Our People
Julia Bartley
As a Professor in the Department of Environment, Geography, and Earth Sciences (EGE), Julie K. Bartley teaches courses in the Geology and Environmental Studies programs. With a background in chemistry and geology, Professor Bartley brings an interdisciplinary perspective to the study of the Earth’s past and present. As a teacher, she strives to know her students as individuals and to inspire interest in the Earth’s past and care for its future. She has also held significant leadership roles at Gustavus, including serving as chair of EGE, as the project director for the Inclusive Excellence Project, and as Associate Provost and Dean of Sciences and Education.
Professor Bartley’s expertise lies in interpreting ancient environments, with a particular focus on the Precambrian. Her research explores how microbial communities shaped and were shaped by the environments in which they lived. She and her students study the fossil record and the chemical signatures left by life hundreds of millions or even billions of years ago. At Gustavus, she actively involves students in this discovery process, supervising numerous undergraduate research projects that range from evaluating stromatolites in Minnesota to analyzing the Martian surface signs of habitability.
Students who collaborate with Professor Bartley might conduct fieldwork, perform laboratory analyses, analyze imagery, work with databases, or some combination of these. In the classroom, Professor Bartley teaches a wide array of courses taken by students across campus. Her teaching philosophy is characterized by a commitment to effective and inclusive instruction and a firm belief that every student is equipped to succeed. Whether a geology major, a general education student, or a first-semester Gustie, students can expect to take an active role in class, have many opportunities for hands-on experiences, and be challenged to grow as they learn.
Beyond her teaching and research, Professor Bartley serves Gustavus and the broader scientific community in many ways. She recently served as the Faculty Shepherd for the Nobel Hall of Science renovation and addition project and has co-chaired the Nobel Conference. She is a trained facilitator for two national programs: the ADVANCEGeo Partnership, which aims to improve workplace climate in the geosciences, and the Traveling Workshop Program, whose workshops help strengthen geoscience departments.
As the curator of the Chester Johnson Geology Museum, Professor Bartley regularly shares her passion for geology with K-12 students and the public. Whether leading fossil collecting field trips or presenting to local community organizations, she enjoys helping others see the landscape as a "time machine." Her dedication to service was recently honored with the Gustavus Faculty Service Award.
Outside of her professional life, she has served as the chair of a local charter school board and remains an active member of several professional societies, including the Geological Society of America, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, and the Association of Women Geoscientists.
Our People
Kathy Lund Dean
Kathy Lund Dean holds the Board of Trustees Distinguished Chair in Leadership and Ethics, a position uniquely designed to engage external stakeholders with students, faculty, and program opportunities. This role supports three main strategic focus areas:
- Increase Gustavus’ national and international footprint through scholarship and high profile recognitions
- Increase and broaden career readiness through alumni engagement
- Increase and deepen opportunities for experiential learning for students across campus
Kathy explores experiential education’s impacts on students, learning outcomes, and teaching practice, especially links between student mental health and experiential learning. In managerial practice, she examines remote work and why managers and executives resist remote work so strongly. Last, her partnership with the City of St. Peter and City Council allows her research insights into how municipal leaders prioritize very different constituent issues and resolve serious conflict.
Her scholarship encompasses more than 100 journal articles, book chapters, and books. Books include “The Ethical Professor: A Practical Guide to Research, Teaching and Professional Life” (published both in English and Chinese); "Course Design and Assessment" (2022, Edward Elgar) and "How to Become an Effective Journal Editor in Business and Management A Guide to Developing Authors" (2024, Edward Elgar).
Getting Gustavus' brand recognized outside the United States is a key focus. She won a Fulbright Specialist role to assist institutions under-represented in academic scholarship, an editorial role she will be continuing with the Journal of Management Inquiry. She has worked with business school colleagues at Rikkyo University supported by a Fulbright award, creating an exchange agreement between Rikkyo College of Business and Gustavus. Kathy holds joint appointments at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
Kathy is passionate about engaging students in learning about investing and markets. She advises student members on the Board of Trustees Investment Committee as well as the E. Terry Skone Investment Club on campus, where students work with large endowments and portfolios and make important decisions. The Skone Club won a Magnuson Leadership & Service Award for its long-term positive impact on learning, outreach, and philanthropy, donating more than $135,000 in scholarship money back to the College.
Her conflict resolution practice takes many forms. As a certified mediator, a Minnesota Rule 114 qualified neutral, and faculty Ombuds, she helps others talk through and resolve complex issues from an impartial and non-judgmental perspective. At the Academy of Management, Kathy supports ethical practice and manages difficult situations as a member of the Ethics Adjudication Committee and the Ethics Education Committee.
She is a Chicago native and has lived in seven U.S. states and two countries. Prior to joining the Gustavus faculty, Kathy was Professor of Management at Idaho State University for ten years.
Our People
Tara Cadenhead
Tara Cadenhead serves as the Instructor of the Practice in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, where she is also the Director of the Center for Innovative & Entrepreneurial Leadership (CIEL). A Gustavus alumna herself, Tara brings a unique blend of high-level corporate strategy and "maker" entrepreneurship to the Hill, providing students with a practical roadmap for turning creative ideas into sustainable ventures.
