Past Faculty Fellows

IWL annually bestows fellowships to faculty members of Marquette University to help progress IWL's mission and vision around campus and in the greater community. 

"Getting involved with a team of powerful, smart, and transformative women is, then, the highlight of the experience for me. I got to contribute to programming that helped me and other faculty to feel connected, understood, and appreciated in the middle of a devastatingly isolating time. Moreover, at IWL, we developed capacity for action as our Faculty Advisory Board advanced recommendations to address gender inequity on campus. Fortunately, this fellowship has been about more than meaningful service. Due to the relationships generated in this space, I’m walking away with a team of collaborators with whom I will engage in interdisciplinary research for years to come."

 

Our comprehensive list of past IWL Faculty Fellow include those who served during the following terms:    Expand all   |   Collapse all  

Fall 2025 Faculty Fellows

Paul Gagliardi, PhD |  English

Paul Gagliardi is a teaching associate professor in the English Department at Marquette University. His research focuses on performance studies and American culture, including the intersections between theater and film with cultural studies and economics. His current research project examines the history of popular ice shows in the United States and Canada during the 20th century. His work has appeared in the Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Middle West Review, and Howlround, and his book, All Play and No Work: American Work Ideals and the Comic Plays of the Federal Theatre Project, was published in 2023 by Temple University Press. 

Sarah Gendron, PhD  |  Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Sarah Gendron is Professor of French and Cultural Studies, Chair of the department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Faculty Fellow in the Office of Research and Innovation, and Faculty Fellow of the Institute of Women’s Leadership. She is a former Fulbright Research Fellow and a Way-Klingler 3-year Research Fellow. She is the author of Repetition and Difference in the Works of Samuel Beckett, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze, The Co-opting of Education by Extremist Regimes: Professing Hate, the translator of Frédéric Brun’s Goncourt winning novel Perla and Simone de Beauvoir’s “War Notes,” as well as scholarly articles on literature and art about genocide, women in international humanitarian law, and state sponsored propaganda. She is currently writing a semi-fictional book, tentatively titled “Fury,” on the lives and work of Irish women civil rights, community, political, and para-military activists fighting colonial rule in Ireland.

Lee Za Ong, PhD  |  Dentistry

I bring extensive experience teaching in urban university settings, including minority-serving institutions. As a first-generation college graduate with multilingual abilities and diverse international living experiences, I am deeply committed to advancing accessibility, diversity, and social justice across all facets of my professional work. My research centers on promoting social and mental health equity for underserved communities, with a particular focus on ethnic minority populations living with chronic illness, individuals with disabilities, and refugee and immigrant groups. Funding sources for my research have included Wisconsin Department of Workforce, U.S. Department of Education Rehabilitation Administration Services (RSA), HRSA Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training (BHWET) program, Wisconsin Humanities Council, and Marquette University. 

 

Spring 2025 Faculty Fellows

Terry Burant, PhD 

Clinical Associate Professor Terry Burant, PhD, serves as the Director of Teacher Education in the College of Education.  Most recently, she led a team of faculty and staff in a 6-year teacher education curriculum redesign, simultaneously meeting new state accreditation standards and reflecting the core values of Marquette’s teacher education program.  In addition, for the last 10 summers, she’s taught the Teaching Dentistry course to graduate students in the Dental School.  Dr. Burant earned her PhD in Teaching and Teacher Education at the University of Arizona and was awarded the John P. “Jack” Ellbogen Meritorious Teaching Award at the University of Wyoming in 2016.  As a former high school science teacher, swim coach, and camp director, Dr. Burant brings a practical perspective to her work as an educator in multiple contexts and enjoys working with teachers to identify puzzles in their teaching practice as well as investigate and enact solutions.  You might find her swimming in Lake Superior, lifeguarding and managing an outdoor pool in downtown Milwaukee, planning and hosting theme parties, mermaiding, and playing cowgirl in Wyoming and South Dakota.

