Idiana Wesleyan University. IWU Undergraduate College of Arts & Sciences

JWHC Faculty Fellows

Dr. Charles Bressler

JWHC Senior Scholar for Undergraduate Research
Professor of English

Dr. Bressler (B.A., Wilkes University; M.S., University of Scranton; Ph.D., University of Georgia) joined the IWU community in 2008 as professor of English. In addition to his teaching several English courses each academic semester, Dr. Bressler has recently been appointed the senior scholar for undergraduate research in the John Wesley Honors College. His primary task in the Honors College is to supervise and coordinate undergraduate honors theses.

In addition to his teaching and work in the Honors College, Dr. Bressler maintains an active scholarly life. Presently he is revising his text Literary Criticism: An Introductory to Theory and Practice (Prentice Hall, 2006) for its fifth edition. He has also delivered many scholarly presentations at such venues as the British Tolkien Society, the National Hawthorne Society, the C. S. Lewis Oxbridge Conference, the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, and the American Popular Culture Association, to name a few. Dr. Bressler's primary areas of research include literary theory and criticism, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, G. K. Chesterton, Charles Williams, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. While writing articles for such journals as Touchstone, he is also working on a scholarly edition of a Hawthorne romance, a new English grammar text for freshman composition courses, and a text showing the influence of George MacDonald and G. K. Chesterton in the lives and literary works of the Oxford Christians, known as The Inklings.

Dr. Bressler has been married for the last thirty-five years to Darlene. Presently, Darlene is serving as the vice president and academic dean for the College of Arts and Sciences at IWU. He and Darlene have one daughter, Heidi, who is a first-grade teacher.

Dr. Todd C. Ream

JWHC Associate Director
Assistant Professor of Humanities

Todd C. Ream (B.A., Baylor University; M.Div., Duke University; Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University) lives with his wife Sara and daughters, Addison and Ashley, in Greentown, Indiana (Home of the Eastern Comets!), where they are members of Jerome Christian Church. Prior to coming to Indiana Wesleyan, Todd served as a postdoctoral research fellow, a dean of students, and a residence director.

In addition to his teaching and administrative duties, his research interests include historical, philosophical, and theological explorations of higher education. He is the author (with Perry L. Glanzer) of Christian Faith and Scholarship: An Exploration of Contemporary Developments (Jossey-Bass, 2007) and Christianity and Moral Identity in Higher Education (Palgrave Macmillan, December 2009). His current book project (with Tim Herrmann and Skip Trudeau) is entitled A Parent's Guide to the Christian College (Abilene Christian University Press).

He has contributed over one hundred articles, reviews, and review essays to a variety of academic journals and popular periodicals including Big Sky Journal, Books and Culture, Christianity Today, Educational Philosophy and Theory, New Blackfriars, The Review of Higher Education, and Teachers College Record. He also serves as the book review editor (with Perry L. Glanzer) for Christian Higher Education and for Christian Scholar's Review.

Email:todd.ream@indwes.edu
Todd C. Ream Curriculum Vitae

Dr. David Riggs

JWHC Director
Associate Professor of History

Dr.Riggs (B.A., Azusa Pacific University; M.Div., Princeton Theological Seminary; M.Phil., D.Phil., Oxford University) joined the IWU community in 2000. In addition to his duties as director of the Honors College, Dr. Riggs teaches courses in history, religion, and undergraduate research. His primary area of scholarly interest is society and religion in the ancient Mediterranean world. He also has a developing interest in the history of the Muslim-Christian encounter.

Dr. Riggs has written various articles and presented several conference papers on the religious world of late antiquity, focusing especially on the cultic life of late-antique North Africa. He is currently revising his doctoral thesis for publication with Oxford University Press (Divine Patronage in Late Roman and Vandal Africa: Reconsidering a Local Narrative of Christianisation). Dr. Riggs is also co-leading (with Dr. Chris Bounds) a research project focused on patristic conceptions of "grace" in light of Greco-Roman models of patronage and benefaction. This project is sustained by the undergraduate research assistance of students in the Honors College. In addition, Dr. Riggs is currently composing A Brief Guide to Christian Liberal Learning for Triangle Publishing.

Dr. Riggs has been married to his high-school/college sweetheart, Laura, for twenty years. Laura is a CPA who currently indulges her accounting interests part-time alongside the more challenging task of raising their four ultra-active children: Patrick, Christian, Alexandria, and Faith.

