Faculty & Staff--Profiles

SALAH BASSIOUNI, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
UW-Waukesha
E-Mail: sbassiou@uwc.edu

Coming from Egypt, the mother of seven thousand years of rich civilization, I feel honored and obligated to spread knowledge and value diversity. Let me briefly tell you my story. I received my bachelor's degree in Sociology and Psychology in 1967 from Ain-Shams University in Cairo, Egypt. In 1969, I was awarded a two-year fellowship at the United Nations Institute for Economic Development and Planning in Dakar, Senegal, from which I obtained a graduate diploma in Social Development in 1970. In 1973, I received my Master's degree in Sociology from Ain-Shams University. I went on to receive my first Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from Alexandria University in 1977. I taught at Ain-Shams University from 1973 to 1981.

In 1981, I was invited to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, as a visiting scholar for two years. While conducting research, I decided to join their competitive Ph.D. program. I completed my course work and comprehensive exam in 1984. I accepted a teaching position at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I taught and conducted research there from 1984 to 1989. I returned to Northwestern University to submit and defend my dissertation, and received my second Ph.D. in Sociology in 1991. I joined the UW System in 1992.

My guiding principles in the past thirty years of my career have been dedication, integrity, and hard work. I have published three books and a number of articles in both Arabic and in English.  I have presented more than a dozen scholarly papers at annual professional meetings and conducted several field research projects in both Sociology and Anthropology. I have written and received numerous grants. I have also received several awards, including Teacher of the Year Award in 1994, and the Arthur Kaplan Fellowship in 1998.

I have been teaching a variety of courses at the UW Colleges in both Anthropology and Sociology. Among these courses are Introduction to Sociology; Sociology of Race and Ethnicity; Contemporary Social Problems; Marriage and Family; Crime and Criminal Justice; General Anthropology; Cultural Anthropology; Cultures and Peoples of the Middle East. I have also been active in the integrated studies and learning community clusters. I started and taught the first Learning Community Cluster in the UW Colleges in the fall of 1993. My areas of interest include racial and ethnic relations, cross-cultural studies, interdisciplinary studies, and Middle Eastern studies. I am currently working on two projects. The first one focuses on the performance and needs of the non-traditional students. The second project deals with racial and ethnic stereotypes in small towns.

My teaching philosophy stems from my experience and training. I bring the global perspective to the classroom and use the cross-cultural approach to explore with my students the world's diverse cultures, their similarities and differences, each with its own unique beauty and dignity. I encourage my students to use their rational reasoning and enhance their critical thinking in this flooded information age. In addition, I love innovation and use instructional technology for more effective teaching and learning. I use different teaching strategies and techniques to meet my students' needs and to involve them in the teaching/learning process. These techniques include active participation, group projects, field trips to prisons and courtrooms and other institutions, in-class presentations, and field assignments in the community. For me, teaching has been a rewarding intellectual experience. I enjoy teaching my students as well as learning from them. I inspire them to advance and make a positive difference in their own lives and the lives of others.

RENEE M. GRALEWICZ, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Sociology
UW-Barron County
E-Mail: rgralewi@uwc.edu

I  graduated in 1997 from Washington State University with a doctorate in Anthropology. While there, I received a Candian-U.S. Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research in Canada, exploring Canadian Aboriginal policies and health, mainly within Treaty #7 area. It was a wonderful experience where I learned to better appreciate our Canadian neighbors, their joys and their struggles.

I am now here at UW-Barron, and loving every minute. I began teaching here in September, 1997. Because the class size is relatively small, I get to know more of and more about the students. I encourage lively debates in class (usually to ensure the class stays awake). My primary emphasis in teaching is convincing students that anthropology and sociology are pertinent to their life; to put concepts into practical use; into their reality. It is my attempt at integrating the "School of Life" with the "School of the Academy."

My major interests include Medical Anthropology; Ethnography; Native Americans; and Gender Studies. My research interests involve health care access and usage among marginalized peoples, namely Native Americans in both Canada and the U.S. There is significant differences in Native American/Aboriginal-federal government (U.S./Canadian) relationships, especially with reference to health care. Connecting politics, prejudice, and health care issues makes for very interesting work.

PHILIP G. GROTH, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Sociology
UW-Rock County
E-Mail: pgroth@uwc.edu
Campus Dept. Web Page: http://rock.uwc.edu/sociology
Web Page: http://rock.uwc.edu/pgroth

My background and experience in Sociology is diverse. I obtained my bachelor's degree in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1967 with a specialization in correctional administration. I turned to Rural Sociology in graduate studies. For five years I worked as a research assistant and social science analyst with Prof. Glenn Fuguitt of the UW Madison Dept. of Rural Sociology and Mr. Calvin Beale, Senior Population Analyst with the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. The main focus of my graduate work was relating changes in the economic bases and racial compositions of the U.S. counties to their historic population changes.

