Staff
- Natalie Friedman
Associate Director and Visiting Assistant Professor in English - Karen Getter
Academic Support and Learning Resources Specialist - Doris Haas
Director of the Supplemental Instruction (SI) Program and Math Specialist - Maria Höhn
Director of Faculty Research and Associate Professor of History - Lee Rumbarger
Director of the Writing Center and Visiting Assistant Professor in English - Mary (Molly) Shanley
Director and Professor of Political Science on the Margaret Stiles Hallack Chair - Susan Ward
Administrative Assistant
Natalie Friedman became Associate Director of the Learning, Teaching and Research Center in 2007, after being Interim Director from 2006-2007, and after having directed the Writing Center from 2004 to 2006. She teaches writing and literature courses in the English department and in the Jewish Studies program at Vassar. Her publications have appeared in journals such as Legacy, Critique, and MELUS, and her current research focuses on American immigrant literature and narratives of education from the early and late twentieth century. She especially enjoys working with early career faculty on issues of pedagogy, classroom dynamics, course preparation, and work-life balance. She lives on campus as a residence hall “House Fellow” with her husband and son.
Karen Getter received her Master's of Art from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. She was teaching study skills at the State University of New Paltz and was encouraged to apply for an academic counseling position at Vassar, and she joined the Academic Resource Center at Vassar in 1983. She became Assistant to the Director of the LTC in 2003, and then shifted her focus as Academic and Learning Resources Specialist in 2007. Her focus has expanded to helping students of all skills levels, including at-risk student, and to support them in specific courses, test preparation, organization, prioritizing, and presentation skills. Her passion is helping students achieve from their first years through their senior years. She is a resident of Ulster County and enjoys the drive into Poughkeepsie.
Doris Haas is the Director of the Supplemental Instruction (SI) Program, which is a peer led group learning program offered in math, chemistry and physics. She earned her B.S. at SUNY Albany and her M.A at Adelphi University. She is a member of the Math Department and taught in the Education Department for many years. In 1981, she began her work at Vassar as the Mathematics Specialist in the Academic Resource Center. She continues to diagnose the learning difficulties of students in math. Her main interest is in the variety of ways students learn.
Maria Höhn has been at Vassar since 1996. She teaches classes in History, American Culture and Jewish Studies. Her book, GIs and Fräuleins. The German American Encounter in 1950s West Germany, (UNC Press, 2002), was published in German in 2008 with Verlag Berlin Brandenburg under the title, Amis, Cadillacs, "Negerliebchen. GIs im Nachkriegsdeutschland. She is also the co-editor of Over There. Living with the U.S. Military Empire (Duke University Press, 2010). Together with Martin Klimke, Höhn is currently writing a history of the experience of African American soldiers, activists and intellectuals in Germany during the 20th century, entitled From DuBois to Obama: The Civil Rights Struggle, African American GIs, and Germany. Her collaboration with Martin Klimke has also resulted in an educational website and digital archive related to that topic (http://aacvr-germany.org/).The NAACP honored Höhn and Klimke for their research and digital archive with the 2009 Julius E. Williams Distinguished Community Service Award.
Lee Rumbarger has directed of the Vassar College Writing Center since Fall 2006. She teaches writing process and pedagogy for Vassar’s interdisciplinary College Course program, and literature and writing as a visiting assistant professor of English. Her current research examines a pedagogical project on the part of women modernists Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf to train a larger public as readers and writers: she argues that their popular texts addressing and redressing the academy’s failure to teach nontraditional students, as Stein would say, “how writing is written,” present a surprisingly radical vision of an unbounded writing classroom. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in May 2006. At Vassar, Lee meets individually with student and faculty writers, has initiated the campus-wide Conversations on Writing series, and enjoys working with the Writing Center’s student consultants, particularly in their roles as designated course consultants. She says she wants the Writing Center to serve as a hub where all Vassar writers find support and community.
Mary Lyndon (Molly) Shanley became Director of the Learning, Teaching and Research Center in 2007 and is Professor of Political Science on the Margaret Stiles Halleck Chair. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1972. Her articles have appeared in a wide range of scholarly journals, and she is author or editor of six books, including Making Babies, Making Families: Reproductive Technologies, Surrogacy, Adoption, and Same-Sex and Unwed Parents (Beacon, 2001). Her current work concerns social justice issues in family formation, and bioethics and human reproduction. She enjoys teaching a course on contemporary social issues that she teaches with Vassar colleague Eileen Leonard at Taconic Correctional Facility (a medium security prison for women) in Bedford Hills, NY. She sings in Cappella Festiva, and enjoys hiking (particularly in the White Mountains of New Hampshire).
Susan Ward moved to Poughkeepsie, NY from Michigan in 2000. Susan previously worked at Vassar in 1976/77 as Administrative Assistant in the Africana Studies Department. Her role as Administrative Assistant for the LTRC is to provide administrative support for the Director, Associate Director, Supplemental Instruction Coordinator, The Writing Center Director and the Academic Resources Specialist. Susan coordinates all aspects of our programming. She lives near campus with her husband, Dan, their grown son, Mitch, and dog, Zoe.