JWHC Postdoctoral Fellows

Dr. Rusty Hawkins

Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, 2009-2011
HST 180 Humanities World Civilization & HNR 215 News & Views through the Eyes of Faith

Dr. Hawkins was born and raised in Kansas City, Kansas, and graduated from Wheaton College in 1999. After spending three years in Bozeman, Montana (where he received an M.A. in American history from Montana State University), Dr. Hawkins and his wife Kristi moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where they ran literacy programs in some of the city's under-served public elementary schools. After a year in New England, Dr. Hawkins began his doctoral studies at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and earned his Ph.D. in American history in 2009.

Dr. Hawkins's research interests primarily revolve around issues of race, religion, and politics in the twentieth-century American South. His dissertation, Religion, Race, and Resistance: White Evangelicals and the Dilemma of Integration in South Carolina, 1950-1975, examines the way white Christians' religious beliefs caused them to work against the civil rights movement in the South.

Dr. Hawkins and Kristi have two sons, Caleb and Micah. In addition to spending time with his wife and boys, he enjoys reading (obviously), running (not as often as he should), and rooting for his favorite sports teams (the Kansas Jayhawks and the Kansas City Chiefs).

Dr. Lisa Toland

Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, 2008-2010
HST 180 Humanities World Civilization

Dr. Toland is proudly and originally from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, but has more recently spent five years living in Oxford (England) where she was completing her D.Phil. in early-modern English history. Her primary interests lie within early modern British social and legal history. Dr. Toland's research focuses in particular on women's legal and economic experiences, as well as the rituals of dying and burial. She earned an M.A. in European history from Miami University (Ohio) and is a 2001 graduate of IWU's John Wesley Honors College. Dr. Toland is a JWHC Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow.

JWHC Honors Instructors

Dr. Paul Allison

Professor of English

Dr. Allison was born and raised in central Pennsylvania and has lived in Marion, Indiana, for the last fifteen years. He received his M.F.A. from the University of Pittsburgh and his Ph.D. from Binghamton University, New York. As a member of the English faculty, he has enjoyed teaching a variety of classes, from English Composition to Gothic Literature, but he gets much satisfaction from helping students discover how life-altering a good novel (or a good sentence) can be. Dr. Allison teaches honors sections of ENG 180 Humanities World Literature.

Prof. Steve Horst

Assistant Professor of Religion

Professor Horst received his undergraduate degree in philosophy and humanities from Houghton College in New York and continued graduate school in philosophy at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He also has a degree in marriage and family therapy from Syracuse University and has worked as a missionary in Russia. Professor Horst began teaching full-time at IWU in 1999. He is presently finishing work on his dissertation from the University of Wales in Lampeter, focusing on Dostoevsky's criticism of modernism. He lives in Marion with his wife Cherie and their daughter and granddaughter. Prof. Horst teaches honors sections of PHL 180 Humanities Philosophy.

Dr. Steve Lennox

Professor of Religion

Dr. Lennox loves to teach the Bible, especially to thinking students, like those in the Honors College. Their insightful and honest questions clarify the truth about God as revealed in his Word. After serving as a pastor for ten years and earning M.Div. and Ph.D. degrees, Dr. Lennox moved to IWU from Pennsylvania in 1993. He loves to travel and read, but his greatest loves are his wife of twenty-seven years, Eileen, who is the nurse practitioner in the IWU Health Center, and his two children. Dr. Lennox teaches honors sections of BIL 101 Old Testament Survey and BIL 102 New Testament Survey.

Dr. Mark Smith

Associate Professor of History

Dr. Smith graduated from Asbury College in 1981 and holds two master's degrees, one from Asbury Theological Seminary (M.A.R. in historical theology and church history) and the other from the University of Kentucky (M.A. in European history), where he also earned his Ph.D. in European history with a focus on Medieval and Renaissance/Reformation history. Before coming to Indiana Wesleyan in 2001, Dr. Smith taught at Lexington Community College, Asbury College, Western Kentucky University, and Mercer University.

Since 1974, Dr. Smith has been married to Terri (Rutherford) and has two daughters, Bethany and Erin, and three grandchildren.

Dr. Willem Van De Merwe

Professor of Physics

Dr. Van De Merwe earned both his bachelor's and master's degrees from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, before studying at Clemson University to receive his Ph.D. in physics and biophysics. Dr. Van De Merwe has been teaching at Indiana Wesleyan since 1995 and holds IWU's only endowed chair, the Blanchard Chair in Physics and Mathematics. He recently completed a year-long assignment as a visiting scholar with the U.S. State Department in Washington D.C. Dr. Van De Merwe lives in Marion with his wife Angie. He teaches SCI 380 Impacts of Science on Faith and Society.