Faculty & Staff Directory

Edwin D. Sell is a part time lecturer in engineering at Penn State Altoona. He began teaching various engineering courses following an early retirement as a supervising engineer from Pennsylvania Electric Company in 1997. Ed is a partner in Sell, Neff & Associates, a small consulting firm specializing in electrical power systems. He has also been active in training and teaching various industrial classes through Allegeny College and the Greater Altoona Career and Technology Center. Ed is a graduate of Penn State University and holds professional engineer and professional surveying licenses in the State of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Seymour teaches a broad array of courses which involve media, anthropology, gender studies, history, and culture. Her expertise in Middle Eastern culture has been featured in recent media coverage and in academic presentations. Before coming to Penn State Altoona, she served as Managing Editor of “Egypt’s Insight,” a monthly magazine, and Chief Operating Officer of the Pinnacle Group, an import/export firm, both based in Cairo, Egypt. She also served as Vice President of Marketing and Distribution for Founoon, an Egyptian Media Consortium. Prior to that she was Assistant Site Director of James Madison University’s Archaeological Research Center. She has published a book chapter in a text entitled “Bruce Springsteen and the American Soul: Essays on the Songs and Influence of a Cultural Icon” (McFarland, 2011). She has been a strong advocate for international study and currently serves as Penn State Altoona’s Interim Education Abroad Coordinator. She has been active in the Faculty Senate at the University and College levels. Dr. Seymour has earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Binghamton University.

Thomas Shaffer received his bachelor of arts degree in economics from Ripon College and his master of arts degree in political science from Indiana University at Bloomington. Currently a doctoral candidate at Indiana, his research concerns the politcs of state-level child welfare reform in the United States. Mr. Shaffer has taught courses in introductory American politics, public policy formation, urban politics, and law, politics and the family. At Penn State Altoona, he regularly teaches introduction to American national government while serving as the College's internship coordinator.

Steven Sherrill teaches creative writing and integrative arts courses at Penn State Altoona. After receiving a Welding Diploma from Mitchell Community College (and the passing of a considerable amount of time) he went on to earn an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Fiction in 2002. His first novel, "The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break," has been published in eight languages. His second novel, "Visits From the Drowned Girl," published by Random House, US and Canongate, UK, was released in June of 2004, and was nominated by Random House for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. His third novel, "The Locktender's House," was released by Random House in April 2008. And November of 2010 saw the publication of "Ersatz Anatomy", a collection of poems. In his dream life, Steve is a ukulele busker.

Peter J Shull is a professor of engineering at Penn State Altoona. Dr. Shull has worked in the field of NDE for over 20 years while at the Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the Materials Reliability Division, at The Johns Hopkins University and at The Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Shull�s primary research focus is NDE applied to process control. He has authored numerous publications including the popular textbook entitled �Nondestructive Evaluation: Theory, Technique, and Applications� (Marcel Dekker, 2001), is a Fulbright Scholar (Argentina�2006), and is a member of the American Society of Nondestructive Testing, the American Society of Engineering Educators and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. He received a B.S. degree (1982) in mechanical engineering from Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and a M.S. (1992) and a Ph.D. (1996) degree from The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Shull is also an expert in Engineering Education.

Esther Siegfried's research focused on the role of an evolutionarily conserved signal
transduction pathway, the Wnt signaling pathway, in the specification of cell fate,
growth and differentiation in embryonic development, as well as adult testes
development of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. Dr. Siegfried's teaching includes
molecular and cell biology, genetics, development biology, mammalian physiology and
anatomy.

Megan Simpson received her Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico. She has an M.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State University and a B.A. in literature/creative writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Dr. Simpson is the author of "Poetic Epistemologies: Gender and Knowing in Women's Language-Oriented Writing." Her teaching and research interests include African American literature, multiethnic literatures of the U.S., poetry, women writers, and literary theory.

Mr. Singer came to Penn State Altoona in 2002 after a 27 year career in the Defense Intelligence business working in software and systems engineering, engineering management, programs management, and new business generation. He holds a BS and MEng in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University. His interests include the smart electric grid, voice and speech recogniton, and cybersecurity.

Lori Smith, instructor in nursing, recently completed
her master�s degree in nursing from South University
and completed her BSN at Penn State. Her professional
experience includes both obstetrical and
medical-surgical nursing at Bon Secour and Altoona
Regional Medical Centers.

Dr. Sherron Sparks has her Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, a MS in Organizational Leadership and BS in Human Resources. She is an adjunct instructor at Penn State University, (Altoona and UP) teaching classes in Business, International Business, Psychology, Sociology and Labor and Industry.

She formerly worked at Penn State University as a community liaison for the Career Services Department and as a Career Counselor. Her personal career path took her into the business realm of technology, where she served as General Manager and COO of an international technical business. In 2002 she was chosen as the only Pennsylvania, woman-run technical company, in a group of 15 companies, to accompany the Governor of Pennsylvania to Australia to study new technology trends. In 2003 she opened Sparks Business Institute, providing corporate training, coaching, counseling and business turnaround to growing and struggling businesses.

Her penchant for looking at the future trends of business and industry has thrown her into the international market as well, with respect to the growing global economy and growth. Keeping abreast of current issues and staying on the cutting edge of industrial and organizational trends. In April of 2012 her latest book, Nanotechnology: Business Applications and Commercialization was released. She is currently working on a second Nanotechnology book.

Sherron’s passions are business, people, and her fascination with Nanotechnology and its far reaching effects.

Sue Stevens received her B.A. degree in Telecommunications from the Pennsylvania State University in 1986. She is the Project Coordinator for the Entrepreneurship Program, Sheetz Fellows Program and Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE).

Rebecca Strzelec is coordinator of Visual Art Studies and an assistant professor of Visual Arts at Penn State Altoona. She received her BFA and MFA in Metals/Jewelry/CAD-CAM from Tyler School of Art, Temple University (2000 and 2002). Her work consists of wearable objects that are created via CAD and Rapid Prototyping. Her latest exhibitions include "Alternatives: Materials/Means, Contemporary Studio Jewelry" at Rhode Island College's Bannister Gallery and "Virtual/Tangible" at the Cleveland Institute of Art. She was the 2005 recipient of the Nancy Graves Fellowship at The Millay Colony for the Arts. Strzelec's work can be seen in the recent Lark Books publication "500 Brooches Inspiring Adornments for the Body," "Metalsmith Magazine" (Fall 2005 and Spring 2006), "American Craft Magazine" (Dec.2005/Jan. 2006), and the fall 2007 book "Body of Art."