CHOICES - Key Persons
Adrián López Denis is a Spanish and world history teacher at Princeton International School of Mathematics and Science. He has also taught at the University of Delaware, Princeton University, and The College of New Jersey. At the time of filming, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in international humanities at the Cogut Center for the Humanities at Brown University. His primary field of specialization is the cultural and social history of the Spanish Caribbean, with a focus on disease, medicine, and society. López Denis is a Cuban-born scholar, and earned a BA in biology as well as a BA in library science focusing on the study of colonial scientific journals. He also completed an MA in economics, with a concentration in international development, as well as an MA in Latin American studies, with a focus on the comparative study of popular religions. He received his PhD in history at UCLA and has lectured widely and published a variety of articles in English and Spanish.
His videos are used in these Choices Program curriculum units:
Job Titles:
- Director of Curriculum Development
Andy is Director of Curriculum Development for the Choices Program. Andy joined the Choices Program in 1999. Andy is a former high school teacher with experience teaching in the United States and Brazil. Andy holds a B.A. in English from Bates College and a Masters of International Affairs from Columbia University.
Job Titles:
- Education Director at the Middle East Policy Council
- Is Director of Middle East Connections
Barbara Petzen is director of Middle East Connections, a not-for-profit initiative specializing in professional development and curriculum development on the Middle East and Islam, global education, and study tours to the Middle East for American educators. She is also the director of Learning Experiences with the Abshire-Inamori Leadership Academy at Center for Strategy and International Studies. She has also served as the president of the Middle East Outreach Council.
While serving as education director at the Middle East Policy Council, Petzen created TeachMideast.org, a comprehensive resource for educators seeking balanced and innovative materials for teaching about the region. She also served as outreach coordinator at the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, starting just before September 11, 2001.
Petzen's academic interests include Ottoman and Middle Eastern history, the history and present concerns of women in the Middle East and Muslim communities, the role of Islam in Middle Eastern and other societies, relations and perceptions between Muslim societies and the West, and the necessity for globalizing K-12 education in the United States and around the world. She has taught courses on Middle Eastern history, Islam, and women's studies at Dalhousie University and St. Mary's University in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Petzen's videos are used in these Choices Program curriculum units:
Job Titles:
- Member of the Undergraduate and Graduate Student Assistants Team
Caroline Zhang is an undergraduate in the Brown|RISD Dual Degree program. She is concentrating in International and Public Affairs at Brown and majoring in Painting at RISD.
Job Titles:
- Administrative Manager
- Administrative Assistant for the Choices Program
Christine is the Administrative Assistant for the Choices Program. Christine comes to Choices with more than 20 years of experience in sales and human resources management, acquired in small independent retailers as well as Fortune 500 companies. She attended Rhode Island College, majoring in English.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Choices Advisory Board
- Associate Professor of History at Brown University
Daniel A. Rodriguez is an Associate Professor of History at Brown University. He received his PhD in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from New York University in 2013. His research examines the social history of Latin America and the Caribbean, with a focus on 19th and 20th century Cuba. His first book, The Right to Live in Health: Medical Politics in Postcolonial Havana (UNC Press, 2020), looks at how struggles over disease and health shaped the lives of Havana's residents during the transition from colonial rule to independence. His more recent work examines the history of childhood in post-emancipation Cuba, examining how new labor, political, and carceral regimes transformed the meanings of childhood as well as the lived experiences of poor children in the decades after slavery. Rodriguez is also the author of published and forthcoming articles in Hispanic American Historical Review, Cuban Studies/Estudios Cubanos, and the Journal of Social History. His work has been supported by the Woodrow Wilson and Mellon Foundations, among others. His other teaching and research interests include the history of welfare and philanthropy in the Americas, environmental history, and the history of gender and sexuality in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Denise Moller is a high school Social Studies/History teacher at the Bridge Academy Charter School in Bridgeport, Connecticut. While a Connecticut native, she lived in Louisiana for 24 years, during which time she earned her BA at Tulane University and her MA at the University of New Orleans. She taught in the New Orleans Public School system for 7 years, until Hurricane Katrina forced evacuation and relocation in 2005. After a year in Texas, she and her family moved to northern Louisiana where she continued to teach Social Studies/History. In 2016, she participated in the former Choices Teaching Fellows program, and used the additional understanding to introduce colleagues to the materials. Upon return to Connecticut in 2017, she worked at a regional magnet school and then at Bridge Academy. In 2021, she was part of the first cohort of teachers to implement the state's African-American, Black, Puerto Rican, and Latino Studies course.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Choices Advisory Board
- Senior Administrator
- Deputy Provost for Academic Affairs
Elizabeth Doherty is a senior administrator on academic and faculty affairs. She oversees academic program reviews and works with departments and senior officers on strategic planning. She also staffs the Academic Priorities Committee.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Undergraduate and Graduate Student Assistants Team
- Curriculum Assistant
Emma Gardner is an undergraduate majoring in history at Brown University. She is a contributor to the forthcoming Choices unit The Weimar Republic and the Rise of Hitler.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Hispanic Studies at Brown University
Esther Whitfield is associate professor of comparative literature and Hispanic studies at Brown University. She works on Latin American and Caribbean literature and culture, with an additional interest in modern Welsh. She has published on literary writing in the context of economic, social, and political change in post-Soviet Cuba; Welsh nationalism and emigration, Welsh-language writing in Patagonia; and borders, visibility, and surveillance in writing and art about the Guantánamo naval base.
