I was born in Pennsylvania and grew up mainly in Ohio, where I did my psychology and English literature undergraduate studies at Case Western Reserve University. I then pursued a Ph.D. in psychology at Stanford University and, from there, a post-doctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany. In 1999, I arrived in Utah as a faculty member in the Psychology department, fell in love with the mountains, and stayed put! My scholarly expertise is in adolescent and young adult identity development. I am especially interested in how telling stories shapes our memories, emotions, and selves across the lifespan – and how those stories are influenced by the listeners in our lives. I joined the Honors College in 2018 as an associate dean and accepted the role of interim dean in June of 2023. I welcome conversations with students about their life paths and how Honors and the University of Utah can support them!

Rachel Hayes-Harb is Associate Dean of the Honors College, as well as a Professor of linguistics. She served as Director of the Office of Undergraduate Research and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies from 2014-2021. She has also collaborated with the Office of the Vice President for Research to promote high-quality mentoring in the research context through education and mentor community building. Her scholarship focuses on a variety of phenomena related to the acquisition of the sound systems of new languages by adult learners, specifically the development of sound inventories and the sound structure of words. Her research typically involves experimental investigations of the perception of new sounds and words, and the influence of various types of linguistic experience on adults’ linguistic development. She serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Applied Psycholinguistics and co-directs the Speech Acquisition Lab, where she collaborates with undergraduate and graduate student researchers.

Aaron joined the Honors College in 2014. Previously, he worked in student services at the University of Arizona and Southern Utah University. A native Utahn, he grew up in a small town in central Utah. After his undergraduate studies at Snow College and Brigham Young University, he completed a master’s degree in organizational leadership at Columbia University and a doctoral degree in higher education administration at the University of Utah. He enjoys golf, reading, traveling, and spending time with family.

I grew up in Chicago, studied classical music at Chicago Conservatory, and then led a precarious double life, dashing between the encyclopedia business by day and a punk rock band by night. But I fell in love with the red rocks of Southern Utah, so I left behind MTV to live in Springdale, the gateway to Zion National Park. My new neighbors forgave my punkish ways and twice elected me mayor. After noticing significant and useful similarities between musical and political processes, I cooked up the Composing a Community course for the Honors College. Other Honors courses I teach include Radical Quiet, The Artfully Extended Mind, and Kindness. I am also a certified mindfulness teacher and include meditations in my classes. In Navajo legend, a coyote, or “song dog,” emerged from a hole in the ground and sang the world into existence. The song dog story and the feeling of possibility it engenders have inspired all my work as a composer, mayor, and citizen. My goal as a teacher is to spark that feeling and develop that capability in my students, helping them to become conscious and intentional co-creators—song dogs—singing ourselves and our communities into existence. My work can be found here.

After growing up in New Jersey, I have managed to live along both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts (Los Angeles and Charleston, SC), in the Allegheny Mountains of central Pennsylvania, amid the corn and soy fields of Illinois, and in the Mile High City at the foot of Colorado’s Front Range. I’m now happy to call the Wasatch Front home. As a proud graduate of flagship state universities (B.A., Penn State; Ph.D., University of Illinois), I am committed to helping my students here at Utah excel amid the hive of innovation, opportunity, and community activity that shapes undergraduate life at a public research institution. As a scholar and teacher, I care about the ways in which literature and film can be situated within a broader ecosystem of cultural narratives shaping human experience. I often attend to the ways and reasons we craft and share stories about health and wellness issues (specifically, addiction and disease risk), and I consider how such stories might resist or reinforce ideological suppositions about who we are and how we are expected to live.

I am from the San Francisco Bay Area in California and grew up in a small suburban city bordered by salt marshes to the west and dry yellow hills to the east. As a diasporic writer, educator, scholar, and mother, I am attentive to how place and identity weave together and shape our sense of selves, communities, histories, and futures. Centered in place-based pedagogy, I encourage students to think critically and creatively about diverse ecologies of place and identity. I aim to help students develop their own practices to read and observe attentively, find their own ways through a “text” (and college!), and contextualize their thinking as part of ongoing discourses and histories. At the Honors College, I am also the director of the Ecology & Legacy minor and welcome students to contact me about the integrated minors in Honors, environmental humanities at the U, mentoring, etc.