 

Christine Dalessio, PhD 

Christine Falk Dalessio received her PhD in Theology from the University of Dayton and joined the Theology department  in 2022.  Her dissertative scholarship considered John Paul II’s Theology of the Body through a contemporary Catholic feminist hermeneutic.  Her published contributions include thoughts on Evangelium Vitae and the prophetism of women in Woman as Prophet at Home and in the World, an article on body language in Listening Journal at Duquesne, and a recent chapter in the first of a collaborative two-volume set Theology and Tolkien.  Dr. Dalessio has a particular interest in grassroots movements for women and has spoken on several occasions to both academic and broader audiences on embodiment, ethics, and women's issues in the context of Catholicism. 

 

Desiree Valentine, PhD 

Desiree Valentine is an assistant professor of philosophy at Marquette University. Her research areas include critical disability theory, feminist philosophy, bioethics, and critical philosophy of race.  Her research addresses the intersections of race and disability from a philosophical perspective attendant to the historical, sociopolitical, and legal processes of racialization and constructions of disability.  She has published on topics such as racial health inequity, disability justice, and reproductive justice.  You can find her work in Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Journal of Philosophy of Disability, Critical Philosophy of Race, Bioethics, and Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology. 

 

Fall 2024 Faculty Fellows

Alison Clark Efford, PhD

Alison Clark Efford, PhD, is an associate professor of history who specializes in immigration to the United States from about 1850 to 1920. Her numerous publications include: "German Immigrants, Race, and Citizenship in the Civil War Era" (2013), "Radical Relationships: The Civil War Era Correspondence of Mathilde Franziska Anneke" (ed. and trans. with Viktorija Bilic, 2021)  and “Women’s Empowerment through Strength Sports—and Its Limits: The Case of the German American Turners, 1880s–1920s,” in "Gender and Power in Strength Sports, ed. Brigden, Forbis, and Hejtmanek" (2023). Efford enjoys community-engaged and collaborative teaching and research and is currently working on two major projects: a book on immigrant suicide and a full biography of the German American feminist and abolitionist Mathilde Franziska Anneke (1817–1884). Both projects find inspiration in the history of emotions, exploring the ways in which humans are “biocultural” beings for whom social and cultural interactions shape embodied experiences.

                                                                                                                       

Kathryn (Katie) Malin, PhD, RN, NNP-BC, APNP

Dr. Katie Malin is an Assistant Professor in Marquette University's College of Nursing and a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner at Children's Wisconsin.  Her research focuses on understanding the impact of infant and parental stress in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) on long-term health outcomes.  Currently Dr. Malin is investigation the complex relationships between maternalsocial determinants of health, early life toxic stress, and epigenetic modifications.  As an IWL Faculty Fellow, Dr. Malin will advance this work by utilizing large datasets to explore how structural and social determinants of health and maternal mental health influence maternal and infant health outcomes.  Dr. Malin was recently awarded a K23 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the cumulative impact of maternal social determinants of health and early life toxic stress in the neonatal intensive care unit on epigenetic alterations in preterm infants and their mothers.

 

 

Zori A. Paul, PhD, LPC (MO), NCC

Dr. Zori A. Paul (she/her) is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology. She received her PhD in counselor education and supervision from the University of Missouri-St. Louis, her MA in clinical mental health counseling from Northwestern University, and her BA in comparative human development with a minor in gender and sexuality studies from the University of Chicago.  Dr. Paul is a psychodynamic-trained Licensed Professional Counselor and a certified provider of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT).  She is also a co-founder of Black in Mental Health, an online initiative to highlight and promote Black mental health professionals, students, researchers, and advocates throughout the world.  Dr. Paul’s research focuses on three main areas: multiple marginalized identities, specifically bisexual+ women of color; cross-cultural mentorship in counseling programs; and ethical social media and artificial intelligence (AI) use for mental health professionals.  

