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Dr. Shu-Ling Wang is an associate professor of Economics. She joined Gustavus in 2016 after a two-year appointment at The College of Wooster. Her teaching interests include Intermediate Macroeconomics, Money and Banking, International Finance, Public Finance, and Principles of Economics. As an active instructor in an interactive and interdisciplinary liberal arts environment, she enjoys developing and experimenting with innovative pedagogies to enrich students’ learning experiences. She also values mentoring undergraduate research that fosters critical and independent thinking. At Wooster, she advised several year-long senior independent studies, and at Gustavus, she offers writing-in-the-discipline courses in economics and mentors class-based research projects. In October 2023, her Money and Banking students’ paper titled “The Asian Crisis of 1997” won third place in the Economic Communication category of the Minnesota Economic Association (MEA) Undergraduate Paper Contest. In 2025, Dr. Wang served as a faculty panelist at the MAYDAY! Peace Conference at Gustavus, participating in the teach-in model addressing issues of peace, human rights, and social justice. More recently, she served on the Nobel Conference '63 Planning Committee (theme: AI and Human Agency).

Dr. Wang’s research focuses on Macroeconomics, Monetary Economics, and International Finance. She studies fiscal and monetary policy issues—such as fiscal stimulus, public debt, tax policy, income distributional effects, and monetary policy, using dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models with representative or heterogeneous agents. Her papers have been published in the Journal of Macroeconomics, Review of International Economics, and Economic Modelling. She received the Mansergh Faculty Scientific Research Award at Gustavus in both 2022 and 2025. Her recent project examines the debt-financed stimulus effects in a high-debt economy without monetary independence, considering different schemes and speeds of debt adjustment in a two-sector New Keynesian model. Future projects will examine the redistribution effects between savers and hand-to-mouth agents of debt-financing policies. She regularly presents her work at the The Midwest Economics Association, Canadian Economics Association, Western Economics Association, and Liberal Arts Macroeconomics conferences.

In addition to her research, Dr. Wang actively contributes to professional service. She serves as a reviewer for the Journal of Macroeconomics, Economic Modelling, Contemporary Economic Policy, Cambridge University Press, and the Bulletin of Economic Research. She has also served on the steering and program committees for the Liberal Arts Macroeconomics Conference and was a member of the Board of the Minnesota Economic Association. In 2025 she served as a mentor and a panelist for junior women economists at the CeMENT workshop sponsored by the AEA at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Beyond academia, Dr. Wang is a mother of three children. She enjoys architecture, art, photography, and music. Her favorite architects include Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, and Zaha Hadid. She is also inspired by the works of Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Hopper, and Claude Monet. A musician herself, she plays the piano, violin, and pipa (a Chinese lute). Her favorite composer is Johann Sebastian Bach of the Baroque period.

Sarah Mages is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker who has been a Mental Health Therapist at Gustavus since 2022. Prior to this, Sarah worked as a school social worker and has over 25 years of experience working with students of all ages in educational settings. Sarah utilizes a "strengths and 'whole' person" approach in her clinical work. She believes in finding and using individual strengths to make positive changes as well as looking at all aspects of an individual’s environment when problem solving.

Sarah prefers to customize therapy based on individual student needs and meets students where they are at in the healing process. Sarah pulls from many types of therapy including but not limited to: Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), Brainspotting (BSP), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), Somatic Therapy, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Sarah has worked with mental health issues including: anxiety, depression, social relationship issues, adjustment/life changes, emotional regulation, grief/loss, stress, self-esteem, trauma, identity, and learning concerns. Sarah is enthusiastic about working with college students and is excited by the positive insight and energy they bring to the therapeutic process.

Outside of her time on campus, Sarah is an avid reader, likes to cook, and enjoys the outdoors and traveling. Sarah likes spending time with her family and friends and loves watching movies on the big screen.

Lisa Ortmann, PhD is the Grace and Bertil Pehrson Endowed Professor and Associate Professor of Education at Gustavus. Dr. Ortmann’s education courses prepare future teachers across the grade levels and content areas to build a deep understanding of how children and adolescents learn to read and write, and the research-based methods of teaching literacy for all students. She was awarded the Innovation in Teaching Award from the Kendall Center for Engaged Learning for her “Literacy Histories” project, where education majors critically examine their own experiences of learning to read, write, and use language, identifying the ways their history shapes their teaching. She teaches a First Term Seminar course called “For the Love of Books!” where first-year students follow their curiosity as readers, reflecting on the value of literacy in their lives as citizens of a free and democratic society. Together, students build a reading community that sustains their values, shapes their identities, and expands their worldviews.

Dr. Ortmann’s scholarly work informs, and is informed by, her teaching and professional activities at the College and in the state. Her research areas include teachers’ uses of culturally responsive teaching practices and diverse literature, the instructional methods that support literacies of multilingual adolescent learners, and the impact of instructional coaching models to enhance teaching. Recent peer-reviewed publications include a co-authored study with a former Gustie student, “Developing Responsive Disciplinary Literacies for Student Teaching in Social Studies” in The Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, and a state-wide study, "Surveying the Landscape: Minnesota's English Language Arts Teachers' Perspectives on Intellectual Freedom" in The Minnesota English Journal.

Dr. Ortmann’s professional service is in partnership with teachers and schools both locally and nationally. She is an engaged collaborator with Saint Peter and Mankato educators to design and facilitate real-world teaching opportunities for Gustie education majors at all stages of the four-year program. She serves the state of Minnesota as the Intellectual Freedom Chair for the board of the Minnesota Council of Teachers of English where she provides professional development to English Language Arts teachers across the state. She was selected to serve as a This Story Matters Teacher Corp Member on the National Council of Teachers of English to develop book rationales for teaching diverse literature. She consults and provides guidance on statewide reading initiatives for the Minnesota Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, and for the English Language Arts 2020 Standards development project with the Minnesota Department of Education.

