Congratulations to the 23 members of the faculty who were awarded promotions and/or tenure by the Ithaca College Board of Trustees at its May meetings.
The biographies of the faculty members were provided by their respective schools.
AWARDED PROMOTION FROM ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR TO PROFESSOR
Department of Theatre and Dance
Paula Murray Cole (M.F.A. Southern Methodist University) teaches acting, voice, and movement. Her professional work is centered on the development and dissemination of Rasaboxes, a suite of exercises originally devised by Richard Schechner. She co-authored and edited the first book dedicated to the exercises, “Inside the Performance Workshop: A Sourcebook for Rasaboxes and Other Exercises” (Routledge 2023), and co-authored “The Actor As Athlete of the Emotions: The Rasaboxes Exercise” for the book “Movement For Actors (2nd Edition, 2017), edited by Nicole Potter, Barabara Adrian, and Mary Fleischer. She has taught performance workshops at New York University, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, the Dell’ Arte International School of Physical Theatre, Brown University, and Rose Bruford College and has presented Rasaboxes at conferences and workshops in Israel, Montreal, Turkey, Singapore, China, and Poland.
Department of Occupational Therapy
Melinda Cozzolino (P.P.O.T.D. Creighton University) teaches courses in neuroscience, mental health, and research. She received the founding grant for the Center for Life Skills, an interdisciplinary program at Longview for adults with chronic neurological conditions. This program has operated for over 20 years and has provided experiential learning for thousands of students and therapeutic services for hundreds of community members. She is a prolific scholar in the areas of interprofessional education and supporting mental health and is an advocate for mental health at the local, regional, and national levels.
Department of Theatre Studies
Chrystyna Dail (Ph.D. University of Maryland) serves as director of the Integrative Core Curriculum. Her area of specialization is theatre history, with research interests in U.S. social activist performance, labor theatre, 20th-century Ukrainian-American performance, and the representation of witches in performance. Her book, “Stage for Action: U.S. Social Activist Theatre in the 1940s,” is part of the Theater in the Americas series published through Southern Illinois University Press, and her chapter, “Driving Race Work: The UAW, Detroit, and Discrimination for Everybody!” is included in the edited collection “Working in the Wings: New Perspectives on Theatre History and Labor.” Additionally, her chapter on Margo Jones is included in the eight-volume book series The Great North American Stage Directors published through Methuen Drama. She is currently writing a book about theatrical stagings of the Salem witchcraft crisis by female-identifying artists, and is the book review editor of Theatre Survey, which is published through Cambridge University Press.
Department of Philosophy and Religion
Serge Grigoriev (Ph.D. Temple University) imbues the array of courses that he teaches with his ready sense of humor and his gift for oratory. In his classes, laughter is a regular feature, allowing students to enjoy themselves intellectually as they grapple with complex material. His research focuses on pragmatism and the philosophy of history, and he has published prodigiously, producing original, philosophically significant, and refreshingly readable scholarly work. He has been a generous citizen of the college, bringing thoughtful insights to the H&S Faculty Senate, the C.P. Snow Lecture Series Committee, and the Faculty Grievance Committee, to name just three of his service endeavors.
Department of Management
Narges Kasiri (Ph.D. Oklahoma State University) bridges theory and practice in her courses in operations management and business analytics. She has integrated cutting-edge technology, including generative AI, into the curriculum. Her collaborative projects with local businesses allow students to apply their skills in real-world settings, enhancing both their learning experience and IC’s engagement in the community. As a scholar, she has earned prestigious honors such as the Fulbright Innovation Award and a grant from HSBC’s Sustainability Office.
Department of Exercise and Athletic Training
Patrick McKeon (Ph.D. University of Virginia) is best described as a teacher/servant/scholar. He teaches both graduate and undergraduate students to better understand research and its application to their clinical practice. He serves the department as the Athletic Training Clinical Education Coordinator, the college as chair of the Institutional Review Board and his profession as an editor of two prestigious professional journals. He is also a well-respected scholar, serving as an Executive Council member of the International Ankle Consortium and mentoring numerous students each year to present their own research at local, regional, and national conferences.
Department of Music Education
James Mick (Ph.D. Florida State University) teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in string pedagogy, orchestral rehearsal techniques, instrumental conducting, and the psychology of music teaching and learning. In 2020 he was honored with Ithaca College’s Faculty Excellence Award. Recent all-state orchestra appearances include Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, New York, Ohio, and Wyoming. Internationally, he has worked with student ensembles in the United Kingdom and Belgium. He served as music director and conductor of the Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra from 2015 to 2023. During his tenure the RPYO held annual side-by-side performances with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra at Eastman Theatre’s Kodak Hall and performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. A popular clinician, he has presented at numerous state, regional, and national conferences including the American String Teachers Association National Conference and the Midwest Clinic: An International Band & Orchestra Conference.