Spring 2024 Faculty Fellows

Daniel Collette, PhD

Daniel Collette, PhD, is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Marquette University and is affiliated with the Minnesota Center for Canon Expansion and Change. His research and teaching aim to recover and amplify philosophical voices that have been forgotten or erased due to identity factors like gender, race, and social class. He is co-editor of the Philosophical Works of Blaise and Jacqueline Pascal (Hackett, 2025), a project funded in part through the National Endowment of the Humanities. His most recent work explores Pascalian metaphysics as well as ethical and socio-political questions of autonomy and resistance centered around Jacqueline Pascal and the Port-Royal nuns.

 

Alexandra Kriofske Mainella, PhD, CRC, LPC-IT

Dr. Alexandra Kriofske Mainella is a PhD prepared counselor educator. She is in her fifth year of teaching, service and research in the Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology program and is a nationally certified rehabilitation counselor and has a professional counselor’s training license. She has extensive experience with youth service and counseling individuals with disabilities, having begun a youth leadership program in a Milwaukee independent living center and taking the program from its inception to a fully funded youth service program with a staff of five, serving more than 500 young people with disabilities annually. Dr. Kriofske Mainella is a nationally recognized sexual and relationship health educator for youth with and without disabilities and has vast experience developing and managing programs in youth service, mental health and disability service. Dr. Kriofske Mainella is the chair of her department’s Racial and Social Justice Committee and the lead instructor of the Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology department’s Multicultural Counseling course. She also was raised by her parents to speak up for injustice and fight for change, a driving value in both her personal and professional life.

 

Sabirat Rubya, PhD

Sabirat Rubya, PhD, is an Assistant Professor within the Computer Science Department at Marquette University, where she also co-directs the Social and Ethical Computing Lab. Her research spans human-computer interaction, social computing, health informatics, and human-aided machine learning. A significant area of her work involves designing mobile health technologies, particularly for critical health contexts like mental health among pregnant women. Her contributions are recognized in renowned conferences and journals, including ACM CHI and CSCW. Dr. Rubya earned her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota.

 

Fall 2023 Faculty Fellows

Heather R. Hlavka, PhD (she/her/they)

Dr. Heather R. Hlavka is Associate Professor of Criminology and Law Studies in the department of Social and Cultural Sciences. Her teaching and research interests include sexual violence, sex and gender, socio-legal studies, youth, trauma, and feminist embodiment and research ethics. An interdisciplinary scholar with a history of engaged scholarship and advocacy, her research portfolio includes both solo and collaborative projects on gender and violence. In 2012, she was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to complete research published in her book (with Sameena Mulla) Bodies in Evidence: Race, Gender, and Science in Sexual Assault Adjudication (New York University Press, 2021) which was awarded the Senior Book Prize by the American Ethnological Society (2022) and Honorable Mention for the Senior Book Prize by the Association for Feminist Anthropology (2022). She is also co-editor (with April Petillo) of Research Gender-Based Violence: Embodied and Intersectional Approaches (New York University Press, 2022) and her other published work has been featured in Gender & Society, Law & Society, Law & Social Inquiry, Men and Masculinities, Violence Against Women, and in public outlets such as the Huffington Post, New Republic, Think Progress, Salon, Milwaukee NNS, the Melissa Harris-Perry Show, MSNBC and Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR). Her most recent work includes research on domestic violence during COVID-19 with Sojourner Family Peace Center and participatory action research on gender, trauma, and embodiment supported by the Institute for Women's Leadership (IWL) and Marquette’s Presidential Challenge Grant. She is affiliated research faculty and advisory board member for the IWL; Associate Fellow of SHaME; Co-Chair of the Social Action Committee, Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS); and on-call advocate for Marquette’s Sexual Assault Advocacy Network.

 

Jennifer Vanderheyden, PhD

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jessica Zemlak, RN, MSN, PhD

Dr. Jessica L. Zemlak, is an Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing. She is a community-engaged researcher whose research examines the intersection of violence and the sexual and reproductive health of women who sell sex and women who use drugs. As a trained Advanced Practice Family Practice and Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, Dr. Zemlak utilizes a trauma-informed lens to examine the impact of violence on the mental and physical health of marginalized women.

