Jonathan Edwards College
Jonathan Edwards College

Meet the Fellows

JE students: if you would like to connect with someone here, reach out! Fellows would not have put forward this information had they not wanted to be contacted!

Stuart Allen, JE ’02, Lawyer, is interested in speaking with students who are considering careers in law or who are planning to attend law school. Stuart graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 2006 and is currently a senior associate at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr in Washington, DC where he specializes in intellectual property litigation and appellate litigation.  Previously, he worked for a multi-national law firm in Los Angeles and clerked for judges on the federal trial and appellate courts. He has also worked at non-profit and civil rights organizations as well as a district attorney's office. While he does not live in New Haven, Stuart is happy to chat by phone with any perspective law students about their plans, law school, and actually practicing law. stuart.allen@aya.yale.edu

Jurgen Bank, an Industrial-Organizational Psychologist focusing on leadership development with corporate clients around the world, and a resident fellow in JE, is interested in discussing intercultural experiences over lunch or coffee breaks. He would like to talk about questions and insights related to situations where different cultures meet, such as travel experiences, observations on intercultural friendships and, of course, the experience of being immersed in or confronted with a different culture while living abroad or, if you originate from another culture, living here. He currently is developing a project to explore the ways in which national, ethnic, and local cultures mix with corporate cultures around the globe. Jurgen grew up in Germany, and himself immigrated to the United States in 1998. Jurgen.Bank@bts.com

Gerhard Bowering, is Professor of Islamic Studies, specializing in the study of the Qur'an and its interpretation, Islamic religious history, and the contemporary world of Islam. Over lunch in JE, on either Tuesdays or Thursdays, he would like to share his experiences of study, research and travel in the Islamic world all across the globe from Morocco to Mindanao (in the Arab Middle East, North Africa, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Indonesia, as well as contacts with Muslim communities of China, Europe and America). No special language skills required, just an informal exchange of views and ideas. gerhard.bowering@yale.edu

Andrée Aelion Brooks, Journalist, Author and Lecturer, would like to talk to students about the emerging and changing field of news from her 30 years in news reporting (for 18 years she was a contributing columnist and writer for the New York Times), her current work researching, writing and lecturing on the untold aspects of the social history of the Jews, and her efforts to get more women into elective office and why. She was the founder, in 1994, of the Women's Campaign School at Yale, an independent campus organization under the auspices of the Law School that trains women of all backgrounds and ages in political campaign skills (Gabby Giffords was one of our graduates and board member). She would welcome meeting students for an informal chat late afternoon on a Thursday at JE, prior to the weekly Fellows Dinner. andreebrooks@hotmail.com

Susan Cahan, Associate Dean for the Arts in Yale College and a resident fellow in JE, would enjoy meeting with students who are interested in contemporary visual art, both art making and art history. Through her experiences working at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and as a curator for a large private art collection, she has had the opportunity to get to know many fascinating artists, including Andrea Fraser; Felix Gonzalez-Torres; Jim Hodges; Vik Muniz; Cathy Opie; Tim Rollins; Fred Tomaselli; Carrie Mae Weems; and others. She would be happy to talk with students pursuing studies or career paths in art, art history, and museum work. susan.cahan@yale.edu

Jay Emerson, Associate Professor of Statistics, would enjoy meeting students with interest in real-world data challenges, cooking, opera, or off–the–beaten–track world travel. Jay has done several data analysis projects receiving attention in the media. Most recently, he has exposed a new quirk in the scoring system used in international figure skating competitions. He is currently attempting to master Mutter Paneer (including making the paneer from raw milk). He is looking forward to seeing Der Ring des Nibelungen again. He grew up in Vermont, has seen a good bit of the US, and has traveled to China, Brazil, and parts of Europe. He speaks French poorly. http://www.stat.yale.edu/~jay john.emerson@yale.edu

Karyl Evans. A Documentary Filmmaker, would be happy to talk with students about their interest in pursuing a career in the world of television and film production. She has won 5 Emmy Awards for her work over a 30–year period. She has specialized in producing, directing, and editing historical documentary films for museums and educational institutions and is currently working on the “History of the Yale School of Medicine” and the “History of the New Haven Green”. She has worked in all areas of the arts entertainment business from developing feature films in Los Angeles working with director Taylor Hackford, developing a children’s series with Shelley Duvall, to live college sports and a film review series in the San Diego market, to making commercial spots—currently producing all the marketing spots for Connecticut Public Television, to long form documentaries on a national, regional, and local level. (View film clips here) karyl@snet.net