I have published on these subjects and presented papers at national sociological meetings. Among specific topics were expansion of ghettoes in a sample of U.S. cities and the demographic contexts of election of black officials in the South. While teaching at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, I taught courses in urban and industrial sociology, in human ecology and demography, in social organization and methodology. I worked on several projects concerning fishing and marine transportation that were funded through the L.S.U. Center for Wetland Resources. As such, I am an advocate for using sociological data and analysis in connection with federal regulatory issues. I was the 2000-2001 recipient of the UW Colleges Barrington/Musolf Faculty Research Award for an article I published in The Journal of Applied Sociology (Vol 18, No. 1, 2001) entitled, "The Human Ecology of Louisiana Shrimping."

At the UW-Rock, I have taught a variety of introductory sociology courses--from Introductory Sociology; Marriage and the Family; American Minority Groups, to World Population and the Sociology of Health and Illness. I strive to teach my students critical thinking skills (i.e. logical thinking) which they can apply to their study of Sociology, or any other field of endeavor. Visit my Sociology Home Page at UW- Rock for more information about my teaching philosophy and goals. I have remained an active Sociologist--reviewing texts for commercial publishers, presenting papers at professional meetings, and on occasion, publishing articles in professional journals. I try to integrate my demographic interests and training with interests in social problems and criminology. Among my current projects, I am developing readings for introductory sociology (with a global twist, and for educational assessment programs), and for crime and criminal justice. I would like to publish these anthologies. In the department, I am the Coordinator of Assessment of Instruction 1999-present.

RONALD GULOTTA, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Sociology
UW-Waukesha
E-Mail: rgulotta@uwc.edu

My professional specialities are in areas of criminology, the family, and research methods. These specialities include Juvenile Delinquency; Theoretical Criminology; Law, Society, and the Criminal Justice System; Juvenile Social Problems; Family and Social Welfare Policy; and Research Methods.

My educational background has great variety. I completed by bachelor degree at Marquette University with a major in theology. I then obtained a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I chose to seek my doctorate in sociology and to pursue my final degree again at a Jesuit University. I obtained my Ph.D. in Sociology from Loyola University of Chicago in 1994. My work experience, although varied in focus, has always been in the education field. I began work as a high school teacher and pursued my Ph.D. so as to move to teaching at the college level. Prior to returning to Wisconsin and taking my position within the UW College system, I was an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Work for five years at Murray State University in Murray, KY.

Teaching is my first love and my great passion. Sociology affords me a chance to impact students' lives through skills and insights applicable to their private and professional lives, and by encouraging them to think both critically and philosophically. Sociology also allows me to work and relate with faculty from many other disciplines in the UW Colleges. I look forward to opportunities to build IS courses and web courses with my collegues.

In addition to teaching, I have participated in a variety of research endeavors. I have conducted research and presented papers on the Impact of Adult Day Care in a Rural Community; the Impact of Marijuana Cultivation on Economic and Social Relations in a Rural Community; the Reactions of Criminal Justice Systems to local Marijuana Cultivation; and the Factors Contributing to readmission to a State Mental Hospital. I have also worked with theorist John Braithwaite, exploring options for testing his Reintegrative Shaming theory. My main focus of research remains studying the factors contributing to juveniles' abilities to desist from delinquent behavior. I currently have an article under review for publication on preliminary findings regarding supports for desistance.

WAVA G. HANEY, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
UW-Richland
E-Mail: whaney@uwc.edu

My major areas of interest are Gender, Work and Family: U.S., Latin America, Western Europe; Social Stratification, Race and Ethnic Relations: U.S.; Social Change and Development in Latin America; and Theory.

I have edited two books, including Women and Farming: Changing Roles, Changing Structures (with Jane Knowles), Westview, 1988; and Agriculture and Natural Resources: Planning for Educational Priorities for the Twenty-first Century (with Donald Field), Westview, 1991. I have published chapters in seven edited books and published seven refereed journal articles. In 1993, I was the receipient of the U.W. System's Underkofler Excellence in Teaching Award. In 1998, I was the President of the Wisconsin Sociological Association.

During the past 28 years, I have taught Sociology, Cultural Anthropology; Women's Studies; Urban Studies and Interdisciplinary courses in the UW Colleges and at UW-Green Bay, and as a teaching assistant and visiting professor at UW-Madison. I have taught classes in standard classrooms, in a room at a shopping mall and at a state and a federal correctional facility. Some of my most interesting and challenging classes have been as part of a team of instructors. But regardless of the setting and the responsibility, I have had fun!