 

Spring 2023 Faculty Fellows

Karisse A. Callender, PhD

Dr. Karisse A. Callender is an Assistant Professor in the department of Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology, licensed in the state of Wisconsin as a Professional Counselor (LPC) and Substance Abuse Counselor (SAC), and the Coordinator of the CECP Clinical Mental Health Online Program. She investigates what aspects of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and mindfulness work for individuals and how those aspects work, how mindfulness-based interventions may improve the quality of life of individuals with a history of sexual violence and substance use, and sexual health in diverse groups. In addition, Dr. Callender explores the efficacy of DBT with diverse groups and cultural adaptations of mindfulness interventions for minority populations. Dr. Callender serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Counselor Leadership and Advocacy (JCLA) and is a member of the International Association of Addictions and Offender Counseling Sex Offender Treatment Committee. As an IWL Faculty Fellow, Dr. Callender will explore the experiences of Black women who have been in DBT treatment to learn more about their experiences in treatment, perceptions of the impact of DBT on their quality of life, and considerations for cultural adaptations to DBT.

 

Priya Deshpande, PhD

Priya Deshpande, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering department at Marquette University. She completed her PhD in Computer Science from DePaul University, Chicago. Dr. Deshpande has more than 14 years of teaching experience and her research interest is in data sciences, big data analytics, databases, and computer-aided diagnosis. Her research extensively investigates the problem of biomedical data integration with heterogeneous and unstructured data elements. Dr. Deshpande is an IEEE Senior member and actively involved in activities that support Women in STEM programs.

 

Kate Ward, PhD

Kate Ward, PhD, is assistant professor in the theology department at Marquette, with research interests in economic ethics and virtue ethics. She is the author of Wealth, Virtue and Moral Luck: Christian Ethics in an Age of Inequality (Georgetown, 2021) and serves on several editorial boards. Other recent scholarly publications have focused on worker dignity and universal basic income.

 

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Fall 2022 Faculty Fellow

Noelle Brigden, PhD

Noelle Brigden, PhD, is Associate Professor of Politics at Marquette University. Her interests include gender, human security, borders, transnationalism, violence, the politics of the body, trauma, fieldwork ethics, and political ethnography. Her first book, The Migrant Passage: Clandestine Journeys from Central America (Cornell University Press 2018), won the Yale Ferguson Award.  She has published in International Studies Quarterly, International Studies Perspectives, International Studies Review, Mobilities, Antipode, Migration Studies, International Journal for Migration and Border Studies, and Geopolitics.  

Dr. Brigden’s forthcoming co-edited volume, Gender and Power in Strength Sports: Strong as Feminist (Routledge Press 2023), examines how athletic participation both resists and reinforces intersectional oppressions. She works on community-engaged projects that promote gender empowerment, such as Pesas y Poder, The Body Resistance Program, and Restorative Justice in Movement.  Her ongoing book project, exploring the transnational politics of gendered notions of ‘fitness’, is tentatively titled Survival of the Fit: Body Politics and Gym Life in Post-Conflict El Salvador.   

Dr. Brigden was also the 2022 IPF World Masters Champion in the 47kg weight class, and in 2022 she held the open-age national bench press record for 47kg lifters in the Powerlifting America federation. As a coach, she develops and implements inclusive gym practices and trauma-informed lifting programs.

 

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Spring 2022 Faculty Fellows

Marie Bement, MPT, PhD
Pain: Sex Differences in Pain Perception

Dr. Marie Hoeger Bement, MPT, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy. As a physical therapist, she practiced in an outpatient orthopedic clinic where she was a member of the interdisciplinary chronic pain team. During this time, she realized that the pain management approaches were inadequate and returned to graduate school with a primary research focus on the mechanisms of chronic pain. A recent Fulbright scholar, she continues this research at Marquette University with an emphasis on nonpharmacological pain management in clinical and healthy populations. This research is in line with Dr. Bement’s teaching and service initiatives to improve pain education worldwide with an emphasis on the interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors in the assessment and management of pain. This biopsychosocial model extends beyond pain management and parallels the Jesuit educational principle of cura personalis. As a faculty fellow at IWL, Dr. Bement will investigate the interaction of these factors to explore health and wellness among women at Marquette University.

