Lifelong Learning Collaborative Instructors
Have you ever inflated a life-sized blue whale in a school parking lot? Talked with astronauts in real-time aboard the International Space Station with 200 third graders? Led science and social studies explorations with one thousand fourth graders around the track at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway? If you’ve had class with Dr. Catherine Hagerman Pangan – most likely you have!
Dr. Pangan is a Professor in the College of Education. She is honored to work with first-years through graduate students and many community partners around the city. Her work focuses on science and social studies methods, teacher leadership and innovation, and pre-service teaching. She is also an Innovation Fellow for Butler’s Transformation Lab.
She also has a unique role as a “Faculty-in-Residence and lives with 630 sophomores in Fairview House with her family. Dr. Pangan contributes as a columnist in The Teacher Advocate magazine as “Dr. P.” and has written curriculum for teachers for exhibits at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. She wrote a children’s book titled“No Peanuts for Me!” about her son’s peanut allergy. She also authored chapters for “The Power of Teacher Leaders” and “Connecting Children to Nature” and advised on a student-led publication “The Gifts of Indiana.” She serves as president of the Board of Trustees for Sycamore School. Formerly, Dr. Pangan was an elementary teacher in St. Louis, MO and Indiana. She traded in her “golden apple” teaching award for the Big Apple and helped start the NewTeacher Academy at Columbia University and worked with teachers in Harlem and Brooklyn. She received her B.S. in Elementary Education, Master’s in Educational Administration at Butler University, an endorsement in Gifted Education, and a doctorate in Curriculum and Teaching with an emphasis on policy and education law. Dr. Pangan has been working in education for over 25 years.
Fabiana Alceste earned her B.A. from the University of Florida and earned her Ph.D. from John Jay College of Criminal Justice/The Graduate Center, CUNY. She currently teaches courses in Social Psychology and Psychology & Law, in addition to Research Methods & Statistics courses. Dr. Alceste’s research area is the psychology of police interrogations and confessions, a topic on which she also teaches a senior seminar. Her recent work focuses on how interrogation practices influence judgments about police custody and confession evidence. She hopes that work in this field will improve the criminal justice system by preventing and reversing wrongful convictions.
An academic staff member since November 2015, Amy received a Master’s Degree in Effective Teaching and Leadership from the College of Education where she completed a thesis researching university staff’s need for professional development. In July 2022, she accepted her current position in the College of Education, leading staff and managing external placements for COE students. She also teaches a course for the Well Being (WB) area of the University’s Core Curriculum called Mindfulness in Everyday Life. Her contemplative training is based in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Interpersonal Mindfulness, and is a certified Mindfulness Institute for Emerging Adults teacher.
A native of Huber Heights, Ohio, J.J. DeBrosse graduated from Butler University in 1995 after being heavily involved in multi aspects of college life. The 1995 Outstanding Marketing Student of the Lacy School of Business, J.J.’s professional career would start with an internship with the Indiana Pacers that would lead to his first full time position, becoming the Coordinator of Athletic Promotions at Purdue University in the fall of 1995. Less than two years later he was back with the Bulldogs as the first ever Athletic Ticket Sales Manager. He would become the third Director of Sports Marketing in school history in 2002. DeBrosse stepped out of athletics in the summer of 2004 to become the Division Director at Office Team, a division of Robert Half International. It was during his time with Office Team that JJ and his wife Emily lost their first child, Catherine, to SIDS. This event would lead JJ to walk away from the staffing industry and start his fundraiser Count It! For Cat. After a quick stint as a substitute teacher, JJ re-entered the business world as the Corporate and Athletic Sales Manager for the Crowne Plaza Indianapolis Downtown. A ten year run with the hotel saw him become a leader not only on the sales board but also amongst his peers. After ten years he was promoted to a Regional Director of Sales position with the General Hotels Corporation, the management company of the Crowne Plaza. However, the draw to “come home” was too much and in November of 2017, DeBrosse returned to Butler as the Director of Graduate and Professional Recruitment for the Lacy School of Business. Happy to be back at his Alma Mater, his passions are for all things Butler Athletics, family and his fundraiser, Count It! For Cat, which raises money for a scholarship that goes to a female student athlete at Butler University.
Mike Freeman has served as Butler’s Senior Associate Athletic Director for External Operations since 2017 and has been a member of the Athletic Department staff since 2006. He has overseen key externally facing areas of ticketing, marketing, corporate partnerships and licensing since 2009, while also working closely with athletic and university development on athletics annual and capital fundraising efforts. Freeman has also been a team instructor in Sport Management at the University of Indianapolis (2012-15) and with the College of Education at Butler (2015-2018).
Evan Krauss, a 2016 College of Communication graduate and Strategic Communications Masters candidate, has been with the Butler Marketing & Communications office in one form or another since 2013. Starting as a volunteer handler of Butler Blue III and working his way through an internship his Senior year, Krauss is now Senior Marketing Manager and Handler/Dad of Butler Blue IV.
Jason Lantzer serves as the Assistant Director of the Butler University Honors Program. An historian by training, his research and writing interests generally center on religion, politics, and law, with some work about Disney thrown in for good measure. He is the author of eight books, including Dwight Eisenhower & the Holocaust (DeGruyter, 2023), Mainline Christianity: The Past and Future of America’s Majority Faith (NYU 2012), Dis-History: Uses of the Past at Walt Disney’s Worlds (TPP, 2017), and Rebel Bulldog: The Story of One Family, Two States, and the Civil War (Indiana Historical Society Press, 2017), numerous book chapters and articles. He is a three-time graduate of Indiana University (BA, MA, PhD).
