Faculty Research Interests
Ronald Bishop, Ph.D., Associate Professor. Dr. Bishop offers his students the benefits of 10 years of experience in journalism and public relations with major organizations.
Prof. Joan Blumberg, Instructor & Coordinator - Publication Management Program . Prof. Blumberg’s areas of interest are Electronic publishing, Publishing and communications, and Publishing and mass-media.
Robert Brulle, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Department of Culture and Communication. Dr. Brulle’s areas of interest include U.S. environment movement worldviews and institutions, and interdisciplinary environmental research.
Prof. Karen Cristiano, Instructor. Prof. Cristiano’s areas of interest are Journalism, Medical writing, Feature writing, copy editing, and Mass media and society.
Dr. Daniela De Pau, Assistant Teaching Professor of Italian. Dr. De Pau’s scholarly research interest includes Italian cinema; Relationship between Literature, Cinema and other Arts; Traveling Literature; Women Writers; The tradition of the Comic and the tradition of the Fantastic; Autobiography; Politics of Immigration and Cultural Identity in Contemporary Italy..
Robert D’Ovidio , Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Sociology. Dr. D’Ovidio’s areas of interest include computer crime, computer forensics, criminal justice technologies, surveillance and privacy, intellectual property theft, and criminological theory.
Mary Ebeling, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Sociology. Dr. Ebeling’s areas of interest include sociology of science & technology, political sociology, online communication & political discourse, social movements and sociology of markets, knowledge & information.
Dr. Paul Evangelista, Assistant Teaching Professor of Communication. Dr. Evangelista’s scholarly activity includes Communication and Law Research.
Alexander Friedlander, Ph.D., Associate Professor. Dr. Friedlander specializes in written communication and rhetoric. Additional interests include document design and new communication technologies in the workplace.
Anthony P. Glascock, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology. Dr. Glascock's areas of research include Aging and health; definitions of functionality and impairment; technology and aging; social organization; Ireland; East Africa; Behavioral Informatics.
Ernest A. Hakanen, Ph.D., Associate Professor & Director of Graduate Programs. In his communication theory and research methods courses, Dr. Hakanen’s goal is to encourage students to think effectively and critically.
Julia Hall, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Dr. Hall’s areas of interest are criminal justice & juvenile justice reform, including community based alternatives to incarceration; correctional education and programming; reentry and reintegration; and restorative justice.
Maria Hnaraki, Ph.D., Assistant Teaching Professor. Dr. Hnaraki’s areas of interest are Anthropology of the Mediterranean, Greek & Cretan Folklore, Mediterranean Music & Performance, and Modern Greek Language
Barbara Hoekje, Ph.D., Assistant Professor. Dr. Hoekje’s areas of interest are Sociolinguistic and discourse approaches to language testing and learning, English for specific purposes (academic and medical purposes), New technologies in language teaching and learning, and International teaching assistants, International medical graduates
Barbara Hornum, Ph.D., Associate Professor. Interests: Comparative gerontology; planned communities; continuing care communities; retirement; faculty development.
Frank Kelley, Ph.D., Assistant Teaching Professor. Prof. Kelley’s areas of interest are Corporate university systems online, Power structure of media enterprises, and Public relations, event planning.
Emmanuel Koku, Ph. D., Assistant Professor of Sociology. Dr. Koku’s areas of interest include social network analysis, social demography, medical sociology, communication & information technology, community & urban sociology, and sociology of development.
David Kutzik, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Culture and Communication. Dr. Kutzik’s areas of interest include social theory, gerontology, race, and traditional Jewish Music and Language revival movements and ethnicity.
Diamantino P. Machado, Ph.D., Teaching Professor of Sociology, Dr. Machado’s areas of interest include globalization, American foreign policy, political economy, political sociology, philosophy of social science, and postmodernist social reflection.
Maria delaluz Matus Mendoza, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Spanish , Dr. Matus-Mendoza’s areas of interest include Language variation in Spanish, The relationship between language variation and mobility (social and geographical) among the Mexican communities in Mexico and in the United States, First and second language acquisition, and Bilingualism, theater, baroque and contemporary literature .