 

Alexandra Crampton, PhD
Gender & Faculty Service: Gender Inequities in Academia

Dr. Alexandra Crampton is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences. She joined the faculty in 2009. Her interdisciplinary training began with an undergraduate Humanities major called Modern Thought and Literature, and has continued through a joint Ph.D. in Anthropology and Social Work. Her research and scholarship bring ethnographic fieldwork in dialogue with professional and policy concerns about “doing good” and helping vulnerable populations. This helps bridge gaps between intervention intentions and outcomes by studying directly what happens as interventions unfold. Insights gained through research were helpful in her leadership on the Faculty Council last year, as faculty sought a greater voice in budget decisions. As a faculty fellow, she is excited to bring in the question of gender and faculty service through a project examining the persistence of gender inequities and how to address them. In her current research on aging in a retirement community, she is also examining gender differences in how people experience and address challenges that come from aging into a “4^th age” of frailty, dependency, and loss.

 

Melissa Shew, PhD
Joy: The Power of Intellectual Joy for the Future of Women at Work

Dr. Melissa Shew is Associate Director of Teaching Excellence in the Center for Teaching and Learning at Marquette as well as the Faculty Executive Director of MU's EMBA program. She teaches a wide range of classes in Philosophy, Honors, and Business and has a wide range of scholarly interests, from ancient Greek philosophy to our contemporary world. Recently, she edited and published Philosophy for Girls (OUP 2020) and is working on a related digital scholarship project, called The Persephone Project. She also recently gave a TEDx Talk, "Women and Intellectual Empowerment” (June 2021), to articulate ways that we can amplify, advocate for, and adore younger women and nonbinary people--and why it’s worth doing so. Another book project, On the Vocation of the Educator in This Moment, is coming out in November 2021 in association with MU Press. It features 24 chapters, most of which are written by women across campus from different departments. The book is a response to three crises of our time: the pandemic, racial injustice, and challenges in higher education. Shew also serves in a variety of ways at Marquette, from the Participating Faculty Task Force to the CfAH, Honors, and the Ignatian Year. She most loves building new projects with others.  We are excited for Dr. Shew to continue her role of a Fall 2021 Faculty Fellow in the Spring 2022 Semester.

 

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Fall 2021 Faculty Fellows

Jody Jessup-Anger, PhD

Dr. Jody Jessup-Anger (Michigan State University) is professor of higher education, chair of the department of educational policy and leadership, and program coordinator of the Student Affairs in Higher Education master’s program.  Her research explores how the interaction of students and the collegiate environment affects student development and learning. Dr. Jessup-Anger is co-author of Living-Learning Communities that Work: A Research-Based Model for Design, Delivery and Assessment (Stylus 2018) and co-editor of Addressing Sexual Violence in Student Affairs and Higher Education (New Directions for Student Services 2018).  She co-led the Elon University Center for Engaged Learning 2017-2019 Research Seminar on Residential Learning Communities, a summer institute that promotes multi-institutional research collaboration on high impact practices in higher education. In the Fall of 2017, she served as scholar-in-residence for Workshop Architects.  A former women’s center director, Jessup-Anger is passionate about creating conditions that promote sex and gender equity.

 

Melissa Shew, PhD

Dr. Melissa Shew is Visiting Associate Professor of Philosophy and the Senior Faculty Fellow (Assistant Director) of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Marquette. She teaches a wide range of classes in Philosophy, Honors, and Business and has a wide range of scholarly interests, from ancient Greek philosophy to our contemporary world. Recently, she edited and published Philosophy for Girls (OUP 2020) and is working on a related digital scholarship project, called The Persephone Project. She also recently gave a TEDx Talk, "Women and Intellectual Empowerment” (June 2021), to articulate ways that we can amplify, advocate for, and adore younger women and nonbinary people--and why it’s worth doing so. Another book project, On the Vocation of the Educator in This Moment, is coming out in November 2021 in association with MU Press. It features 24 chapters, most of which are written by women across campus from different departments. The book is a response to three crises of our time: the pandemic, racial injustice, and challenges in higher education. Shew also serves in a variety of ways at Marquette, from the Participating Faculty Task Force to the CfAH, Honors, and the Ignatian Year. She most loves building new projects with others.

