Faculty Biographies
Department Chair
Chris Kellett
Chris Kellett received her M.A. and Ph.D. in English at the University of Washington and currently serves as Chair of the Department of Humanities and Sciences at Cornish College of the Arts. Before joining Cornish in 2004, Chris was on the faculty at Antioch University Seattle for fifteen years where she taught courses in literature, creative writing, composition and interdisciplinary studies. She previously taught for the University of Washington, Central Washington University (Extended Degree Programs), Bellevue Community College and the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Core Faculty
Adjunct Assistant Professor John Hagman
Western Civilization, Integrated Studies
John Hagman is in his tenth year of teaching history and Integrated Studies at Cornish. He earned his BA from the University of Washington and his MA from the University of Chicago, where he is now a doctoral candidate in history. He taught at history and philosophy at Coe College in Iowa for three years, and then moved into adult literacy. He earned a second MA, this one in Education and Reading Instruction, from Seattle University. He spent the next two decades in adult literacy, teaching at community-based organizations, community colleges, reservations, maximum and medium-security prisons, and the King County Jail. He also coached a middle school Math Olympics team for four years. Ten years ago he returned to college teaching. In addition to teaching at Cornish, he has been the Education Coordinator at the I-WA-SIL Youth Program, a division of United Indians of All Tribes. I Wa Sil has become a branch of Boys and Girls Clubs of America and an affiliate of the South Wind Indian Arts and Education Foundation. I-WA-SIL is America's first branch of Boys and Girls Clubs serving Native American young people living in an urban area. He is the author of many texts, learning materials, and articles on adult literacy. He is now developing a learning taxonomy for history for application to global citizen initiatives.
Assistant Professor Erica Howard
Physical and Natural Sciences, Environmental Studies, Quantitative Reasoning
Erica Howard teaches courses primarily in interdisciplinary environmental studies. She earned her B.A. in Chemistry and International Environmental Studies from Cornell University. She also received an M.S. in Land Resources and Forestry from University of Wisconsin – Madison, and will soon complete a Ph.D. in Environment and Resources, also from UW-Madison. In 2006 she earned a graduate certificate in the integration of research, teaching, and learning. She has strong interests in the human side of environmental issues, and in fusing artistic and scientific perspectives to advance our understanding of our environment. She has life-long interests in promoting public science literacy. She enjoys international travel, cross-cultural communication, and learning from and working with diverse types of people. She has studied abroad in Australia, Canada, Brazil, and Russia. She has also worked and performed as a modern dancer, choreographer, and pianist, and has occasionally taught modern dance, hatha yoga, and piano. Erica looks forward to new opportunities to bring the arts and the sciences together.
Professor Kimball MacKay
Integrated Studies, Literature, Creative Writing (Poetry, Fiction, Creative Nonfiction)
Kimball MacKay teaches Integrated Studies, Literature, Creative Writing (Poetry, Fiction, Creative Nonfiction) at Cornish. He has received three grants from the Seattle Arts Commission's Seattle Artist Program and the Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship. His poetry has been widely published in such journals as Arts & Letters, The Crab Creek Review, The Journal, Spoon River Quarterly, Fine Madness, Willow Springs Review, Green Mountains Review, The Seattle Review, and others. He has been the Associate Editor of a scientific journal, Limnology and Oceanography, and has taught in California's Poets-in-the-Schools program, the University of Washington Extension program, Seattle Central Community College and City College in Bratislava, Slovakia. In 1999, he received the Cornish Teaching Excellence Award, and in 2003, he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar, teaching American literature in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He has an MFA from Vermont College.
Professor Raymond Maxwell
Western Civilization: Antiquity, Western Civilization: Medieval, Western Civilization: Modernity, Western Civilization: Intellectual History
Raymond Maxwell has been on faculty since 1986. He received his Master's Degree from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. A recipient Fulbright scholarships (The Netherlands, 1989 and Poland/Czechoslovakia, 1992) and several National Endowment for the Humanities summer fellowships, he has also taught, been guest lecturer, and presented papers at a number of universities in the United States and Europe. Raymond Maxwell has done further studies at Sacred Heart University (Connecticut), the University of Washington and Herzen University (Saint Petersburg, Russia).
