Faculty Information

Dr. Daniel Jones

My Ph.D. is in musicology (music history), and my Masters degree has a dual focus in musicology and music theory.  My specialty as a musicologist is American music, particularly folk and popular musics.  My areas of research and publication include early American psalmody, country music, and music theory.

As a performing musician, my instruments are in the steel guitar family (pedal steel, dobro, and lap steel), and I am active as a gigging freelance steel guitarist in the greater Boulder-Denver area.  Currently, I enjoy playing live with Denver-based group Runaway Express and doing studio work on call.

Outside of music, I am a mountain dweller and love outdoor recreational activities such as hiking, camping, cross country skiing, and snowshoeing.  I also enjoy woodworking, cooking, and being a dad and a husband.  At heart, I am a folky and a humanist.

Dr. Rolf Norgaard

A faculty member at CU since 1987, I have most recently led the effort to design and implement a new first-year writing curriculum for the campus.  I have also coordinated upper-division writing courses in Business and Engineering.  After a two and a half year stint as associate director of the Program for Writing and Rhetoric, I am returning full time to the classroom, where my teaching has won or been nominated for several awards.  I taught in the Kittredge Honors Program for the past two years, and look forward to returning this fall.  As an active writer and scholar, I can speak first hand to the challenges and joys of writing.   Come November and December, I won’t be able to contain my enthusiasm for Nordic skiing. And speaking of “reading culture,” your own cultural expertise will be invaluable to me, as I am the father of two “pre-teens."

Dr. George Moore

I am a poet and educator, who has spent a good deal of time traveling in Europe, Asia and South America, particularly in my years just out of college.  As a writer, I believe literature is more than a subject to be taught at the university; literature is a way of understanding the world in all of its human complexity.  Writers often take on the larger questions of ethics, philosophy and human nature, and through different periods of history, in different cultures, they express the current thoughts and radical innovations that lead to future changes and new understandings. I received my undergraduate degree in Philosophy and English Literature from Lewis and Clark College, in Portland, Oregon.  The Northwest instilled in me a desire for a greater contact with nature, and, in returning to my home state of Colorado, I began to explore the Rocky Mountains on foot, on skis, by bike and motorcycle. I received my Master’s degree in Creative Writing in Poetry and Translation from the University of Colorado, and then went on to earn my Ph.D. in American Literature from the same institution.  My background in poetry has greatly influenced my way of seeing the art of teaching.  I believe that literature is first of all an experience of the senses and the mind, and that these are the greatest gateways to learning.  I now spend much of my time again traveling, and writing of the places and people I encounter.  The more I compare the cultures of the world, the more I am convinced that we learn best not simply by seeing others’ differences, but by realizing ourselves in light of the worlds great diversity.

Dr. Vincent McGuire

Originally from the East Coast, I came to Colorado in 1976 and received my B.A. from CU in 1979.  I went back to New York and taught High School Social Studies. I also took a Masters Degree in Political Science from New York University in 1984.  Returning to CU in 1989, I took the Ph.D. in Political Science in 1995.  I teach American Government and Political Theory in the Farrand Residential Academic Program and the Kittredge Honors Program. My interests are films as metaphor for American society and politics, bringing broader intellectual diversity to the university and debunking received academic wisdom.       

Dr. Judith Streit

Judith Streit received an undergraduate from the University of Colorado after her children started school.  She holds a Ph.D. in Biblical Interpretation, with an emphasis on Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament.  Her dissertation was a study of the deity as a literary character, and her academic interests include reading the biblical text as literature and the history of interpretation.  She is energized by teaching, which she has done in a wide variety of contexts.  A child of the 60’s, Judith values community as the context for independent thinking and creative problem solving.  She enjoys hiking, has eclectic tastes in music, and is active in a Quaker community.

Dr. Robert Nauman

Dr. Nauman received dual Masters degrees in music and fine arts before completing his PhD in Art and Architectural History at the University of New Mexico.  He currently teaches at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where his research focuses on art and architectural history of the 19th and 20th centuries.

