Dr. Milt Allen, Assistant Professor of Music, Chair of the Department of Music
Dr. Milt Allen, Chair, KWU Department of Music has worked with hundreds of schools and thousands of students, directors and community members during his career. He is often credited as being one of the most creative, innovative, inspiring and non-traditional music educators today. Conductor, clinician, speaker, author and tireless advocate on behalf of music education, his passion for reaching more musicians at a grass-roots level includes extensive experiences in both public schools and universities in addition to founding a non-profit: The Music Guerrilla, which works with underfunded/underserviced programs in Rwanda, Zambia, Haiti and Compton, CA. Milt’s articles and insights have also appeared in music, parenting and educational magazines as well as various newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune.
The Conductor's Companion: 100 Rehearsal Techniques, Imaginative ideas, Quotes and Facts by 
Music, Artistry and Education: A Journey Towards Musical Growth and Enlightenment by 
Dr. Mike Bell, Assistant Professor of Math and Physics, Dept. of Mathematics and Physics
Bell, M. S.; Borhan, A. 2020. “A Volume-Corrected Wenzel Model." ACS Omega. 5(15):8875-8884.
Bell, M. S. 2020. “Double Ring Stand Interference." The Physics Teacher. 58: 204-205.
Bell, M. S. 2016. “Wetting of Two-Dimensional Physically Patterned Surfaces." Ph.D. Thesis, Penn State University.
Bell, M. S.; Fichthorn, K. A.; Borhan, A. 2016. “Effect of Gravity on the Configuration of Droplets on Two-Dimensional Physically Patterned Surfaces." Langmuir. 32(16): 3858-3866.
Bell, M. S.; Shahraz, A.; Fichthorn, K. A.; Borhan, A. 2015. “Effects of Hierarchical Surface Roughness on Droplet Contact Angle." Langmuir. 31(24): 6752-6762.
Bell, M. S.; Hager, A. G.; Tranel, P. J. 2013. “Multiple resistance to herbicides from four site-of-action groups in waterhemp (Amaranthus tuberculatus)." Weed Sci. 61(3): 460-468.
Abbasi, R.; Abdou, Y.; Abu-Zayyad, T.; et al. (The IceCube Collaboration). 2012. “Search for ultrahigh-energy tau neutrinos with IceCube." Phys Rev D. 86(2): 022005.
Abbasi, R.; Abdou, Y.; Abu-Zayyad, T.; et al. (The IceCube Collaboration). 2012. “An absence of neutrinos associated with cosmic-ray acceleration in gamma-ray bursts." Nature. 484: 351-354.
Abbasi, R.; Abdou, Y.; Abu-Zayyad, T.; et al. (The IceCube Collaboration). 2012. “Multiyear search for dark matter annihilations in the Sun with the AMANDA-II and IceCube detectors." Phys Rev D 85(4): 042002.
Tranel, P. J.; Riggins, C. W.; Bell, M. S.; Hager, A. G. 2011. “Herbicide Resistances in Amaranthus tuberculatus: A Call for New Options." J Agric Food Chem. 59(11): 5808-5812.
Bell, M. S. 2010. “A Waterhemp Saga: Seed Production, Genetics, Hybridization, and the Creation and Discovery of Quad-stack Individuals." M.S. Thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Bell, M. S.; Tranel, P. J. 2010. “Time Requirement from Pollination to Seed Maturity in Waterhemp (Amaranthus tuberculatus)." Weed Sci. 58(2): 167-173.
Lewis, A. F., M. S. Bell, R. E. Wagner, Q. Su and R. Grobe. 2003. “Dark cone produced by light back-scattered o_ turbid media." Laser Phys. 13: 207-212.
John K. Burchill, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, Dept. of Criminal Justice (Center for Public Policy and Safety)
Brackens, Chesterman, Papenbrook, Pinsky, Burchill and Wynn. (2011) Saline County Jail Survey
Bullets, Badges, and Bridles: Horse Thieves and the Societies That Pursued Them by Burchill, J. K. (2011) Lecture – Responsibility to Protect (R2P). KWU Holocaust Remembrance Week
Burchill, J. K. (2012) United Methodist Values Inventory: An Assessment of Values that reflects the spirit and intention of a United Methodist Affiliated College
Burchill, J. K. (2016) Panelist - Witness against Violence: Preventing Gun Violence in Perspective of Faith
Burchill, J. K. (2015 & 16) Working with Families with Incarcerated Members. In-House Training for Heartland Programs USD 305.
