Dr. Bernie Kaussler is Associate Professor of Political Science. His research focus deals with diplomacy and statecraft, conflict management, US foreign policy and Middle East security. His latest book was published by Routledge in 2017 and is on the impact of US foreign policy on Middle East security:  US Foreign Policy Towards the Middle East: The Realpolitik of Deceit He enjoys the intersection of scholarship and the policy-making community. To that end, he has produced national security teaching materials for the US armed forces and participated in war games. He provides regular commentary on US foreign policy and Middle Eastern affairs. His blog is at  https://berniesaffairs.com/

Seán is an assistant professor in the School of Writing, Rhetoric and Technical Communication at James Madison University, and his teaching and research are situated at the intersection of community engagement and digital literacy studies. He is particularly passionate about better understanding how writing, digital media, and interdisciplinary collaboration serve to build creative university-community partnerships.

Seán currently serves as a university Entrepreneurship Faculty Fellow at JMU, and he also co-teaches an annual institute for faculty in digital humanities pedagogy. In 2017, he and collaborator Mollie Godfrey won the award for Best Community-University Project at the Conference on Community Writing for their work on “Celebrating Simms: The Story of the Lucy F. Simms School.”

Jennifer Mease (also PeeksMease) is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Communication in the School of Communication Studies. Her teaching, consulting, and scholarship all focus on creating the conditions under which people can be the best versions of themselves. While her teaching and consulting focus on developing the capacity to understand organizational processes and strategic participation in those processes, her research addresses how social bias is built into organizational structures. You can read her work in The Applied Journal of Communication Research and Management Communication Quarterly among other places.