Faculty - Science and Humanities

Therese Anderson received her Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry/Microbiology, her Master of Science in Biochemistry and her Master of Science in Teaching from the University of Maine. She has worked at Colby College's Chemistry Department, and the University of Maine's Water Research Institute and Department of Chemistry. In addition, she has worked for Northeast Laboratory Services, URS and Summit Environmental Consultants, Inc. Therese's relationship with Husson began in 2008, when she joined the staff as an adjunct instructor before becoming a full-time member of the faculty.

All together, Therese has over 20 years experience working with organic chemicals, including sampling, extraction and analysis of data at both public and private laboratories. As an Organic Chemist she has worked closely with Federal, State and Local officials in the analysis of organochlorine pesticides, herbicides, polychlorinated biphenyls, brominated flame retardants and dioxins/furans in a variety of matrices. She is experienced in the evaluation of data for adherence to Quality Assurance and Quality Control protocols and has served as in house data evaluator and has conducted training on health and safety issues and data ethics.

Karl Bishop graduated from high school in Ohio and moved west to attend college in the Rocky Mountains at Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado. Karl earned a double-major Bachelor's degree in chemistry and physics. After starting his graduate education in physics at the University of Maine, Karl moved to Syracuse, New York, where he earned a Ph.D. in Biophysics at Syracuse University. Karl then moved to San Francisco for a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California. Upon completion of his academic training Karl has held a number of positions in industry and academia before returning to Maine to raise a family.

Karl has published articles in many scientific journals (Biochemistry, Journal of Magnetic Resonance, Nucleic Acids Research, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Journal of the American Chemical Society) as well as several book chapters. His research program covers a broad range of topics ranging from nucleic acid structure and drug development to ceramic membranes used in sustainable energy development. A research program for undergraduates encompassing these areas is available in the Chemistry Program at Husson University in cooperation with Zeomatrix, LLC, a materials science company based in Orono, Maine. Karl is a co-founder of Zeomatrix and serves as its Chief Technical Officer. As the chemistry program at Husson University grows, summer internship opportunities will be available for students interested in a career in applying chemical principles to developing products for environmental remediation and alternative energy sources.

Two of my favorite quotes are "Chance favors the prepared mind." by Louis Pasteur and "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." by Albert Einstein. These summarize my philosophy in my teaching and my research. I try to encourage my students to keep trying, keep preparing, and keep studying. My hope is that some of my enthusiasm for science and discovery is passed along to my students. I believe that when we stop learning, we stop growing. If we stop growing, we stop living.

Although his Bachelor's degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Master's degree from the University of Connecticut are in English Literature, Kevin serves as Husson's Executive Director of Information Resources and Library Services. And while he spends much of his time working with servers, mice and cabling, instead of Hemingway, Coleridge and Emerson, he visits them when he can. Kevin is also a Registered Maine Guide, and has had the pleasure of teaching Fly Fishing at the University, as well as a number of English and Computer Information Systems courses over the last ten years.

"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" -- T.S. Eliot
Throughout history, men and women have made enormous sacrifices and have risked even death for the chance to access the kinds of information that might lead to wisdom. The "Information Revolution" has made more of this raw information available to more people than ever before, but often, that which exists in abundance is not held in great value. It is the role of today's educator -- not just to provide information -- but to help students and ultimately society develop meaning and value for this information, to define and create a path to wisdom.

With a Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma in English, where Stephanie taught for the past fifteen years before coming to Maine, Stephanie teaches writing and literature courses, specializing in women's literature, American literature, and theory. Her dissertation centers on the notion that Willa Cather, in her own fin de siecle conservatism, is actually a radical critic of American consumer culture. With an affinity for virtually all periods of literature, Stephanie's favorite is the period in America from Emerson to the 1930s, including expatriate women writers, and the so-called regionalist writers like Maine's own Sarah Orne Jewett of the late nineteenth century. She is also partial to the British Romantics, especially William Blake, and to George Eliot, as well as to the British Modernists.

My favorite thing in teaching is introducing students to the idea that their own ideas actually have a history, and that many of the same contradictions in the culture today have been present in American culture since our beginnings. Many of the ideas Emerson or Whitman were wrestling with are still with us. I also continue to teach writing, not only in composition courses, but in all my courses. In my opinion, good writing and close reading are the most valuable skills students acquires in college life since they enable students to become critical thinkers about their own lives, and about the world around them and the information presented to them from that world.

David Haus earned his B.A. in American Studies from Penn State University, and he is a graduate of the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State. He earned his M.A. in American Culture Studies from Bowling Green State University, focusing on Early American History and Culture. He earned his Ph.D. in History at Bowling Green State University, focusing on 20th Century U.S. Policy History. He has minor fields in Latin American History and the History of Modern Japan.