She is the author of Cuban Currency: The Dollar and ‘Special Period' Fiction (University of Minnesota Press, 2008); editor of a critical edition of Cuban writer Antonio José Ponte's Un arte de hacer ruins (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005); co-editor with Jacqueline Loss of an anthology of Cuban short fiction in translation, New Short Fiction from Cuba (Northwestern University Press, 2008); and co-editor with Anke Birkenmaier of a collection of essays on post-1989 Havana, Havana Beyond the Ruins (Duke University Press, 2011). She has also researched war metaphors in Latin American political speech and culture and is working a book on representations of the Guantánamo naval base in art, literature, law, and politics.
Whitfield's videos are used in this Choices Program curriculum unit:
Job Titles:
- Member of the Choices Advisory Board
- Professor of History and Slavic Studies
Ethan Pollock (Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 2000) is Professor of History and Slavic Studies at Brown University and teaches courses on Russian history, the Cold War, and the history of the nuclear age. He is the author of Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars (Princeton University Press, 2006) and Without the Banya We Would Perish: A History of the Russian Bathhouse (Oxford University Press, 2019). His research and writing has been funded by Fulbright-Hays, IREX, SSRC, ACLS, and NCEEER. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at George Washington University and Columbia University (Harriman Institute) and a resident fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto, California, and at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.
Job Titles:
- Video Producer
- Video Producer for the Choices Program
Gracie Vicente (she/hers) is the video producer for the Choices Program. Gracie has spent the past year working as a videographer and editor for Brown University Media Services. Prior, she worked at Arts at Wheaton creating video and photo content for social media. In 2022, she received a B.A. in Film and New Media Studies and Visual Art from Wheaton College, Massachusetts.
Haydee Burrola is a social science educator with over 20 years of experience serving students and families in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. She is currently teaching U.S. History, Economics, and Financial Literacy at Five Keys Independence High School. She is also currently serving as DEI Coordinator, and is most excited about implementing Five Keys' Ethnic Studies program. Haydee incorporates ancestral Yoeme and Wixarika traditional wisdom and teachings into her work, and applies a pragmatic approach to the practice of restorative justice, trauma-informed care, and culturally proficient practices that are relevant, affirming, and sustaining. Haydee is honored to be a part of the Choices Educator Advisory Council.
Heidi Reinhart has taught for 28 years in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Omaha, Nebraska. She earned her bachelor's degree in Secondary Education from Oklahoma Baptist University and a Master's degree in Curriculum Development through Oklahoma State University. She has primarily taught at the high school level but did have a brief three-year stint teaching middle school.
Heidi just finished her 15 th year at Duchesne Academy in Omaha, Nebraska. Throughout her career, she has taught everything, including United States History, World History, Geography, World Cultures, History of the Holocaust, and International Relations.
Heidi and her husband, Tom, have three grown children and two dogs. Now that her kids are mostly grown, she has more time to read and travel.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Undergraduate and Graduate Student Assistants Team
- Program Assistant
Jazz Carlson is an undergraduate at Brown concentrating in History. He is currently working on a thesis that investigates the role of the American university as an extension of nationality and identity during and after World Wars I and II.
Jennifer M. La Place is a social studies teacher at Centennial High School in Columbus City Schools (Ohio). She teaches AP World History Modern, AP US Government and Politics, and U.S. History. Jennifer is a graduate of Southern Illinois University Carbondale and received her teaching credentials from Ohio Dominican University in an Urban Education Teaching program. Jennifer has participated in numerous educational programs locally, nationally, and internationally. Among these programs are Fulbright Hays (Southern Africa), exchange programs at the Ohio State University (Poland, South Africa), National Endowment for the Humanities (The Most Southern Place on Earth), The National Consortium for Teaching About Asia (NCTA/OSU), and History Speaks (OSU). Jennifer received the 2020 Helen Jenkins Award from the Columbus Education Association, the 2019 District 6 Ohio Teacher of the Year, and the 2020 NEA Foundation for Teaching Excellence (Ohio).
