Faculty and Staff

Scott Gabriel Knowles, Ph.D. – Program Director

Thank you for your interest in the Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry (CII) and its programs the Great Works Symposium and the Custom-Designed Major. I joined the administrative staff of the Pennoni Honors College in 2005, and became associate dean and director of the CII in 2011.

I am also associate professor of history in the Department of History and Politics.  I am a historian of modern cities, technology and the environment, and public policy–with a particular focus on risk and disaster. My most recent book is: The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). 

I completed my Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in the Department of the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology in 2003, after completing an M.A. in history and B.A. in history and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. 

I am also the author/editor of: Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City (UPenn Press, 2009); and have published articles, essays, and book reviews in The Next American City, Isis, History and Technology, the New York Times, Public Works Management and Policy, Technology and Culture, Business History Review, Enterprise and Society, The Smart Set, and Annals of Science.

Kevin D. Egan, Ph.D. – Program Manager

I joined the Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry in the fall of 2011, having served as the Visiting Fellow for the Great Works Symposium during the 2008-09 academic year. I served as an adjunct professor in the Honors College and Department of History and Politics at Drexel during the 2009-10 academic year, and, most recently, I was a Program Advisor at the Washington Center.

I completed my Ph.D. at the Pennsylvania State University in the Department of Political Science in 2007. Before that, I completed my M.A. in Political Science at Virginia Tech in 2003, and my B.A. in Political Science and Philosophy at the College of Wooster in 2001.

While working on my dissertation, which examined the role of rights in structuring democratic citizenship for marginalized sexual identities, I was awarded the Penn State Alumni Association's Outstanding Dissertation Award. My research has been published in such journals as Contemporary Political Theory and New Political Science; my teaching interests span a wide array of topics, including democratic theory, citizenship and civic education, sexuality and gender studies, identity politics, and the relationship between politics and popular culture, among others.

Faculty Mentors

Joseph Hancock, Ph.D. – Associate Professor, Department of Fashion and Design & Merchandising
Bio: http://www.drexel.edu/westphal/contact/directory/HancockJoseph/

Mark Brack, Ph.D. – Associate Professor, Department of Architecture
Bio: http://www.drexel.edu/westphal/contact/directory/BrackMark/

Advisory Board

Fred Allen, Ph.D. – Associate Teaching Professor, School of Biomedical Engineering, Science & Health Systems
Bio: http://www.biomed.drexel.edu/new04/content/academics/faculty/dsp_faculty_details.cfm?RECID=159

Craig Bach, Ph.D. - Associate Vice Provost for Curriculum and Assessment
Bio: http://www.drexel.edu/provost/about/bach.html

Shannon Gary, Ph.D. – Director of Honors Program, Pennoni Honors College

James Herbert, Ph.D. – Professor, Department of Psychology; Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
Bio: http://www.drexel.edu/psychology/contact/facultyDirectory/JamesHerbert/

Timothy Kurzweg, Ph.D. – Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Bio: http://www.ece.drexel.edu/kurzweg/

Francis Linnehan, Ph.D. – Professor/Associate Dean, Lebow College of Business
Bio: http://www.lebow.drexel.edu/Faculty/FrankLinnehan.html

Danuta Nitecki, Ph.D. – Dean of University Libraries
Bio: http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/Home/people/faculty/facultydetails/?facultyid=57

Casey Turner, Ph.D. – Assistant Vice President for Recruitment
Bio: http://www.drexel.edu/em/division/recruitment_ct.html