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Kathleen Keller is a professor of History. Keller’s research specialization is in the history of France and West Africa in the twentieth century. Keller did research in archives in Paris, Aix-en-Provence, France and Dakar, Senegal to write her first book, “Colonial Suspects: Suspicion, Imperial Rule, and Colonial Society in Interwar French West Africa.” This book, published by University of Nebraska Press uses police sources to understand police surveillance, anti-colonial activity, and the cosmopolitan society that emerged in the cities of French West Africa in the 1920s and 1930s. 

Keller’s latest book project, “A Magnificent Fraud: An African Life in Twentieth Century France,” under contract with Louisiana State University Press, considers the life of Alioune Kane, an African migrant to France who reinvented himself many times over decades, especially during the German occupation during World War II. The book manuscript provides new insight into what it meant to be a Black Frenchmen and traces the story through the Second World War when Kane faced dangerous choices.

Keller has published academic articles in the journals French Historical Studies, French Colonial History, and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. She has also published public history essays in the Washington Post.

Keller’s teaching at Gustavus covers a wide range of topics in world, imperial, European, African, and women’s history. Her favorite courses to teach delve into complex and morally fraught moments of twentieth century history—France under Nazi Occupation and South Africa and Apartheid. She most enjoys working with students to improve their writing and to find research topics that match their personal interests. 

At Gustavus since 2011, Keller also serves as the director of the African/African Diaspora Studies program and director of Writing across the Curriculum. 
 

Lynnea H. Myers, PhD, PhD MSN, RN is a dual PhD-trained nurse and researcher specializing in pediatrics, child development, asthma, and digital health. She currently serves as the faculty mentor for the Gustavus team for the Innovation Scholars Program. She most recently worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden and a Visiting Research Fellow at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Prior to those roles, she was an Associate Professor of Nursing at Gustavus Adolphus College. Her research interests focus on leveraging artificial intelligence and remote monitoring devices to improve pediatric asthma management.

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.

Espen Fredrick is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Physics. A 2021 Gustavus alumnus, Dr. Fredrick earned his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2025 before returning to the college, bringing with him a strong commitment to undergraduate education and student-centered research.

In the classroom, Dr. Fredrick emphasizes preparing students for future careers in science and related fields through a teaching philosophy centering on helping students develop the habits needed for independent problem solving. His favorite courses to teach include electromagnetic theory and quantum mechanics, where he enjoys helping students contextualize new mathematical formalisms to build their own physical intuition.

Dr. Fredrick’s research focuses on space plasma physics, particularly the interaction between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field. His work aims to improve predictions of how and when solar wind disturbances impact near-Earth space, contributing to a broader understanding of space weather and its effects on technological systems. At Gustavus, he is interested in involving undergraduates in research that emphasizes the accessibility of computational physics and empowers students to conduct meaningful research beyond traditional settings.

Beyond teaching and research, Dr. Fredrick currently assists students who operate the Olin Observatory, helping them gain hands-on experience with astronomical instrumentation. He values close collaboration with students and sees mentoring as one of the most rewarding aspects of his role. He is excited to help students grow as scientists, problem solvers, and future leaders.

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! 
 

A graduate of Gustavus Adolphus College herself, Stephanie was delighted to return to her undergraduate alma mater as a professor. Stephanie teaches courses both within and beyond the Exercise Physiology major, and she finds student mentorship to be among the most rewarding aspects of her work. Her teaching philosophy is grounded in the concept of vocation, emphasizing the integration of academic learning with personal purpose. She is committed to helping students discern how their skills, values, and passions can be meaningfully applied in service to others, preparing them not only for professional success but also for lives of purpose and engagement. Research is intentionally embedded within the Exercise Physiology curriculum at Gustavus, and she regularly serves as a faculty mentor for multiple student-led, independent research projects. These projects are frequently presented at local, regional, and national conferences across the country.

Her scholarly interests focus on the relationship between physical activity and bone mineral density. Most recently, she published an article in the International Journal of Fitness titled “Step Count, Calcium Intake, and Bone Mineral Density Among Women Using Depo-Provera.”

Stephanie is an active presenter and attendee at national meetings of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), where she has earned Fellow status. She has also served on the ACSM Women, Sport, and Physical Activity Committee.

Dr. Yumiko Oshima-Ryan began teaching at Gustavus in 2004. She enjoys teaching private piano lessons and establishing relationships with her students that focuses on trust and integrity. At her piano studio, students cultivate musical, technical, historical, and theoretical features of piano repertoire which they select to perform for their recital. Students focus on developing piano skills which are vital for artistic self-expression. Dr. Oshima-Ryan values mentoring students as they face their challenges, find new perspectives, and most of all, promote self-belief. All of these things ultimately provide deeper meaning and joy to their performance and creativity.

A native of Japan, Yumiko also teaches keyboard courses to students of all levels, including total beginners. Along with keyboard skills courses for music majors and minors, she offers courses on how to practice and prepare performances, as well as on wellness for musicians.

Dr. Oshima-Ryan believes musical performance is one of the most valuable opportunities students can have, and that it represents a core value in the music department of a liberal arts college. As an instructor, she also values sharing the experience of her own performances with students.