I have professionally reinvented myself several times over. I started my career as a working journalist in both print and TV and then went to law school with the thought of becoming a network correspondent reporting on the Supreme Court. Along the way, I developed a love of the law and thus began my second career as a practicing lawyer at Utah’s largest law firm. I developed a media law litigation practice where I was able to combine law and journalism by representing many local and national news organizations, including 60 Minutes, CNN, the New York Times, the Associated Press, Redbook Magazine, and the Salt Lake Tribune. Ask me about my representation of the Globe supermarket tabloid, which was sued by Marie Osmond. I have some great stories! After 30 years as a practicing lawyer, I began phase three of my professional career when I was named as the Presidential Honors Professor with a joint appointment at the law school and the Honors College. Nirvana! I believe technology can aid the learning environment, and most of my classes incorporate blogs, YouTube, and social media in the pedagogy. Check out the links below.

Privacy in a Digital Age

Information Privacy Law by Prof. Randy Dryer - YouTube

A first-generation college student from Arkansas, I joined Honors as core writing faculty in 2006.  My student writers publish novels and creative and scholarly work in national venues and have a high completion rate for the honors thesis.  I currently mentor Honors’ 2023 Undergraduate Research Scholar of the Year, whose novel/honors thesis, Lady of the House, is forthcoming from Madville Publishing in spring 2025.  My undergraduate Novel Writing Workshop has been featured in USA Today, and novelists present at conferences in Portland, Seattle, Tampa, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and elsewhere.  I am grateful to my students who’ve made possible recognition including a Distinguished Honors Professor Award and Undergraduate Research Mentor of the Year.

I teach writing as a process, an act, as opposed to a thing.  That our rough drafts are fecund sites where vitality thrives, and out of such good things grow.  Perfection is paralysis.  Writing is an avenue of inquiry, a portal to discovery.  “What stands in the way becomes the way.”  We sit in a circle.  I am only one of the circle.  All this is strange for student writers. After that first class, I can see it in their eyes–that holy not knowing. This is why I teach writing, why I’ve stayed in the classroom these thirty-five years. Because the first day passes, the first week, and there is always–always–that fine moment when fire flies and the student writer makes the leap of faith onto the tightrope, no net below.  Such moments are transformative, and the payoffs are profound because the writer now possesses a vehicle that ushers them full-throttle toward revelation and innovation and truths that the world so needs now at this most perilous moment for our species. And that is important.

I grew up in Miami, Florida (which is actually much more boring than it sounds). After attending Florida State University for my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in creative writing (with a brief layover between in Eugene, OR), I got married, then moved to Utah to pursue my doctorate in literature and creative writing, fell in love with the mountains, and we haven’t left. I am a novelist (The Late Matthew Brown) and have served as editor of two different literary magazines (Quarterly West and Western Humanities Review). All my pursuits—literary, academic, pedagogical—intersect with ideas about identity and the pursuit of social justice. I’ve been teaching in the Honors College for 15 years and the big reason I’m still here is because of the students. Teaching is endlessly challenging but also endlessly rewarding. There is an incredible power in collaboration—both with writing and discussion—and I use both extensively in my classes. We all succeed when we are a vibrant community exchanging ideas and challenging each other to be our best. In all my classes, we grapple with important questions: about ourselves, our histories, and the world in which we live.

I grew up in New York and came to Utah to study literature and creative writing. I completed an MFA at the University of Utah and then went to the University of Washington to study medieval literature and critical theory. Though I greatly enjoyed that research, I changed course and returned to the University of Utah to resume creative writing and complete my doctorate. While pursuing an academic career, I have maintained my early interest in visual art and music. In addition to publishing fiction and poetry, I have exhibited paintings and recorded albums with a number of local bands. I try to make the various artistic mediums a prominent component of all my courses, particularly in Intellectual Traditions II, III, and VIII. Comparing and contrasting different artistic modalities and relating them to philosophy and the sciences has been an integral part of my teaching, along with various out-of-class excursions on and off campus. I have greatly enjoyed working with students from various disciplines. My experiences in the classroom have been some of the most exciting and happiest times in my life. Students have been generous enough to select me twice as the distinguished Honors professor of the year.

