Dr. Eric Hall is a professor of exercise science at Elon University in North Carolina (USA). His primary research interest is in the area of exercise neuroscience and includes research and education in the area of physical activity and mental health and also explores the impact of concussions in student-athletes. Additionally, he is interested in the influence of high impact practices on student development as well as the faculty role of mentorship in high impact practices. He has authored over 70 research articles, 6 book chapters and is the co-editor of book on concussions in athletics. At his institution he has received awards for his mentorship of undergraduate students and scholarship.
Jenny Olin Shanahan, Ph.D. is Assistant Provost for High-Impact Practices at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts, where she supports Undergraduate Research, the Honors Program, National Fellowships, and a Research Internship Program for students from underserved groups. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Marquette University and has taught research, literature, and writing courses for over 20 years. Dr. Shanahan is co-author of Undergraduate Research in Music, Undergraduate Research in Dance, and Undergraduate Research in Art, with more books to come in Routledge’s series of textbooks on undergraduate research in the arts and humanities. She is co-editor of two Council on Undergraduate Research books on creative inquiry in the arts and humanities. Her research interests include inclusion and equity in high-impact practices for all students, excellence in mentoring undergraduate research and creative scholarship, and scaffolding research and inquiry across curricula.
Helen Walkington, Ph.D. is Professor of Higher Education at Oxford Brookes University, UK, where her research focuses on higher education pedagogy (as well as soils research in her discipline of geography). Her specific interests include the research – teaching nexus, developing undergraduate students as researchers and teacher excellence in mentoring practice. Helen is a National Teaching Fellow (2009) and Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2012). Helen has written papers, chapters, books and guides relating to teaching and learning in education. She has established undergraduate research conferences and journals and has been a steering group member of the British Conference of Undergraduate Research (BCUR) since its inception in 2010. She is editor-in-chief of the undergraduate research journal GEOverse, Associate Editor of Higher Education Pedagogies, International co- editor for Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research and Editorial board member of the Journal of Geography in Higher Education. Helen Co-convenes the academic practice network of the Society for Research in Higher Education and co-chairs the International Network for Learning and Teaching. In 2018 Helen was awarded the Taylor and Francis Award for ‘sustained contributions to teaching and learning in Higher Education’ by the Royal Geographical Society.
Liz Ackley, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Health and Human Performance and the Brian H. Thornhill Endowed Professor at Roanoke College (Salem, VA). Liz leverages mentored undergraduate research as a means to encourage translational approaches to community health surveillance, and her research has been funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Reinvestment Fund, and ChangeLab Solutions. For her creativity in the classroom, Liz was recently awarded the Harris Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching by the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges.
Kearsley A. Stewart, Ph.D., is Professor of the Practice at Duke University with joint appointments in the Duke Global Health Institute and Cultural Anthropology. She previously taught at Northwestern University, worked at the Centers for Disease Control as a behavioral scientist, and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. Stewart’s current research interests include research ethics of HIV/AIDS clinical trials in Africa, global health pedagogy, and global health humanities. Her research is supported by grants from NIH, NSF, and Fulbright. She currently teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses in global health research ethics, ethics of infectious disease, narrative methods in HIV/AIDS research, and qualitative global health research methods. In 2017 she received the Outstanding Graduate Faculty of the Year award, and in 2015 received the Star Advisor Award for mentoring a student extracurricular organization. Her use of theatre to teach global health ethics was recognized as a top ten pedagogical innovation in the undergraduate classroom at Duke in 2017. She is Co-Director of the Duke Health Humanities Lab, faculty associate with the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities and History of Medicine, and a member of the Duke University Library Council. She and her golden retriever, Tula, are trained as a dog therapy team and provide care at the VA Hospital, Duke Cancer Center, and in rural home hospice outside Durham.