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Honors College Staff | University of Central Missouri
Staff
Dr. Jennifer Carson, Director
Dr. Jennifer Varriale Carson serves as the Director of The Honors College and is also a Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at UCM. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Maryland in Criminology and Criminal Justice and a B.S. in Child Psychology from the University of Minnesota, where she herself was an honors student (magna cum laude). Dr. Carson started her research career at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, a former Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence. These beginnings led her to focus her work on policy evaluation through the use of quasi-experimental and experimental methods, with a concentration on U.S. counterterrorism efforts and the use of virtual reality technology. Dr. Carson’s work can be found in a number of academic outlets including the Journal of Research on Crime and Delinquency, Criminology and Public Policy, and the Journal of Quantitative Criminology and has been featured in Congressional Quarterly Researcher, the New Scientist, The Conversation, the LA Times, and Bloomberg News. She has also served as the Executive Counselor for the American Society of Criminology’s Division on Terrorism and Bias Crimes and was the recipient of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences’ Bracey/Joseph New Women Scholar Award. Dr. Carson is currently the Principal Investigator on a National Institute of Justice grant exploring left-wing and environmental ideologically-motivated crime in the U.S. She will be teaching an online honors colloquium related to criminal justice this summer.
Dr. Tom Goldstein, Interim Director
Dr. Tom Goldstein is the Assistant Director of The Honors College and an Associate
Professor in the Department of History. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in History from
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and B.A.s in History and Government
and Politics from the University of Maryland. He is also a graduate of the University
of Maryland Honors Program. Dr. Goldstein’s research focuses on the Communist dictatorship
of East Germany, particularly struggles over free expression amidst censorship and repression. His first book, Writing in Red: The East German Writers Union and the Role of Intellectuals (Camden House, 2017), explores how the regime-sponsored organization for writers both
enabled and constrained members in challenging the limits of acceptable speech. His
current project examines political rumors among the East German populace, exploring
the ways citizens utilized such “unofficial news” to make sense of events, complicate
or contradict official media narratives, as well as express discontent with the government.
Dr. Goldstein teaches courses in world history (including Honors sections), Building
Foundations in Honors (HONR 1400), modern Germany, 20th century Europe, World War
I, and conspiracy theories.
Grace Kennedy, Program Coordinator
Grace Kennedy is the Program Coordinator of The Honors College. She earned her Bachelor
of Science in Public Relations from the University of Central Missouri, and is a graduate
of UCM's Honors College.
HONR 3000 Instructors
Dr. Angela Nonaka
Angela M. Nonaka is the Assistant Director of the McNair Scholars Program at the University of Central Missouri. An anthropologist classically trained in four-fields anthropology, her M.A. and B.A. degrees are in East Asian Studies. Prior to completing her Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles, Angela lived and researched abroad for almost half a decade at two tertiary educational institutions for “disabled” students in Asia: Tsukuba College of Technology (Tsukuba, Japan) and Ratchasuda College (Salaya, Thailand). She has conducted original ethnographic fieldwork on the national sign languages and Deaf communities of Japan and Thailand, although the centerpiece of her research involves first-pass ethnolinguistic description and analysis of Ban Khor Sign Language, a previously undocumented indigenous/village sign language isolate used exclusively in the rural community of Ban Khor, Thailand. Angela's intellectual interests include: language diversity and language endangerment, language socialization studies, sign language linguistics, Deaf studies, Asian studies, studies, anthropology of disability, history of special education, as well as examination of language and humor. She is teaching an honors colloquium titled "Why We Laugh" during the fall semester.
Dr. Corey Werner
Growing up in the High Plains of Kansas, Corey Werner’s favorite words were “where” and “why.” This explains the fact that all of his degrees are in geography. Dr. Werner earned a B.S. from Kansas State University, where his focus was urban and economic geography. His M.S. came from Texas A&M, where he focused on GIS modeling and archaeology. He then earned a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where his minor was distributed between geology and soils science. The breadth of his studies suggests that Dr. Werner is a generalist by disposition, and at UCM, he has enjoyed the opportunity to teach a wide range of courses in social science as well as physical science. Dr. Werner’s interest in climate change is a direct result of his Ph.D. and later academic research, where he has used landforms and soils to investigate how the climate has changed. He will be teaching an honors colloquium on “Climate Change: The Science and the Narrative” during the spring semester.