Job Titles:
- Communications and Marketing Coordinator
Jo is the Communications and Marketing Coordinator for the Choices Program. Prior to joining Choices in 2019, she worked as the Communications and Project Manager for the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University. She holds a B.A. in English and Journalism and an M.A. in History.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Choices Advisory Board
- Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs
- Adjunct Professor of International Studies at the Watson Institute
Jo-Anne Hart is an Adjunct Professor of International Studies at the Watson Institute and a Professor at Lesley University. Her areas of interest include Iran's internal politics and foreign policy, US-Iranian security relations, conflict resolution, negotiation, and threat reduction, Middle East political change, social context of technology, and teaching and learning political literacy.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Choices Advisory Board
- Assistant Professor of Education
- Assistant Professor of Education, Political Science ( by Courtesy ), and International and Public Affairs
Jonathan E. Collins is an assistant professor of Education, Political Science (by courtesy), and International and Public Affairs. He holds affiliations with the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy. His research focuses on race and ethnic politics, urban politics, state and local politics, and questions of democracy. His scholarship has been published in the American Political Science Review, Political Behavior, the Peabody Journal of Education, the Urban Affairs Review, and the Journal of Urban Affairs. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, the American Political Science Association's Susan Clarke Young Scholar Award, and the Brown University Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship Award. He holds a Ph.D. in political science and an M.A. in African American Studies from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) as well as a B.A. in English from Morehouse College.
Justin Aromin is a high school history teacher at North Smithfield High School in North Smithfield, Rhode Island. His primary instruction focuses on American civics and international policy. Justin has participated in numerous Choices-related conferences and has been a major advocate of the program. He developed a class specifically utilizing only Choices Program materials called Choices in the Global Perspective. This class is designed to engage and prompt secondary students to address and respond to both current and historical international issues as well as to prepare students to address these issues through various, diverse formats of civic engagement. The class surveys international challenges to human rights, highlights major examples/case studies of relationships with regard to American foreign relations, and addresses social, economic, and political realities of globalization. Justin received a B.A. in History from Rhode Island College in Providence, Rhode Island.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Undergraduate and Graduate Student Assistants Team
- Curriculum Writer
Kate Elizabeth Creasey is a Ph.D. candidate in modern Middle East history at Brown University. Her dissertation is about Turkey during the late Cold War. She also works on the history of China in the Middle East and is interested in questions about trust and mistrust in democratic institutions. Kate lived in Turkey for many years and has travelled extensively in China and North Africa. Before coming to Brown in 2018, Kate worked in documentary film and television development in Montreal.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Director of Curriculum Development for the Choices Program
Kevin is an Assistant Director of Curriculum Development for the Choices Program. Prior to joining the Choices Program in 2019, Kevin spent six years as a lecturer in U.S. History and the History of U.S. Foreign Relations at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Kevin holds a B.A. in History from Boston College and a M.A./Ph.D. in History from Brown University.
Leah (she/her) is the Digital Sales Manager for the Choices Program. Prior to joining the Choices Program in 2022, Leah worked for over a decade as a museum educator, most recently at the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. Leah holds a BA in Anthropology from the University of Michigan and an MA in Public Humanities from Brown University.
Mario Fitzpatrick is a Social Studies teacher at McQueen High School in Reno, Nevada. He has been teaching for 17 years and has taught Geography, World and U.S. History, AP Government, and We the People. In addition to being a classroom teacher, Mario facilitates learning for educators on teacher leadership and working with student teachers. Mario also serves on the boards of the local teachers union and the Northern Nevada Council for the Social Studies.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Choices Advisory Board
- Assistant Professor of History
Mark A. Ocegueda (Ph.D. University of California, Irvine) is an Assistant Professor of History at Brown University. His research and teaching specializations include Latinx History, Mexican American History, Labor, Race, Ethnicity, Recreation, and Public History. His current book project examines the development of Mexican American communities in Southern California's Inland Empire. In particular, he emphasizes the City of San Bernardino's Mexican American community, revealing its significance toward understanding the historical development of civil rights, race, urban renewal, culture, and labor in California. Prior to joining Brown University as an Andrew W. Mellon Gateway Fellow and now as Assistant Professor, Ocegueda was Assistant Professor of Mexican American History at California State University, Sacramento from 2017-2019 and the César Chávez Postdoctoral Fellow from 2019-2020 in the Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies program at Dartmouth College.