Ayaska Fernando, JE ’08, Assistant Director of Undergraduate Admissions, would like to speak with students who wonder about pursuing something quite different to their major area of study at Yale post graduation. He was a Mechanical Engineering (ABET) major while at Yale, spent his junior year summer on Wall Street at Bear Steans, and is now in his 3rd year at Yale Admissions. Students often wonder why they were admitted to Yale—Ayaska is happy to talk about admissions and the considerations that go into these decisions. You will definitely see him at IM Waterpolo or Badminton in case you want to introduce yourself before writing an email. ayaska.fernando@yale.edu

David Hafler, Professor of Neurology and Immunobiology and Chairman, Department of Neurology, loves to kayak in the Long Island Sound, go for runs, and to pontificate on how we should train the next cadre of physician scientists. He decided early in his career (college) to make the understanding of multiple sclerosis as a life passion, and during this adventure became a clinical neurologist, immunologist, and geneticist. After spending 28 years at Harvard, he recently moved to Yale with his wife Janet (see her blurb), a Medical Educator. While he is the Breakstone Professor Emeritus at Harvard, (he doesn’t look that old) he always sits on the Yale side at “The Game”. They have two wonderful children, Brian, a Princeton and Harvard Medical School MD/PhD graduate, is an ophthalmology resident at Yale and Jason is just completing his PhD in Genetics at Cambridge UK and is an associate partner at Atlas Ventures in Cambridge US. david.hafler@yale.edu

Janet Hafler, Assistant Dean for Educational Scholarship at the Yale Medical School is very interested in talking with students about careers in health care and in education. Over her career she has taught, advised students in the health care professions, and participated in medical school admissions. Having two sons and a husband, David Hafler who is the Chair of Neurology at Yale School of Medicine she has tried to balance her career while raising their two sons and she always enjoys conversations of how to balance work and family. She also loves to take walks, do yoga and cook. janet.hafler@yale.edu

Emily Horning, Director of Undergraduate Programs for the Yale Library, enjoys speaking with students about career paths for history and humanities majors. By training she is a historian of early modern Europe; her work in graduate school concerned the transition from manuscript to print culture in France and England. Emily is also the curator of the Yale Library’s Curtis Mountaineering Collection, and while not strictly speaking a mountaineer, she is an enthusiastic hiker, having climbed in North, Central and South America, Europe, the Arctic, eastern and southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Over lunch in JE she would be delighted to talk about foreign and domestic travel, so-called “Arc TV” (those finely-crafted television serials like Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, Downton Abbey, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos and especially, especially The Wire), literature and movies of all kinds, and volunteering in New Haven. She hails from southern California, is a fan of UCLA Basketball and the Lakers and would be happy to commiserate about New England weather. emily.horning@yale.edu

K. David Jackson, Professor of Portuguese, has a special interest in speaking with students who would like to know more about Brazil, Portugal, the Lusophone world and literature in Portuguese. He has worked closely with the Sao Paulo concrete poets, studied with Portuguese poet Jorge de Sena. In addition to Brazil and Portugal, he has had the opportunity to do research and travel in Goa, Sri Lanka, Malacca & Macau. His work includes cultural contacts, Creole music and verse as well as major writers such as Pessoa, Camoes, Machado de Assis, and the Brazilian modernists. k.jackson@yale.edu

Jennifer Julier, JE ’77 and an Assistant Director for Yale College Classes at the Association for Yale Alumni, working on reunion planning for Yale College classes, would be happy to talk to any student interested in a career in alumni relations or eager to explore how to stay connected to Yale after—gasp!—graduation. Also, she has a 1911 Steinway B at her home in Hamden and welcomes serious pianists in J.E. to contact her about arranging occasional practice times. She earned a Masters from Columbia in Library Science and worked in the field of rare books and manuscripts, later broadening her activities to free–lance editing, writing and genealogical research. For twelve years she was the volunteer chairman coordinating alumni interviews of local students applying to Yale. Jennifer.julier@yale.edu

Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles, Senior Lecturer in History of Science and Medicine, is happy to speak with students about NASA and the space program, and what it was like to be the first woman to hold the Charles Lindbergh Chair at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. She can talk about how she wrote a science column for the Los Angles Times and how in writing a book about women in space she interviewed more than 40 astronauts in the US and Russia, and in writing a history of medical imaging interviewed 3 men who would later win Nobel Prizes. Students might want to talk about the discovery of X–rays, how the ability to peer into the human body gradually changed our ideas about privacy, and disease. bettyann.kevles@yale.edu