Biography
Kristen (Allen) Palmer serves as the team lead for Academic Partnerships in the Online Education and Educational Technology office at Butler University. She completed her BS in Middle/Secondary Mathematics Education with minors in Business Administration and Business Law and her MS in Strategic Communication at Butler University. Prior to working at Butler, she spent time in the Middle East volunteering with a church and teaching English, followed by three years working in client service at a local Indianapolis wealth management firm. Kristen’s education and training experiences include leading or teaching middle/secondary learners in a traditional classroom, corporate trainings with adult learners, English-language learners in non-profit settings, one-on-one discipleship and small groups in faith communities, and faculty-focused workshops about teaching with technology.
Scholarly Activity
Presentations
MacIsaac, Olivia; Allen, Kristen; and Turner, Tatum. (2020) “Making Cultural Heritage Artifacts into 3D Digital Objects Using Photogrammetry.” Poster presented at the iLRN2020 6th International Conference of the Immersive Learning.
Neal, S., & Allen, K. (2019). “QR’ing the Library: Learning about physical and online library resources through a QR-coded tutorial.” Poster presented at the Celebration of Innovations in Teaching and Learning, Indianapolis, IN.
Publications
MacIsaac, Olivia; Allen, Kristen; and Turner, Tatum, “Making Cultural Heritage Artifacts into 3D Digital Objects Using Photogrammetry : Final Report” (2020). Scholarship and Professional Work. 79. http://digitalcommons.7672049.com/librarian_papers/79
Grants
PALNI 2023 Innovation Grant: Open Repository for AI Class Activities
PALNI 2019 Innovation Grant: Photogrammetry
PALNI 2018 Innovation Grant: Using Augmented Reality for Place-Based Library Instruction
Courses Taught
ED 245: Integrating Technology
Specialty Areas
BU Systems: Canvas, Panopto, Zoom, WordPress, Poll Everywhere
Digital Literacy
Graphic Design (Photoshop, Canva, Adobe Spark, Piktochart)
ePortfolio & Website Design and Development
Podcasting
Digital Storytelling
Data Analysis & Visualization (R studio, Excel, machine learning with big data)
Photogrammetry
Extended Realities (AR, VR, XR)
Generative AI
Bob Schultz, APR, Fellow PRSA is a fulltime Strategic Communication Lecturer and serves as the Internship Director for Butler’s College of Communication where he also regularly leads pop-up courses leading Butler students in civic engagement for some of Indy’s largest community events, including the 2024 NBA All Star Weekend, the U.S. Olympic Swim Trials and most recently, the Taylor Swift concert weekend in Downtonw. Prior to these roles, Bob was an adjunct member of the Butler faculty starting in 2006. Schultz is the principal and founder of Schultz Strategies, LLC where he maintains contractual marketing and event roles with Downtown Indy, Inc. where he served as Executive Vice President prior to coming to Butler fulltime in Aug. 2023. Other clients include some of the community’s most high-profile hospitality and tourism companies and organization. Prior to joining Downtown Indy, Inc., Bob was Vice President of Borshoff Advertising & Public Relations where he delivered high-level marketing consultation for such client organizations as Eli Lilly and Co., WGU Indiana, University of Notre Dame, Defender Direct, Buckingham Companies and the 2012 Super Bowl Host Committee. Bob also had a ten year run serving Visit Indy as its primary marketing communications director from 1999-2008. He and his wife Diane (a Butler grad) are both lifelong Indy residents.
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jpsorenson/
- Semester schedule: http://blue.7672049.com/~jsorenso/ (forgive the 1990s style :))
- Publication Lists: Digital Commons@Butler, Google Scholar, Sematic Scholar, MathSciNet, ACM-DL
- CSSE home: http://swm8.7672049.com/computer-science
Teaching
I have been teaching computer science (and in the past, some mathematics) at Butler since 1991. Courses I commonly teach include CS142 Intro to Programming and Computer Science (in C++), CS248 Object-Oriented Programming and Data Structures in Java, CS321 Computer Organization, CS151 Foundations of Computer Science (discrete math), and CS458 Cryptography. In the past, I have also taught operating systems, compiler design, EPICS, algorithms, databases, computer ethics, parallel algorithms, and even modern algebra. I also teach a course on Alan Turing in the university honors program from time to time.
Research
My research interest is in algorithms for problems from number theory. In particular, I’m interested in algorithms for computing greatest common divisors, for listing and detecting prime numbers, and for factoring large integers. I often use Big Dawg, Butler’s cluster supercomputer, in my work. I’ve published several papers with former Butler students.
I studied computer science and mathematics as an undergraduate at Valparaiso University, and as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Eric Bach was my thesis advisor.
Service
I served as Department Chair for Computer Science & Software Engineering from 2005-2020, and more recently as Chair of Faculty Senate from 2020-2024.
Marguerite Stanciu is assistant director of The Compass Center at Butler University. She graduated from the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and English and the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco with a Master of Arts in Intercultural Philosophy and Religion. Marguerite is an authorized meditation instructor and teacher in the Buddhist and Shambhala (secular) traditions. Her interest in social justice issues reflects her commitment to valuing community and honoring varieties of religious, cultural and vocational experiences that call us to be more of who we are and to contribute to the greater good when we are able. Marguerite serves as staff adviser for Butler Meditation.