Before coming to Husson David served as an Instructor of History and Distance Learning at Bowling Green State University and Assistant Professor of History at Bluefield State College. He has held several administrative posts during his career including Faculty Senate Chair, Associate Dean of Assessment and Distance Learning, and Dean of Arts and Sciences. He serves as a Social Studies education program Curriculum Reviewer for the West Virginia Department of Education and a certified Quality Matters reviewer. He is the co-founder and former editor of H-Policy. David designed and continues to offer his Social Studies Content Licensure preparation seminars to teacher education students at several institutions in the United States. The program is designed to help students prepare for exams such as the Praxis II: Social Studies Content Exam offered by ETS.

David is currently working on his scholarly monograph "Radio Is an Extension of the Home: Protecting Private Space from Public Vulgarity, 1929-1935". It re-examines the public debate between commercial interests and educational reformers over the organization and control of radio in the early 1930s. Other scholars have explored this moment in American history, arguing that the National Committee on Education by Radio stood little chance for success because of its own ineptitude before a powerful commercial radio industry. My work attempts to make sense of the NCER’s choices and motivations in the struggle for educational radio while examining the broader implications of the NCER’s arguments on our understanding of New Deal politics, associationalism, gender, and consumerism. I conclude that the NCER was a progressive group that watched the very progressive machinery its members once supported quash its campaign for radio reform and alter its conception of democracy, as federal regulators devalued its expertise and sacrificed educational radio at the altar of the New Deal. However, I contend that the NCER posed a greater threat to the commercial industry than other scholars have found, and it could have succeeded under different circumstances. The NCER fought against the conflation of consumerism and democracy while fighting to stave off what it saw as cultural domination by the East coast, and it compels us to rethink the nature and periodization of progressivism and the centrality of radio in the context of urban-rural conflict of the 1920s and 1930s.

Before joining Husson, Frank spent five years chairing the Department of Humanities at Georgia Perimeter College in Dunwoody, Georgia. Before that, he was first coordinator of first year composition and then an assistant dean in the graduate school at Marquette University in Milwaukee. He has been instructing in collegiate settings for more than 30 years, teaching primarily writing and linguistics. Frank received his Bachelor of Arts degree at Amherst College, where he played soccer, worked in the dining hall, and sang in the glee club. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley, where he also taught scuba diving and helped to run a recreational facility. He has had a Fulbright in Finland and a short teaching stint in Gaza City. He has four grown children scattered about the country.

My students usually notice right away that I repeat myself a lot, and one of the things I say often is "This is not 13th grade". I mean that college students have to find ways to become more active learners, in order to meet their professional and career responsibilities. For many, that means learning better ways to learn, ways that I hope will sustain lifelong mental, emotional, and spiritual growth. I also start many classes with "You need a blank piece of paper", because I want my students to feel how writing can help them learn, in any class and not just in mine. Probably what I ask the most is "Where's the critical thinking"? For me, that's the most important thing college has to teach.

Kenneth B. Johnson received his B.S. from Ferrum College in Virginia. At Ferrum, Ken studied Environmental Science and Chemistry. He then went on to receive his M.S. from the University of Maine, Orono in Ecology and Environmental Science with a concentration in Water Resources. Before becoming an instructor at Husson, Ken lived the life of a researcher splitting his time between the lab and being out in the field. His studies have special interest in the watersheds of Acadia National Park, specifically the impact of mercury and methylmercury on the aquatic environment.

Prior to coming to Husson in 2000, Ali was an educator and researcher at large state universities including Appalachian State University in North Carolina and Western Kentucky University for over 15 years. With a Ph.D. in Physics from University of Maine, Ali specializes in physical acoustics and low temperature physics. His recent research involves experimental determination of the anomalous skin depth in free electron and non-free electron metals. This project is in collaboration with Professor Charles Smith at the University of Maine.

Here at Husson I have been able to establish close and one-on-one relationship with most of my students in such a way that was not possible at my prior jobs. This enriching experience has been due to the friendly environment of the college, small size of my classes and the great kids that choose to come to Husson.

Sharon J. Kobritz has joined the English Department, where she previously taught as an adjunct. Sharon received her Bachelor's Degree in Management from Boston University and began working on her Master's Degree in English and American Literature and Language at Harvard's Continuing Education. School. After many years of working in the financial industry in Boston, she returned to her hometown of Bangor and received a Master's Degree in Liberal Studies with a major in English from the University of Maine. As a freelance writer, Sharon has traveled extensively and enjoys exploring and writing about international cultures.