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Assistant Athletic Director for Recreation | Recreational Sports | thompsrw@plu.edu | 253-535-7495 | Robert Thompson arrived at Pacific Lutheran University in August of 2013 as the Coordinator of Recreation and was elevated to Assistant Athletic Director for Recreation prior to the 2017-2018 academic year. Under Thompson’s leadership, student participation in intramural programming has increased by 40 percent through innovative marketing to students and partnerships with several departments on campus.

Master of Business Administration | sweberva@plu.edu | Vic Sweberg has been an Adjunct Professor in the Pacific Lutheran University’s School of Business from 2013 to the present.  He has taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate-level courses.  Prior to 2013, he had a successful career with The Boeing Company for nearly 30 years.  At Boeing, he served in many capacities and held assignments in program management, strategy development, business development, and leading a variety of innovative growth areas.   As an Executive during the latter part of his career, he formed and led a new division inside of Boeing, the Unmanned Airborne Systems (UAS) division, reporting to the President of Boeing Military Aircraft.

Visiting Assistant Professor | Department of Computer Science | pfawcett@plu.edu | 253-535-7402 | Overall I am hybrid academic/industry experienced professional with skills as an information scientist, Software Engineer, Entrepreneur, technology manager, and technologist who has worked in the technology sector for over 30+ years, mostly on Microsoft engineering teams and Microsoft Research (MSR).

Poetry | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | David Biespiel is a contributing writer at The Rumpus, Partisan, American Poetry Review, Politico, New Republic, Slate, Poetry, and The New York Times, among other publications.  He is the author of numerous books of poetry, most recently Charming Gardeners and The Book of Men and Women, which was chosen one of the Best Books of the Year by the Poetry Foundation and received the Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry.  His books of essays include A Long High Whistle: Selected Columns on Poetry and a book on creativity, Every Writer Has a Thousand Faces.  He is a member of the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle.  Recipient of Lannan, National Endowment for the Arts, and Stegner fellowships, he has taught at Stanford University, University of Maryland, George Washington University, Portland State University, and Wake Forest University, in addition to other colleges and universities.  He is a longtime faculty member in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film at Oregon State University and is the founder of the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters in Portland. Mentor.

Poetry, Nonfiction | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | Brian Teare, a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, is the author of seven critically acclaimed books, including Companion Grasses and Doomstead Days, winner of the Four Quartets Prize and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle, Kingsley Tufts, and Lambda Literary Awards. His most recent publications are a diptych of book-length ekphrastic projects exploring queer abstraction, chronic illness, and collage: the 2022 Nightboat reissue of The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven, and the fall 2023 publication of Poem Bitten by a Man. After over a decade of teaching and writing in the San Francisco Bay Area, and eight years in Philadelphia, he’s now an Associate Professor of Poetry at the University of Virginia.

Founding Director, In Memoriam | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | Judith Kitchen (1941-2014)  was the co-founder of the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program at PLU.  She is the author of four collections of essays, most recently The Circus Train (Ovenbird Books, 2014).

Fiction | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | Sequoia Nagamatsu is the author of the national bestselling novel, How High We Go in the Dark (William Morrow, 2022), a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and the story collection, Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone (Black Lawrence Press, 2016), silver medal winner of the 2016 Foreword Reviews Indies Book of the Year Award.

Lecturer - Tuba | Music | evansmp@plu.edu | 253-535-7602 | Paul Evans is the Principal Tuba of the Tacoma Symphony Orchestra and Lecturer of Tuba at Pacific Lutheran University.  An active performer in the Pacific Northwest, Paul also performs with the Northwest Sinfonietta, Bellevue Philharmonic, Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra, and with the Lyric Brass at PLU.  He studied tuba performance with Ron Munson in Seattle, Steve Call at Brigham Young University, and Gary Ofenloch at the University of Utah.  Before coming home to the Pacific Northwest, Paul was Principal Tuba of the Boise Philharmonic and played frequently with the Utah Symphony.  He performs regularly as a soloist and chamber musician and has been soloist with the Boise Philharmonic, Tacoma Symphony, and Lyric Brass. .

Dean of Assessment and Core Curriculum | Office of the Provost | rogers@plu.edu | 253-535-7985 | Scott Rogers was born in the desert and grew up on a farm but will always call the city home.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Education | Music | justin.lader@plu.edu | 253-535-7602 | Justin Lader received his PhD in music and human learning from The University of Texas at Austin, Master’s degree in viola performance with emphasis in string pedagogy from the University of Oregon, and Bachelor’s of Music from the Oberlin Conservatory.