Where did you complete your academic studies?

I received my Bachelor of Science degree from St. Thomas Aquinas College, my master's degree from Bowling Green State University, and my PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

What are your research interests?

My interests focus on two broad topics of fish biology: adaptation and breeding behavior. These are important topics to study because they are two key aspects when trying to understand how organisms and species persist in their environment.

John Honeycutt always loved making television. As a student at Medford High School, he was active in the school’s cable access TV studio, and figured he may be able to transfer the experience into a job someday.

“That’s what led me to Fitchburg State,” he recalled. “I didn’t know it was going to take me down this road.”

The opportunity to study abroad inspired David Farland to look for someplace to explore some of his personal passions and the unique opportunity to surf for credit.

“I’m very outdoorsy,” he recalled. “I like the sun. I like nice weather. I just thought Australia was a nice fit.”

And then some. The semester the electrical engineering student spent in Queensland, Australia, was nothing less than a life-changing experience.

Fitchburg State’s storied theater program has resounded on the global stage. Since 2000, the university has taken part every three years in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. The trip typically involves more than two dozen students (with the high point being more than 30 students when the university’s production of The Laramie Project was exported).

The week-long trip involves students performing alongside theater companies from around the world. 

Steven Edwards, english studies assistant professor, was awarded $10,000 from the Massachusetts Cultural Council as one of its 2014 creative writing fellows.

Edwards has been an assistant professor at Fitchburg State since 2011. The award-winning author’s books include the memoir Breaking into the Backcountry (University of Nebraska Press, 2010), which tells the story of his time as the caretaker of a 92-acre homestead along the Rogue National Wild and Scenic River in southwestern Oregon. His writing can be found in recent issues of Orion, Electric Literature, AGNI Online, Terrain.org, and The Good Men Project.

Samuel Tobin, communications media professor, published Portable Play in Everyday Life via Palgrave Pivot in October, 2013. Despite the fact that the Nintendo DS is one of the most popular game systems of all time, theorists have largely ignored it.

Chris Kibler’s first glimpse of Fitchburg State came on the track, and in a way he’s never looked back. He first competed at Elliot Field as a high school student from Bath, Maine.

“The facility was just gorgeous, so I looked into what programs the school had to offer,” Kibler recalled. He visited Fitchburg State three or four more times in the ensuing months. “Each time, it felt more like home.”

The Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013 was a moment we will never forget, and for Katherine Jewell, economics, history and political science professor, it was personal.

Jewell, pushing her 3-year-old son in a stroller, was close enough to the second explosion to feel the blast and smell the smoke. In the tumultuous days that followed, Jewell turned to her training as a historian in an attempt to make sense of the experience, chronicling the details, locations and conversations that erupted from the chaos.

Teaching middle school was a career change for Tammi Chandler, who began her professional career in the private sector, training adults in California. But the prospect of working with younger students also appealed to her.

After visiting friends in Fitchburg she planted roots—including starting a family—in the city and eventually at Fitchburg State, where she was impressed by the strong connection between the university and the Fitchburg Public Schools. Soon she was teaching at the middle school level.

“It was so much more fulfilling,” she said. “I wanted to work with at-risk children.”

Timothy Michalak attributes his interest in studying abroad in Spain to two simple factors: people and curiosity.

“My entire experience in Spain revolved around people,” he said. “Not places, buildings, or language. I have always been fascinated by people, and always strive to meet new people and understand them as wholly as I can. Because of this, the inspiration to study abroad came quite naturally. I see a world which is full of people whom I don’t know, and I actively choose to spend my life trying to meet them.”