IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI: Featured Faculty and Staff

Featured Faculty & Staff

Subir Chakrabarti

Professor of Economics

Economic theory is tough to comprehend. A professor of economics at IUPUI since 1986, Subir Chakrabarti has had plenty of practicing helping others try to figure it out-both in the classroom and through his written work.

He says of his undergraduate course, Principles of Economics 201, "I find it most difficult to teach students how production and cost are related."

Read more about Subir

Past Featured Faculty & Staff

Andrew Baker

Lecturer in Geography

Every May, the howl of engines commences less than four miles from the IUPUI campus. How the Indianapolis 500 has changed—and changed Indianapolis—in its 100 years is just one of the topics geography lecturer Andrew Baker will cover in this fall's Z100 Motorsports Studies course.

Jennifer S. Cochrane

Senior Lecturer in Communication Studies

Jennifer Cochrane, Senior Lecturer in Communication Studies, always wanted to teach. But did the now veteran teacher ever imagine that she would become a guru of teaching online?

"The nature of teaching and learning is radically different today than when I started 30 years ago," she says.

Janet Acevedo

Director, American Sign Language/English Interpreting Program, IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI

Janet Acevedo, the director of the American Sign Language (ASL)/English Interpreting Program in the IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI, has a passion for interpreting that began forty years ago. She discovered ASL at the Deafness Research and Training Center at New York University in 1971 when interpreting for people who are deaf was just beginning to gain recognition as a professionalized field.

Johnny Flynn

Director of Native American Programs, Assistant Professor, Religious Studies, IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI

A tribal blanket splashes the mundane wall of Dr. Johnny Flynn's office with red, brown, yellow and green. Scattered across the blanket are photographs of his family and pins with peace logos printed on them. The remaining walls have hundreds of books on religion resting in tall, sturdy cases. A professor in Religious Studies and the Director of Native American Programs at IUPUI, Flynn is half Potawatomi and half Irish, granting him a unique ethnicity and perspective for his position.

Sloane Thompson

Director of Career Development, School of Liberal Arts

Walking into Sloane Thompson's office is like walking into your best friend's living room. Warm and inviting, she always greets visitors with a smile and can't wait to get to know the students and alumni who come to her door.

Thompson is the Director of Career Development in the School of Liberal Arts where she helps students with majors, internship options, and graduate school applications. She is always enthusiastic about helping students find their way, saying, "I have the best job in the world."

Nancy Newton

Professor Emerita of Spanish, Department of World Languages and Cultures

As final grades were submitted for Fall 2009 and that semester drew to a snowy close, Spanish Professor Nancy Newton packed up the last of the books and travel souvenirs remaining in her office and bid Cavanaugh Hall farewell. After a career spanning 3 and a half decades, Newton was entering a new phase-retirement-which Newton anticipated as a time to learn new things, research, read, and travel.

Larbi Oukada

Professor of French, Department of World Languages and Cultures

In today's global economy, and as more U.S. citizens travel internationally, communicating across cultural and geographical boundaries is a skill few can do without. However, language learning is a challenge that many are reluctant to tackle. To address this issue, French Professor Larbi Oukada has created a system to help the linguistically cautious take the plunge. His Functional Language Series uses short modules and an interactive approach that Oukada says will make language learning both fruitful and enjoyable.

Kristine Frost

Associate Editor, Santayana Edition

In order to interpret works from past philosophers, editors need to understand what was in those philosophers' heads and hearts. For American philosopher George Santayana, Kristine Frost is charged with that heavy–and exciting–responsibility.

Robert Sutton

Professor of Classical Studies, World Languages & Cultures
Director, Individualized Major Program

Professor Robert Sutton knew in high school that he was going to study the past, and winning the 10th grade history prize helped seal his fate. As a college student, Dr. Sutton studied Classical and Near Eastern archaeology at Haverford College and graduated with his A.B. in 1969. He then went on to earn his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Kelly Hayes

Assistant Professor of Religious Studies

After spending a year living in Sierra Leone in 1989 as a college student, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Kelly Hayes' view of life changed dramatically. She realized that "everything you took for granted as normal was socially conditioned." She came back to the United States a very different person, questioning the materialism of American culture and the view of the world that she had unquestioningly absorbed as a privileged American.

Larry Zimmerman

Professor of Anthropology and Museum Studies

Professor Larry Zimmerman traces his love of archaeology back to his childhood on an eastern Iowa farm that contained several archaeological sites. He vividly remembers collecting arrowheads while walking fields with his father. Dr. Zimmerman believes that archaeology, although predominately viewed as a discipline concerned with only the ancient past, affects people and society today, and wants his students to understand the impact that contemporary archaeology has on our present-day lives in "the way people perceive their identity, and sometimes even the way they see their futures.

Tim Lyons

Associate Professor of Philosophy

Nearly 400 years ago, Galileo peered through his primitive telescope and saw things no human had seen before: Jupiter's moons, Saturn's majestic rings (or as he described them, "handles"), and the phases of Venus. Such observations challenged an idea accepted for thousands of years: the heavens, in fact, do not revolve around us; we are not at the center of our universe.

Marci Bounds Littlefield

Assistant Professor of Sociology

Surrounded by colorful photographs of her children, Assistant Professor of Sociology Marci Littlefield explains that as a little girl she dreamed of becoming a lawyer. With the support and encouragement of her mother and grandmother she became the first member of her family to attend college.

Kristy Sheeler

Associate Professor of Communication Studies

Kristy Sheeler, Associate Professor of Communication Studies in the School of Liberal Arts, is entering her twentieth year of teaching, a far cry in career paths for this one-time mathematics major. Her shift in academic interests came on the heels of challenging courses in math and concurrent communication and English courses.

John McCormick

Professor and Chair of Political Science

With the world's largest economy residing in Europe, McCormick finds necessity in bringing the importance of the European Union to the forefront of his classrooms to make students more aware citizens. His goal is to show students that "literally every moment of our lives is impacted by politics."

Mitchell Douglass

Assistant Professor of English

Assistant Professor Mitchell L.H. Douglas talks about his experience at the 2007 Cave Canem Fellowship, a network of established and emerging black writers.