Kate is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the University of Utah Anthropology Department. Her research examines how human economic decisions contribute to ecological disturbance regimes, primarily via the human use of fire. Specifically, she studies how landscape and cooking fires influence human subsistence decisions and create ecological consequences. Her current research is focused on understanding the contemporary social and ecological drivers and impacts of Tribal firewood harvesting on the Colorado Plateau. Additionally, Kate has long conducted research and education on dark skies and light pollution, which she frames as an important contemporary dimension of human ecology. As a Dark Sky Scholar, she teaches a course as part of the new Dark Sky Studies minor at the University of Utah. Community engagement is fundamental to Kate's teaching and research philosophy. In an effort to synthesize the goals of applied teaching and research, Kate focuses on community-engaged projects to maintain important relationships between contemporary social issues, students, and research projects. Kate has facilitated such connections in the classroom, in the research lab, during fieldwork at places like the Bonderman Field Station at Rio Mesa, and in communities throughout Utah and Navajo Nation. Kate earned her doctorate in 2019. Previously, she earned her Master of Science in Anthropology at the University of Utah in 2014 and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology at the University of Arizona, Tucson in 2004. She spent the intervening years working for the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management. Issues in public land management, traditional knowledge, and energy heavily inform her research and teaching.

I grew up in rural British Columbia and attended college on the Canadian prairies, finishing my undergraduate degree at the University of Manitoba. After completing my master’s degree (also at Manitoba), I lived in London and Montreal for several years before moving to the United States to begin graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, where I received my Ph.D. in early modern English literature in 2015.

In Honors, I have taught a variety of courses, from our traditional sequence in the Intellectual Traditions of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Modernity, to courses on topics such as “The Network” and the literature and history of West Africa.

In recent years, as part of my role as Faculty Director of the Integrated Minor in Human Rights and Resources, my interests have turned to the American continent and, in particular, the languages, cultures, and literature of Latin America. For me, the minor is a remarkable opportunity to consider the intertwined relationship of human rights, human culture, and the natural environment of places such as Mexico and the Intermountain West. The opportunity to do this work alongside motivated students from diverse disciplines such as engineering, biology, philosophy, Latin American studies, and nursing has been a particular treat, giving me the chance to consider the minor theme from many different angles and helping us create a program where students can find a home both socially and intellectually, no matter what their background may be.

I welcome conversations with prospective and current students about topics related to the Human Rights and Resources minor, Spanish and Latin America, my research interests, which historically have focused on the relationship between technology and religion, and really, whatever happens to be on your mind!

Christopher Patrick Miller (Ph.D., UC Berkeley) is a poet and interdisciplinary scholar in the humanities with a focus on poetry and poetics, critical theory, and urbanism. His first book of poems, ARCH (Tuumba, 2019), is a writing-through of Vitruvius’s Roman manual for architects for the contemporary Americas. Recently published scholarly work in Poetics Today, Twentieth-Century Literature, and VirModernism/modernity has focused on transient culture, democracy and its limitations, literatures of war, and the intersections between politics and language philosophy. He is excited to be a part of the Honors community here at the University of Utah.

I was born and raised in rural Utah, and I am fascinated by ancient cultures and how humans interact with different ecosystems. I was drawn away from that environment to travel and live in Europe and Asia, picking up languages and cultural insights along the way. I teach HONOR 3200 and 2211 and contribute to both the Ecology and Legacy and Human Rights and Resources Integrated Minors. I'm also a fiction writer and editor for the Dark Mountain Project out of the UK, as well as a researcher and published author in the environmental humanities, focusing on personal ecology. I seek to help students come to terms with just how strange and wonderful the human animal is, and can be, and how that strangeness can be harnessed to improve our quality of life.