I find it exciting to learn about my students and their experiences. I hope that the information and understanding of the social world that come from the courses I teach will help my students appreciate their experiences and be active participants in their society. I try to challenge my students to think and write more clearly and to ask critical questions of what is presented to them. In each course, I try to include a data gathering and a data analysis experience. My students have observed garage sales, analyzed the impact of McDonald's on many aspects of U.S. culture, recorded stories of immigrant women, and their own family history from an ethnic/religious viewpoint. Three of my sophmore students did independent research projects that they presented as papers at a Wisconsin Sociological meeting. One received first place and another had her paper published in a journal. Regularly, I take my students to jail and send them to the courtroom!

In the 1960's, I lived for a year in a peasant village in the Colombian highlands east of the capital, Bogota, and studied work, family and migration patterns of men and women remaining in the countryside and those settling in the cities. In the early 1970's, I lived and studied for a year in Mexico, and, in the early 1980's, co-directed a research training and research project in the central highlands of Ecuador. Most recently, I spent my sabbatical year at the University of Trondheim, in Norway, doing research on work and gender with members of the Rural Research Center of the Institute of Sociology. I was a founding member of an interdisciplinary group of scholars (mainly historians, sociologists and anthropologists) that hold national and international conferences on rural women. I have been active in several other professional organizations.

CHRISTOPHER HAYS, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
UW-Fond du Lac
UW-Washington County
E-Mail: chays@uwc.edu

My educational background includes a B.A. from the University of Virginia and an M.A. and Ph.D. from SUNY-Binghamton. I have conducted both academic and cultural resource management-related field and laboratory research in archaeology throughout the Eastern United States. I have also participated in excavations on Paleolithic and Mesolithic period sites in Germany. During the past five years I have been at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge where I was the Regional Archaeologist for the southeast part of the state, and I was an adjunct faculty in the Dept. of Geography and Anthropology.

I have taught undergraduate students in both the field and the classroom at the University of Virginia, SUNY-Binghamton, and Louisiana State University. In the fall of 2000, I began teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Fond du Lac and Washington County, and I am thoroughly enjoying the experience. In addition to my college teaching, I have delivered over a hundred lectures and presentations to the public ranging from kindergarten to high school students and library associations to amateur archaeological societies.

My research focuses on mortuary ceremonialism and long distance exchange systems in the Eastern Woodlands from the Late Archaic to the Middle Woodland period. In particular, I have conducted extensive research in the Ohio Valley Early Woodland Adena culture. Currently, I am researching the origins of ceramic production and exchange in the Poverty Point culture of the Lower Mississippi Valley. I have publications printed or accepted in the Journal of Archaeology Science; Tennessee Anthropologist; Louisiana Archaeology; and the Encyclopedia of Prehistory.

ANN HERDA-RAPP, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Sociology
UW-Marathon County
E-Mail: aherdara@uwc.edu

I am a product of the UW System and I am thrilled to be returning. I recently completed my dissertation in Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Previous to that, I attended Southern Illinois University at Carbondale where I received my Master's degree in Sociology. I earned my undergraduate degree in education and sociology at UW-Whitewater.

I have taught for many years at various levels, first as a high school teacher. While in graduate school, I taught for the University of Illinois, as well as for Lewis University and Concordia University in the Chicago area. As an adjunct professor, I taught a broad range of courses: Social Problems, Education and Society; Contemporary Family Patterns, Sociology of Gender; and Cultural Diversity. My areas of research interest, as suggested by my dissertation ("Women's Activism in the Toxic Waste Movement: The Dialectics of Gender and Activism"), include gender, environmental sociology, and social movements. I hope to continue my research on gender and the environmental movement because I enjoyed my dissertation immensely. But, my true love is teaching. It is the reason I pursued the Ph.D.: I wanted to teach Sociology at the University level.

I am thrilled to be a faculty member at the UW Colleges and UW-Marathon County and enjoy my life in Wausau. The hard work has indeed paid off!

ANNETTE KUHLMANN, Ph.D
Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
UW-Baraboo/Sauk County
E-Mail: akuhlman@uwc.edu
Web Page: http://baraboo-sauk.uwc.edu/Anthro_Soc/index.htm

My main areas of interest include Race and Ethnic Relations; American Indians; Gender Studies; Social Inequality; Social Theory; Western Europe; Qualitative Research methods; and Collaborative Anthropology.