Penelope Laurans, master of JE and special assistant to the President, has an interest in speaking with students who would like to know more about modern poets and modern poetry. At various points in her life she has had the opportunity to know well Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Seamus Heaney, Octavio Paz, and many other poets and writers, and she knows a great deal about T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Flannery O’Connor and John Berryman, who were close friends of her late husband, the poet and translator Robert Fitzgerald. Her field is the history of English prosody but she has written and published on modern poets and their work. She also would be glad to talk with students about University administration. penelope.laurans@yale.edu

Robert Lyons, Professor of Medicine at UConn and Clinical Associate Professor at Yale.is interested in talking with students about medicine, Japanese Prints and Paintings, and/or Rudyard Kipling! He is His interests are in clinical Infectious Disease, particularly HIV/AIDS and tick borne diseases. He collects Japanese prints and paintings, some of which have been exhibited at JE, the Asia Society in NYC, and the Yale Art Gallery. His print collection includes a number of 18th century actor prints as well as many shin hanga prints from the first half of the 20th century; among the paintings are several by Zen artists, including one by Hakuin. Bob also has a long standing interest in Rudyard Kipling, is a member of The Kipling Society, and has an extensive collection of Kipling first editions and early works. He spoke recently to the Beaumont Medical Club at Yale about Kipling and his ambivalent attitude toward doctors. RLyons@stfranciscare.org

Dr. Charles "Andy" Morgan III, received his medical degree from Loma Linda University School of Medicine in 1986; He completed his residency training in psychiatry at Yale University in 1990.  He then joined the faculty of medicine at Yale University & the National Center for PTSD at Yale and has here for the past 23 years.  Dr. Morgan has received numerous grants and has published over 100 peer reviewed scientific papers on human cognition under stress, eyewitness memory, PTSD, selection and performance in Special Operations forces and in the arena of Credibility Assessments. For his work Dr. Morgan was awarded
the US Army Award for Patriotic Service in 2008 and awarded the 2010 Sir Henry Welcome Medal and Prize for his development of interventions to buffer the negative impact of stress on human cognition, memory, learning and operational performance. Dr. Morgan has also served as member of the US Intelligence Community (2003-2010); The products developed from his research have been vetted domestically as well as in a theatre of operations (Afghanistan).  Dr. Morgan is currently an Operational Advisor to the United States Army. In that capacity he deployed to Afghanistan in 2011.   Dr. Morgan's work and research have
been featured on CNN, ABC's 20/20, Discovery Channel (U.S. and Canada) and on National Public Radio. In addition, his work has been cited in Popular Science, Wired, Men's Magazine, The New Yorker magazine, the New York Times and New Scientist. charles.morgan@yale.edu

Douglas Nygren, a child, adolescent, and family therapist at the Clifford Beers Clinic in New Haven, and a former JE writing tutor, would enjoy meeting with students to discuss his work or his passion for speaking German, playing the piano and making photos, either over lunch or supper. He treats children who have been abused, are depressed, impulsive, and/or have behavioral troubles. He particularly likes working with children who are autistic. dnygr@cshore.com

Elaine Piraino–Holevoet, JE’75 and parent of Dan JE’07, has a special interest in speaking with students who would like to find out more about life in the City beyond Yale, particularly those who share her interest in environmental activism. She has lived in downtown New Haven since graduation and works with her husband in their graphic design firm — PIROET. For years an active volunteer in the community, she has also maintained strong ties to Yale as a volunteer on the Yale Alumni Schools Committee and as a vice president of the Yale Club of New Haven. You can read more at her blog: ontheroadtogreenness. Elaine would gladly meet for lunch, most any day. Elaine@piroet.com

David T. Totman ’61, is a lawyer who would be interested in sharing his experiences and thoughts concerning careers in the law—domestic and/or international. He says that, “The whole scene has changed significantly since I started out and students need to be current in their decision making.” dttotman@yahoo.com

James C. Tsai, Professor and Chair/Chief of Ophthalmology and Visual Science at Yale School of Medicine and Yale–New Haven Hospital, has a special interest in speaking with and mentoring students who would like to know more about careers in medicine and scientific research. Tsai has and MDand an MBA and has also pursued medical training abroad and can provide a first–hand perspective on this type of educational experience. He has authored a wide range of scientific articles, abstracts, and books including the recently published “Oxford American Handbook of Ophthalmology.” Tsai has also served on a variety of governmental scientific panels at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). james.tsai@yale.edu