 

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Summer 2021 Faculty Fellows

Debra L. Oswald, PhD
Dr. Debra Oswald is a social psychologist and a Professor in the Department of Psychology. She joined Marquette University in 2003, is the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Psychology, and teaches classes such as Social Psychology, Psychology of Gender Roles, and Psychology of Prejudice.  Her research and teaching interests focus on stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination with an emphasis on gender-related issues, especially as they intersect with other social identities (sexual orientation, ethnicity etc.) and women’s experiences with sexism.   

Deb is excited to be a faculty fellow in the Institute for Women’s Leadership this summer. This is an exciting opportunity to work with an interdisciplinary team and apply her academic and research interests to help develop programming that can support and benefit women on campus.   

 

Lilly Campbell, PhD 
Lilly Campbell is an Assistant Professor and Director of Foundations Instruction in the English department at Marquette. Her research and teaching focuses on feminist rhetorics, rhetorics of health and medicine, and professional and technical writing. In 2020, she received a Difference Maker award along with Dr. Cedric Burrows for their redesign of Foundations in Rhetoric to focus on antiracism and racial justice. Current research projects include ethnographic research on how students in the health sciences learn embodied communication strategies as well as an interdisciplinary NSF-sponsored project on algorithmic patient care.  

In addition to her personal interest in women’s leadership, Lilly’s research also focuses on how those with historically less power, including women, participate in professional scientific communities. Her work on women’s participation in scientific communication includes an article in Women’s Studies in Communication which unpacks materiality and gendered positioning in news coverage of a female scientist, an analysis of the framing of female healthcare workers in the feminist health pamphlet Our Bodies, Ourselves, and an overview of research on the rhetoric of women scientists forthcoming in the Routledge Handbook on Scientific Communication. She is so excited to be a faculty fellow at the IWL during Summer 2021 and have a chance to work with like-minded colleagues from across campus! 

 

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Spring 2021 Faculty Fellows

Ayleen Cabas-Mijares, PhD

Dr. Ayleen Cabas-Mijares is an assistant professor of journalism and media studies at Marquette University. Before coming to the U.S. to pursue her graduate studies, she worked as a reporter and copy editor of a national women’s magazine in Venezuela, her home country. Dr. Cabas-Mijares graduated with a M.S. in Journalism from Ohio University and a doctorate from the Missouri School of Journalism. Her research interests focus on the critical examination of the role of media and journalism in social change. Specifically, Dr. Cabas-Mijares investigates media activism in Latin America and the Latinx diaspora. Cabas-Mijares chose Marquette because Marquette’s focus on moral responsibility and social justice spoke to her own education and ethics as a graduate of a Jesuit school and a critical media scholar.

 

Amber Wichowsky, PhD

Dr. Amber Wichowsky is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Director of the Marquette Democracy Lab.  Amber’s work on women and politics examines gender differences in political efficacy, public opinion, and political rhetoric. She is also an occasional source for media coverage of electoral and gender politics, including CNN, NPR, Fox News and several local news outlets. Her book, The Economic Other: Inequality in the American Political Imagination (joint with Meghan Condon, Loyola University Chicago) examines how Americans use social comparisons to make sense of economic inequality and how such frames of reference affect attitudes about redistribution and feelings of political power (University of Chicago Press 2020). As an IWL Faculty Fellow, Amber will be working on three gender-related research projects. The first tests how news coverage of women’s gains in political office affect men’s and women’s political attitudes. The second will extend her earlier work on the gender gap in evaluations of the US economy to consider how women and men have reacted to the pandemic recession and to the 2020 presidential election. In her final project, Amber will be analyzing tweets posted by US mayors about COVID-19 to consider gender differences in political communication and policy response.

 

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