Honors Faculty
The Frederik Meijer Honors College features eight permanent full-time faculty, four half-time Faculty-in-Residence, the Meijer Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship & Innovation, and dozens of exceptional faculty drawn from departments and programs across campus.
Full-time Honors Faculty
These faculty all teach the majority of their classes in Honors and have their offices in the Niemeyer suite.
Coeli Fitzpatrick
Chair and Professor of Philosophy in Honors
Office Address: 125 Niemeyer
Phone: (616) 331-3748
Email: [email protected]
Coeli Fitzpatrick is Professor of Philosophy in the Frederik Meijer Honors College and Chair of the Honors Faculty. Originally from Phoenix, Arizona, Professor Fitzpatrick received her B.A. in Philosophy from Regis University in Denver, Colorado and her Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Binghamton. She teaches several courses in the program, including two first-year sequences, The Middle East Beyond the Headlines and The Making of Meaning, and an integrative seminar on Islamophobia. Her publications include the award winning edited volume Muhammad in History, Thought and Culture as well as writings on Edward Said and Orientalism. Professor Fitzpatrick's current research focuses on the transmission of Arab intellectual history in the West, Muslim Spain and Orientalism.
Ellen Adams
Associate Professor of Art History, Honors College
Office Address: 126 Niemeyer
Phone: (616) 331-8134
Email: [email protected]
Ellen Adams is Associate Professor of Art History in the Frederik Meijer Honors College. Originally from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Professor Adams received her B.A. in Art History from the University of Delaware, her M.A. from Hunter College (City University of New York), and her Ph.D. in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She teaches several courses in the program, including the first-year interdisciplinary sequence Dangerous Ideas, The Bloodiest, Darkest Hour, and I Love the 80s. Her publications and presentations concentrate primarily on modern and contemporary artists. Prof. Adams’ current research project focuses on American women artists active during the New Deal.
Jeremiah Cataldo
Professor of History in Honors
Office Address: 121 Niemeyer
Phone: (616) 331-3470
Email: [email protected]
Jeremiah Cataldo is Associate Professor of History in the Frederik Meijer Honors College. He earned his Ph.D. from Drew University, a Master in Philosophy from Drew University, a Master in Ministry from Bethel College, and a B.A. in Religious Studies from Bethel College. He is the author of numerous books and journal articles, including Biblical Terror (Bloomsbury, 2017) and A Social-Political History of Monotheism (Routledge, 2018). A strong supporter of cultivating well-roundedness in mind and body, he enjoys woodworking, backpacking, running ultramarathons, and training in Taekwondo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He teaches The Powers That Divide Us, Prophetic Critique, Textual Tease, and Social Media and Belief.
Maria Cimitile
Professor of Philosophy in Honors
Office Address: 132 Niemeyer
Phone: (616) 331-2838
Email: [email protected]
Maria Cimitile is Professor of Philosophy in the Frederik Meijer Honors College. Professor Cimitile earned her A.B from the College of the Holy Cross, her M.A from Villanova University, and her Ph.D. from the University of Memphis. Trained in European philosophy, her scholarly and teaching interests are in feminist philosophy, political theory and logical thinking. Professor Cimitile is a GVSU award-winning faculty member for teaching excellence and has held a number of leadership positions at the university. Professor Cimitile teaches first year interdisciplinary sequences The Powers that Divide Us and The Making of Meaning.
Kurt Ellenberger
Professor of Music in Honors
Office Address: 123 Niemeyer
Phone: (616) 331-8075
Email: [email protected]
Kurt Ellenberger is a pianist, composer, and author whose work includes music for a wide range of ensembles. His writings include a jazz theory book, other pedagogical writings, and many essays that appear in his arts blog entitled Also Sprach FraKathustra, which was published by The Huffington Post–Arts and Culture until 2017. He is currently a Contributing Writer and Editor at All About Jazz, and is also the Managing Editor for the International Association of Schools of Jazz’s “Journal of Applied Jazz Research."
He has recorded on Innova Recordings, Ghostly International, and Challenge-A Records (the Netherlands), among others, and has been hailed as "a gifted pianist who combines the lyricism of Bill Evans with the energy of Keith Jarrett." He was a member of the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble, whose recordings of Terry Riley’s “IN C: Remixed” and Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians” were featured in The New York Times, as well as in many of the nation’s leading publications, including The New Yorker. Ellenberger is a faculty member in the Frederik Meijer Honors College at Grand Valley State University, where he has been teaching since 1999. He is also a Fulbright Scholar who taught in Austria at the Kunstuniversität Graz (University of the Arts in Graz).
Rob Franciosi
Professor of English and Faculty-in-Residence in Honors
Office Address: 131 Niemeyer
Email: [email protected]
Rob Franciosi earned his BA from New York University and his MA and PhD from the University of Iowa. His current research interests center on American cultural responses to the Holocaust. He is completing a study of John Hersey's epic novel of the Warsaw Ghetto, tentatively titled Imagining the Ghetto: Hersey's The Wall and American Holocaust Memory. He has also escorted groups of Honors students to Germany and Poland as part of a seminar on Holocaust museums, memorials, and sites.
