Featured Speakers
This series highlights the speaker biographies of the faculty featured in the Authors@EIU events.
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Robert Corn-Revere, J.D.
Robert Corn-Revere J.D.
EIU Alum, and Chief Counsel for Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Robert Corn- Revere, will discuss his recent book “The Mind of the Censor and the Eye of the Beholder: The First Amendment and the Censor’s Dilemma”.
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Dr. R. Lance Hogan & Dr. Luke Steinke
R. Lance Hogan and Luke Steinke
Dr. R. Lance Hogan and Dr. Luke Steinke are professors in the Lumpkin College of Business and Technology and principal consultants specializing in organizational and talent development. With deep expertise in curriculum design, workforce education, and apprenticeship training, they have co-authored several books on the DACUM system and led national and international efforts to close skill gaps through strategic, competency-based training solutions.
Training Program Development: The DACUM System for Designing Occupational Training offers a comprehensive guide to developing effective, industry-driven training programs using the DACUM (Develop A Curriculum) approach. The book outlines a systematic process for conducting occupational analysis, identifying essential competencies and skills, and translating them into structured, performance-based training. It serves as both a practical manual and a strategic framework for educators, trainers, and workforce development professionals.
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Brian Keith & Laurie Taylor
Brian Keith and Laurie Taylor
Brian Keith, Dean of Booth Library, holds an MBA from UF and a MLIS from the University of Washington. His work focuses on aligning library roles, spaces, and services with the evolving needs of students, faculty, institutions and communities. His scholarship is extensive, including national and international publications and presentations, along with grants as principal or co-principal investigator. Notably, Brian served as a co-PI with Laurie Taylor on a $2 million Mellon Foundation award supporting equitable and transformative international collaboration through the Digital Library of the Caribbean.
Laurie Taylor is the Associate University Librarian for Collections & Discovery at the University of Connecticut Library, serving as a member of the senior leadership team and directly leading collections, technical services, and technology. She previously held leadership positions at the Digital Library of the Caribbean and the University of Florida. Laurie holds an MA and PhD in English/Digital Humanities, MS in Information, has published extensively, and has had over $7 million in grants.
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Dr. Mari Kita
Mari Kita
Mari Kita graduated with a Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2018. Her areas of interest include feminist criminology, crime and punishment in Japan, and criminological ethnography. She was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan.
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Dr. Niall C. Nance-Carroll
Niall C. Nance-Carroll
Dr. Niall Nance-Carroll is an instructor at of children’s and young adult literature. His research interests include children's and adolescent literature, ethics, politics, narrative theory, popular culture, and everyday life.
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Dr. Linda Ghent
Linda Ghent
Linda S. Ghent is an award-winning economics professor at Eastern Illinois University. A former editor of the Journal for Economics Teaching, Linda has presented and published many articles about teaching economics. The second edition of her book (co-authored with Alan Grant), Seinfeld and Economics: Lessons on Everything from the Show About Nothing, published in 2024.
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Dr. Amie Whittemore
Amie Whittemore
Amie Whittemore (she/her) is the author of the poetry collections Glass Harvest (Autumn House Press), Star-tent: A Triptych (Tolsun Books) and Nest of Matches (Autumn House Press, 2024). She was the 2020-2021 Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. She teaches creative writing at Eastern Illinois University. Learn more at amiewhittemore.com.
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Dr. Ryan Burge
Ryan Burge
Dr. Ryan Burge is an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University. He is the author or co-author of four books including The Nones, 20 Myths about Religion and Politics in America, and The Great Dechurching. He has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and POLITICO. He has also appeared on 60 Minutes, where Anderson Cooper called him, "one of the leading data analysts of religion and politics in the United States." He has been a pastor of an American Baptist Church for over seventeen years.
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Dr. Stephen Eskilson
Stephen Eskilson
Stephen Eskilson received his PhD from Brown University in 1995. He is the author of Graphic Design A New History (Yale UP, 3rd ed. 2019) and The Age of Glass (Bloomsbury, 2018). He is an avid sailor and pick-up basketball player.
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Dr. Julie Campbell
Julie Campbell
Dr. Julie D. Campbell is Professor of English and Coordinator of the Premodern Global Studies Minor at Eastern Illinois University. She is a co-editor of Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Her research focuses on early modern women and their transnational contexts.
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Dr. Bob Klein
Bob Klein
Bob Klein serves as Chair and Professor of Teaching, Learning, and Foundations. Klein’s recent publications include Middle of Somewhere but also Why Rural Matters 2023: Centering Equity and Opportunity. His research focus is equity broadly, and rural and Indigenous education more specifically. Klein comes to EIU after having spent nearly 18 years at Ohio University in various academic and leadership roles.
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Dr. Alexis Jones
Alexis Jones
Dr. Alexis Jones is an Associate Professor in the Teaching, Learning, and Foundations Department at Eastern Illinois University. Before earning her doctorate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she was an elementary teacher and then grant coordinator for a small, urban school district. At Eastern, she frequently teaches undergraduate courses on assessment and graduate courses on assessment and research methods and has published in numerous journals, including The Educational Forum, the Journal of Culture and Values in Education, Teachers College Record, and Issues in Teacher Education.
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Dr. Scott Meiners
Scott Meiners
Dr. Scott Meiners is a plant ecologist interested in community dynamics, species invasions, and biotic interactions. His undergraduate and Masters degrees are from Miami University (Botany), and his doctorate (Ecology) from Rutgers. He currently teaches at Eastern Illinois University and grows trees on his farm near there.