I have been teaching at the University of Utah since 2010 and have been a member of the Honors core faculty since 2016.  I enjoy teaching Intellectual Traditions and Reacting to the Past courses. I have also served as the Director of the Office of Nationally Competitive Scholarships since 2020 and have had the great fortune to help scores of University of Utah students apply for and receive prestigious undergraduate and graduate scholarships, as well as research and experiential opportunities here and across the globe. I am a medieval historian interested in midwifery and childbirth, anatomy, and social history and I am the editor of Quidditas, the Online Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, and Secretary of Medica: the Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages.

I was born many years ago in the Massachusetts town that spawned “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”  This explains my early interest in poetry and my deep-seated suspicion of sheep.  I attended the University of Chicago, where I earned a Bachelor of Arts in General Studies in the Humanities (really, is there any other kind of study?) and French.  I got a Ph.D. in French literature at New York University, focusing on 20th-century poetry and poets writing on the visual arts.  I have lived in New York City, Paris, and Marseille before arriving in the Beehive State.  I am interested in contemporary French poetry, visual and spatial poetry more generally, and in the relationship between creative writing and the visual arts.  I have published a book of “visible” and ekphrastic poetry and have a forthcoming book of creative texts written alongside paintings by the 20th-century French painter Pierre Tal Coat.  I primarily teach Intellectual Traditions, not surprising given my undergraduate experience as a general studier.  I am pleased that I have not yet had any run-ins with sheep along the Wasatch Front.

Dr. Virginia Solomon: B.A. Stanford University, 2004, Studio Art and Feminist Studies; M.A. 2007, Ph.D. 2013, Art History and Gender Studies, University of Southern California. Dr. Solomon’s research interests include contemporary art, curation, gender studies, queer theory, visual culture, subcultures, and alternative forms of politics. Solomon’s research has been supported by a Canadian Art Research Fellowship at the National Gallery of Canada and a Helena Rubenstein Critical Studies Fellowship at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program, among others. Their curatorial work includes the exhibition Tainted Love (2009) at the La Mama La Galleria in NYC and Shary Boyle and Emily Duke: The Illuminations Project (2011), realized while serving as the Whitney-Lauder Curatorial Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Before joining the University of Utah faculty, Solomon was an Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of Memphis and a Postdoctoral Fellow in Visual Studies in the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons The New School for Design. They teach FF courses in the college around ideas of art, politics, culture, and their points of intersection, and they are also the faculty director for the Thesis Mentoring Community.

I am a population health scientist with a multi-disciplinary and global research program to improve health outcomes and reduce health disparities. With joint appointments as a Research Professor in the School of Medicine’s Department of Population Health Sciences and an Instructor in the Honors College, I am in a unique position to be a bridge between Honors and the Health Sciences. In Honors, I am the Faculty Director of the Honors Integrated Minor in Health and an instructor of two courses (Social Determinants of Health; Global Health). I aim to support transformative learning, where students envision new possibilities for themselves, their world, and their future. Transformation necessarily involves unsettling epistemological assumptions and developing new, empathic ways of seeing and being.

I grew up in a small town in North Carolina. As an undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina (UNC), I spent a year in Ghana – first as a student studying the history of the slave trade in Ghana and then as an independent explorer, traveling by bus throughout West Africa and relying on the kindness of strangers. This experience was transformative and continues to motivate me to create opportunities for undergraduate students to study abroad. I have a master’s degree in gender and international development from the University of Sussex in the UK and a Ph.D. in public health from UNC. Prior to joining the University of Utah, I spent 11 years as a faculty member at Duke University’s Global Health Institute, where I continue to hold an adjunct appointment.

melissa.watt@hsc.utah.edu

Madison Abele is the Assistant Director of Advising in the Honors College. She manages the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Distinguished Scholars, the Second Year Learning Community, and mandatory first—and second-year advising. Madison advises all Honors students but is specifically the Honors College liaison to the College of Social and Behavioral Science.

Madison was born and raised in Salt Lake. She received her honors bachelor’s and master's degrees in social work from the University of Utah. In her spare time, Madison enjoys listening to audiobooks, exploring museums, and spending time with her husband, Garrett, and their dog, Dave.