Department of Music Theory, History, and Composition
Alexander Reed (Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh) is the author of the books “Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music (2013 Oxford University Press) and “Laurie Anderson’s Big Science” (2021 Oxford University Press). He also co-wrote the volume on the They Might Be Giants album “Flood” (2014 Bloomsbury) for the 33 1/3 book series. He has published in the Journal of Popular Music Studies, Popular Music and Society, Perspectives of New Music, the Journal of Popular Music Education, ImageTexT, Music Theory Spectrum, Music Theory Online, and the Journal of Musicological Research. He is founder and former chair of the Popular Music Study Group of the American Musicological Society and has served on the board of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music’s U.S. branch. He has received awards, fellowships, and residencies at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Mellon Foundation, Contemporary Arts International, and the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. Active as a musician, he has toured internationally and released seven albums with his bands Seeming and ThouShaltNot. He has also produced dozens of records for others, and his work has aired on MTV and in popular television on series such as “Gossip Girl.”
Department of Music Performance
Michael Titlebaum (M.M. Eastman School of Music) is a saxophonist/composer/arranger who serves as Director of Jazz Studies at Ithaca College, where he directs the Ithaca College Jazz Ensemble; coaches combos; and teaches jazz saxophone and courses in jazz standards, arranging, repertoire, and pedagogy. In 2010 he founded the Ithaca College Jazz Ensemble Composition Contest. He also teaches and coordinates the jazz area in the IC Summer Music Academy. He is the author of the book “Jazz Improvisation Using Simple Melodic Embellishment,” published by Routledge/Taylor and Francis in 2021. He has performed and given workshops and lectures at numerous state and national conferences, including the Jazz Education Network, the International Society for Improvised Music, the New York State School Music Association, the New York State Band Directors Association, and the Texas Music Educators Association.
Department of Computer Science
Doug Turnbull (Ph.D. University of California) teaches across the computer science curriculum, exhibiting a persistent dedication to making his classes accessible and to providing research opportunities to the largest possible number of students. Students appreciate that he involves them in his research as genuine partners and grants them foundations for future careers. His scholarship has earned wide recognition in the form of NSF and NEA grants that have brought more than $600,000 to IC. He has published widely in the area of music information retrieval, and he recently delivered a keynote lecture at a conference in Singapore. In his service, he has continued his efforts to promote undergraduate research, and he serves on the H&S Faculty Senate. He also engages in service to the music information retrieval research community, nationally and internationally.
Department of Media Arts, Sciences, and Studies
Andrew Utterson (Ph.D. Birkbeck College) has expertly taught courses across the Screen Studies curriculum including Film Aesthetics and Analysis, Hollywood and American History, and Fiction Film Theory as well as ICC courses and mini-courses for the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, of which he is now co-director. The focus of his scholarship in film history, theory, and criticism is the intersection between film and new media as well as the changing nature of cinema from production to exhibition.
Department of Exercise and Athletic Training
Justine Vosloo (Ph.D. West Virginia University) is a model for faculty within helping professions. She has spearheaded significant improvements to the department’s graduate Sport Psychology and Mental Performance programs. She is an outstanding mentor to students as they present their own research within professional journals and at national conferences and when they consult with student-athletes to improve their mental performance. Finally, she has grown to be a well-respected scholar within her profession as evidenced by her recent keynote lecture, “Reflections on cultural humility, inclusion, and belonging: Current trends and future challenges for the practice of sport psychology when considering the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Department of Music Education
Baruch Whitehead (Ph.D. Capella University) is the founding director of the Dorothy Cotton Jubilee Singers, which is dedicated to the preservation of the Negro Spiritual. He also founded the Orff-Schulwerk certification program, a music education that views music as a basic system like language, at Ithaca College and Marshall University, and is the past director of the annual Orff Certification Training Course at Boston University. His other areas of expertise include diversity in music education, gospel music and its preservation within mainstream musical settings, African American music, and the music of the Civil Rights movement. He has been a featured speaker/workshop presenter at many state, national, and international conferences, including the International Arts and Humanities conference in Honolulu and MENC, NYSSMA, NJMEA, and the American Orff-Schulwerk Association national conference. He has taught at the World Music Village in Helsinki, Finland, and continues to present workshops on diversity in music education for state, national, and international conferences.
Department of Strategic Communication
Cory Young (Ph.D. Bowling Green State University) regularly teaches Crisis Communication, and this topic is the focus of most of her research. She is an organizational communication scholar whose work also explores risk communication and projects on diversity and inclusion. She has served in many capacities, including administrative roles for her department and for the school’s graduate program as well as for the college as a whole, as director of the Honors Program, a member of All-College Tenure and Promotion Committee, and chair of the Faculty Handbook Committee.
AWARDED TENURE AND PROMOTION FROM ASSISTANT TO ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
Department of Music Performance
Mike Truesdell (D.M.A. The Juilliard School) is a percussionist who has performed with numerous ensembles, including the New York City Ballet, International Contemporary Ensemble, and Lucerne Festival Ensemble conducted by Pierre Boulez, and with members of the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, Chamber Music Society (New York), and Alarm Will Sound, among others. As an educator, he has previously been on the faculties of the University of Northern Colorado, Rutgers University, and Columbia University. Also engaged with mentoring the next generation, he has taught in the acclaimed Music Advancement Program at The Juilliard School, and founded Wildcat Percussion Camp, a summer percussion program to introduce aspiring percussionists to the spectrum of percussive sounds and techniques.
