Bios

Julie E. Williams, Ph.D. is the Associate Vice President for Research and Outreach Scholarship at the University of New Hampshire. She holds a joint appointment reporting directly to the Provost & Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and to the Vice President for Research. She developed the University's first Office of Outreach Scholarship & Engagement which provides university-wide leadership for this core institutional mission as articulated in the UNH academic strategic plan. She also holds responsibility for the development of funded research and education initiatives and grants which involve multidisciplinary faculty and multi-institutional partners, and for developing partnerships with federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation and NASA. Further, Williams is responsible for the development of externally funded faculty teams that work to extend the University's research and knowledge to external partners and which can also enhance the diversity of the faculty and graduate students. Since joining UNH in 2001, she has held key leadership roles in university-wide strategic planning and review, institutional accreditation, and unit level strategic planning. She is currently co-chairing the UNH Research Strategic Plan. She has also advanced one of the nation's largest single-institution undergraduate research conferences and supervises and supports the Joan and James Leitzel Center for Mathematics, Science and Engineering Education. Further, she also developed the institution's first long-term federally funded research and education partnership with a historically black university. Recently she catalyzed a new partnership between UNH Cooperative Extension and UNH-Manchester (the urban campus) which focuses on urban issues in the City of Manchester, NH. Williams is a faculty member and serves on the national advisory panel for the "Engagement Academy for University Leaders" and she developed the innovative UNH Outreach Scholars Academy (now in its 4th year), a semester-long faculty professional development program and learning community of scholars focused on engaged scholarship. The Academy is designed to transform the UNH culture and become a national model of faculty professional development in this area. She also developed the "Engaged Scholarship Writing Team," a group of faculty interested in collaboratively publishing, disseminating, and advancing the national conversation about engaged scholarship among professional and public audiences.

Dr. Williams was awarded a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Tennessee, was a predoctoral fellow at Yale University and completed her undergraduate education at the College of William and Mary. She was awarded an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellowship in 2005, served at her alma mater, the College of William and Mary. She is an Affiliate Associate Professor in the UNH department of Psychology and prior to joining UNH, held faculty and administrative positions at Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Tennessee, the University of Tennessee Medical Center, and Knoxville College. Faculty from several academic areas and cooperative extension are all members of her leadership team.

Cameron P. Wake, Ph.D. is the senior faculty fellow to the Associate Vice President for Research and Outreach Scholarship, and an Associate Research Professor in the department of Earth Sciences. He has served as the faculty director of the UNH Undergraduate Research Conference and works with the Associate Vice President to advance a number of the Office's engaged scholarship and research initiatives. Dr. Wake focuses his research on studies of regional climate and environmental change through the analysis of ice cores and instrumental records. Currently he is leading research programs to reconstruct climate change from ice cores recovered from glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau and in the Canadian Arctic. He is also involved in the AIRMAP project, which seeks to improve understanding of New England's changing climate and air quality. He leads the related INHALE project that is investigating the links between air quality and human health in New England. As part of the Northeast Climate Impact Assessment, he was co-lead on two research papers and a series of reports detailing past and future climate change in the US Northeast.

Dr. Wake teaches several classes at UNH including Global Environmental Change, Earth System Science, and Climate and Health. He also led a team that produced a Design Guide for Earth System Science Education that summarizes the lessons learned from 15 years of NASA supported education programs. He serves on the UNH Energy Task Force and is Chair of the Undergraduate Research Conference Planning Committee. He also serves as chief scientific advisor for Clean-Air-Cool Planet, a not-for-profit organization finding and promoting solutions to global warming. Dr. Wake received a B.Sc. in Geology (1984) from the University of Ottawa, an M.A. in Geography (1987) from Wilfrid Laurier University, and a Ph.D. in Geochemical Systems (1993) from the University of New Hampshire.

Karen J.Graham, Ph.D. is Professor of Mathematics in the UNH Department of Mathematics and Statistics. She was appointed to serve as the inaugural director of the Joan and James Leitzel Center in January 2003. She received her Ph.D. in Mathematics Education from UNH in 1986. She taught mathematics in Pine Plains, NY prior to beginning work on her doctorate and taught at Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, MI) prior to joining the faculty at UNH. Dr. Graham also directs the UNH Master of Science for Teachers (MST) in mathematics program. Her professional and scholarly interests include the teaching and learning of calculus, mathematics education reform based research, and mathematics teacher development. Dr. Graham has served as the project director of many state and federally funded projects. She has presented numerous workshops at local, state, regional, and national conferences. In addition she has served as a documentation consultant on several national research projects designed to explore mathematics education reform efforts, the QUASAR (Quantitative Understanding: Amplifying Student Achievement and Reasoning) Project, the R3M (Recognizing and Recording Reform in Mathematics Education) Project, and the CCH Evaluation and Documentation Project.

