Faculty Promotions and Tenure Approved at St. Norbert College

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From St. Norbert College, March 10, 2020
by Mike Counter, mike.counter@snc.edu, 920-403-3089

The following faculty members were approved by the board of trustees for tenure and promotion, emeritus and sabbatical status at St. Norbert College.
Tenure and promotion:
Debbie Kupinsky to associate professor of art

Professor Debbie Kupinsky received her B.A. in English from Syracuse University in Syracuse, N.Y.; her B.F.A. in fine arts from the Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City, Mo.; and her M.F.A. in studio art from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, La. Before joining the art discipline and St. Norbert College, Kupinsky taught ceramics and foundations at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., and at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Previously, she taught in Mississippi and Southern California. Her teaching emphasizes experiential and project-based learning and is informed by her investigation of materials in her scholarship. She currently teaches sculpture, ceramics, studio art foundations and global art history.
Kupinsky works primarily in ceramics, wood and found materials. Her sculptural works explore how objects and images mediate memory and experience as they engage with everyday objects, nature forms and repeating motifs. She has been a resident artist at nationally known artist residencies such as the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in 2009 and 2012; the Red Lodge Clay Center in Red Lodge, Mont., in 2019; The Appalachian Center for Crafts in Smithville, Tenn.; and the Arts in Industry program at Kohler in Sheboygan, Wis., in 2014. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Long Beach Museum of Art, the Kohler Corp. and The Archie Bray Foundation, among others. She shows her work nationally, internationally and regionally at venues such as the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, La.; the San Angelo Museum of Art in San Angelo, Texas; and, most recently, at the Bloomington Art Center in Bloomington, Minn. She has curated and organized multiple thematic exhibitions and is involved in the professional organization, Foundations in Art-Theory and Education, and is an active member in the National Council on Education in the Ceramic Arts. She maintains a studio in Appleton, Wis.


Carrie Larson to associate professor of history

Carrie Larson is a Latin Americanist historian. Her research focuses on modern cultural history, asking questions about how people have built meaning into their own lives through everyday practices like sports, science and the media. She is the author of “Our Indigenous Ancestors: A Cultural History of Museums, Science and Identity in Argentina, 1877-1943” (Penn State University Press, 2015), and editor of “The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina’s Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History” (University of New Mexico Press, 2020). Larson grew up in the Milwaukee area, attended Lawrence University, and earned her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. At St. Norbert, Larson teaches classes on Latin American history, ranging from the Classic Maya to the present day and focusing on topics including revolutions, borderlands and U.S.-Latin American relations.
Michelle Schoenleber to associate professor of psychology

Michelle Schoenleber joined the faculty at St. Norbert College in 2015. She received her B.A. in psychology from Marquette University in 2006 and completed her Ph.D. in clinical/community psychology, with a graduate minor in personality psychology, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2013. She completed her pre-doctoral internship and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and the G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Jackson, Miss. At St. Norbert College, Schoenleber teaches courses in clinical and personality psychology, as well as writing-intensive general psychology and professional issues. In addition to her work at the college, Schoenleber also provides assessment and therapy services at a local outpatient mental health clinic, remaining an active practitioner in her field of study and in her area of teaching. Schoenleber’s program of research in the Personality, Emotion and Psychopathology Research (PEPR) Lab focuses on the motivational nature of emotion and its connection with personality in the onset and maintenance of psychopathology. Much of her research examines how shame – a self-conscious emotion that people experience when unwanted outcomes are attributed to personal inadequacies – contributes to a wide range of mental health outcomes (e.g., self-injurious behavior, social anxiety). She has worked to develop a transdiagnostic, cognitive-behavioral treatment for shame, with the first study reporting its effectiveness published in 2018. Numerous St. Norbert College students have gained valuable research experience in the PEPR Lab, assisting with Schoenleber’s studies and designing their own. Students have been successful in presenting their work at regional, national and international conferences, with some receiving awards for their work. Several students have been recipients of internal grants to help fund their research. Many recent graduates from the lab have gone into master- and doctoral-level training programs, while others have taken positions with organizations that serve the community.

Erica Southworth to associate professor of education

Erica Southworth earned her master’s degree in education from Viterbo University and her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee after serving as a high school social studies teacher for eight years. At SNC, Southworth instructs courses in social studies methods, secondary-education methods, and adolescent psychology and methods for second- and third-year students. Her research focuses on women’s agency in social studies textbooks, specifically on promoting gender-balanced perspectives, and she has collaborated with outstanding SNC undergraduates in this work. In her faculty-undergraduate research studies, Southworth and her education research assistants have presented at a national conference and have co-published two articles in peer-reviewed journals.

During her time at SNC, Southworth also has initiated and continues to coordinate the SNC Knight Educator Program (KEP). KEP offers pre-service teachers the opportunity to complete non-academic trainings pertinent to their future full-service teaching profession (i.e., K-12 teachers) prior to graduation and getting certified to teach. Southworth works with staff and administrators in various SNC campus departments, such as Career & Professional Services, Health Services and Campus Safety, who all volunteer their time to host training sessions for students. The types of training hosted include topics such as active-shooter, CPR, sexual assault awareness, verbal de-escalation and bloodborne pathogens. It is the only program of its kind in the state.

Abby Trollinger to associate professor of history

Trollinger joined the St. Norbert College faculty in the fall of 2014, after completing her Ph.D. in United States history at Northwestern University. While at Northwestern, Trollinger studied U.S. urban history, immigration history and gender studies.

At St. Norbert, Trollinger teaches introductory courses on United States history, from before the arrival of European explorers into the 21st century. At the advanced level, Trollinger teaches U.S. history courses on immigration and ethnicity, as well as the history of women and gender. She is also a firm advocate of bringing research and teaching into conversation with practice. In Archival Research Methods, students engage in archival research on the Great Depression. In Poverty, Charity and Welfare in U.S. History, students complete research and reading on the history of poverty in the United States, while also volunteering in a Green Bay anti-poverty agency (like St. John’s Homeless Shelter).

In research, Trollinger studies American urban and social welfare history and especially the ways that reformers and workers articulated their beliefs and goals to impact social welfare policy. Her research has been published in the “Journal of Social History as well as in the Routledge History of the Twentieth-Century United States.” Her first book, “Becoming Entitled: Relief, Unemployment, and Reform During the Great Depression,” examines settlement-house workers, policymakers and jobless laborers during the 1930s. “Becoming Entitled” is scheduled for publication in the fall of 2020 by Temple University Press. Trollinger also is interested in relationships between social workers and their clients, which were multifaceted and often highly contested. Her second book project, tentatively titled “The Caseworker,” examines caseworkers, investigators and friendly visitors throughout United States history.


Emeritus/emerita:

Stuart Korshavn, associate professor of psychology

Susan Landt, associate professor of education

Jim Neuliep, professor of communication and media studies

Dave Pankratz, associate professor of computer science

Larry Thorsen, associate professor of mathematics