Jack Maxwell, M.S. Instructor of Sociology . Criminal investigations, policing, police administration. Profesor Jack Maxwell recently retired from the Philadelphia Police Department as Chief of the Detective Bureau.
Margaret McClure, Ph.D., Instructor of Sociology, Department of Culture and Communication. Dr. McClure’s areas of interest are research methods, sociology of the family, and deviance.
Usha Menon, Ph.D., Associate Professor. Dr. Menon's interests include: Self, identity, and prison-hood; emotional functioning; Hindu morality; gender relations in Hindu society; adult development; popular Hinduism; post-colonial feminism; Hindu religious nationalism; and Islamic radicalism.
Alexander G. Nikolaev, Ph.D., Associate Professor. Dr. Nikolaev’s areas of interest are public relations, political communication, organizational communication, mass communication, international communication, and communication theory.
Anne-Marie Obajtek-Kirkwood, Ph.D., Associate Professor of French. Dr. Obajtek-Kirkwood's areas of interest include French and Francophone 20th and 21st century literature, culture and film.
Representations of the Occupation (WWII), War, Autobiography, Minorities in France, and Feminist issues.
Rakhmiel Peltz, Ph.D., Professor. Interests: Sociolinguistics; social history of Yiddish language & culture; ethnography of communication; Yiddish culture of E. Europe; language planning; language & ethnic identity; language & group memory; aging & ethnicity; urban neighborhoods.
Douglas V. Porpora, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Department of Culture and Communication. Dr. Porpora’s areas of research include War, Genocide, Torture, and Human Rights, Macro-Moral Reasoning in Public Sphere Debate, Contemporary Social Theory, Moral and Political Communication, Religion
Devon Powers, Ph.D., Assistant Professor. Dr. Power's areas of interest include Popular Music, Cultural Intermediaries, Promotional Culture, 20th Century History, and Journalism Studies.
Rachel Reynolds, Ph.D., Associate Professor. Dr. Reynold’s areas of interest include dialects of English worldwide, intercultural communciation in the workplace & schools, African immigrants in American cities, and the analysis of how the mobility of professional people affects global communication.
David Ridgway, M.S., Instructor of Sociology, Department of Culture and Communication. Professor Ridgway’s area of interest is criminal investigatory work. His current areas of research include Deviant Behavior and Social Problems.
Simone Schlichting-Artur, Ed.D., Assistant Teaching Professor of German. Dr. Schlichting-Artur’s areas of interest include International Business Communication ( Germany and the US ), Public Health Policy and Languages, German Post-War History through Film and Literature, and Development of Writing Assessment Tools for German Minor .
Wesley Shumar, Ph.D., Associate Professor & Asst. Dept. Head. Interests: Ethnography of cyberspace; online learning communities; political economy of higher education; globalization; activity theory; semiotics; critical realism; psychoanalysis; identity and the self.
Diane M. Sicotte, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Sociology, Department of Culture and Communication. Dr. Sicotte’s areas of interest are environmental justice, environmental health, communities of concern, environmental inequality, social inequality, and urban sociology.
Lawrence Souder, Ph.D., Associate Teaching Professor. Dr. Souder’s areas of interest are corporate communication, science writing, communication ethics, and rhetoric of science.
Alan Stegeman, Ph.D., Teaching Professor. Professor Stegeman brings a variety of real-world experience to his courses on communication technology and mass media.
Susan Stein, Ph.D., Assistant Professor. Dr. Stein’s areas of interest include community-based social marketing, environmental information campaigns & education, renewable energy & conservation, sustainable transportation and participatory communication.
Robert Stokes, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Culture and Communication . Crime prevention planning; crime and public policy; security; urban policy and planning.
Judith Storniolo, Ph.D., Assistant Teaching Professor. Interests: Historical and comparative linguistics; Mesoamerican languages and culture; applied anthropology; public policy; oral traditions and narratives; ideology and ritual; Mesoamerican ethno-history; and Pre-Columbian literature.
Alan Zemel, Ph.D., Assistant Teaching Professor. Dr. Zemel’s areas of interest include Medical Education, Computer Mediated Communication, Decision Making, Conversation Analysis (CA), Ethnomethodology (EM), and Interaction Analysis.