I come from Germany where I completed the equivalent of an M.A. degree in Education at the Universitat Hannover in 1980. I attended the University of Kansas in Lawrence, and received an M.A. (1984) and a Ph.D. (1989) in American Studies and an M.A. (1991) and a Ph.D. (1998) in Sociology.

I have published several articles on Native American and gender issues as well as in Social Theory. I presented papers at regional conferences on a variety of topics. Currently I am working on a publication on American Indian gaming. In the past, I taught classes in a variety of settings beside the UW Colleges---in German schools, for an American Indian tribe (the Kickapoo), as an Instructor at the University of Kansas, and in a federal correctional institution. I particularly like teaching in a team with an instructor from another discipline.

Teaching at the UW-Baraboo means that I can offer courses that cover a wide variety of topics, and the students I encounter come from very different backgrounds and life experiences. I enjoy discussing with students in my classes how their experiences relate to the social world at large, and how that world, in turn, shapes their lives.

CATHERINE L. LEONE, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Sociology
UW-Manitowoc
E-Mail: cleone@uwc.edu

I completed my doctoral work in Anthropology at Washington State University. Subsequently, I conducted postdoctoral research at the Carolina Population Center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My major professional interests include anthropological demography; marriage, family and kinship; and reproductive issues.

I teach General Anthropology; Cultural Anthropology; Women in Cross-Cultural Perspective; Indians of North America; Introduction to Sociology; Sociology of Marriage and the Family; American Minority Groups; and Feminism Equality and Public Policy. In 1998, I was awarded the Arthur Kaplan Fellow in the UW Colleges.

The thing I like best about teaching at UW-Manitowoc is the wide range of topics I am free to explore through my array of courses. My "repetoire" has grown over the years, so that now I teach topics that range from the evolution of Homo sapiens to the new feminism of the 1990's. And, I enjoy showing students how to make the connections among the ideas and events they study in their own array of courses.

RONALD D. LIPPI, Ph.D.
Department Chair
Professor of Anthropology
UW-Marathon County
E-Mail: rlippi@uwc.edu

While working toward my bachelor's degree around 1970 in aerospace engineering, I took a little anthropology to fulfill my general education requirements. I have been hooked ever since (though I did get my engineering degree and even worked a little in that profession).

My specialty is South American archaeology, and I got my Master's and Ph.D. degrees at the UW-Madison in the early 1980's. I have had a few research projects in Ecuador, including a big, multi-year project currently in progress. I've spent over eight years, off and on, living in Ecuador, and my wife is Ecuadorian. We go back there often with our two kids so I can continue my research, and they can be with their family.  I've spent the last two summers excavating an Inca fort in my research area and expect to return this coming summer.

If that sounds rather glamorous, I suppose it is, but most of my time I dedicate to teaching freshman and sophomore anthropology courses at the UW-Marathon. I find the entire field of anthropology, not just archaeology, so immensely interesting and beneficial that I put a lot of effort into sharing with my students the excitement and the wonder. To me anthropology is not a discipline so much as a way of life.  I'm not the most popular professor around, in great part because I'm fairly demanding; I always challenge my students to do better than they think they can. Very few students breeze through my classes, but I like to think that they all become better scholars and better world citizens by having studied with me. Hey, no pain, no gain, right? This isn't to say that my courses are extremely difficult or that students don't like me. Nearly all my students indicate they are satisfied with my courses.

I stay active with writing papers and articles and my third  book on Ecuadorian archaeology was published this year. This third book is the first one I've written in English (though that is my native language) and is intended as a supplement to a textbook in an introductory archaeology course.   In order for me to teach anthropology effectively, I feel it's important to be an active researcher in my field. That way I can share my goals, methods and results with students in a way that they can't get out of textbooks. I also am very busy in a variety of campus events and committees on campus or in the state-wide Anthropology and Sociology Department.

If you are interested in Anthropology but a little unsure about majoring in a field which doesn't seem to be very marketable, it turns out there are few better choices around for an undergraduate major, regardless of what career you end up in.

If you're curious about my last name, it's Italian. My father was first-generation Italian-American, and my mother was first-generation Norwegian-American. I grew up in a small town in Minnesota. In some ways I suppose I've come a long way from my roots, but in another sense I've barely moved. I find my professions--college professor and archaeologist--to be enormously satisfying. What I really am is a lifelong student, except I actually get paid for it (though not all that much).

MICHAEL P. NOFZ, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
UW-Fond du Lac
E-Mail: mnofz@uwc.edu

I completed my undergraduate education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, received my M.A. from Northern Illinois University, and received my Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

My major professional interests include the problems of substance abuse; Native Americans; and race and ethnic relations. I authored a text book entitled, Sociology and You: An Applied Approach, by Stipes Publishing.

