Governing Board

The Governing Board consists of six members of Wesleyan’s Environmental Studies faculty who will work closely with the Chair and Director of the COE.  This board will help with all planning and programming as well as ensure diverse input into the running and coordination of COE. Governing Board members serve a two-year term and cannot simultaneously be a member of the Think Tank.

  • Marc Eisner

    Henry Merrit Wriston Chair of Public Policy and Professor of Government

    Read More
    Marc Eisner is the Henry Merrit Wriston Chair of Public Policy and Professor of Government at Wesleyan University. Eisner’s research addresses US political economy and public policy, with a focus on the dynamics of regulatory change. He is author or coauthor of nine books on topics ranging from the evolution of antitrust policy to environmental governance to the impact of war on state-building in the United States. His most recent book explores how regulatory design decisions and polarization combined to create problems of regulatory drift and a growing reliance on public-private partnerships and voluntary programs, with a focus on environmental protection and occupational safety and health. His current research is on the political economy of the national debt.
  • Mary Alice Haddad

    Chair, College of East Asian Studies, Associate Professor East Asian Studies and Professor of Government

    Read More

    Mary Alice Haddad is a Professor of Government at Wesleyan University.   Her publications include Building Democracy in Japan (Cambridge 2012), Politics and Volunteering in Japan: A Global Perspective (Cambridge 2007), co-edited with Carol Hager, NIMBY is Beautiful: Local Activism and Environmental Innovation in Germany and Beyond (Berghahn Books, forthcoming), and articles in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Democratization, Journal of Asian Studies, and Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.  She has received numerous grants and fellowships from organizations such as the Institute of International Education (Fulbright), the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, the Japan Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Mellon Foundation, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, and the East Asian Institute.  She is currently working on a project about environmental politics in East Asia.

  • Katja Kolcio

    Chair, Dance and Associate Professor of Dance

    Read More

    Katja Kolcio, PhD. is Associate Professor of Dance at Wesleyan University. Her research is in social somatic theory, investigating the role of physical engagement and creativity in practices of knowledge production, and about modern dance as a political art form. Katja's choreography engages the community and environment within which it occurs.  Her interests also include integrating traditional arts into contemporary performance.

    Publications:
    Movable Pillars Creating a Foundation for Dance Studies in the Academy, 1956-1978 (2010, Wesleyan University Press),
    Branching Out: Oral Histories of the Founding of Six National Dance Organizations (2000, American Dance Guild, nominated for the De La Torre Bueno Prize),
    Faking It: The Necessary Blind Spots of Understanding (2009, Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies), A Somatic Engagement of Technology (2005, International Journal for Performance Art and Digital Media),
    and book reviews in the Dance Research Journal and the New England Theater Journal.

    Choreography:
    Katja has received choreographic fellowships from the New York State Council of the Arts and Meet the Composer, and has been commissioned to create original choreography/repertory by Wittenberg College, Duke University, Ohio State University (Slavic Studies Program), Antioch College, New York University (Department of Music), and Yara Arts Group (NYC). Choreography has been presented at Judson Church, New York University Black Box Theater, St. Marks Church, The Ukrainian Museum of New York, The Bridge for Dance, La Mama Experimental Theatre, the Ukrainian Institute of America, various community gardens throughout NYC, the Honchar Museum (Kyiv, Ukraine), Kyiv Mohyla Academy (Kyiv, Ukraine) and in colleges around the United States.

    Katja received her PhD in Somatics/Cultural Studies and her MA in Dance from Ohio State University and her MA in Political Science from University of Georgia.

  • Danny Krizanc

    Professor of Computer Science

    Read More

    Danny Krizanc received his BSc from University of Toronto in 1983 and his PhD from Harvard University in 1988, both degrees in Computer Science. He held positions at the Centruum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York and Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada before joining the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Wesleyan University in 1999.  His research focus is the design and analysis of algorithms, especially as applied to distributed computing, networking and computational biology.

  • Dana Royer

    Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences

    Read More

    Dana Royer is a Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Wesleyan University. He is interested in the paleoclimate and paleoecology of terrestrial ecosystems that are millions of years old, and has published over 50 papers on these topics. He teaches courses on environmental studies, climate change, paleontology, and soils. He also serves on the Board of Control for the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. Dana has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania (BA) and Yale University (PhD).

  • Tula Telfair

    Professor of Art

    Read More
    Tula Telfair paints monumental landscapes and epic-scale vistas that are simultaneously awe-inspiring and intimate. She combines stillness with motion, solitude with universality and definition with suggestion in her bold and quiet works. An extension of the progression of landscape from the backdrops of the Renaissance through the travelogues of the nineteenth century and beyond, Telfair's paintings are fully contemporary in their inspiration and execution. They demonstrate the spirit and potency of the genre adapted to a new century. Each painting calls attention to the power and fragility of the environment. Her work has been described as a meditation on the field itself, fueled by memories of her experiences living on four continents. Telfair shares with us her private vision of the beauty and majesty of the natural world. More than a single moment in time, each scene is a continuum that develops a narrative of past, present and future, indicative of nature itself. (From the Exhibition A World of Dreams)

    She is a Professor of Art in the Department of Art and Art History at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She lives and works in New York City and Lyme, Connecticut. Born in Bronxville, NY in 1961, she grew up in Africa, Asia and Europe before settling in the United States. She received her BFA as a W.W. Smith foundation Fellow from Moore College of Art in 1984, and earned an MFA in 1986 as a Graduate Fellow from Syracuse University. She has work in public collections around the world, and has shown extensively in one-person and group exhibitions in the United States and abroad. She is represented by Forum Gallery in New York City and Los Angeles.