Tara’s teaching is informed by nearly two decades of leadership in the corporate sector. During her tenure at FICO, a leading provider of analytics and CRM software, she led talent management and organizational change initiatives, specializing in aligning human capital with strategic business goals. Later, at Target Corporation, she served as a key advisor to Supply Chain leadership, and then played a strategic communication and change leadership role in launching a new enterprise-wide talent system and related processes for a workforce of more than 70,000 users.
In addition to her corporate background, Tara is the founder of Marquess Studios, a creative venture based in Stillwater, Minnesota, that emphasizes intentional design and community-focused commerce. Experience as a small business owner allows her to mentor students with authentic insights into brand storytelling, lean product development, and the resilience required to launch a startup.
In the classroom, Tara emphasizes experiential learning and vocational discovery. She views entrepreneurship as a multidisciplinary mindset relevant to every major, from the fine arts to the hard sciences. Her courses function as laboratories where students are encouraged to iterate, take calculated risks, and solve complex problems through "failing forward."
As the Director of CIEL, Tara spearheads initiatives that foster a culture of innovation across the entire campus. She oversees the Gustie Cup, the college’s premier entrepreneurship competition which offers significant seed money prizes across "Scalable" and "Sustainable" categories. In this role, she mentors student founders through intensive Start-Up Labs and 1:1 consulting sessions, while engaging alumni and industry experts to enhance the viability of students' plans. Gustie Cup winners have advanced as semi-finalists in the statewide Minnesota Cup. Her service extends to the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem, where she builds bridges between Gustavus and Minnesota’s business leaders, alumni mentors, and economic organizations, and recently represented Gustavus on an International Economic Development trip to Ireland.
Outside of her work at the College, Tara is deeply committed to community-driven service and regional development. She is most interested in exploring public-private partnerships to maximize social and economic impact. Tara is a founding Board member for Connect Lake Elmo, where she helps guide initiatives that enhance local connectivity and economic vitality. Her dedication to service is further highlighted by her previous involvement with Rotary International, various non-profit organizations, and was recently nominated as "Volunteer of the Year" by the Stillwater Area Chamber of Commerce. When not mentoring the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs, she enjoys traveling, cooking, gardening, and spending time with her family.
Our People
Hannah Drea
Hannah Drea, MS, BSN, PHN is Nursing Faculty, a Clinical Instructor, and the Clinical Coordinator within the Gustavus Nursing Program. She has taught a variety of courses across the nursing curriculum, including Medical–Surgical Clinical, Pre-Health Professions, Public Health, and Public Health Clinical. Through these diverse teaching experiences, she supports students at different stages of their academic and professional development. She is committed to the College’s liberal arts mission, striving to help students reach their full potential, foster a passion for lifelong learning, and prepare them for lives of leadership and service. Her teaching pedagogy emphasizes student-centered and collaborative learning, encouraging students to actively construct knowledge through experiential learning while adapting to diverse learning styles.
In her role as Clinical Coordinator, Hannah facilitates high-quality clinical learning experiences by securing, scheduling, and managing student placements across healthcare settings while ensuring compliance with accreditation and regulatory standards. She serves as a liaison between the nursing program and clinical partners, overseeing site contracts, coordinating student and faculty orientations, and tracking required clinical hours. Her responsibilities include clinical placement management, partnership development with healthcare organizations, and comprehensive compliance and documentation oversight—such as immunizations, CPR certification, background checks, HIPAA training, and adherence to site-specific policies. She also monitors and evaluates the quality and effectiveness of clinical experiences to support continuous improvement and student success.
Hannah brings clinical expertise to her teaching, with a strong background in medical–surgical and endoscopy nursing. Her experience in the Endoscopy Unit includes colonoscopies, esophagogastroduodenoscopies (EGDs), endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCPs), BRAVO placements, dilations, pre-operative EGDs for bariatric surgery, and bronchoscopies. She has also been involved in the implementation of robotic bronchoscopies, reflecting her engagement with advancing clinical technologies.
In her medical–surgical nursing practice, Hannah specialized in the care of patients with gastrointestinal and urinary conditions, hospice and end-of-life needs, cancer-related complications, post-surgical recovery, withdrawal management, and a wide range of other medical and surgical conditions. This breadth of experience informs her ability to connect theory to practice and prepare students for the complexities of clinical care.
In addition to her clinical coordination and teaching responsibilities, Hannah is actively engaged in professional service and collaboration through the Gustavus Nursing Program Local Advisory Board, the Minnesota Nursing Student Internship Consortium, and the MN Academic Networking Group. These collaborative groups provide guidance and direction to support best student outcomes by strengthening the connection between didactic course knowledge and clinical practice.
She actively participates in ongoing continuing education to remain current in nursing practice and education. Her professional memberships include the National League for Nursing and the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, through which she stays connected to best practices in nursing education and clinical coordination, further enriching her work with students and colleagues.
Our People
Shu-Ling Wang
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.