Adjunct Faculty
Adjunct Instructor Dr. Cori Adler
Integrated Studies
Dr. Cori Adler has a B.A. from Wesleyan University in Interdisciplinary studies, an M.A. from the University of Colorado Creative Writing program, and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington in Literature/Cultural Studies. Cori has published poetry, short stories, articles and creative non-fiction in the U.S. and Canada and one chapbook, The Toothed World. Cori teaches in the Integrated Studies program at Cornish and at Antioch University Seattle and has taught previously in Colorado, Washington, Massachusetts and Greece. Her classes study interactions between society, culture and creative expression. They heavily emphasize discussion, collaboration and writing (both creative and academic).
Adjunct Instructor Marc Dombrosky
Integrated Studies
Marc Dombrosky is a visual artist based in Tacoma. Recent projects have been featured in group exhibitions at Platform Gallery (Seattle), Davidson Contemporary (Seattle), as well as the traveling exhibition "Skirting the Line: Conceptual Drawing" (organized by DePauw University). He is a recipient of a 2005 Tacoma Artist Initiative Program grant and 2006 Artist Trust GAP Grant. He has instructed classes for Metro Parks Tacoma, Pratt Fine Arts Center, The Ohio State University, and Academie Voor Beeldende Vorming (Tilburg, Netherlands). He holds an MFA from The Ohio State University.
Adjunct Instructor Anita Feng
Continuing Studies Instructor: Writing Poetry
Anita Feng received a BA and MFA from Brown University in English Literature and Creative Writing, respectively. Her major writing awards include an NEA grant, an Illinois Arts Council grant, a Washington State GAP award and the Pablo Neruda Prize (for poetry). Publications include two books of poetry, Internal Strategies, published by the University of Akron Press, 1995, and Sadie " Mendel, winner of the Backwaters Press Prize, 2005. Individual works have been published by Nimrod, Ploughshares, Black Warrior Review, North American Review, Northwest Review, and Primavera among others. In addition to teaching at Cornish, Anita works as a self-employed potter making musical instruments out of clay.
Adjunct Instructor Himanee Gupta-Carlson
Continuing Studies Instructor: The Rise and Fall of Empires, Culture, Power & Privilege
Himanee Gupta-Carlson is completing her doctorate in political science at the University of Hawai'i. Her dissertation, "No Place to Call Home: Remapping America's 'Middletown' from a South Asian Perspective," narrates a story of Muncie, Indiana, the "typical" all-American community where she grew up, from the perspective of immigrant and American-raised South Asians who have made the town their home since the mid-1960s. Himanee has taught political science and women's studies at UH, and is enjoying her first semester in the Humanities & Sciences Department at Cornish. A longtime journalist and freelance writer, her work has appeared in The Seattle Times
Adjunct Instructor Nadya Zimmerman
Integrated Studies
Nadya Zimmerman is a cellist and composer who received her PhD in Musicology from the University of California Los Angeles with a focus on the Sixties Counterculture, and her undergraduate degree from the University of California Berkeley in English and Mathematics. Her scholarly work on topics ranging from African American slave spirituals and resistance, narrative in the works of James Joyce, and countercultural ideologies has been published in Music Research Forum, The Journal of Modern Literature, and American Music and she is currently completing a book on the late Sixties counterculture for the University of Michigan Press. In addition to being an experienced adult school English as a Second Language instructor and high school math/basic college math instructor, Nadya Zimmerman has taught music history as well as interdisciplinary 20th-century humanities/science courses for the past six years at the University of California Los Angeles, San Francisco State University, Linfield College, Foothill College, Antioch University, University of Puget Sound, and most recently here at Cornish College of the Arts.