Karen von Kunes, Senior Lector in Slavic Languages, would be glad to converse over lunch on any topic—languages, cultures, real estate, politics, immigration, or cars, jobs, fashion, diseases, personal problems and everyday life in French, Russian, Czech, or Slovak, the languages in which she is fluent. In addition to teaching Czech language and courses on Milan Kundera’s novels and Milos Forman’s films she is interested in creative writing, screenwriting, and short stories and would be glad also to talk about these. karen.vonkunes@yale.edu

Martin Wand M.D., Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology, University of Connecticut and Chair, American Board of Ophthalmology, has a special interest in speaking with JE students contemplating medicine as a future career who have questions regarding the whole process, from application to ultimately which area of medicine, and whether in private practice, industry, academic, or public service, He is in full time private practice of glaucoma (an ophthalmology sub–specialty) in Farmington CT but have been an active participant in academic medicine and in national health organizations. He also would be glad to arrange for a visit to his office to see first hand what the practice of ophthalmology is like. martin.wand@comcast.net

Harry Wexler, a consultant with many years of experience in city planning and housing would be happy to talk with students who have an interest in these areas. Wexler brings a unique perspective to urban studies through his training as a lawyer and an urban planner. He served on the faculty of Yale’s Department of City Planning and as executive director and legal counsel to two nonprofit housing development corporations. During his more than 30 years as a consultant his clients have included local and national foundations, foundation intermediaries, government agencies, and community development corporations. He directed studies of urban housing policy for the National Science Foundation in the 1970s and for the Pew Charitable Trusts in the 1990s. He has evaluated housing and neighborhood revitalization programs for the Ford Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Surdna Foundation and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation. He has published several articles about housing and city planning, including one of the first evaluations of the HOPE VI public housing program, and was principal investigator and co-author of the book Housing and Local Government (1975). wexler@hwfco.com

Jeannie Suk, JE 95, would be happy to speak with students about legal education and legal academia. She is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where she has taught criminal law, criminal procedure, family law, and the law of art, fashion, and the performing arts. She previously served as a law clerk to Justice David Souter on the United States Supreme Court. She has received a Marshall Scholarship, a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her book, At Home in the Law, was awarded the Law and Society Association’s Herbert Jacob Prize. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Slate. She has given congressional testimony on law and innovation in the fashion industry. jsuk@law.harvard.edu.

Jane Mendelsohn, a novelist, would be happy to talk to students who have an interest in pursuing a career in writing or the arts in general. Jane graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Yale in 1987, and attended Yale Law School for one year before beginning a career as a writer. She wrote book reviews before publishing her first novel, I was Amelia Earhart, which became an international best-seller and was nominated for The Orange Prize. Her subsequent novels are Innocence, currently being made into a film by Killer Films, and American Music (Knopf, 2010), available in paperback from Vintage. She lives in New York with her husband and two children. Janemend@earthlink.net

Anthony Kyriakakis, JE ’98, is a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia and an Adjunct Professor at Temple Law, where he will be teaching a class on sentencing law and policy in the fall semester of 2012. He is interested in speaking with students about the criminal justice system, the decision to go to law school, and life in the City of Brotherly Love. Anthony.Kyriakakis@gmail.com

Mark Ryan was Dean of JE from 1976 through 1996, making him the second longest-serving officer in the College’s history. After leaving that post, he joined the faculty of the Universidad de las Américas in Puebla, Mexico, where he helped establish the first residential college system in Latin America. He is the author of A Collegiate Way of Living: Residential Colleges and a Yale Education and currently serves as Chair of the Jonathan Edwards Trust. He would be pleased to talk to students about any aspect of residential college life, and also about life in his hometown of Houston, where he now lives with his wife Ginger Clarkson. mark.ryan@aya.yale.edu

Kem Edwards '49 is an alumnus and Associate Fellow of JE.  After a career in insurance systems and computer processing he retired to New Haven - his birthplace - and has been auditing courses since 1996.  He has totaled about 115 so far in practically every department (not chemistry or physics) and every term finds at least twenty he's missed and wants to take.  As an undergraduate he won a varsity letter in swimming, sang with the Yale Glee Club, the Spizzwinks(?) and the Whiffenpoofs and has continued singing, most recently in a quartet with three Whiffs from the Classes of 1939 and 1942.  Singing goes on forever.  He is also a Freshman Advisor, works out in the gym daily, and can be found in SML trying to catch up on course reading.  kemedwards@aya.yale.edu

