Meet the Team

As curricular program director of Summer Institute, Dr. Theisen plans and manages academic activities, including the morning SI seminar course and the afternoon topics courses. She also plans and manages the trip to the Oneida Nation and the weekend at Björklunden.

My Profile

My name is Juan Arguello, and I am the Second Year Dean.  As the Second Year Dean, I work with second-year and new transfer students to help them navigate their transition from the first year to the second year or their transition to Lawrence.  As the Co-curricular Director of the Summer Institute, I help SI students throughout the program and assure that they have a good experience.  I also coordinate and facilitate the co-curricular events and the extra-curricular events.  

I look forward to working with SI students as they begin their college careers in order to help them get off to a strong start at Lawrence. One of things I think makes the SI (and Lawrence as a whole) special is the personal connections that develop among students, staff, and faculty. It’s a privilege to get to know students as individuals in a setting like SI and to help them to develop attitudes and abilities that will serve them well throughout their time at Lawrence and beyond.

My Profile

As the Director of ESL and the Waseda and Pathway Programs I work with multilingual students who wish to develop any English skill.  I teach University courses focused on the English language as well as courses in Education and Linguistics.

My Profile

I'm the physical chemist here at Lawrence. I love physics, chemistry, and math and have the best job sharing that love with my students!

My Profile

For me, dance is a practice of crafting pathways for curiosity, resiliency, and connection through movement. I’m looking forward to sharing our approach to dance at Lawrence with you. In our time together, we will engage with the histories and knowledge we already embody. We’ll explore preparations, practices, and wellness tactics for being a performative human, in this world, in this place, right now. Each class, we will move through a variety of activities: reading, creative writing, drawing, discussion, and movement explorations. 

My Profile

Kramer is a twice published author and blogger who enjoys teaching writing and considers herself a creative problem-solver. Called after years of teaching to work in Lawrence's diversity office (I.D.E.A.S.), they enjoy being able to interact with faculty, staff, and students in furthering our goals of inclusion, diversity, equity, and anti racism.

My Profile

For me, studying languages has opened up countless possibilities for learning about people and stories in all sorts of contexts. Learning French as an undergraduate student eventually led me to studying francophone African literature and film, which I now also love to teach!

I teach all levels of classes in French, from beginner language and culture classes, to the intermediate-advanced levels like Creative Writing in French and Cinematically Speaking, to advanced topics courses such as Immigrant Voices, Race in France, and Francophone African Cinema. I also get to be a faculty lead for Lawrence’s study abroad program in Dakar, Senegal, which takes place every 2-3 years during spring term.

I love that my research involves marveling at creative, profound, and perspective-changing works of art made by artist-thinkers who take on big questions related to identity, power, and making meaning in the world. The learning journey thankfully never stops, and I look forward to continuing my own learning with you when our paths converge at the Summer Institute!

My Profile

I'm a historian of 20th Century United States and African American History. I was trained as an interdisciplinary scholar getting a PhD in American Studies. Some of my favorite questions are those that defy a single answer.

I’m the author of two books: Along the Streets of Bronzeville: Black Chicago’s Literary Landscapes and Dream Books and Gamblers: Black Women’s Work in Chicago’s Policy Game published by the University of Illinois Press. My work also appears in the Journal of African American History, Journal of African American Studies, and Southern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the South. All of my work focuses on US race relations, cities, and uses interdisciplinary analysis.

In addition to hanging out in historical archives and writing, I offer courses in 20th Century American History, African American History, and Urban History. My classes always provide students with the opportunity to learn and examine of American Culture using an interdisciplinary lense. In my course History 204: “The Black Athlete’s Protest” students simulate the Olympic Project for Human Right’s debate on whether or not to boycott the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games. In History 266: “Race and Pandemics In US History” students study New Orleans’ 1853 yellow fever epidemic by tracking the city’s urban geography and social determinants of disease. Finally, in my course History 208: “African American History to 1865,” students examine runaway slave advertisements using the lyrics from Rhiannon Giddens’ song “At the Purchasers Option.”  

My Profile