I have taught at the UW-Fond du Lac since 1978, and have always enjoyed it, despite the many changes in teaching approaches and the impact of new technologies. I urge my students to see sociology as a tool for everyday living; something of value which they can acquire even if they don't intend to major in the field. With the world changing so rapidly these days, it seems important to have a workable perspective which can help make sense out of what seems to be many divergent (even contradictory) trends. Sociology can help provide the perspective, but it can also cause one to challenge the trends. Pretty exciting, when you think about it.

GREGORY A. PETER, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Sociology

UW--Fox Valley

E-mail:  gpeter@uwc.edu

I was raised in a rural area in Dunn County, Wisconsin near a town called Elk Mound.  I am currently an environmental and rural sociologist with specialties in food systems, agriculture, and the environment as well as community studies and development.  I earned a BA in East Asian Studies with an Environmental Studies minor at UW-Madison, an MS in Rural Sociology and PhD in Sociology at Iowa State University.  I changed majors and took time off between my degrees, teaching at public universities, private colleges, technical schools, business schools, and a nursing school.  My first tenure-track job was in Harrisonburg, Virginia at James Madison University.  I spent three years there and then happily moved my family (wife, two daughters, three dogs, and a cat) back to our home state of Wisconsin the summer of 2003.

I am a co-author of a book, several articles, and dozens of research presentations on rural sociology, sustainable agriculture, and the interface between the environment and society.  My ongoing research project in the Fox Valley includes working with community agencies to help resolve issues of natural resource management, community planning, and growth issues.  I also encourage my UW-Fox students to do field research with me.  I recently gave a research presentation with one of my UW-Fox students at a conference at UW-Madison. We sit in seminar format for all of my classes at UW-Fox and I encourage my students to form groups, do field research, write reports, and do presentations on their results. 

I am an applied sociologist conducting fieldwork and consulting for the USDA Forest Service, Natural Resource Conservation Service, Resource Conservation and Development groups, North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, and Cooperative Extension agencies.  The reason why I became a sociologist is because I really believe that sociology can help make the world a better place to live in.

THOMAS C. PLEGER, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Associate Campus Dean
UW-Fox Valley
E-Mail: tpleger@uwc.edu
Campus Dept. Web Page: http://www.fox.uwc.edu/depts/ant.html
Web Page: http://www.fox.uwc.edu/depts/antfac.html

For Dr. Pleger's biographical information, please visit his home web page at UW-Fox Valley.

REJOICE D. SITHOLE, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Sociology
UW-Waukesha
E-Mail: rsithole@uwc.edu

[Dr. Sithole retired from the university in May, 2001, and has returned to live in her home country of South Africa.]

I received my B.A.S.W. from the University of Zululand in South Africa before continuing my graduate studies in the United States. I received my M.S.W. from Washington University in St. Louis, and a Ph.D. in Sociology, also from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.

At UW-Waukesha I taught Race and Ethnic Minority Groups; Marriage and the Family; Introduction to Social Psychology; Introduction to Sociology; and Social Problems. I published "Family: The Functionalist Versus Conflict Theory Views," in the Survey of Social Research: Sociology; and, "Prejudice and Discrimination: Merton's Paradigm."

My professional research interests include comparative analysis of families; health care services and illnesses among Black South Africans; South African political, economic, social and cultural changes, and South African women.

CAROL I. MASON, Ph.D.
Professor Emerita of Anthropology
UW-Fox Valley
E-Mail:

I retired from the UW-Colleges in the Spring, 1999 as Professor Emeritus of Anthropology. I am now working on special projects as an Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Lawrence University, Appleton, WI.

I graduated cum laude from Florida State University and with honors from Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi. I obtained my Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Michigan. My major interests include the archaeology and ethnohistory of the Eastern United States with an emphasis upon the western Great Lakes. I have extensive archaeological field experience and laboratory experience in Wisconsin; Georgia; and Florida with archaeological site excavation experience ranging from the Paleo-Indian period through the Euro-American period. I have written numerous articles in scholarly journals. I authored the book, "Introduction to Wisconsin Indians: Prehistory to Statehood," published by the Sheffield Press.

I have taught undergraduate anthropology and archaeology at St. Norbert College, Lawrence University and the University of Wisconsin Colleges. Undergraduate teaching experience is where the action is if anthropology is to succeed in its efforts to provide the backbone of a liberal arts approach to education. This is where cultural difference is explored, diversity acknowledge, and the anthropological success story of the recovery and reconstruction of human and evolutionary sequences celebrated. Anthropology is a fitting introduction to a broad understanding of human achievement.