Contributor bios

Terrence Ball

Terence Ball holds a 1973 PhD in Political Science from UC Berkeley. His scholarly specialty is political theory, “from Plato to NATO.” He is the author or editor of fourteen books, including an academic mystery novel, Rousseau's Ghost (1998). He has held visiting academic appointments at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and UC San Diego.

Gretchen M. Bataille

Gretchen was chair of English and CLAS Associate Dean at ASU before serving as provost at UC Santa Barbara and at Washington State U. She served as senior vice president for the U of North Carolina system and the American Council on Education and as president of the University of North Texas. She founded GMB Consulting Group and is a partner with ROI Consulting Group, helping universities build strategic leadership teams. Her publications include books and articles on internationalization, diversity, faculty career paths and crisis management.

David R. Berman

David R. Berman came to ASU in 1969. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Senior Research Fellow, Morrison Institute for Public Policy Arizona State University. He holds a doctorate from the American University in Washington, D.C. His work includes several books and articles on the populist/ progressive period in Mountain West and in Arizona in particular. His work for the Morrison includes reports on direct democracy, clean elections, top-two primaries, redistricting, and dark money.

Jean R. Brink

Jean is a Research Scholar at the Huntington Library and Professor Emerita of English at Arizona State University, where she founded and directed the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Brink recently completed a biography entitled, The Early Spenser (15541580): “Minde on Honour Fixed,” published by Manchester University Press. (2019). She is at work on The Later Spenser (1580-99). Her edition of Rivall Friendship is forthcoming from ACMRS Press (2021).

Lee B. Croft

Lee received a B.S. in Mathematics at ASU (1968) but switched gears and earned his Ph.D. in Slavic Languages from Cornell in 1973, returning to the Foreign Languages faculty at ASU. He retired as Professor Emeritus in 2011. Croft was awarded the V. I. Vernadsky silver medal for collaborative research by the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. He remains active as an International Advisory Board member of ASU’s Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies, having co-founded and first directed its Critical Languages Institute, the Russian offering of which is now being named after him as the “Lee B. Croft Russian Program.”

Beatrice Gordon

Beatrice (Babs) Gordon grew up in Chicago but began her long journey through higher education at Vassar College. Returning home, she became a certified Medical Technologist (ASCP) at Augustana Hospital. Babs attended Northwestern University and then moved to California with her husband, who was stationed there with the Navy. The family came to the Phoenix area in 1962. She returned to her education after the last child started to college. She received a Bachelor of Arts and two Master of Art degrees at Arizona State University (English Literature; Applied Ethics and the Professions). She taught in the English Department for sixteen years. She is Instructor Emerita and an active member of the Emeritus College.

Alexandra Gruzinska

Aleksandra grew up in Poznan, Poland, and studied in Barcelona, Spain, before immigrating to the United States in 1951. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in French from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and her PhD from Pennsylvania State University in 1973. She joined ASU that year as an assistant professor of French, served intermittently as director of the graduate program in French and as head of French before retiring in 2016.

Jane Jackson

Jane Jackson earned the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. (1970) in physics from ASU. Before returning to ASU in 1994 as Co-Director of the Modeling Instruction Program, she was Professor of Physics at Scottsdale Community College, prior to which she was Assistant Professor of Physics at South Dakota State University.

Contribtor Bios

Paul Jackson

Paul grew up in Phoenix, when his family moved there after World War II. He graduated from ASU in 1959 with a degree in journalism. After five years of working in that field, he returned to ASU to earn a PhD in English. He taught in South Dakota before returning to Arizona, where he enjoys landscape painting, especially in the desert.

John

John received his PhD from the University of California, San Diego. He taught at ASU 1972–2012. In retirement he has been an active member of the local chapter of Veterans for Peace.

David Kader

David Kader taught in the areas of criminal procedure, torts, state constitutional law and religion and the Constitution. He obtained his LL.M. from University College London in England, and served as Associate Dean of ASU’s law school from 1980-83. He also taught in the Arizona Center of Medieval and Renaissance Studies Summer Abroad Program at Cambridge University and was a Visiting Fellow at the University of London Institute for Advanced Legal Studies. He became emeritus in the summer of 2015, after completing 36 years on the law faculty of ASU and 41 years as a law professor.

Shannon

Shannon Perry, RN, PhD, FAAN, retired from San Francisco State University as Professor Emerita where she taught nursing and child development for almost 17 years. She is spending her retirement writing, doing historical research in nursing, and traveling both for fun and for medical and other missions.

William Dirk Raat

William Dirk Raat, Professor Emeritus of History, began his college career at Weber College in his native city of Ogden, Utah and received his PhD at the University of Utah. He taught Mexican history, Latin American history and indigenous peoples history at ASU and several other institutions. Last Worlds of 1863 is his latest book. He and his wife live in Surprise, Arizona. They have several children and grandchildren in San Francisco, Seattle and Lisbon, Portugal.

Harvey A. Smith

Harvey A. Smith, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, holds degrees in engineering, physics and mathematics from Lehigh University and the University of Pennsylvania. He has served as a staff member or consultant to many industrial concerns and government and quasi-governmental agencies.