Faculty Profiles
Meet our distinguished faculty at Stony Brook Southampton:
Sara Aponte-Olivieri
Adjunct Professor
Ms. Aponte-Olivierif
is completing work toward her Ph.D. in Compared Civilizations and Literatures from Stendhal University in Grenoble, France, where she previously taught, and will teach Conversational Spanish at Stony Brook Southampton. She has expertise in French, English and Italian, as well.
Sara.Aponte-Olivieri@stonybrook.edu
William Burford
Adjunct Professor
Mr. Burford
will teach Theater Arts for Stony Brook Southampton. He received his MFA in Directing from the University of Texas and has lectured on Touring Play Development and Bunraku Puppetry. He also serves as general manager of Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor.
William.Burford@stonybrook.edu
Dolores Cannella
Adjunct Professor
Ms. Cannella
received her M.A. in Experimental Psychology from Long Island University, where she also received the Margaret Tatz Memorial Award. She then received her Ph.D. in Social and Health Psychology from Stony Brook University, where she was honored for Excellence in Teaching by the Department of Psychology, and was the recipient of the prestigious Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching. Her research employs social psychological theories to investigate adaptation to chronic illness, stress and coping, and the promotion of physical activity and other health behaviors. She was the Laboratory Manager for Stony Brook's Chronic Pain Study from 2002-04, and was the lead author of the article, "Factors associated with depressed mood in chronic pain patients" in the Journal of Pain. She is currently the Co-Investigator of Stony Brook's Pregnancy Project.
Dolores.Cannella@stonybrook.edu
Arlene Kons Cassidy
Lecturer
Arlene Kons Cassidy received her bachelor's degree in Applied and Theoretical Mathematics and a master's degree in Economics from Stony Brook. She completed her Ph.D. in Administration/Management with a concentration in Economics and Mathematics at Walden University. Dr. Cassidy has several years experience teaching a variety of economics, mathematics and business courses for undergraduate as well as graduate students. She has mentored Ph.D. students and has worked as a consultant in varied research design and statistical analysis projects. She has also served on several committees involving academic evaluation and program development, organized and chaired student activities and worked with student advisement. Through her years in education, she has received several awards from students, educational institutions and the community.
Arlene.Cassidy@stonybrook.edu
Lynn Catterson
Adjunct Professor
Ms. Catterson
is an Art Historian who received her M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Columbia University, where she has also served as Lecturer. She is Coordinator of the Art History Summer Session at Columbia, where she was also named a Whiting Fellow, a Hibbard Fellow and received the Presidential Teaching Fellowship. She is currently co-authoring a textbook on Italian Renaissance sculpture.
Heather Dune Macadam
Lecturer
Heather Dune Macadam taught creative writing at Savannah College of Art and Design and holds her MFA from Southampton Graduate Campus. Her novel, The Weeping Buddha was a finalist for the Nero Wolfe Awards and is still receving national attention. Her first book, Rena's Promise - A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz, was nominated for a National Book Award and received international acclaim as it was translated into a number of languages. Ms. Macadam has been published by The New York Times, The Advocate, and Racing Home: New Stories by Award-Winning North Carolina Writers, where one reviewer remarked she writes like "an archangel with an avenging pen." You can also hear her quirky perceptions on life and teaching on NPR's All Things Considered, where she is a "semi-regular" commentator.
Heather.Macadam@stonybrook.edu
Emmanuelle Pales Espinosa
Adjunct Professor
Ms. Espinosa
earned her Ph.D. in Marine Biology from the University of Nantes in France. She is an expert on the impact of biotic and abiotic factors on phytoplankton assemblages, and recently co-authored an article on the Pacific oyster in the Journal of Aquaculture.
Emmanuelle.PalesEspinosa@stonybrook.edu
R. Marc Fasanella
Adjunct Professor
Mr. Fasanella was formerly Professor of Art at Long Island University. He received his B.S. from the State University of New York at Oswego and M.A. and Ph.D. from New York University. His specialties include graphic design; Robert Moses and the design of state parks on Long Island, passive solar architecture; and environmental art and design.
Christopher J. Gobler
Associate Professor
Christopher J. Gobler earned his Ph.D. from Stony Brook University and continues to be a leading expert in various aspects of marine science, including phytoplankton, harmful algal blooms, estuarine ecology and aquatic biogeochemistry. He has published dozens of articles in leading marine-science journals, and his lab work focuses on plankton ecology, ecological functioning and trophic status of estuaries, and biogeochemical cycles of organic carbon, nutrients, and trace metals in aquatic ecosystems.
