View more about the members of the Community-Engaged Teaching and Learning Fellows Program for the Academic Years 2021 – 2022 below.
Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Art
Chair, Department of Art and Design
Office Location: Calcia Hall 110
Email: kaczmarekc@montlclair.edu
Christopher Kaczmarek is a New York based artist and educator whose work spans both experimental and traditional practices, including sculpture, site specific installations, performance, video, built circuits and solar-powered objects. His work is often interactive and designed to guide the viewer towards a deeper contemplation about the inhabited environment. Recent research interests have been concerned with the act of walking as a praxis for artistic production, and the shapes in which collective and collaborative environments can be formed to become spaces where imagination and creativity are used in the service of hopeful outcomes. He has had the opportunity to present work at national and international galleries and festivals such as Art Souterrain in Montreal, Canada; the Trinity College Science Gallery, Dublin Ireland; the Byzantine Museum of Agios Germanos, Prespes Greece; the New York Hall of Science, Queens NY; Real Art Ways, Hartford CT; the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus OH; Art Museum of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chongqing, China; Art Walk Projects, Edinburgh, Scotland; and the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea.
Assistant Professor, Psychology
Office Location: Dickson Hall 119
Email: oconners@montclair.edu
Dr. Shannon O’Connor is an Assistant Professor in the Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program at Montclair State University. She completed her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Michigan State University in 2018 after completing her APA-accredited pre-doctoral internship at the UCSD Eating Disorder Center and Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego. Dr. O’Connor then completed a post-doctoral fellowship on the Midwest T32 for Eating Disorder Research at the University of Chicago.
Dr. O’Connor’s research interests center on identifying environmental risk factors for eating pathology using genetically-informed designs. She directs the BeFed(“Biological and Environment Factors underlying Eating Disorders) lab on campus. Dr. O’Connor’s research has been published in numerous high impact peer-reviewed journals, such as Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Journal of Psychiatric Research, and International Journal of Eating Disorders. Additionally, she has been recognized for her scholarship through a number of awards, including receiving the Early Career Investigator Award from the Eating Disorder Research Society in 2019. As a Community-Engaged Teaching and Learning Fellow, Dr. O’Connor is eager to partner with community organizations to understand how experiences related to access to food may impact eating behaviors and other mental health factors.
Assistant Professor, Psychology
Email: yangyi@montclair.edu
Phone: 973-655-7639
Yingying (Jennifer) Yang received her doctoral degree in Developmental Psychology from the University of Alabama. She joined Montclair State University in 2017. She is interested in learning and cognition in typically developing children aged 4-12 years old and individuals with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities. Her research has implications for designing more friendly physical environments for children and people with intellectual disabilities, and for developing training programs to improve people’s cognitive abilities. She has published in various cognitive and developmental psychology journals such as Research in Developmental Disabilities, Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, and Memory and Cognition. Her research is currently supported by the National Institute of Health.
Assistant Professor, Public Health
Email: lius@montclair.edu
Sze Yan Liu is an Assistant Professor of Public Health at Montclair State University. She teaches courses in the health systems and administration concentration. Broadly, her research uses a life-course framework to examine how social processes and policies create, perpetuate or diminish health inequities. Currently, she is studying the impact of gentrification on healthcare utilization. She is interested in incorporating a community-based component into her research and teaching.
Professor, Mathematics
Email: robertsh@montclair.edu
Phone: 973-655-7886
Dr. Helen Roberts is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics. She received her PhD in Biostatics from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her scholarly interests lie in the general area of applications of statistical tools to practical problems and her work has covered applications in genetics, population growth, energy use in obtaining food, threats to marine transportation, measurement of the gender gap, and Bayesian methods to aid in minimizing shortages of water. She collaborated with a Life Science professor to write a book on Genetics and most recently has been working on a series of “briefs” to explain the use of statistical tools to help policy makers achieve the United Nations sustainable development goals. Dr. Roberts chaired the Department of Mathematical Sciences for 16 years. Education is a key component of her work. She chaired the development and implementation of Montclair’s General Education Requirement, has developed new transdisciplinary educational programs at a variety of levels, and is currently particularly interested in ways to involve students in addressing societal problems.
Professor, Mathematics
Office: CCIS 130H
Email: lia@montclair.edu
Dr. Aihua Li is a professor of Mathematics at Montclair State University. She earned her Ph. D. in mathematics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her current research involves number theory, difference equation, matrix theory, graph theory, and mathematical education. Dr. Li has been active in servicing the local community by making presentations to local public schools on general mathematics topics such as “Beauty of Mathematics and Amazing Numbers Around Us”, “Crypto Kids”, “Contributions of American Women Code Breakers”, etc.
Dr. Li is also active in the mathematical societies at the national and regional levels. She has been an undergraduate mentor in theNational Alliance for Doctoral Studies in the Mathematical Science since 2009.She served in several national committees in the Mathematical Association of America(MAA) and was the recipient of the “2021 Sr. Stephanie Sloyan Award for Distinguished Service for the MAA-NJ”. Dr. Li was a council member for the Council on Undergraduate Research(CUR) for eight years. In 2013, she was awarded the “Faculty Mentoring Award” by Division of Mathematical Science and Computer Science of CUR. At MSU, Dr. Li served as the director of MSU’s Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program from 2015 to 2019.