In her moments of free time, you can find Dr. Ortmann outdoors at the lake or in her garden, reading a novel, running with her yellow lab Harley, or cheering loudly at her daughter’s performances and games. She is a passionate educator, who has found a home at Gustavus due to the life-long relationships that are built on campus. Mentoring new teachers into the profession is one of the greatest gifts of her career, especially when they return to campus with their own students.

Dan McAvey's artistic practice explores mental health and human interconnection through the genre of landscape painting. Dan teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses in studio art and art education at Gustavus Adolphus College and at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Dan encourages students to adopt a spirit of experimentation and play in their work and to embrace mistakes as a joyful part of developing their artistic practice.

Dan earned an M.F.A. in Visual Studies from MCAD. Prior to pursuing art full-time, he worked in psychology and student development on college campuses. Dan also holds a Master’s degree in Educational Psychology from the University of Minnesota and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Carleton College.

Patrick is a counseling psychologist with an interest in help-seeking behaviors, positive psychology, and psychological measurement. His recent research focused on how social and cultural factors (e.g., stigma, gender role expectations) serve as barriers to seeking out mental health care, and how positive psychological factors (e.g., self-compassion, self-affirmation) could promote seeking help. Recently, Patrick has been working on the development of brief interventions that could reduce the impact of help-seeking barriers. In addition to this work, Patrick examines the reliability and validity of psychological measures across cultures to ensure that these measures can be used in cross-cultural research. Patrick utilizes advanced statistical methodology to examine these topics, like structural equation modeling and measurement invariance testing.

Jessica Auel has been a therapist at Gustavus for six years. With over a decade of experience in the mental health field, she has specialized training in Internal Family Systems (IFS), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), and Brainspotting. Jessica has experience working with diverse presenting concerns and has particular interest in working with stress, trauma, relationships, adjustment, and executive functioning. She is passionate about supporting LGBTQIA+ and neurodivergent folks. 

Her therapeutic approach is heavily influenced by systems theory and feminist therapy, which consider the context in which folks live to de-pathologize and promote personal growth. She strives to foster a safe space for self-exploration, emotional processing, and healing so students can be their most authentic selves. 

When she’s off the clock, Jessica enjoys attending concerts, listening to audiobooks and true crime podcasts, practicing “granny hobbies,” and raising monarch butterflies.

K. Angelique Dwyer is an Associate Professor of Spanish and the Program Director of Latin American, Latinx and Caribbean Studies (LALACS). She specializes in Mexico/U.S. Intercultural Studies and teaches courses on film, border studies, Latina/x/o literature, Spanish language, and Latin American culture. Dwyer is an engaged scholar who created the student organization "Language Buddies" that works in partnership with the St. Peter Public Schools, Free Clinic, and Food Pantry. Her courses co-embed service-learning and community engagement with the goal of broadening student's intercultural skills. She has published in the fields of Chicana/Latina Studies, creative nonfiction, and pedagogy. She is particularly interested in Latin@/Latin American pop culture through the lens of Performance Theory. She has a podcast called “Gringos Mexicanos,” which broadens the dialogue on Mexican American identity that features her short stories written in Spanglish. She has a forthcoming article on the assessment of intercultural skills gained by students via community engagement learning. Dwyer also enjoys dancing, trying new foods, and photography.

Karl Larson, PhD, MCHES, is a Professor of Public Health and is dually appointed to the Master’s in Athletic Training program. Dr. Larson has lead the effort to build a presence for public health on the Gustavus campus and has served as the Program Director for the interdisciplinary program in public health since the program’s inception in 2018. Since his arrival at Gustavus in 2005, he has taught more than 20 different courses focusing on individual and population health including offerings such as stress management, sexuality, tai chi, youth coaching, as well as courses in public health programming, global health, behavioral theory, and epidemiology. Dr. Larson has served the campus community on numerous health related efforts and programs.

Professionally, Dr. Larson is nationally recognized as the “case study guy,” after designing and leading the National Case Study Competition in Health Education (NCSCHE), a role he has served in since 2006. He also has served as the president of the Minnesota Society for Public Health Education from 2015-2018, and has been the recipient of the Karen Denard Goldman Mentor Award (SOPHE), the Dean’s Distinguished Lecturer (New York Medical College), and has received the W.E Schaller Presidential Citation from Eta Sigma Gamma for his professional development work with college students. He is the author of four books including Consumer Health and Integrative Medicine and The Truth About Violence. 
 

John C. Volin, PhD serves as the 18th President of Gustavus. 

Following a postdoctoral fellowship in plant physiological ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Volin accepted a faculty position at Florida Atlantic University, where he rose to the rank of full professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and served as the director of the Environmental Sciences graduate program. Volin joined the University of Connecticut in 2007 to head the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, advancing to serve as Vice Provost of Academic Affairs. From 2020-2025, Volin served as the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at the University of Maine, where his portfolio included oversight of more than 1,000 faculty and staff and a budget of over $250 million. Volin is recognized as a national leader in using evidence-based practices to support holistic student wellbeing. He serves on the Executive Committee of the LearningWell Coalition and is a co-founder and senior advisor of LearningWell magazine.

Born and raised in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Volin holds a BS in botany and biology and an MS in agronomy from the South Dakota State University, and a PhD in forestry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Volin and his wife, Valeria, have five children and six grandchildren.

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