He is the author of several books dealing with issues of contemporary art.  His latest book, On the Wings of Modernism, was published by the University of Illinois Press this past year and deals with issues of American modernism during the Cold War era.  It is a topic he will be pursuing this spring, with the help of a grant he received from the University of Colorado’s Graduate Committee for the Arts and Humanities, as he continues research in New York and London.

Summers find Dr. Nauman traveling.  He has taught study abroad programs in Italy, and is already planning this summer’s trip to the Czech Republic and Hungary to study the art and architecture of those cultures.

Dr. Robert Ferry

A great-grandson of Colorado pioneers, Robert Ferry graduated from CU in 1969. He received his graduate degrees in Latin American history from the University of Minnesota.  During the better part of the 1970s he lived in Caracas, Venezuela, where he played semi-professional baseball, traveled extensively throughout the country looking for old newspapers for the National Library of Venezuela, and met his wife (while also doing research for his doctorate).  He taught at Tulane University and Indiana University before returning to his alma mater in 1982.  For the last ten years his research interest has focused on colonial Mexico, but he teaches on a broad range of topics in Latin American and Spanish history.  He considers himself to be something of a specialist in the methods and objectives of the Spanish Inquisition.   During the academic year 2002 – 2003 he was a Fulbright fellow at the Universidad Veracruzana in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, where he taught courses in United States history to Mexican students.

Dr. Alan Lester

Alan Lester is a Senior Instructor and Research Associate in the Department of Geological Sciences, CU-Boulder.  A native of Oregon, Alan came to Colorado in 1985 (with a B.S. from the University of Oregon).  After receiving a Ph.D. in Geology from Cu (1993), he remained as a Research Associate and Lecturer, and later as an Instructor.

Alan has done research in a variety of geological sub-disciplines including mineral structures, paleomagnetism, isotope geochemistry, and igneous petrology; all of which have been directed at understanding the origin and subsequent evolution of continental crust in the Rocky Mountain region.

A recipient of multiple university-wide teaching awards, Alan focuses on teaching at the undergraduate level.  He also serves as the undergraduate academic advisor for geology majors in the Department of Geological Sciences.

Both Alan and his wife Melissa are rock- and mountain-climbing enthusiasts.  They particularly enjoy combining their interest in geology with visits to climbing areas all over the western United States; sometimes adding to the adventure by flying small airplanes to their destination.

Dr. Jean Lehman

Jean Lehman has taught English language and literature at the university level at Indiana University; the University of Miami, Florida; the Central Bank Education Department, Jakarta, Indonesia; the National Economics University, Hanoi, Vietnam; Chubu Medical Education Program, Okinawa, Japan; and the University of Colorado, Boulder.  While teaching English language courses, she specialized in teaching English for graduate study in Economics and Business.  Her graduate degrees are in French Literature; Education; and English Literature.  While she wrote her Ph.D. thesis on British Victorian literature about India, she takes pleasure in exploring Shakespeare’s plays and poems, in studying Renaissance culture and theatre history, and in learning from the perspectives of students from a wide variety of disciplines.

Dr. Paul Strom

I came to Boulder from New Mexico to attend CU in 1967 where I earned a BA in Mathematics and Physics.  Along the undergraduate way, I was also able to take advantage of the first Study Abroad program at the University of Lancaster, England (highly recommended).  It was during the turmoil of the Vietnam War era that I became interested in other matters that seemed urgent, and so I pursued a Ph.D. in “Religion and Social Change,” which I received in 1990 from the University of Denver and the Iliff School of Theology.  Soon after completing my doctorate, I was invited to teach a course for the Kittredge Honors Program called “The Ethics of Ambition.”  Not only have I been teaching a version of this course ever since, but the teaching opportunity led to the invitation to direct the Kittredge Honors Program in 1999.  This relationship continues to be both challenging and rewarding and I am quite happy to be back in Boulder and at CU.  I also teach “Nonviolence and the Ethics of Social Action” which reflects my personal, research, and writing interest in the strategies of nonviolent social transformation, matters which are of great urgency.  I can often be spotted riding my skinny-tired bike around campus (summer and winter) or on the roads in the area.  You may also see me on the hiking trails in the mountains.