I have been a freelance percussionist in central Wisconsin for 25 years. My work includes orchestral performances with the Fox Valley Symphony, Wisconsin Philharmonic Orchestra, Weidner Philharmonic and more. I also have been the percussionist on the national tours of Broadway shows including runs of “Wicked,” “Newsies,” “Anastasia,” and “West Side Story.” I maintain a private studio and have been the clinician at high schools around the state.
I am the Director of Choral Activities at Ripon College. I direct the Chamber Singers, Concert Choir, and Choral Union. I also teach Conducting I and II, Choral Techniques, Music History I, and in the Catalyst curriculum. My research includes applications of Servant Leadership in Choral Rehearsals, and the use of concepts from Information Pedagogy to frame Conducting Pedagogy. I conduct Aperi Animam, a professional early music choir in Milwaukee, and sing with several professional choirs throughout the country. In my free time, I love to spend time with my family and friends, read, golf and cook.
Paul Dietrich has been described as “an apt bandleader, an exception composer, and a superlative performer” (All About Jazz) and “a skilled composer” (JazzTrail) and his music has been praised as “stunningly beautiful” (Audiophile Audition) and “captivating” (Chicago Jazz Magazine).
A composer, trumpet player and educator based in the Midwest, Dietrich has led the Paul Dietrich Quintet since 2012 and the Paul Dietrich Jazz Ensemble since 2016. The Chicago-based Quintet has released two albums: Focus (2017, ears&eyes) and We Always Get There (2014, Blujazz). The Paul Dietrich Jazz Ensemble’s 2019 album Forward features guest artist and world-renowned drummer Clarence Penn (Dave Douglas, Maria Schneider) alongside many of the Midwest’s best jazz musicians.
As a composer, Dietrich has completed over a dozen commissions for schools and organizations including the Isthmus Jazz Festival, Lawrence University’s Jazz Weekend, Ripon College, Madison College, the Mount Horeb Middle School Jazz Festival, and various high schools throughout Wisconsin. He is a two-time recipient of the Greater Madison Jazz Consortium’s Artistic Development Grant.
Paul holds a Bachelor’s degree in trumpet and jazz studies from Lawrence University and a Master’s degree in Jazz Studies from DePaul University. As an educator, Paul has directed the Jazz Ensemble at Ripon College since 2021, and served as co-trumpet instructor with his wife, Jessica Jensen, while filling in for his former teacher, John Daniel, at Lawrence University in 2021. Previously, Paul taught at Prairie Music & Arts in Sun Prairie, WI, and directed the jazz ensemble at Madison East High School.
I’m originally from Las Vegas, Nevada. Most of my work involves creating theatrical encounters that conjure a sense of enthusiasm and social responsibility. I received my bachelor’s degree in theatre from the University of Northern Colorado and an MFA in theatre from Ohio State University. In addition to being an educator, I am a solo performing artist, actor and director. Currently, I’m touring my solo performance ‘The OREO Complex,” a multi-disciplinary art experience that explores the politics of racial performance by investigating the complexities of black identity.
As Director of Lane Library I connect students to the collections, spaces and library services they need for academic growth and success. This means providing books and articles from the world’s best scholars, making innovative spaces like the Franzen Center possible, and working with students to help them navigate the flood of information available. Like many Ripon students, I was the first in my family to go to college. That’s one of the many reasons I find the additional services we provide, like chromebook and textbook check-outs as well as supporting open-educational resources so essential.
I currently teach information literacy as part of the Catalyst curriculum and have also taught courses on German language, culture and literature, the digital humanities, oral history as well as a half-marathon course.
Professionally, I am an active member of the Wisconsin Library Association as current co-chair of the Leadership Committee, co-chair of the Literary Awards committee as well as a past chair of the Wisconsin Association of Academic Librarians. I also serve on two public library boards. My scholarship focuses on local history and culture.
Nature has always been a central part of my life. I was lucky enough to turn this passion for the natural world into a career as a scientist and educator in the field of biology. My areas of research focus broadly on evolution, ecology and conservation. Specifically, I study a group of fascinating plants that inhabit some of the most inhospitable North American desert areas, the wild buckwheat (Eriogonum). Additionally, the complexity and rarity of the tallgrass prairie ecosystem have always interested me. Currently, students in my research lab at Ripon College are investigating the diversity of insect pollinators (bees, butterflies, etc.) in prairies of Wisconsin. There is still a lot we can learn from the species around us!
