Engaged Scholarship Faculty Fellows 2022 - 2024
The Engaged Scholarship Faculty Fellows Program is a cohort-based faculty development program for full-time faculty instructors (NTT, tenure-track, and tenured faculty members) at Loyola University Chicago, facilitated by the Center for Engaged Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship (CELTS). This program extends for two years (2022 - 2024) and provides access to funding to support your engaged scholarship. The intent of this faculty development program is to create a community of scholars who will develop, build upon, or produce Engaged Scholarship through their work at Loyola University Chicago.
Dr. Mary Bryn
Mary A. Byrn, PhD, RN is a tenured Associate Professor and Department Chair of the Family and Community Health Department in the Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing. Mary has a passion for teaching and working with students. She enjoys sharing her love for nursing research through teaching. She also shares her clinical expertise and passion for nursing by teaching undergraduate students Concepts of Professional Nursing Practice. Her research interests involve investigating ways to improve the quality of life and health outcomes of underserved populations. Her research has investigated women with gestational diabetes and perinatal depression and people with type 2 diabetes and mild cognitive impairment. She has explored the documented health inequities in maternal health care by examining the impact of race on treatment differences during the perinatal period. Currently, she is examining how to incorporate effective and impactful teaching strategies in nursing school curriculum to reduce the impact of unintentional bias from nurses in patient care.
Carolyn Kmet
Carolyn Tang Kmet
Senior Lecturer
Quinlan Honors Program Director
Loyola University Chicago
Carolyn Tang Kmet is a senior lecturer at the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago. She teaches courses in both marketing and information systems. Her research interests include leveraging geospatial information platforms to connect local needs with local resources. Her efforts helped alleviate the PPE shortage for health care entities during the COVID pandemic, and provided a prototype by which impoverished communities could independently maximize resources. In recognition of her work, she was awarded the Mission-Driven Faculty of the Year award for 2020 and the Excellence in Graduate Teaching award in 2022. Carolyn is also director of the Quinlan Honors Program, faculty advisor for the undergraduate Women in Business organization, and a faculty affiliate with the Institute for Racial Justice.
Dr. Eilene A. Edejer
Dr. Eilene A. Edejer
Clinical Associate Professor
School of Education
Institutional Senior Research Associate
Office of Institutional Effectiveness
Faculty Affiliate
Institute for Racial Justice
Dr. Eilene Edejer has over 30 years of applied research experience in different educational and community settings. Her current research interests include equity in student assessment and Culturally Responsive Teaching during the pandemic. Recent publications and presentation cover topics investigating the design and implementation of teacher education, augmentative and alternative communication and emergent literacy, and implementation of state initiatives tracking racial equity in the schools.
Her current work involves collaboratively administering the institutional surveys, analyze the data and prepare reports for multiple constituents decision-making purposes for the Office of Institutional Effectiveness. She serves as faculty member in Research Methodology and Psychology in the Schools, teaches Research Methodology courses (RMTD 400: Introduction to Research Methodology; RMTD 404: Introduction to Educational Statistics; ELPS 620: Capstone/Dissertation Research), and serves as chair or member on numerous dissertation committees and as resource for students during course and post course for various research methodology issues.
Stephanie Wilson
Dr. Gregory Palmer
Gregory Palmer, Ph.D.
Lecturer
School of Environmental Sustainability
Loyola University Chicago
Dr. Gregory Palmer is an Advanced Lecturer in the School of Environmental Sustainability. He joined the LUC faculty in 2018 after serving as a Clinical Assistant Professor in the University of Texas at Austin’s Freshman Research Initiative (FRI) program. Dr. Palmer is passionate about integrating authentic undergraduate research experiences into his teaching, and he has supervised over 200 student research projects in his career to date. Trained as a microbiologist, Dr. Palmer and his students have investigated a range of research questions from how bacteria behave in their natural environments to how we can use microbes to degrade environmental pollutants and waste. Dr. Palmer also coordinates the instructors who teach Environmental Science 101, which is the first of two science courses in the LUC Core Curriculum. He is thrilled to work with CELTS colleagues to continue developing best practices for providing impactful, high-quality learning experiences for his students.
Dr. Pamela Morris
Dr. Pamela Morris
Associate Professor
Program Director Advertising/Public Relations
Loyola University Chicago
Dr. Pamela Morris is Associate Professor, Program Director of Advertising/Public Relations at Loyola University Chicago’s School of Communication where she has been teaching for 15 years. Prior to her joining the academy, Morris had spent about 20 years in advertising and marketing communications, working in account management for Foote Cone & Belding, Los Angeles and DraftWorldwide Chicago on brands including Universal Studios Tour, Mattel, and California Milk Advisory Board. She has a Ph.D. in Mass Communications from Syracuse University and an MBA from California State University, Long Beach. Her research interests include gender portrayals in advertising across cultures, creativity, ethics, and effective advertising pedagogy methods. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses, such as Principles of Advertising, Advertising Issues, Ad/PR Internships, Capstone, and Global and Multicultural Audiences.
Dr. Jennifer Mierisch
Dr. Jennifer Mierisch
Associate Professor
Department of Biology
Dr. Natalia Valencia
Natalia Valencia
Advanced Lecturer, Spanish
Loyola University Chicago
Natalia Valencia is an Advanced Lecturer of Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures She coordinates the intermediate-level conversation and composition course series and has taught undergraduate courses in Spanish language and literature at all levels. She holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on using course design to create integrated classroom experiences for second-language learners. As a life-long learner, she is committed to always trying to make things better, to know more, and to make changes that will improve the quality of her work.
Susan McCarthy
Susan McCarthy
Clinical Associate Professor
Arrupe College of Loyola University Chicago
