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Associate Dean for Academic Affairs | Master of Business Administration | reedjj@plu.edu | 253-535-7252 | Originally from California, Juanita graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a Bachelor’s Degree in World Arts and Cultures and earned her Master’s in Education (M.Ed.) from the University of Washington Seattle in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies.

Professor Emeritus and Faculty Fellow in Humanities | Religion | torvensa@plu.edu | 253-535-8106 | Samuel Torvend teaches courses in the history of early, medieval, and reformation Christianity as well as historical courses on the reform of social welfare, Christian responses to local and global hunger, Christian art and architecture, and Christian rituals.

Benson Family Chair in Business and Economic History | Department of History | halvormj@plu.edu | 253-535-8258 | Michael Halvorson teaches business and economic history courses in the Department of History at PLU, as well as classes on innovation and the history of technology.

Professor of Mathematics | Department of Mathematics | edgartj@plu.edu | 253-535-7238 | Tom grew up in Colorado and attended college at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Nonfiction, Fiction | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | Aram Mrjoian is the editor-in-chief of The Rumpus and a 2022 Creative Armenia-AGBU Fellow.

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.

Web Support Coordinator | Marketing & Communications | winterjl@plu.edu | 253-535-7436 | 1987-1988 Night Custodian in the Library. 1989 Housekeeper in Tingelstad. Came back in 1999 as a Custodian for a few months and then Shipping/Receiving Manager in the bookstore when it was in the University Center. Joined the staff of Marketing & Communication in 2005 as the Administrative Assistant in the Copy Center. 2014 Web Support Coordinator with the web team in Marcom.   .

Assistant Professor of Social Work | Department of Social Work | depps@plu.edu | 253-535-7512 | I received a dual BA in Social Work and Psychology and a Masters in Social Work from the University of Washington, Tacoma.

Fiction | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | April Ayers Lawson is the author of Virgin and Other Stories, which was named a Best Book of the Year by The Irish Times and Vice, and a Best Foreign Book of the Year by Spain’s Qué Leer Magazine.  Virgin and Other Stories has been (or will be) translated into German, Spanish, Norwegian, and Italian.  She has received The Plimpton Prize for Fiction, as well as a writing fellowship from The Corporation of Yaddo.   Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Die Welt, ZYZZYVA, and Oxford American, among others, has been cited as notable in Best American Short Stories, featured by Huffington Post, and anthologized in The Unprofessionals: New American Writing from The Paris Review.  Her nonfiction has appeared in Der Spiegel, Granta, Vice, and Neue Zürcher Zeitung Magazine, and been named a Most Popular Read of the Year by Granta.  She has taught in the creative writing programs at Emory University and the University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and now teaches at Clemson University. Mentor.  Workshops and classes in fiction. Statement: “The most important thing your writing can be is interesting.  And by that I mean interesting to you, because when you’re deeply engaged in the process, the work sparks alive.  This level of engagement involves writing into places you didn’t expect and opening to the risk of surprise.

Professor of Theatre | Theatre & Dance | smithtt@plu.edu | 253-535-7323 | Tom Smith is a playwright, director and improviser.  His plays are published by Samuel French, Playscripts, and YouthPLAYS, among others.  Monologues from his plays appear in five collections of works, and his short plays have been produced internationally.  His work has been enjoyed by audiences in cities across the U.S., including Seattle, Kansas City, San Francisco, and Chicago, as well as in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.  Tom is also the author of The Other Blocking: Teaching and Performing Improvisation(Kendall Hunt) and articles and reviews for Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, The Players Journal, and several resource books.  Tom graduated from Whitman College with a BA in Dramatic Arts and Secondary Education certification, and earned his MFA in Directing from University of Missouri-Kansas City.  He is a proud member of the Dramatist’s Guild and Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. .