Christopher.Gobler@stonybrook.edu
James Hoffmann
Lecturer
Jim Hoffmann will teach Biology and Ecology for Stony Brook Southampton, having received a Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Wisconsin, and a B.Sc. in Marine Biology from Cornell University. He previously served as Director of the Integrated Biological Sciences Program at the University of Vermont, where he also taught. His research has included evolutionary computation applied to modeling complex biological systems.
Nay Htun
Professor
Dr. Nay Htun was formerly U.N. Assistant Secretary General with the United Nations Development Program in charge of the Asia Pacific Bureau and the United Nations Environment Program. He established the Industry and Environment Office in Paris, was in charge of Asia Pacific and served as its Deputy Executive Director. He helped organize the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Geneva, the preparation of Agenda 21 and the Earth Summit at Rio. He graduated with a Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College London, where he a Fellow and Visiting Professor. He is also Visiting Professor and Senior Advisor Asia Pacific, Lund University Sweden, and Honorary Professor Tongji University, Shanghai, China.
Daniel Koontz
Adjunct Professor
Mr. Koontz
will teach Music at Stony Brook Southampton, and previously served on the faculty of Southampton College. He received his Ph.D. in Music Composition from Stony Brook University as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship. With a specialty in electronic and computer music, his compositions have been performed across the country and on four continents.
Chris La Barbera
Lecturer
Chris La Barbera received his B.A. in Philosophy from Dartmouth College in 2001, and is currently a doctoral candidate in Philosophy at Stony Brook University. His present research project, entitled "States of Nature," traces the significance of the animal in the history of social contract theory. This work investigates how political citizenship emerges from the imperative to appropriate natural resources and the drive to control humanity's own "savage" or animal nature. La Barbera also serves as Managing Editor for the first two volumes the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics. His research interests span social and political philosophy, philosophy of gender, and environmental ethics.
Christopher.Labarbera@stonybrook.edu
Elizabeth Newman
Lecturer
Elizabeth Newman, who teaches Anthropology and Archeology, has spent significant research time in Latin America, leading excavations and conducting ethnographic research most recently in Puebla, Mexico, and will also teach “Peoples of South America” this semester. She is completing her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Yale University. She also served as an instructor in Puebla at the International Center of Language and Culture and the University of the Americas.
Elizabeth.Newman@stonybrook.edu
Richard Orr
Adjunct Professor
Mr. Orr will teach Chemistry at Stony Brook Southampton and serves as Director of Undergraduate Labs. He served in a similar role at Valencia Community College in Florida, where he developed laboratory curricula for organic and general chemistries. He earned his M.S. from Florida A&M University in Computational Molecular Biophysical Chemistry. He has extensive training in various analytical technologies applied to environmental chemical analysis, and at Valencia, he built a 48 node Linux High Performance computing cluster he called the "Butterfly Cluster" in honor of the Monarch Butterfly project.
Richard.Orr@stonybrook.edu
Bradley J. Peterson
Assistant Professor
Bradley J. Peterson earned his Ph.D. from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab at the University of South Alabama. His research is focused on understanding the role of organisms in changing nutrient availability within their communities and how these interactions might affect community development and stability. Most of his work is with plant-animal interactions within seagrass ecosystems along the eastern coast of the U.S. Recent projects have included looking at the role of sponges in Florida Bay to control phytoplankton blooms and increase light availability to the benthic plant community, the effect of marine protected areas on changing trophic transfer from nearby seagrass foraging grounds on both 'no take' and unprotected reefs and the possibility of herbivorous fish creating nutrient 'hot spots' around patch reefs.
Bradley.Peterson@stonybrook.edu
James Quigley
Lecturer
James Quigley instructs both Environmental Science
and Political Science courses at Stony Brook
Southampton, including Prospects for Planet Earth,
Energy Analysis, Global Politics, and American
Government. Quigley served as Director of the Center
for Sustainable Energy at Bronx Community College,
CUNY from 2003 to 2007, and Director of the New Jersey
Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability from
1998 to 2002. He also taught environmental studies
at Ramapo College of New Jersey and Portland State
University in Oregon. He earned his Ph.D. in City and
Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania.