Jeff Badger, originally from Wilmette, Illinois, joined the Honors College at the University of Utah in November 2022. He earned a bachelor's degree (2002) in chemistry education and a master’s degree (2004) in counseling from Indiana University. Jeff thrives on engaging Honors students in the learning process while cultivating an atmosphere that promotes collegiate success and overall student development. In his free time, Jeff enjoys hanging out with his family and attending as many athletic events on campus as possible.

Anna Chuaqui is a Program Manager and Academic Advisor at the Honors College. She manages the partnership between the Honors College and the Oxford Consortium for Human Rights and supports other initiatives related to student success. Anna works with and advises all Honors students. She is a University of Utah Honors College graduate with degrees in economics, political science, and Spanish. Anna also holds a master’s degree in Latin American studies. She enjoys hiking, cooking, and spending time with her dogs.

Born and raised in Box Elder County, Utah, Liam joined the Honors College in 2022 after completing his undergraduate degree with an honors bachelor’s in English at the University of Utah. Liam is currently a master’s student in the Human Development and Social Policy program at the University of Utah, with plans to finish his degree in 2026. Liam works on the Honors College’s first-year colloquium, Ideas that Matter, and hires and trains the peer mentors who support students in that class. In his spare time, Liam enjoys reading, running, caring for 8 chickens and a cat, and spending time with his partner, Abby.

Carlos was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He has previously earned his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Utah and completed his Master of Education in Higher Education Leadership at Utah Valley University. Carlos previously worked as an Academic Advisor at Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) advising for the Education and Economics program. He has 2 dogs, enjoys reading Sci-fi/ Speculative fiction, and currently is 3 - 9 in his Sunday Soccer League.

Karleton J. Munn is the Director of Academic Advising for the Honors College. He has a bachelor’s degree in English from Weber State University, a master’s degree in educational leadership & policy from the University of Utah, and a Ph.D. in educational studies specializing in higher education and student affairs from Ohio State University. With twenty years of experience, he has worked with college students at three different institutions, primarily at the University of Utah, as well as Weber State and Ohio State.

Karleton is passionate about his work and enjoys interacting with college students daily. He firmly believes that by guiding students through the higher education system, they will be equipped to navigate any system. In the Honors College, his responsibilities include managing academic advising for Honors students and ensuring effective communication between the Honors College and the campus community.

Dominic Pecoraro is the Associate Director of Special Programs for the Honors College. His area includes the Honors Student Advisory Committee (HSAC), Integrated Minors, Praxis Labs, and communications. Originally from the St. Louis, Missouri, area, Dominic earned an Honors Bachelor of Science in Intercultural Communication & Diversity and a Master of Arts in Communication from Missouri State University. He also has experience teaching courses in communication and writing with an interest in interpersonal communication, communication & identity, and personal narrative. In his free time, he enjoys traveling and enjoying everything outdoors that Utah has to offer.

I have been teaching at the University of Utah since 2010 and have been a member of the Honors core faculty since 2016.  I enjoy teaching Intellectual Traditions and Reacting to the Past courses. I have also served as the Director of the Office of Nationally Competitive Scholarships since 2020 and have had the great fortune to help scores of University of Utah students apply for and receive prestigious undergraduate and graduate scholarships, as well as research and experiential opportunities here and across the globe. I am a medieval historian interested in midwifery and childbirth, anatomy, and social history and I am the Editor of Quidditas, the Online Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, and Secretary of Medica: the Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages.

I was born in Ohio but grew up in Southern California. I attended Stanford University as an undergraduate and the University of Washington for graduate work in English. Soon after receiving my Ph.D., I moved to the University of Utah where I have enjoyed teaching students for over thirty years. Teaching is my passion—I love seeing students expand their thoughts, sharpen their skills, and work together in learning communities. My own teaching has transformed from lectures to group discussions and activities, especially role-playing in Reacting to the Past. I teach in both the Honors and LEAP programs, where I direct and teach Pre-Law LEAP. I serve as a Distinguished Bibliographer for the Modern Language Association and am an affiliate of the Bennion Center. My students and colleagues have rewarded me with many teaching awards, including the University Distinguished Teaching Award and Distinguished Honors Professor (twice) and recently the General Education Teaching Award for Innovation.