At Ripon College, I teach courses ranging from Introductory Biology and Environmental Studies to advanced courses in Plant Diversity, Flora and Vegetation, and Conservation Biology.
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!
American soprano Erin Bryan has been praised for her “deft” operatic characterizations and a voice that is “a lyric soprano of exceptional beauty.” Recent engagements include Rosalinda (Die Fledermaus), Anne Sexton/#2 (Transformations), and the Governess (The Turn of the Screw), and she is featured as Young Anne/#1 on the recently released world-premiere recording of Conrad Susa’s Transformations. An advocate for new music, she enjoys frequent collaboration with living composers, including the Midwest premiere of Laura Schwendinger’s Kay Ryan Songs and the world premiere of Dangerous New Avenues, a chamber duet for soprano and percussion by Justin Giarrusso. She has just completed her second season with the innovative Fresco Opera of Wisconsin, where she was heard in works by Mozart, Verdi, Floyd, and Bellini.
Dr. Bryan holds degrees from Lawrence University, where she studied with Steven Spears and Patrice Michaels, and the University of Louisville, where she studied with Edith Davis Tidwell. She earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in vocal performance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she studied with Paul Rowe. Her research concentration is largely in the area of vocal repertoire, with particular emphasis on eighteenth-century opera.
As a member of the music faculty at Ripon College, Dr. Bryan instructs courses in applied voice study, vocal pedagogy, lyric diction, and musicology, and she also enjoys regular collaboration with both the school’s choral program and the theatre department.
I serve as the director of bands and music education at Ripon College. I direct the Symphonic Wind Ensemble – our main concert band – and the Rally Band, our athletic band. I also teach all of our music education courses, and oversee the music education major. Other courses that I teach include music history and theory courses, and music technology. Like most professors at Ripon, I also contribute to our Catalyst curriculum. My research interests focus on the social structures within school bands, including social induction, belonging, and hazing.
I have a Bachelor of Music Education from UW – Eau Claire, and a Masters in Music and a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from UW – Madison. Before Ripon, I taught for five years at UW-Richland, and for thirteen years in Wisconsin’s public K-12 schools.
My name is Deb MacKenzie, and I teach in the Music Department at Ripon College, as well as accompany all ensembles, juries and recitals. I have degrees from the University of Iowa (B.M. Music/Music Therapy) and UW-Madison (M.M. Piano Performance and Pedagogy). I enjoy watching students progress in their fields of study, and love watching their growth. I am married with four children, a son-in-law and a grandson.
I am a cultural anthropologist with specializations in economic anthropology and the anthropology of money. My ethnographic research and engaged policy work examines the everyday uses of monetary technologies and the shifting relations of money, social inequality, and financial inclusion in Europe, the United States and internationally. I have a B.A. in anthropology and German from Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis. After receiving my Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, I was a postdoctoral scholar at the Institute for Money, Technology, & Financial Inclusion (IMTFI) at the University of California, Irvine. In partnership with IMTFI and the International Currency Association (ICA), I’ve written two white papers on the role and importance of cash in society. I have been a visiting professor of anthropology at Ripon College from 2018-2022 and participated in faculty-student collaborative research for two summers in the Ripon College Summer Opportunity for Advanced Research (SOAR) program. I am now an assistant professor of anthropology.
Hi! I teach biology, primarily Anatomy and Physiology. I carry out behavioral neuroendocrinology research (hormones on the brain and behavior) in rats. I am particularly interested in the role of steroid hormones in social and sexual behaviors, as well as the neuropeptides vasopressin and oxytocin in social behaviors. I also carry out pedagogy research on how students learn. I grew up in Madison, WI and got my B.A. from Earlham College, a school about the same size as Ripon. I got my MS and PhD from UW-Madison in behavioral neuroendocrinology, did a postdoc in biology education research, then taught for two years at Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington. I currently live in Ripon with my husband, two kids, two dogs, and chickens. I am a runner and hope to get back into triathlons soon (I am a 2x Ironman).
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.
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.