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Caroline Hendel, JE '83, wife of John Wysolmerski, JE '82, and  parent of Michael Wysolmerski, JE '12, is a Senior Associate General Counsel in the University's Office of the General Counsel.  She is interested in speaking with students who are considering careers in the law.  Caroline graduated from Harvard Law School in 1986, clerked for the  Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and worked for several years in a large Boston law firm before coming back to work at Yale. As a result, she has experience in a variety of legal practice areas.  Her focus is on employment law and discrimination law, with particular emphasis on those practice areas in the field of higher education.  She is always happy to discuss anything having to do with life at Yale and in JE.  Caroline.hendel@yale.edu

Michael Friedmann, professor (adj.) of Music in the school and department of music, has found his niche in relating music theory and analysis to performance. He would be glad to chat with students about finding the right space for music in their lives, and even about engaging in dubious battle and entering the music profession as composer, performer, academic or critic. Warning: he is an unabashed admirer of Arnold Schoenberg, and of forgotten representatives of "modernist" music who plied their craft in the last century. He also loves to talk about baseball, but NOT with Yankee fans. michael.friedmann@yale.edu

Murph Levin, JE ’66 is a financial advisor with Morgan Stanley in NYC.  After Yale, he got his MBA from Harvard (’68) and spent 37 years at a number of Wall Street firms in sales and management.  Prior to joining Morgan Stanley in early 2011, he spent four years on the development staff of Environmental Defense Fund.  He would be pleased to meet with – and hope to be a resource for - students contemplating a career in finance. murph.levin@morganstanley.com

George Syrimis, lecturer in Comparative Literature and is interested in engaging in conversation about literature, film, theater, music and the arts. He specializes in modern Greek literature with an emphasis on its interaction with Anglo-American authors. His interests range from the reception of antiquity, gender and sexuality studies, religion and literature to politically engaged music. He enjoys cooking, listening to music, and talking, preferably all at once. He is especially interested in road trips, hiking, cycling, attending theater and dance performances with students in New Haven or in New York. george.syrimis@yale.edu

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Murray Biggs has taught English, Theater Studies, and some Film since he joined the Yale faculty in 1986.  His chief interests are Renaissance English drama, and modern drama across the globe, with a special focus on the interplay between text and performance.  Every year he offers an upper-level course in acting Shakespeare. murray.biggs@yale.edu

Lisa Ford is the Associate Head of Research at the Yale Center for British Art, and a Tudor historian who specializes in court politics and administration, with a secondary field in 18th Century cultural history as it relates to the professionalization of natural history and networks of exchange.  She also runs the Yale-in-London study abroad program, and studied abroad herself, doing her PhD at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.  Lisa teaches college seminars on British Queenship, Early Modern propaganda and Fictionalizing History.  She has also served as a sophomore advisor and senior essay advisor to students in the history and history of art majors.  She’s very happy to chat with students about any of those subjects. lisa.ford@yale.edu

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David Florin is Senior Associate General Counsel and Director of Health Legal Affairs in the University's Office of the General Counsel.   He has worked for the Public Defender Service in the District of Columbia, was a  partner in three major law firms in Washington, D.C., has been active in the public service community and has served on the boards of several non-profit organizations. Although David has specialized in health care law, he has  been involved in many other specialty areas over a long and varied legal career. He has also traveled extensively throughout the world and currently volunteers his time as a member of the National Ski Patrol. He would be delighted to meet with and talk with any student who might be interested in law, travel, the non-profit world, skiing or any other topic of mutual interest.

Birgitta Johnson is a retired bank executive.  One of her areas of expertise is in financial planning and money management.  She has many years of experience in the area of wealth management.  She has also served on numerous boards of non-profit organizations in the New Haven community, both in human services and arts organizations.  She served as Director for Fellowship Place, Inc.’s Capital  Campaign which raised funds for the recently completed renovation of two major buildings at 441 Elm Street.  Birgitta would be happy to talk to students on any topic of general interest in the areas of finance, fund raising, non-profit board governance as well as the performing arts scene in New Haven. birgittajohnson@snet.net.