Harold.QuigleyJr@stonybrook.edu
Robert Reeves
Associate Professor
Robert Reeves is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, both published by Crown, as well as short fiction, essays, and literary criticism. Kirkus Review hailed Doubting Thomas as "a zesty, classy original," and Patricia Holt of the San Francisco Chronicle called Peeping Thomas "funny, disturbing, and brilliant." Reeves, a professor and Director of the MFA in Writing and Literature Program at Stony Brook Southampton, has also taught writing at Harvard and Princeton.
Alexander Retakh
Lecturer
Alexander Retakh
formerly taught at the University of Texas at Arlington, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and, as a Visiting Professor, Stony Brook University. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Yale and B.A. in Mathematics summa cum laude from New York University. An expert in Representation Theory and Noncommutative Algebra, Dr. Retakh has had his work published in numerous academic journals and has spoken at several universities and conferences.
Alexander.Retakh@stonybrook.edu
Alan Rice
Lecturer
Alan Rice teaches Chemistry, Physics and Mineral Resources. He has previously worked as a researcher with the American Museum of Natural History and as an instructor with the City University of New York. He
earned a B.S., M.S. and doctorate from Columbia University in Engineering
and Applied Physics and Mathematics. His work has included researching nuclear waste removal, oceanography, geophysics and seismic reflection
and refraction at sea.
Tara Rider
Adjunct Professor
Ms. Rider
is completing her Ph.D. in History at Stony Brook University and is a graduate of Southampton College, where she studied Marine Science. She has taught Long Island History and Maritime History. With a subspecialty in Women and the Seas, she has written about the role of female pirates in history.
Roger Rosenblatt
Distinguished Professor
Roger Rosenblatt's essays for Time Magazine and the PBS NewsHour have won two George Polk Awards, a Peabody and an Emmy. He is the author of five Off-Broadway plays and eleven books, including Children of War, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; the national bestseller, Rules for Aging; and the novel, Lapham Rising, also a national bestseller. His second novel, Beet, is due out in January, 2008.
Roger.Rosenblatt@stonybrook.edu
Martin Schoonen
Professor, Interim Dean
Martin Schoonen is Interim Dean at Stony Brook Southampton and Professor of Geochemistry for Stony Brook's Center for Environmental Molecular Sciences. He received his Ph.D at Pennsylania State University and joined Stony Brook in 1989. His academic interests include environmental chemistry, groundwater chemistry, geochemistry and astrobiology. Dean Schoonen's research group is currently working on three major projects: heterogeneous catalysis involving mineral surfaces; surface chemistry of iron sulfides; and the hydrogeochemistry of Long Island. He has also been the lead author of numerous articles in respected academic journals. Along with his studies in the Central Pine Barrens of Eastern Long Island, Schoonen has supervised a number of research projects of the Long Island aquifer system.
Website: pyrite.geo.stonybrook.edu
Martin.Schoonen@stonybrook.edu
Julie Sheehan
Assistant Professor
Julie Sheehan won the Barnard Women Poets Prize for her second book Orient Point. Other honors include the Poets Out Loud Prizes for her first book, Thaw, the Poetry Society of American's Robert H. Winner Prize and The Paris Review's Bernard F. Connors Prize. Sheehan's poems have appeared in Parnassus, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Kenyon Review and Yale Review. Her work has been anthologized, most recently in The Best American Poetry 2005 and 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day. She holds a B.A. from Yale and an M.F.A. from Columbia.
Stephanie Wade
Lecturer
Stephanie Wade teaches composition. She earned her B.A. in Psychology from Wesleyan University, M.A. in English from City College of New York and is completing her doctorate in English from Stony Brook University. She has presented papers on rhetoric, composition and poetics at leading national academic conferences.
Lou Ann Walker
Lecturer
Lou Ann Walker's memoir, A Loss for Words, won a Christopher Award. Her other books include Hand, Heart & Mind. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Life, Allure, Parade, The Chicago Sun-Times, and The New York Times Book Review, among others. Formerly an editor at Esquire and New York Magazine, Walker has lectured on writing at Smith College and Yale University, and taught at Marymount Manhattan College, Southampton College, and Columbia University.
Joseph D. Warren
Assistant Professor
Joseph D. Warren received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. His research
interests include bioacoustical oceanography and zooplankton ecology. He
uses underwater sound to study a variety of biological and physical
oceanographic processes including the distribution and abundance of
zooplankton populations and their interactions with predators; acoustic
scattering from microstructure in the water column, and detecting
submerged aquatic vegetation by acoustic methods. He has conducted
research projects in a variety of environments ranging from local
estuaries and bays to Antarctica. His lab web page is http://www.msrc.sunysb.edu/~warren/.