AWARDED TENURE AT RANK OF PROFESSOR
Department of Media Arts, Sciences, and Studies
James Rada (Ph.D. University of Georgia) expertly teaches budding journalists how to tell important stories in inventive ways in courses such as Documentary Journalism Workshop and Investigative Journalism. His creative activity includes producing and directing “With Infinite Hope: MLK and the Civil Rights Movement,” among other films he contributed to that tell the history of the movement and the Underground Railroad. He was awarded IC’s Faculty Excellence Award in 2020. He is an active reviewer and judge for several industry professional publications and organizations.
AWARDED TENURE AT RANK OF ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
Department of Media Arts, Sciences, and Studies
Andy Watts (M.F.A. Columbia University) is an outstanding teacher who can successfully teach across the various film and television programs in the Roy H. Park School of Communications. His creative work as a screenwriter, director, and producer, combined with a 20-year career as a set lighting technician, directly contribute to his efficacy as an educator, mentor, and colleague. He has demonstrated an exemplary level of service to the department, the school, and the college, while maintaining ties to the industry.
AWARDED PROMOTION FROM ASSISTANT TO ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
Department of Biology
Rebecca Brady (Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin) is renowned for her creative teaching of such classes as Human Genetics and Fundamentals of Biology, enlivening them with innovative techniques and placing a firm emphasis on students’ intellectual growth. Her scholarship is integrally connected to her teaching—she has contributed to the biology education literature through her published work in American Biology Teacher and is at work on a study of the flipped classroom. She has mentored student research projects that have resulted in public presentations, and her service contributions have students at their core. As examples, she has judged sessions for the Whalen Symposium and she was a member of the Innovation Scholars Program steering committee, helping to give birth to that vital new program in H&S.
Department of Music Performance
Daniel Coakwell (D.M.A. Texas Tech University) teaches in the Voice area of the department, and students and peers alike commend his commitment to promoting a learning environment that prioritizes the mental health and well-being of his students. He also enjoys guest teaching artist residencies at institutions such as El Teatro Teresa Carreño in Venezuela, Yale University, and Dartmouth College. He specializes in the Evangelist and tenor roles of J.S. Bach, and he frequently performs the composer’s major oratorios—St. Matthew Passion, St. John Passion, Christmas Oratorio, and Mass in B-Minor—as well as many of Bach’s cantatas. Recent performances as a tenor soloist include G.T. Handel’s Messiah at the Myerson Symphony Center in Dallas, TX, and at the Steinmetz Hall in Orlando, FL, and as tenor soloist of J.S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor at the Judson Memorial Church in New York City and at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Salem, OR.
Department of the Environment
Paula Turkon (Ph.D. Binghamton University) teaches generously not just in her own department but for programs across the college, including Anthropology and Innovation Scholars. She is known as an exuberant and imaginative instructor, and her students express gratitude for the lifelong impact she leaves on them, often helping them to forge careers in science. Her research in the areas of dendrochronology and aquaponics has resulted in three NSF grants as well as published scholarship. She has left an indelible imprint on H&S by leading a discussion that resulted in a new Innovation Scholars Program with sustainability at its core. Colleagues characterize her as an embodiment of the scholar-teacher ideal in the liberal arts.
Department of Writing
Jaime Warburton (M.F.A. Sarah Lawrence College) offers courses at every level of the Writing curriculum, with a focus on first-year writing, poetics, creative writing, and gender. Faculty and students point to her welcoming and passionate approach to instruction, noting that she teaches with humor and vivacity, and she empowers students to interrogate their biases and preconceptions. She is a prolific author of creative nonfiction, poetry, and scholarship on the craft of writing. Reviewers call her work “gorgeous,” “self-aware,” and “self-deprecating.” She has been a generous citizen of IC, directing the Writing Center and the Ithaca Young Writers Institute, and chairing the Faculty Handbook Amendment Committee, among numerous activities.
AWARDED PROMOTION FROM CLINICAL ASSISTANT TO CLINICAL ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
Department of Physical Therapy
Kayleigh Plumeau (D.P.T. Ithaca College) is a highly effective teacher and has exceptional clinical skills. She launched a novel mentoring program that directly addresses diversity, equity, and inclusion in clinical settings. She has had multiple presentations at national conferences including about the mentoring program, representation in clinical education, and growth mindset, with presentations and publications in interprofessional education and home exercise program for cancer survivors. She is the chair of the awards committee for the NY State Physical Therapy Association.
Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology
Jana Waller (M.S. Ithaca College) has been a clinical faculty member since 2011, serving as fieldwork coordinator, graduate co-chair, and interim chair. Since 2021 she has served as associate dean for the School of Health Sciences and Human Performance. She was selected for a prestigious HERS leadership development fellowship based on her leadership experience. She has conducted clinical research in autism, developing an innovative program for autistic adolescents and adults. More recently, her scholarly work has focused on interprofessional education in the health sciences.
