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Faculty At Ripon

Jandelyn Dawn Plane

  • Ph.D. from University of Maryland-College Park
  • M.S. from UW-Milwaukee
  • B.A. from Wartburg College

I recently retired as a computer science faculty member at the University of Maryland College Park where I had been since 1989. I moved back to Wisconsin to be closer to family and now live just outside Ripon with my mother, husband and son. With graduate degrees in both computer science and education, I focus on computer science curriculum, pedagogical methods and underrepresented populations in computing. For 15 years early in my career, I worked on State Department-funded projects building computing degree programs at universities in sub-Saharan Africa and Afghanistan. After that, I became the founding director of two centers (Iribe Initiative for Inclusion and Diversity in Computing (I4C) and Maryland Center for Women in Computing (MCWIC)) both of which emphasize improving diversity, equity and inclusion in the computing fields through K-12 outreach education, current student support and research.

Erin Munro Krull

Erin C. Munro Krull

  • Ph.D., Tufts University
  • M.A., Tufts University
  • B.A., Connecticut College

I started teaching at Ripon College in 2019, joining the math and computer science department with a specialty in applied mathematics. At Ripon, my teaching focuses on mathematical modeling (including modeling within courses like calculus), statistics and data analysis. I have also been able to do both modeling and research projects with senior math majors as part of their senior thesis.

Before coming to Ripon, I taught at Beloit College, and did research in computational neuroscience in Tokyo and Boston. My research includes action potential propagation across gap junctions (with applications to epilepsy), and neocortical processing during sleep. I use both mathematical modeling and data analysis extensively in my research.

While I was always drawn to math because I always loved puzzles, I also love music because I love to sing. While in college, I wanted to become an opera singer, and studied many languages and theater along that goal. I still sing, on occasion, and am always up for a puzzle or a game!

Christina Othon

  • Ph.D., University of Nebraska-Lincoln
  • M.S., University of Nebraska-Lincoln
  • B.S., University of Iowa

Born and raised in Illinois, I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. I went to graduate school at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln earning a Ph.D. in Condensed Matter Physics. After that, I conducted research at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C. on 3D tissue printing for regenerative medicine, and at Caltech investigating protein hydration dynamics, before beginning my own academic research career and teaching. My research now focuses on how liquid dynamics can modify and regulate biological processes. I have had a very diverse career that allowed me to work closely with researchers in other disciplines such as biology, chemistry, and medicine. This experience has informed my teaching and mentoring of undergraduate research students. I aim to demonstrate to students in other majors, how physics can inform topics in their own disciplines.

Brett Barwick

  • Ph.D., University of Nebraska-Lincoln
  • M.S., University of Nebraska-Lincoln
  • B.S., Doane College

I received my undergraduate degree in Physics in 2002 at Doane College in Crete, NE, which is a school very similar to Ripon. After graduating I continued studying physics and received my Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2007. After completing my Ph.D. I joined the group of Nobel prize winner Prof. Ahmed Zewail at Caltech as a postdoctoral researcher where I worked on developing ultrafast electron microscopy (UEM) techniques. Over the last 10 years or so that I have been a professor, I have taught most courses that are offered at the undergraduate level, with one of my favorites being Quantum Mechanics. Outside the classroom I strive to create opportunities for students and have worked with ~30 paid undergraduate summer researchers on a variety of projects. My research primarily focuses on studying the fundamental quantum properties of electrons/light interactions.