Participants:

Kathleen Jagger
E-mail: kjagger@transy.edu

Alan Goren
E-mail: agoren@transy.edu

Peggy Palombi

E-mail: ppalombi@transy.edu

Rick Rolfes

E-mail: rrolfes@transy.edu

Biographies:

Kathleen Jagger
In the fall of 2002 I joined the faculty at Transylvania University ready to begin a new phase of my career. Since 1983 I had been on the faculty at DePauw University, and prior to that taught at Wright State University School of Medicine. I earned my PhD in microbiology from the University of Cincinnati in 1979 and MPH in international health at Harvard School of Public Health in 1992. Currently, my primary teaching responsibilities include microbiology, immunology, genetics, and cell biology. My basic science research interests have focused on how microbes cause disease and how their host organisms defend themselves, a fascination I developed while working in an infectious disease research lab as an undergraduate student. However, I have also developed a professional interest in broader public health issues that span the interfaces between biology and other academic disciplines. In this regard, I have led several teams of students on service projects in underserved areas of Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and hope to continue working with less advantaged populations locally and globally. For more than 10 years I have worked with colleagues through the American Society for Microbiology to improve teaching and learning in undergraduate microbiology courses.

Alan Goren
I have been teaching chemistry at Transylvania University since 1985. My teaching responsibilities have included general chemistry, physical chemistry, environmental chemistry and chemistry in society. Before arriving in Kentucky, I taught at New England College, Virginia Tech, and Hollins College. I haven't always been an academic since obtaining my Ph.D. from the University of Delaware in 1974. From 1974 to 1978 I was a research scientist at Fiber Industries Incorporated in Charlotte, NC. I am a Massachusetts native with a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts. My research training was in classical physical chemistry, but over the years, I have wandered into the field of chemical physics and over the past ten years have been involved in computational chemistry research. My two sabbaticals - University of Sussex (1994) and the University of Washington (2001) have helped me establish research collaborations with both experimentalists and theorists all over the world. My research pursuits these days are in organic chemistry (homoaromaticity) and transition metal chemistry (ligand field spectra). Over the years, I have had a number of students working with me on computational projects, with ten of these students having spent time with me in England at the University of Sussex.


Peggy Palombi
My interest in biology began with the desire to understand exactly what goes wrong in the brain of a person who develops a severe mental illness such as schizophrenia, and then expanded to a desire to understand changes in the brain over time including learning, memory, and changes associated with aging. I earned a masters in neuroscience from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in neuropharmacology from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine where my research turned to aging of the auditory system. I joined the faculty of Transylvania University in 1997, with major teaching responsibilities in cell biology and physiology. I also teach neurobiology, developmental biology, and non-majors courses such as Sight and Sound and Drugs and the Human Body. My research focuses on age-related alterations in auditory function, particularly the impact of GABA neurotransmitter deficits. I work with both computer models and in vitro physiology.


Rick Rolfes
I received a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Cincinnati in 1978. After graduation, I worked as a post-doc in experimental atomic-collision physics first at the University of Nebraska with Eugene Rudd, then at the University of Kentucky with Keith MacAdam. I accepted my first teaching position in physics at Presbyterian College in 1983. I then moved to Transylvania University in 1988. I was tenured in 1993 and promoted to full professor in 1996. At both schools, I've managed to teach every course in the physics curriculum. My recent into-level courses include Conceptual Physics, University Physics, and Sight and Sound, a team taught course with Dr. Palombi. Upper level courses include Modern Physics, Electronics, Optics, and Quantum Mechanics. Along with my colleague, Dr. James Day, I have designed two undergraduate research projects at Transylvania. One uses time-of-flight mass spectroscopy to measure multiple-ionization cross-sections in collisions between electrons and noble gas atoms over a range of collision energies. The other project uses laser light scattering from micron-sized particles in water to measure particle size or particle motion. Over the years I also maintained a collaboration with Dr. MacAdam at U.K. We have measured cross-sections for ionization and state-changing in collisions between singly-charged positive ions and highly-excited Rydberg atoms. Most of my publications have come from this work.