Matt Lim is a high school history teacher at the Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts in Providence, Rhode Island. He is currently teaching an interdisciplinary research seminar and a Cold War history class that uses pop culture and critical media literacy to explore the twentieth century. Prior to teaching in Providence, he served as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Malaysia. He holds an M.A.T. in Social Studies Secondary Education from Brown University and a B.A. in Asian/Pacific/American Studies and Gender/Sexuality Studies from New York University.
Maureen McCorry is a lifelong K-12 educator. Maureen has taught U.S. and world history, world cultures and geography, government, economics, and contemporary foreign policy. She recently founded TeachHistoryNow, providing professional learning opportunities for teachers to expand their subject matter expertise along with strategies to engage students by embracing controversy, complexity, and rigor. Maureen's expertise includes team teaching, project-based learning, and curriculum design that centers contemporary issues, interdisciplinary approaches, and civic engagement - from Modesto to Silicon Valley and points in-between. In 2020, Maureen launched the California Global Education Project at Stanislaus State and served as its inaugural director. As a methods professor and supervisor to credential candidates, Maureen has promoted instruction and lesson design that develops student voice and agency. Maureen serves as regional representative for Human Rights Educators USA, an ambassador for Retro Report, and has volunteered for the International Rescue Committee.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Undergraduate and Graduate Student Assistants Team
- Curriculum Writer
Michael Aoki Deruelle is a PhD student in Brown University's Department of History whose research focuses on journalism, U.S. immigration, Asian America, and U.S.-East Asia relations. His research primarily deals with Japanese diaspora in the Americas and the incarceration of people of Japanese descent during World War II. He is also the Project Director of Incarcerated Quotidian, a digital history project that uses issues of the Topaz, Utah, Japanese American incarceration camp newspaper as windows into the daily lives of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Job Titles:
- Director of Sales
- Director of Sales and Professional Development
Mimi is Director of Sales and Professional Development for the Choices Program. Prior to joining the Choices Program in 2011, Mimi worked at Clark University where she served as the Director of the Teacher Center for Global Studies supporting K12 social studies teachers throughout Massachusetts for more than 20 years. Mimi holds a Masters in International Development and Social Change from Clark University.
Pranvera "Veda" Harris is a social studies educator with a career spanning over two decades. Veda earned her bachelor's degree in History with a minor in English and Political Science from Post University, and a Master's degree in Secondary Education from the University of Bridgeport. Seeking further professional growth, she completed the requirements for a 6th Year degree in Educational Leadership, preparing herself for leadership roles in the educational system.
Rebecca (Associate Professor of History and East Asian Studies; PhD, Columbia, 2001) is a historian of modern China and Taiwan. She teaches political and popular culture, national and local history, death and memory, war, and religion and ritual. She has published Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity (Harvard, 2009) as well as works on Chinese political and print cultures and wartime and postwar society. Her current book traces the history of the displaced dead and living during China and Taiwan's twentieth century world, civil, and cold wars.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Undergraduate and Graduate Student Assistants Team
- Curriculum Consultant
Sarah Christensen is a PhD candidate in her third year at Brown University. She previously received an MPhil in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic from the University of Cambridge. Her work explores the emotional lives of enslaved women in the early Middle Ages, encompassing a broad geography from Iceland to the Islamic world, and with a particular focus on enslaved women as a mobile demographic responsible for intellectual and cultural exchange.
Before first joining Choices in 2002, Sarah was a middle school history and English teacher with experience in Kenya, Australia, and the United States. Sarah left Choices in 2008 but returned in 2022, having in the interim moved to Germany. She holds a BA in anthropology and African studies from Princeton University and an MEd from Harvard University.
Savannah Strong is the Dean of Equity and Community at The Head-Royce School in Oakland, California. She is a passionate educator who cares deeply about building school communities in which every student can thrive. Savannah's previous roles include serving as the Director of Social Justice and Equity at the Nueva School in the Bay Area and serving as both the Associate Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Upper School History Teacher at Greenwich Academy in Greenwich, Connecticut. Savannah holds a Bachelor's Degree in History from Princeton and a Master's Degree in Education Policy, Organizations, and Leadership Stanford's Graduate School of Education. She is thrilled to join the Choices Educator Advisory Council this year.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director of Digital Curriculum for the Choices Program
Susannah is Associate Director of Digital Curriculum for the Choices Program. Since joining the Choices Program in 2008, Susannah has worked on a wide range of topics and has served as the lead writer for curricula on human rights and modern Turkey. Susannah also manages Choices' Digital Editions platform. She is a 2007 graduate of Tufts University where she studied International Relations.