Our People
Lucie Holmgreen
Dr. Lucie Holmgreen uses experimental methodology to study sexual violence. She is particularly interested in relationships among rape myths (false beliefs about rape that blame the victim, exonerate the perpetrator, or minimize the act), personality, and risk of perpetration. Some of her past work has examined how attachment (the ways we think, feel, and behave in close relationships) and attraction to particular personality traits in others may contribute to sexual assault perpetration. She has contributed to empirical work examining the complex relationships among trauma exposure, traumatic stress (e.g., PTSD), physical health, and interactions with the healthcare system, and she has written various book chapters about both traumatic stress and sexual violence. Dr. Holmgreen is passionate about involving undergraduates in her research lab and considers her student researchers’ contributions to be integral to her work.
Although her research skews a bit toward the social psychology realm, Dr. Holmgreen is a clinical psychologist by training, and her favorite courses to teach are Psychopathology (about mental illness), the Psychology of Sexual Assault (an upper-level seminar), and Health Psychology (a 200-level survey course about the clinical sub-field of health psychology). She strives to constantly update and improve her teaching methods and content, and, in Introductory Psychology, she is especially fond of helping students learn to read and understand scientific literature.
Dr. Holmgreen is also passionate about serving the Gustavus community outside of teaching and research by serving as chair or co-chair of various faculty committees, including Faculty Senate. She enjoys working with faculty and staff across campus, finding common ground among diverging perspectives. Being a professor at Gustavus is her dream job.
Dr. Holmgreen received her B.A. in psychology from Ohio State University and her M.S. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Marquette University in Milwaukee. She completed her internship at a VA hospital and Indian Health Service in Albuquerque and a postdoctoral fellowship in traumatic stress at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
Outside of Gustavus, Dr. Holmgreen enjoys spending time with her husband and two children. She is particularly fond of reading and playing video games with her older child and coloring with her younger one. She also loves to read in many genres and to cross-stitch. Once upon a time (before becoming a parent), she enjoyed playing copious amounts of board games and she looks forward to resuming that hobby someday soon — perhaps when her youngest kiddo is up for something other than Candyland.
Our People
Lisa Heldke
Lisa Heldke teaches in the philosophy department and the gender, women and sexuality studies program, of which she was a founding faculty member. Among her favorite courses to teach are modern philosophy (which, believe it or not, focuses on the eighteenth century); aesthetics; and gender, knowledge and reality. But her real passion is the philosophy of food, which she holds in the teaching kitchen of the Nobel Hall of Science, where students can cook together each week.
The philosophy of food is not only a teaching passion, it has also been a focus of much of her service work on campus. She is the co-founder of the Kitchen Cabinet, an advisory committee to the Gustavus Dining Service that works to enhance the ways it serves the mission of the College. The committee includes representation from all the campus constituencies, including students.
Food is also the focus of Heldke’s scholarly research; she is one of the first contemporary philosophers to treat food as a serious philosophical topic. She is the author or editor of a number of books in the field, including Philosophers at Table: On Food and Being Human; Exotic Appetites: Ruminations of a Food Adventurer; Cooking, Eating Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food; and (most recently) Parasitic Personhood and the Ontology of Eating. Her research has led to her being invited to teach each year in a master’s program at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy, a kind of “liberal arts college of food” founded by the Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini. Her scholarly work has also garnered her awards from the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society and the John Dewey Society.
For ten years, she served as director of Gustavus’s Nobel Conference, a role she described as being the “chief learner” for this science-and-ethics extravaganza which is a highlight of the Gustavus academic year, and has brought more than 100 Nobel laureates to campus.
Her newest book project bears the working title “Yurtitude is Experience”; it’s a philosophical exploration of her summertime life in a yurt on the coast of Maine where she lives (mostly) off the grid with her Siberian husky, writing, baking bread in a wood-fired brick oven, and kayaking and sailing in Eggemoggin Reach. Winter finds her and her husky skijoring in the Gustavus Arboretum whenever the snow cover allows.
Our People
Laura Burrack
Laura Burrack is a Professor of Biology. Her area of expertise is in microbiology and molecular genetics. Professor Burrack has an active research program at Gustavus with undergraduates that focuses on better understanding how fungal pathogens, such as Candida albicans, an organism that causes infections in humans like thrush and candidemia, evolve resistance and tolerance to antifungal drugs.
Professor Burrack has contributed to eighteen peer-reviewed scientific papers and has co-authored multiple research papers with Gustavus students. She recently won the Janet Anderson Award from the Midstates Consortium for Math and Sciences for her work mentoring students in undergraduate research.
She teaches classes in the Biology department such as Cellular and Molecular Biology, Microbiology, and Cancer Biology. She was the Program Director for the Challenge Seminar Program from 2022—2025 and is currently the Chair of the Biology Department.
When not in the classroom or the lab, Professor Burrack enjoys experimenting in the kitchen with cooking and baking.
