Our Faculty

Inspiring faculty

Below is a sampling of our dedicated faculty who inspire, lead, challenge, and encourage our scholars both in and out of the classroom. Through dynamic seminar conversation and innovative research collaboration, our faculty mentor students as they grow into the scholars and leaders of the future.

Rebecca Schindler, Ph.D., Classical Studies

She has an A.B. in Classical Languages, and Classical and Near Eastern Art & Archaeology from Wellesley College, and she earned her PhD in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Michigan. Her research interests include the archaeology of Greek colonization in South Italy and Sicily, Greek religion, applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in archaeology, and the ethics of cultural heritage. Prof. Schindler has 30 years of field work experience in the Mediterranean having worked on archaeological sites in Tunisia, Cyprus, and Turkey. She is currently the director of the Trasimeno Regional Archaeological Project (TRAP) in Umbria, Italy. Since 2015 many Honor Scholars have participated in TRAP and some have used that research as the basis for their Honor Scholar thesis project. For the Honor Scholar Program, Professor Schindler teaches a First-Year Seminar on the "Archaeology of Democracy" and a 300-level Area Seminar about "Culture in Context and Conflict."

Humberto Barreto, Ph.D., Economics & Management

He has taught a Law and Economics Honors Scholar course several times and worked closely with many Honor Scholar students over the years. Projects have ranged from colonizing Mars to how winning the NCAA men's basketball tournament affects fund raising (the answer is a lot). Most recently, he supervised a thesis that explored how blockchain technology could be used for real estate transactions (the answer is it's complicated). He believes Honor Scholar students are creative and energetic and passionate. The interdisciplinary nature of the program sends you in many different directions that it is an intellectual roller coaster ride. He says it is a joy to be involved in the Honor Scholar Program.

Andrea Sununu, Ph.D., English Literature

Andrea Sununu earned an A.B. at Mount Holyoke and an A.M. and Ph.D at Brown. Having taught at Mount Holyoke, Swarthmore, Oberlin, and the University of New Hampshire, she arrived at DePauw in 1990. She teaches introductory courses and Early Modern Subjects, including Shakespeare and Milton. Her most recent senior seminar, "Subverters and Self-fashioners: Revisiting Shakespeare's Sisters Nearly a Century After Woolf," grew out of her research on Katherine Philips (1632-64), whose works she is co-editing for Oxford UP. She has directed 15 Honor Scholar senior theses and served on the examining committees of 45 others. Of the 26 first-year seminars she has taught since 1997, 24 have been in the Honor Scholar program and two in the English Department. She received an award for Exemplary Teaching in 1993, an inaugural Distinguished Professorship in 1999, a Tucker Distinguished Career Award in 2005, and in 2017 an Oxnam Award for Service and a NACADA Outstanding Faculty Advisor award. Her most recent essay, published in the British online journal _Women's Writing_ (2017), has been republished in _Katherine Philips: Form, Reception and Literary Contexts_ (Routledge, 2018).

Deepa Prakash, Ph.D., Political Science

Deepa Prakash's research and teaching interests lie in International Relations-specifically International Security, Political Violence and Terrorism Studies and in comparative counter-terrorism policy. She is interested in non-state actors in world politics, the role of identity in International Relations and the intersection of pop culture and international relations. Her methodological interests lie in qualitative methods.
She enjoys teaching about international security – and challenging students' conceptions about what security means to them. She also likes to teach international relations theory because this helps students see that their intuitive takes on many issues and situations are actually formed by some sense of how the world hangs together. Once they see that there are fundamentally different ways to approach international relations, they can then interrogate and analyze their own takes more systematically.

Naima Shifa, Ph.D., Mathematical Sciences

The biggest part of my teaching is building connections with my students and creating a community in my classroom. So students know – right away – that they can approach me. I also want students to feel confident that it’s okay to make a mistake. It actually helps them to learn to put more effort into the subject.
My teaching is interdisciplinary; I teach math and my research interest is public health. My students are from every discipline. If you're interested in math, I will show you how to use it in real-life situations. That is my goal. So I think that the interdisciplinary approach at DePauw is a strength and makes us different from others. You can be a math person, but you can also see the beauty of math in any discipline.
The interdisciplinary approach also helps students connect with the world around them and think critically about the society they live in. It gives them the tools to be successful human beings.

Boom! The archaeological find for Honor Scholar Faculty Foss and Schindler

Rebecca Schindler and Pedar Foss have spent much of their careers digging up ancient artifacts, but the one they and their DePauw University students uncovered July 4 came as something of a surprise.

Archaeological dig turns up an unusual artifact

Honor Scholar Faculty Recognized for their contributions to community, scholarship, and the classroom

Distinguished Honor Scholar faculty members were recently honored for their contributions to teaching, community, and their scholarly work: Karin Wimbley, Associate Professor of English, Pedar Foss, Professor of Classical Studies and Chair of the Classical Studies Department, and Leigh-Anne Goins, Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Faculty members honored for teaching, community contribution and scholarly work