Rebecca Taylor Fremo (Professor of English) earned her Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition at Ohio State University after completing her BA and MA in English at Virginia Tech. In the nearly three decades she’s spent at Gustavus, she’s served as English department chair, English co-chair, Director of Writing Across the Curriculum, and Director of the Writing Center. But Fremo’s real passion is teaching writing, and she’s been awarded the Edgar M. Carlson Award and the Swenson and Bunn Award for this work. Fremo likes nothing better than rolling up her sleeves and sitting side by side with student writers as they work through the challenges of sharing their stories. Fremo has published a variety of scholarly essays about teaching writing, but she’s most excited about her work as a creative writer. She recently completed a memoir titled Controlled Burn, which applies her observations as a gardener to her experiences raising three neurodivergent sons. Her poems and essays appear in journals including Mud Season Review, Mankato Magazine, Full Grown People, Paper Darts, and Water~Stone Review. She is also the author of one collection of poetry, Moving This Body, and a chapbook of poems titled Chasing Northern Lights. When she’s not at work, she’s probably in her garden or daydreaming about her next visit to the North Shore. She’s originally from Richmond, Virginia and still dreads the Minnesota winters–but the summers are worth it! 
 

Dr. Richard Leitch earned his BA in East Asian Studies from Colby College in 1985, and went on to earn an MA in Asian Studies from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign after a two-year career on Wall Street. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Illinois in 1995, where he was the recipient of the Harriet and Charles Luckman Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching, and the College of Liberal Arts Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Graduate Assistant. He has been a member of the Political Science Department since 1996, where he teaches courses in International Relations, Comparative Politics, Asian Politics, Environmental Politics, and the Politics of Poverty. In 2000 he received the Swenson-Bunn Award for Teaching Excellence at Gustavus, and in 2008 the Edgar M. Carlson Award for Distinguished Teaching. In 2012 he was included in The Princeton Review's The Best 300 Professors. He was recognized as an Honorary Gustie by the Gustavus Alumni Association in 2024. His research interests include Japanese domestic politics and foreign policy, and he is the co-author of Japan's Role in the Post-Cold War World. A frequent speaker to off-campus groups, Leitch has given numerous presentations focused on US foreign policy, US-China relations, and geopolitical issues.