Her recordings, "Piano Works for the Left Hand - Takashi Yoshimatsu" and “From Afar,” are published by the Naxos Records label and available to stream on major digital platforms, including iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon. "Piano Works for the Left Hand" was selected as a special edition in the August 2022 issue of Record Geijutsu, a top music review magazine in Japan. Dr. Oshima-Ryan hopes this album inspires and encourages people rehabilitating after injury or fighting a major illness, such as cancer. The album includes pieces which were written for the composer’s respected friend, Izumi Tateno, who lost the use of his right hand after a cerebral hemorrhage. She wants the listeners to get past the idea of the left hand as the overlooked partner of the dominant right. She wants them to see, instead, that through courage, compassion, and creativity, the limitations of human frailty can be overcome.

Recently, Dr. Oshima-Ryan started collaborating with the Department of Theatre and Dance at Gustavus by creating original music for dance performances. Performances, recordings, and lectures are available online.

Matt Panciera is an associate professor of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies. He truly enjoys teaching the languages - all levels of Greek and Latin - in addition to a wide range of classical studies courses; everything from Greek tragedy to Roman history. His research focuses on the incredible treasure trove of information found in the Pompeian graffiti scratched into the walls of the ancient city by its beautifully ordinary inhabitants before it was buried under the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. He is extremely grateful to have been awarded on three occasions a NEH Summer Seminar for K-12 teachers where they, together with a team of distinguished scholars, explored the topic of of Roman daily life as seen in the Roman novelist Petronius and the archaeological and epigraphical remains of Pompeii. He has also worked on Roman funerary inscriptions including the epitaph of the unforgettable freedwoman, Allia Potestas.

Matt feels fortunate to have been hired on four different occasions by the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome and he is a passionate advocate for teaching and learning on site. He always finds himself experiencing ideas, making connections, and asking questions that would never occur to him without the inspiration of standing in the place where the ancient Greeks and Romans once lived their lives. He is happy to teach a class where the students "nerd out" and dive deep into the Greeks and Romans for their own sake. But ultimately he believes, both for himself and his students, the greatest benefit of spending time with the Greeks and Romans is how much we learn about ourselves and what we want to make of our own world.  

If pressed, on most days he would say his favorite classical authors to read in the original language are Homer and Ovid. He recognizes the beauty of Greek and the genius of so much that came to fruition in Athens in the 5th century BCE—the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, the birth of western philosophy, tragedy (Sophocles is his favorite)—but he is more at home in Latin and loves the way that reading Petronius and Pompeian graffiti feels like looking through a window directly at the ancient Romans. His favorite classical building is the Pantheon in Rome and his favorite site is Segesta in Sicily.

Outside of work he loves to cook for his family, visit the Boundary Waters, root for all the Boston teams (but also the Vikings), play golf, and exercise.
  

Sarah Erickson Lume grew up near Ann Arbor, MI and had the privilege of spending summers at the international music camp, Interlochen Center for the Arts. This experience instilled in her the love of music making and she began to cultivate the artistic discipline of practicing, rehearsing, and performing within the context of a supportive community. Valuing a liberal arts education, she attended Sarah Lawrence College, outside of New York City while continuing to study oboe with Laura Ahlbeck (Metropolitan Opera) and Randall Wolfgang (New York City Ballet).

Sarah worked at NYC’s Carnegie Hall before entering graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University, where she was the student of her most influential teacher, Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida (Principal Oboist of the Pittsburgh Symphony). While pursuing a master’s degree in music performance, her momentum flourished both as a musician and as a reed maker. The Philadelphia style of reed making, and the resulting benefits to the oboist, is a specialty she now passes on to her own students. During this time, Sarah also attended Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, and Orford Music Festival, in Quebec.

Her work in the Twin Cities includes chamber music and freelance performances as well as previous work with the Duluth Symphony Orchestra, South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, and Minnesota Waldorf School. Having been an oboe instructor at Gustavus Adolphus College for more than twenty years, Sarah has found teaching to be one of the most fulfilling jobs of her career. She maintains a private home studio and teaches as an adjunct faculty member at other area colleges. Her interests include Alexander Technique, optimal performance psychology, practicing the piano, and recorder, as well as running. Sarah and her husband, a visual artist and professor, have two daughters.

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. 
 

Dr. Suzanne Wilson is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology. Since arriving at Gustavus in 1998, she has taught a range of classes, including Social Inequality, Kinship, Criminology, Drugs and Society, Women, Crime, and Criminal Justice, Globalization, and the Research Seminar in Sociology and Anthropology classes. Dr. Wilson has worked with several campus interdisciplinary programs including Peace, Justice, and Conflict Studies and Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies. 

Her research has focused on U.S. drug policy, the cocaine trade, and extralegal right-wing violence in Latin America. Dr. Wilson has presented at numerous conferences and published in many academic journals. In 2025, the Latin American Research Review published her most recent article, “Colombian Paramilitaries and Their Successor Groups.”

Carol Lagergren is a Visiting Instructor in the Education Department. After working 32 years in K-12 education as a classroom teacher and administrator, she moved to Gustavus and taught for several years focusing on Middle and Secondary School Education courses. She currently supervises and supports student teachers in the Education Program.