Educational Studies

Deborah Appleman received her doctorate in English Education at the University of Minnesota in 1986. At Carleton she is professor of educational studies, the Class of 1994 Chair in the Liberal Arts, and director of Carleton's Summer Writing Program, a three-week program for high school juniors and seniors). She also teaches the English section of Carleton's summer workshop for teachers, the Summer Teaching Institute. During 2003-2004 she is serving her second year as mentor for Carleton's second group of Posse students from the Chicago area. Professor Appleman's primary research interests include multicultural literature, adolescent response to literature, teaching literary theory to secondary students, and adolescent response to poetry. She was a high school teacher for nine years. She has written numerous book chapters and articles on adolescent response to literature and she co-edited Braided Lives,a multicultural literature anthology published by the Minnesota Humanities Commission. Her most recent book is, Reading for Themselves: How to Transform Adolescents into Lifelong Readers Through Out-of-Class Book Clubs. She is also the coauthor of Teaching Literature to Adolescents with Richard Beach, Susan Hynds, and Jeffrey Wilhelm. Her book, Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents was published jointly by Teachers College Press and the National Council of Teachers of English and is widely used in methods classes across the country.

John Ramsay received his B.A. in history from Bucknell University and his PhD in educational studies from SUNY-Buffalo. Ramsay is the Hollis L. Caswell Professor in Educational Studies. He serves on the Board of Directors of Admission Possible, a non-profit in St. Paul, MN that provides test preparation and financial counseling for first-generation college students. He joined the Board of Directors of The Science Center at Maltby Nature Preserve in 2006. He served seven years as a member of the Northfield, Minnesota school board member and was the board's treasurer during several of those years. He was an American Council on Education Fellow at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities during 2003-04. Professor Ramsay's professional publications have appeared in Change, The American Council of Learned Societies' Occasional Paper Series, Liberal Education, The Journal of General Education, Urban Education, Review of Higher Education, The Review of Education, and Education Week, among others. His essay "To Miss the Joy," is about liberal education and college athletics, and appears on the website of the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College. Ramsay's professional speeches have been published in Vital Speeches of the Day and Liberal Education. His most recent publication is " 'Meritocracy' at Middle Age: Skewed Views and Selective Admissions" which is Chapter 8 in Imagining the Academy (RoutledgeFalmer, 2005). He and his wife Michele are the parents of three teenage boys, twins Nicholas and Jacob, and Luke.

Mary Gustafson is a Visiting Assistant Professor, teaching educational psychology (Educ 234) in fall, winter, and spring terms. Dr. Gustafson regularly teaches in undergraduate and graduate psychology and education departments at a number of colleges and universities, including the University of Minnesota graduate school, Macalester College, and the University of St. Thomas. She has taught at Carleton since 2001. She holds a doctoral degree in Educational Psychology from the University of Minnesota, and her research has centered on how children and adults perform complex tasks such as reading, learning, remembering, and reasoning.

Cris Roosenraad received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin. At Carleton he is Senior Lecturer in Mathematics and College Pre-Medical Advisor. He has taught the mathematics methods course for teaching licensure for many years and co-supervises mathematics student teachers.