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Assistant Professor of Biology | Department of Biology | lnervo@plu.edu | 253-535-7376 | My discipline of interest is developmental biology, which is the study of the processes needed for animals and plants to grow and develop.  Developmental Biology is an excellent field that intersects, genetics, cell biology, molecular biology, physiology and comparative anatomy to answer key organismal growth questions.

Nonfiction | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | Sherry Simpson is the author of Dominion of Bears: Living with Wildlife in Alaska, which received the 2015 John Burroughs Medal for a distinguished book of nature writing, and two collections of essays, The Accidental Explorer: Wayfinding in Alaska and The Way Winter Comes, which won the inaugural Chinook Literary Prize.

Assistant Professor of Nursing | School of Nursing | kayla.harvey@plu.edu | 253.535.7672 | After many years of experience as a pediatric nurse practitioner in the critical and acute care setting, I have expanded my practice into research in order to better understand and support families during a pediatric hospitalization.  I enjoy sharing my clinical experience and researcher insight as faculty working with nursing students at PLU. Education  PhD: University of Washington, Doctor of Nursing Science Masters of Science in Nursing (MSN): University of California, San Francisco, Pediatric Primary Care/Critical Care Nursing Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN): University of Florida, Gainesville, BSN Teaching Areas Lead faculty for NURS 360, Nursing Research course, Baccalaureate program, School of Nursing, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington. Lead faculty for NURS 702, Nursing Informatics course, Doctoral program, School of Nursing, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington. Pediatric clinical instructor NURS 380, Baccalaureate program, School of Nursing, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington. Scholarly Interests  My current research interests include exploring the psychological sequelae of the pediatric medical traumatic stress of a hospitalization on parents and young children and examining the function of the attachment system in the presence of a life-threatening event.  Current Practice Part-time faculty for the BSN and DNP programs at PLU.

Nonfiction | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | Brenda Miller edited the anthology The Next Draft: Inspiring Craft Talks from the Rainier Writing Workshop. Her most recent collection of her own work is A Braided Heart: Essays on Writing and Form. She is the author of five more essay collections, including An Earlier Life, which received the Washington State Book Award for Memoir, and she is the recipient of six Pushcart Prizes.

Associate Director of Clinical Operations / Director of Training / Counselor | Counseling Services | jfadden@plu.edu | 253-535-7206 | I am very excited to be back on the PLU campus!  I graduated from the PLU MFT program in 2012, and am looking forward to assisting the PLU community through our amazing counseling services. I have over 12 years of experience as a therapist, along with an extensive professional history within the social work and social justice field.  I have guided many people throughout the years, and feel it is my calling to be present for those who need support through this grand adventure called LIFE! My main goal is to help you cut through the minutiae of your own mind, implement tools that will help you take back the authority of your life and propel you forward on the path of your choosing.  I believe in creating “brave spaces” within the therapy room.  My style of therapy is a little different as I believe therapy does not have to be a long drawn out process, nor a deep dive, in order to make significant changes in your life.  Sometimes, you just need a place to breathe, focus and figure out your next steps.  I combine various therapy techniques, in order to challenge you, keep you focused and allow space for you to discover your authentic self.  Humor is also an important element of the process! If you are ready for deep and lasting change, then contact PLU Counseling Services and let’s get started! .

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.

Professor of English | Department of English | marcusls@plu.edu | 253-535-7312 | Lisa Marcus joined the English department after completing a PhD in English at Rutgers University in 1995.  She has been active in campus-wide diversity education and advocacy; she chaired the Gender, Sexuality, and Race Studies program for many years, and is a founding member of PLU’s Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program.  She is deeply committed to first year education and regularly teaches a popular writing seminar on Banned Books for the First Year Experience Program.  Her constellation of courses in the English department include:  The Holocaust in the American Literary Imagination; American Literature 1914-45: Race, Sex, and War; Anne Frank as a Holocaust Icon; a senior seminar on History & Memory in US Slavery and Holocaust texts; an English Studies course on Gendered Literacy; Feminist Approaches to Literature; Women Writers and the Body Politic; and a first-year seminar on Holocaust Literature developed with Professor Rona Kaufman.  Lisa also regularly teaches courses in the Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Gender, Sexuality, and Race Studies Programs. Her current research project is Snapshots of a Daughter:  A Feminist Genealogy, a critical exploration of letters between Marcus’s mother and the poet Adrienne Rich, 1979-82. You can read a poem she published about visiting Auschwitz here.     .

Poetry | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | Jenny Johnson is the author of In Full Velvet (Sarabande Books, 2017).  Her poems have appeared in The New York Times, Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, Waxwing, and elsewhere.  Her honors include a Whiting Award, a Hodder Fellowship, and an NEA Fellowship.  She has also received awards and scholarships from the Blue Mountain Center, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Yaddo.  She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at West Virginia University, and she is on the faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop, Pacific Lutheran University’s low-residency MFA program.

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.

Nonfiction, Poetry | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | Lia Purpura is the author of eight collections of essays, poems, and translations, most recently, Rough Likeness (essays) and It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful (poems).  Her honors include a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, National Endowment for the Arts and Fulbright Fellowships, three Pushcart prizes, the Associated Writing Programs Award in Nonfiction, and the Beatrice Hawley, and Ohio State University Press awards in poetry.  Recent work appears in Agni, Field, The Georgia Review, Orion, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Best American Essays.  She is Writer in Residence at The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and teaches at writing programs around the country, including, most recently, the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference.  She lives in Baltimore with her family. Mentor.