George C. Hurtt, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the department of Natural Resources, a faculty fellow in the Office of the Associate Vice President for Research and Outreach Scholarship and project lead for the Carnegie Classification Community Engagement initiative. Dr. Hurtt and his colleagues are teaching the first undergraduate course on outreach scholarship in fall 2007 entitled: How to Change the World: Engaging Students and Community Partners in Collaborative Research. He was recognized as a "UNH Outreach Scholar" in 2004. Dr. Hurtt's research focuses on the theory and application of community and ecosystem ecology. His primary approach is to combine mathematics and data to develop models for understanding and predicting the structure and dynamics of ecological systems. He has published on a wide range of topics including: the role of dispersal in the dynamics and structure of plant communities, latitudinal and elevational gradients in biodiversity, and ocean and terrestrial ecosystem models for use in studies of the global carbon cycle and global climate change. Current research is focused on the development and application of mathematical models to address issues such as: the sustainability of land-use practices, the effects of disturbances on ecosystem structure and function, and interactions between the biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. Dr. Hurtt is involved in several collaborative research projects including the Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in South America, the North American Carbon Program, and efforts to develop global carbon system and land surface models using NASA's Earth Observing System. He is a coauthor and scientific spokesperson for the New England Regional Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, a lead author of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and has testified to both the New Hampshire Legislature and U.S. Congress on the science of global change. Dr. Hurtt teaches at both the undergraduate and graduate level. His introductory course Global Biological Change investigates major biological changes on the planet and engages over 100 students per year. His advanced course Earth System Science was developed with NASA support to provide a new approach to the subject and is described in a publication in the Journal of Geoscience Education. He directs Research & Discover, a multi-year internship/fellowship program that has attracted and supported literally dozens of science students. He was the founding chairperson of the UNH Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Symposium, is an editor of the international journal Ecology Letters, and is a contributing faculty member of Faculty of 1000.

Sharyn J. Potter, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the department of Sociology and a faculty fellow in the Office of the Associate Vice President for Research and Outreach Scholarship. She was recognized as a "UNH Outreach Scholar" in 2004 and is the faculty director of the "UNH Outreach Scholars Academy." She received her B.S. in Accounting from the State University of New York at Albany. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Emory University in 1998 and her MPH in Health Policy and Management from the Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University in 1994. Her scholarship has focused on the intersection of federal policy and organizational behavior. She has used organizational theories to examine hospital outcomes in the face of new legislation. Additionally, she has analyzed the community benefit provision of not-for-profit and for-profit hospitals (with Dr. Edmund R. Becker). She has also completed a study examining how changes in federal health care legislation have affected hospital executive turnover and the types of executives that are hired (with Dr. Timothy J. Dowd). In another project, she has analyzed (with Dr. John McKinlay) how changes in 20th century health care policy have affected various aspects of the physician-patient relationship. Dr. Potter's work has appeared in Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Teaching Sociology, Journal of Health Care Finance, Journal of Health and Human Services Administration, Clinical Performance and Quality Health Care and Sociological Forum. She also published a book, Can Efficiency and Community Service be Symbiotic? A longitudinal analysis of not-for-profit and for-profit hospitals in the United States, in 2000. She incorporates service-learning components in many of her courses and has written two papers describing these projects. She also received the UNH 2003 Outstanding Assistant Professor Award

Lisa L. Townson, MA is an outreach associate in the Office of the Associate Vice President for Research and Outreach Scholarship, and an Extension Specialist for the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension. In addition to her Extension responsibilities in program development and evaluation and staff development, she has assisted with the development, implementation, and evaluation of the UNH Outreach Scholars Academy. Ms. Townson is a doctoral candidate in UNH's Department of Education, looking at disciplinary difference in how faculty members engage in outreach scholarship.

Lara M. Gengarelly, Ph.D. is a lecturer in the department of Education and a faculty associate in the Office of the Associate Vice President for Research and Outreach Scholarship. She provides leadership and support for the University’s annual Undergraduate Research Conference. She was awarded a Ph.D. in Plant Biology from the University of New Hampshire and is a specialist in plant ecology and botany. She also has extensive background in science education and works with the Joan and James Leitzel Center and the GLOBE Carbon Cycling project at the University of New Hampshire.

Lynne D. Cooper is program coordinator in the Office of the Associate Vice President for Research and Outreach Scholarship. She advances and provides professional support for the UNH Undergraduate Research Conference, the UNH Outreach Scholars Academy and a range of initiatives in the Office of the Associate Vice President.

Tracey L. Bentley is communications adviser for the Office of the Associate Vice President for Research and Outreach Scholarship and a writer for UNH Editorial and Creative Services. She writes feature stories, profiles, and other materials for a variety of university publications and has received three communications awards from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) since 2005. In addition to journalism, her background includes extensive work in the fields of public relations, marketing, and television broadcasting.