Faculty & Staff Directory

Daniel Curtis Waddell, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, earned his doctorate at the University of Cincinnati. His primary area of research lies in environmentally friendly organic synthesis. His doctoral work focused on developing novel, solvent free synthetic methods using high speed ball milling. He finished his doctoral work within the past year and is excited about joining the Penn State Altoona faculty.

Patricia Jabbeh Wesley is an Associate Professor of English. She is the author of four books of poetry: “Where the Road Turns,” (Autumn House Press, 2010), "The River is Rising" (Autumn House Press, 2007), "Becoming Ebony," (SIU Press, 2003) and "Before the Palm Could Bloom: Poems of Africa" (New Issues Press, 1998). She has won several awards and grants, including the 2011 President Barack Obama Award from the Blair County NAACP, the 2010 Liberian Award for her poetry, a Penn State University AESEDA Collaborative Grant for her research on Liberian Women's Trauma stories, a 2002 Crab Orchard Award for her second book of poems, "Becoming Ebony," a 2006 College of West Africa Alumni Association Award for Literary Excellence, an Irving S. Gilmore Emerging Artist Grant from the Kalamazoo Foundation, a World Bank Fellowship, among others. Dr. Wesley has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and English from Western Michigan University, a MS in Eng. Education from Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, and a BA in English from the University of Liberia, Monrovia, Liberia. She is a regular, featured Poet/Study Abroad faculty and speaker both in the US and internationally, and her poetry has been critically acclaimed by many reviewers and scholarly publications worldwide. She has also published dozens of individual poems and memoir articles in many US and international journals and anthologies, including the "New Orleans Review," "Crab Orchard Review," "English Academy Review of South Africa," "The Prometeo Magazine," Bedford St. Martin’s "Approaching Literature: Writing, Reading, Thinking," among others. Her interests include creative writing, poetry, African, African Diaspora literature and the Liberian civil war. She is presently working on a memoir of her Liberian civil war experience.

In addition to being an associate professor of economics at Penn State Altoona, Dr. Wiens-Tuers is an affiliate in the Labor Studies and Employment Relations program at University Park. She received her Ph.D. from University of California-Riverside (UCR) in 1998. Fields of concentration are labor economics, money and banking, and political economy. Publications include articles in the "Labor Studies Journal," "Labor Family News," and "Journal of Socio-Economics," "Journal of Economic Issues," "Review of Social Economy," the "American Journal of Economics and Sociology", and a chapter in a labor text. She has served as chair of the Penn State Altoona Faculty Senate 2005-2006 and is currently serving on the Penn State University Senate, is involved in assessment efforts university-wide, an active member of the Teaching and Learning Consortium at Penn State Altoona, and has served as an officer in several professional organizations.

L.A. Wilson, II received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Oregon and has held tenured appointments at Arizona State University, University of Alaska, and Penn State Altoona where he is the assistant dean for research and sponsored programs. His areas of specialty include public policy, public choice theory, research methods, and statistics.

James Winsor’s research interests are in plant reproductive ecology. He has worked
extensively on the genetic and environmental factors affecting pollen performance. Dr.
Winsor teaches introductory biology, general botany, ecology, and economic botany.

Dr. Wollburg studies anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and depression. In the US and Germany, she has worked with colleagues on multiple clinical trials that aimed at improving treatment opportunities for patients. Dr. Wollburg is a licensed clinical psychologist and teaches courses in Introductory Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, and Clinical Psychology.

Kenneth Womack was educated at Texas A&M University (BA, 1990; MA, 1992), the Moscow Institute of Communications, and Northern Illinois University (Ph.D., 1997). He has published widely on twentieth-century literary and popular culture. He serves as Editor of "Interdisciplinary Literary Studies: A Journal of Criticism and Theory" and as Coeditor of Oxford University Press's celebrated "Year's Work in English Studies." His book-length publications include "Postwar Academic Fiction: Satire, Ethics, Community" (Palgrave, 2001), "Key Concepts in Literary Theory" (Columbia, 2001), "Mapping the Ethical Turn: A Reader in Ethics, Culture, and Literary Theory" (Virginia, 2001), "Reading the Beatles: Cultural Studies, Literary Criticism, and the Fab Four" (SUNY, 2006), "Postmodern Humanism in Contemporary Literature and Culture: Reconciling the Void" (Palgrave, 2006), "Long and Winding Roads: The Evolving Artistry of the Beatles" (Continuum, 2007), and "The Cambridge Companion to the Beatles" (Cambridge, 2009), among others.