Dr. Mark von Schlemmer
Dr. Mark von Schlemmer is a Regional-Emmy award winning television producer, filmmaker, and professor. He was an editor on such feature films as "Destination: Planet Negro!", "The Only Good Indian", "CSA: The Confederate States of America", and numerous documentaries, including the recently released feature,"No Place Like Home: The Struggle Against Hate in Kansas," which he edited and co-wrote with his frequent film collaborator, Oscar-winning filmmaker Kevin Willmott. Mark earned a Ph.D. at the University of Kansas in Film & Media Studies. He currently serves as Professor of Film in the Digital Media Production Program, where he created and directed the annual Show Me Justice Film Festival from 2011–2016. His area of scholarly interests include cultural studies and representation of humans and non-human animals in mainstream films. His dissertation was entitled: “Cinematic ‘Pigness’: A Discourse Analysis of Pigs in Motion Pictures.” Dr. von Schlemmer will be teaching an honors colloquium on “Race and Representation in Hollywood and Beyond” during the spring semester.
General Education Instructors
Dr. Sally Zellers
Dr. Sally Zellers holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. She has been employed in a variety of positions with both industry and secondary/post-secondary teaching, enabling her to bring "real world" experiences into the classroom. Dr. Zellers’ research interests include marine micropaleontology - using fossil remains of foraminifera to gain insight into the geologic history of the Gulf of Alaska, Japan Trench, and offshore Jamaica. She is teaching an Honors College-only section of Introduction to Geology this fall.
Dr. Julia Trumpold
Dr. Julia Trumpold received her Ph.D. in German Literature at the University of Kansas after graduating with an M.A. in Modern German Literature, Film and Television Studies, and American Literature and Culture from the Philipps-Universität in Marburg, Germany. Her research interests center on Luise Rinser, WWI literature (Remarque, Helen Zenna Smith) and the German Peace Movement of the early 1980s. She will be teaching an Honors College-only section of Elementary German I this fall.
Dr. Aaron Scully
Dr. Aaron M. Scully (he/him) is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at UCM and the Meridith Harmon Sauer Distinguished Professor of Theatre for 2023-26. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri in 2018. His dissertation and research explores how theatre may be utilized to treat and more fully understand addiction and alcoholism. Aaron teaches General Education classes, acting, playwriting, theatre history and theatre management. Aaron was the 2022 recipient of the UCM College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Excellence in Teaching award for Instructional faculty and the 2017 Innovative Teaching Award for Graduate Students from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. He is currently the Chair of the KCACTF Region V National Playwriting Program and the Co-Coordinator for ATHE’s Judith Royer Excellence in Playwriting Award. Aaron is the faculty advisor for the following student organizations: Shenanigans Improv Troupe, Richard Herman Black Box Theatre Program, Central Missouri Playwrights and the Dr. Ed See’s Student Teachers’ Association. He is the co-advisor for B.S.E. in Speech Communication and Theatre. He has had plays produced around the country and acts and directs often. Aaron teaches workshops in playwriting, acting and directing and has consistently presented scholarship at ATHE and MATC. He is teaching an Honors College-only section of Oral Interpretation this spring.
Dr. Hannah Marsh
Dr. Marsh is a physical anthropologist, teaching courses that cover the many topics of her subdiscipline, including ANTH 1810 Human Prehistory, ANTH 2845 Physical Anthropology, ANTH 3810 Applied Anthropology, ANTH 4810 Forensic Anthropology, ANTH 2830 Hoax and Myth in Anthropology, and ANTH 3840 Human Variation. She will be introducing Human Evolution and Primate Behavior as new upper level courses in the coming semesters. Her research focuses on cranial vault thickness in Homo erectus and recent humans, as well as diachronic trends in Homo erectus tooth size variation. Dr. Marsh participates in public discourse on what the concept of "race" in American society actually means, and highlights how the societal use of this concept has no biological basis. As part of this process, she has delivered her public address "Race and Biology: Why do we look different and what does it all mean?" at various institutions, including Kirkwood Community College, the University of Iowa, Mount Mercy University in Cedar Rapids, IA, and at UCM. This work recently won Second Place in the Mead Competition for New Public Anthropologists, sponsored by Allegra Lab and the open journal Sapiens. She is teaching an Honors College-only section of Human Prehistory this spring.