Elizabeth Gansen
Associate Professor of Modern Languages & Literature and Faculty-in-Residence in Honors
Office Address: 124 Niemeyer
Phone: (616) 331-8769
Email: [email protected]
Elizabeth Gansen is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Frederik Meijer Honors College and Assistant Professor of Spanish. She received her B.A. in Spanish and Comparative Literature and M.S. in Library in Information Sciences from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and her Ph.D. in Spanish Literature from Yale University. Professor Gansen teaches several courses in the honors sequence, including two first-year sequences, Food for Thought: Facts, Fictions, and Factions, and Spain in Europe. Her first book, Natural Designs: Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo and the Invention of New World Nature, was published in 2023 (U of Pennsylvania Press). Her current book project, provisionally titled Moorish Songs and African Djembes: The Caribbean Areíto in a Trans-Atlantic Context, positions the song-and-dance areíto with regards to similar contemporaneous cultural traditions to better understand how Europeans first perceived it and how the form developed over time.
Leifa Mayers
Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Faculty-in-Residence in Honors
Office Address: 134 Niemeyer
Phone: (616) 331-3219
Email: [email protected]
Faye Richardson-Green
Meijer Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Office Address: 129 Niemeyer
Phone: (616) 331-2493
Email: [email protected]
Faye Richardson-Green has influenced the strategic direction of numerous organizations in roles as diverse as co-founder, committee chair, facilitator, and board trustee. The organizations include public and parochial school systems, healthcare systems, leadership institutions, foundations, and not-for-profit human services. After beginning her professional career in banking branch management, Richardson-Green spent 33 years at Steelcase, finishing her career there in 2015 as Director of Global Learning & Development. She then started her own consulting firm. From 2016 to 2019, she also served as Interim Executive Director at Partners for a Racism-Free Community. She has received many distinguished local awards, including, in 2006, the Raymond Tardy Community Service “Giant” award presented by the Woodrick Diversity Learning Center at Grand Rapids Community College. In 2013, she received the Diversity Visionary Award from the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce. Richardson-Green earned her bachelor's degree from Oakland University in Rochester, MI. Through Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, she earned certificates in Diversity (2009) and Cultural Intelligence (2016).
Melba Vélez Ortiz (La Profe)
Professor of Communications in Honors
Office Address: 130 Niemeyer
Phone: (616) 331-3469
Email: [email protected]
Dr. Vélez Ortiz's areas of research are communication ethics and global environmental communication. Her work examines the ways in which the long-term success of conservation efforts depend upon fundamental shifts in cultural values, in aesthetic and moral communication, and in shared understandings of how the individual fits into social and ecological communities. In addition, Dr. Vélez Ortiz has researched and published in the area of Latin-American/Caribbean/Latina-o philosophy and intellectual history. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on multiple disciplines such as writing studies, environmental communication, Latin American philosophy and communication ethics. In 2020 her book, Maatian Ethics in a Communication Context, was published by Routledge Press and in 2021 Kendall-Hunt published Communication Ethics: Activities for Critical Thinking and Reflection, a book she co-authored with Tammy- Swenson-Lepper. Bert Ballard, Michelle Leavitt, Lori Carron, LeeAnn Bell-Macmanus and Spoma Jovanovic. Currently she is working on a third book with co-author and mentor Dr. Bill Macauley titled: Post-Pandemic Paideia
Peter Wampler
Professor of Geology in Honors
Office Address: 134 Niemeyer
Phone: (616) 331-2834
Email: [email protected]
Peter Wampler is a broadly trained environmental geologist and geomorphologist with a background in both academic and government regulation of mining and storm water. He received his PhD in 2004 for work on human- and climatic-induced changes along the Clackamas River in Oregon. As a professor at GVSU, he has worked with undergraduate and graduate students on applied geoscience research: 1) evaluating GVSU’s storm water runoff footprint and assisting in designing Best Management Practices (BMP) for GVSU; 2) investigating water resources and groundwater contamination pathways in rural Haiti; 3) evaluating human impacts to river systems resulting from dams and other structures; and 4) Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to create household radon hazard maps for Michigan using geologic data. He has traveled to Haiti numerous times since 2007 to work on water resources issues and safe water interventions. He previously led GVSU students on a 4 week study abroad to Haiti.
Dorothy Danko
SCB School of Accounting
Office Address: 127 Niemeyer
Phone: 616-331-7397
Email: [email protected]
Honors Associates
Honors also draws many exceptional faculty from around campus.
[1728415943].jpg)
[1727788110].jpg)
Tara Hefferan
Anthropology
Latin America & West Michigan and Water for a Changing World
[1533219535].jpg)
Christine Rener
Chemistry and Faculty Teaching & Learning Center
Engines of Innovation
[1690301024].jpg)
