College of Arts & Sciences Chairs/Directors

School of Biological Sciences

Director: Dr. Craig Gatto
Room 210 Julian Hall
Campus Box 4120
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois 61790-4120
(309) 438-3087
Fax: (309) 438-3722

Craig Gatto joined the School of Biological Sciences in 2000 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Oregon Health Sciences University. He holds a BS and MS degree from Eastern Illinois University and a Ph.D. from University of Missouri-Columbia. His research group focuses on the structure and function of membrane transport proteins, predominately P-type ATPases. These proteins play a crucial role in maintaining the membrane potential in excitable tissues such has nerves and muscle. This work has been funded by NSF, NIH, USDA and the American Heart Association.

Department of Chemistry

Department Chair: Dr. John Baur
Room 214 Julian Hall
Campus Box 4160
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois 61790-4160
(309) 438-7661
Fax: (309) 438-5538

John Baur joined the Department of Chemistry in 1993 after working as a developmental scientist for a major pharmaceutical company in North Carolina. He holds a BS from Iowa State University and a Ph.D. from Indiana University, and has conducted research at the University of North Carolina and the University of Miami. His research group develops new techniques and instrumentation for the chemical imaging reactive surfaces, particularly in biological systems. This work has been funded by NSF, NIH, and the Research Corporation.

School of Communication

Director: Dr. Larry Long
Room 434 Fell Hall
Campus Box 4480
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois 61790-4480
(309) 438-3671
Fax: (309) 438-3048

Larry Long holds a BS (Speech, Education, Mathematics) from Northwestern Oklahoma State University, MS (Communication, Educational & Psychological Research) from the University of North Texas, and PhD (Organizational Communication, Management, Research Methods, Computer Science) from the University of Oklahoma. He has published over 40 books, book chapters and articles in national and international journals. His research is directed at understanding how communication functions can be implemented and managed in organizations in order to effectively and efficiently achieve organizational goals while maximizing employees’ quality of work life. Specific topics have included job supervisory credibility, delegation style, organizational design, role behaviors, culture, public relations management, and aging.

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders

Interim Department Chair: Dr. Ann Beck
Room 204 Fairchild Hall
Campus Box 4720
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois 61790-4720
(309) 438-8643
Fax: (309) 438-5221

Ann Beck holds a BS and MS in Speech-Language Pathology from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and a PhD in the same field from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. She joined the Illinois State University faculty in 1992 and was promoted to full professor in 2003. She has served as Director of the Eckelmann-Taylor Speech and Hearing Clinic and as Senior Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences. Beck has authored or co-authored more than thirty publications and has presented her work at more than sixty national conferences and conventions. Her research focuses on attitudes of peers toward individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication, as well as efficacy of interventions intended to improve individuals’ communicative skills.

Department of Economics

Interim Department Chair: Dr. Sherrilyn Billger
Room 425 Stevenson Hall
Campus Box 4200
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois 61790-4200
(309) 438-8625
Fax: (309) 438-5228

Sherrilyn Billger received her PhD in Economics from the University of Illinois. She joined the faculty at ISU in 2002, where she is currently an Associate Professor with research interests in labor economics, education, and applied econometrics. She has also served as the department's Undergraduate Program Director. Her research on single-sex education, incentive pay for educators, and other topics has been published in a variety of top journals in labor economics and the economics of education. Her work has also been funded by the USDA National Research Initiative. She was a Visiting Scholar at Cornell University and is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Labor Studies (IZA) in Bonn.

Department of English

Department Chair: Dr. Joan Mullin
Room 409 Stevenson Hall
Campus Box 4240
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois 61790-4240
(309) 438-3667
Fax: (309) 438-5414

Joan A. Mullin holds a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin, an M.A. from Northeastern University, and a Ph.D. from Loyola University. Her recent work examines student and faculty mentoring processes that foster the acquisition of disciplinary knowledge, and emerges from her research and administration in writing centers and writing across the curriculum programs. A research grant from the University of London School of the Arts indicates her growing involvement in the communication of research across borders, and she has participated in the construction of writing programs throughout Europe and Turkey.

Department of Geography/Geology

Department Chair: Dr. David Malone
Room 206 Felmley Hall
Campus Box 4400
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois 61790-4400
(309) 438-7649
Fax: (309) 438-5310

Dave Malone received his PhD and MS in Geology at the University of Wisconsin in 1994 and 1990, respectively.  He began his career at ISU as an Assistant Professor that fall.  His specialties are Geologic Mapping, Structural Geology and Stratigraphy, and Ore Deposits.  For most of his career, his research has involved work on the enigmatic Heart Mountain Fault in northwest Wyoming.  He has served as Chairperson of Geography-Geology since 2000.

Department of History

History/History-Social Sciences Education Programs
Department Chair: Dr. Anthony Crubaugh
Room 301 Schroeder Hall
Campus Box 4420
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois 61790-4420
(309) 438-5641
Fax: (309) 438-5378

Anthony Crubaugh received a B.A. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Columbia University and then taught at Columbia, Barnard College, and Connecticut College before arriving at ISU in 2000. A specialist in 18th-century European history who also serves as an editor for H-France, Crubaugh's research focuses on the impact of the French Revolution on rural society. His publications include a book, Balancing the Scales of Justice: Local Courts and Rural Society in Southwest France, 1750-1800, in addition to numerous articles, reviews and translations.

Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Department Chair: Dr. Bruce R. Burningham
Room 114 Stevenson Hall
Campus Box 4300
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois 61790-4300
(309) 438-3604
Fax: (309) 438-8038

Bruce R. Burningham received his PhD from Yale University. He in an Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures and an affiliate faculty member in the Latin American and Latino/a Studies program. He specializes in medieval and early modern Spanish and Latin American literature, Hispanic theater, and performance theory. He is the author of Tilting Cervantes: Baroque Reflections on Postmodern Culture (Vanderbilt UP, 2008) and Radical Theatricality: Jongleuresque Performance on the Early Spanish Stage (Purdue UP, 2007). He is also Editor of Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America. He is a recipient of an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities grant.

Department of Mathematics

Department Chair: Dr. George Seelinger
Room 313 Stevenson Hall
Campus Box 4520
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois 61790-4520
(309) 438-8781
Fax: (309) 438-5866

George Seelinger joined the ISU Mathematics Department as Chair in the August of 2002. His research interests include the study of algebraic group actions on varieties with an emphasis on representations of algebras. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Spring of 1985 and his PhD from The University of Texas at Austin in the Spring of 1991. Previous to coming to ISU, he was a member of the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Northern Illinois University.

Department of Philosophy

Department Chair: Dr. James Swindler
Room 412 Stevenson Hall
Campus Box 4540
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois 61790-4540
(309) 438-7665
Fax: (309) 438-8028

James Swindler received his B.A. and PhD (1978) from the University of Kansas. He was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in 1972, and he won the Review of Metaphysics Dissertation Essay Prize in 1980. He served as Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Westminster College from 1977 to 1995 and at Wittenberg University from 1995 to 2000. He joined Illinois State University as Chair of Philosophy in 2000. He served as President of the Southwestern Philosophical Society in 1997 and as editor of Southwest Philosophy Review from 1993 to 2005.

Department of Physics

Department Chair: Dr. Richard F. Martin, Jr.
Room 311 Moulton Hall
Campus Box 4560
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois 61790-4560
(309) 438-8756
Fax: (309) 438-5413

Richard Martin obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research in plasma space physics has been funded by NASA, NSF, and The Research Corporation. He pioneered the application of nonlinear dynamics methods in space physics and has also been an innovator in developing the ISU physics undergraduate research program and in computational physics education. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Department of Politics and Government

Department Chair: Dr. Ali Riaz
Room 401 Schroeder Hall
Campus Box 4600
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois 61790-4600
(309) 438-8638
Fax: (309) 438-7638

Ali Riaz earned his PhD from the University of Hawaii under the East West Center fellowship. He has previously taught at universities in England, South Carolina, and Bangladesh. He also worked as a broadcast journalist in the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service in London. He has published more than ten books in Bengali and five in English. His recent publications include Unfolding State: The Transformation of Bangladesh (2005), and Paradise Lost? State Failure in Nepal (2007). His primary research interests include South Asian politics, political Islam, state-society relationships, and community development. He received numerous awards including the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Scholarship in 2004, Outstanding College Researcher Award in 2005 at Illinois State University, and 2006 Pi Sigma Alpha Teaching Award.

Department of Psychology

Department Chair: Dr. J. Scott Jordan
Room 435 DeGarmo Hall
Campus Box 4620
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois 61790-4620
(309) 438-8651
Fax: (309) 438-5789

J. Scott Jordan

School of Social Work

Interim Director: Dr. Diane Zosky
Room 313 Rachel Cooper
Campus Box 4650
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois 61790-4650
(309) 438-3631
Fax: (309) 438-5880

Diane Zosky joined the School of Social Work in 2001 as the Director for the BSW Program until 2007. She most recently has been the MSW Program Director and will be the Interim Chair for the next two academic years. She is an undergraduate alumni from the first accredited social work class from ISU and completed an MSW degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1983. She completed a Ph.D. in clinical social work from Loyola University Chicago in 2000. Her area of research is primarily on the topic of domestic violence.

Department of Sociology/Anthropology

Department Chair: Dr. Fred Smith
Room 332 Schroeder Hall
Campus Box 4660
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois 61790-4660
(309) 438-8668
Fax: (309) 438-5378

Fred H. Smith holds a BA from the University of Tennessee and earned his PhD in biological anthropology from the University of Michigan in 1976. Although new to ISU, he has chaired departments at Northern Illinois University and Loyola University Chicago. He has worked on European Neandertals for more than 35 years. In 2006, he was the first recipient of the Hermann Schaafhausen prize for research on Neandertals from the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn, Germany.

Women's and Gender Studies Program

Director: Dr. Alison Bailey
Room 231 Rachel Cooper
Campus Box 4260
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois 61790-4260
(309) 438-2947
Fax:  (309) 438-5104