as an enlisted man from 1972 to 1975. He was released from active duty with the rank of sergeant (E-5) and attended Duke University on the G.I. Bill.

Laurie Stoff

Barrett, The Honors College, Senior Lecturer

Laurie Stoff is a Senior Lecturer at Barrett, the Honors College, as well as a faculty affiliate in the Melikian Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at ASU. She holds a PhD and MA in History from the University of Kansas and specializes in Russian, East European, and women's and gender history and studies. Stoff’s research focuses on the intersections of gender and war, specifically, Russian women and the Great War. Her first book, They Fought for the Motherland: Russia's Women Soldiers in World War I and the Revolution (University Press of Kansas, 2006), examines the experiences of the women who served as combatants during the First World War in Russia. Most recently, she completed a book on this topic entitled Russia’s Sisters of Mercy and the Great War: More than Binding Men’s Wounds, published by UPK in the fall of 2015. As part of the international editorial team for the multi-volume project Russia's Great War and Revolution , she is lead editor for a volume exploring the frontline experiences of soldiers, nurses, and prisoners of war.

Fran Zenzen

ASURE Chief Operating Officer

Two-time Arizona State University graduate Dr. Fran Zenzen was appointed chief operating officer of the ASU Research Enterprise (ASURE) in May 2014. At ASURE she oversees all business development and research and operational functions. Zenzen brings to ASURE more than 30 years of experience in defense and intelligence. Prior to joining ASURE she was director of business development at General Dynamics, focusing on soldier systems and intelligence applications. In addition to her responsibilities at ASURE, Zenzen regularly teaches at ASU as an Adjunct Professor of Practice and is active in alumni affairs.

Zenzen is a member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, Society of Women Engineers, Institute of Industrial Engineers, American Society of Quality, and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. She is a published author and regularly is requested to speak at technical conferences focused on software reliability modeling and subcontractor performance.

She received her Ph.D. in industrial engineering and reliability from Arizona State University and also has an MBA from ASU, a master’s in electrical engineering from Syracuse and a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from Lehigh University.

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