Butala, McConnell, Riedl, Burchill and Wynn. (2009) Saline County Livestock and Expo Center Survey
Dr. Meredith Drees, Assistant Professor of Religion & Philosophy, Department of Religion & Philosophy
Dr. Meredith Drees has spent her philosophical career studying the connection between aesthetic experience and morality. Her view is that aesthetic experience has an inescapable moral component, which enables it to play various roles in moral education and development. Her areas of specialization are Ancient Philosophy, Aesthetics, Ethics, Kant’s Critique of Judgment, and Iris Murdoch. She has additional interests in C.S. Lewis, Simone Weil, and Feminist Theology.
Dr. Drees is currently the Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy and Director of Experiential Learning at Kansas Wesleyan University. Dr. Drees earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Kansas in 2014.
Aesthetic Experience and Moral Vision in Plato, Kant, and Murdoch: Looking Good/Being Good, Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2021
"Tragic Freedom: Murdoch on The Sublime," Ethics and Morality, Aesthetics Research Lab, April 20, 2020, aestheticsresearch.com/2020/04/20/tragic-freedom-murdoch-on-the-sublime/
"Sublimity as a Symbol of Moral Dignity," Ethics and Morality, Aesthetics Research Lab, April 2, 2020, aestheticsresearch.com/2020/04/02/sublimity-as-a-symbol-of-moral-dignity/
“Akrasia, Appearances of the Good, and the “Tes Psuches Stasis,” Politeia: International Interdisciplinary Philosophical Review. Special Volume in honor of Professor Anthony Preus, (Athens, Greece: Forthcoming)
"Eros and Experiences of Beauty in Plato's Theory of Moral Progress," Politeia: International Interdisciplinary Philosophical Review. Vol. I1, (Athens, Greece: Spring 2019)
Dr. Jamie Kootz, Director of Graduate Education and Instructional Technology, Dept. of Sport & Exercise Science
Dr. Jamie Kootz is a master's (2010) and doctoral (2016) graduate from the United States Sports Academy. She is now the Director of Graduate Education and Instructional Technology at Kansas Wesleyan University. Jamie teaches both in the classroom and online to promote others to learn more about sports, fitness, and health.
Kootz, J. (2020, May 19). College athletic departments face upcoming safety challenges. The Sport Digest. http://thesportdigest.com/2020/05/college-athletic-departments-face-upcoming-safety-challenges/
Dr. David S. Silverman, Associate Professor of Communications Studies, Dept. of Communication Studies & Theatre Arts
David S. Silverman is the Vice President for Programming and Areas chairs, as well as Animation Division chair (and 2016 David Sokol Area Chair Award winner), for the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association. Dr. Silverman is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Theatre Arts at Kansas Wesleyan University, where he has taught for more than eleven years. His first book, You Can’t Air That”: Four Cases of Censorship and Controversy in American Television Programming, was an Editor’s Pick in Choice magazine. He currently resides in Salina, Kansas, with his wife, Olga, and their daughter, Stephanie.
The American Civil War on Film and TV: Blue and Gray in Black and White and Color by 
“The game’s afoot!”: Sherlock Homes on Film/TV by 
Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek: The Original Cast Adventures by 
It's the Disney Version!: Popular Cinema and Literary Classics by 
The Twenty-First Century Western: New Riders of the Cinematic Stage by 
You Can't Air That: Four Cases of Controversy and Censorship in American Television by Silverman, D. S., & Silverman, O. (2007). Citizens and enemies and aliens, oh my! Or, how Latvia gave me an alien passport in the country of my birth. International Journal on Diversity in Organisations, Communities, and Nations, 7.
Silverman, D. S. (2005). “You can’t air that”: An examination of controversial American television programming and censorship from 1967 to 2002. International Conference on Diversity in Organisations, Communities, and Nations, 4.
Published Book Reviews
Silverman, D. S. (September 2016). Remake television: Reboot, re-use, recycle. [Review of the book Remake Television: Reboot, Re-use, Recycle]. The Journal of American Culture.
Silverman, D. S. (September 2015). Spacefarers: Images of astronauts and cosmonauts in the heroic era of spaceflight. [Review of the book Spacefarers: Images of Astronauts and Cosmonauts in the Heroic Era of Spaceflight]. The Journal of American Culture.
Silverman, D. S. (December 2013). Kodak elegy: A cold war childhood. [Review of the book Kodak elegy: A cold war childhood]. The Journal of American Culture.
Silverman, D. S. (December 2010). Cold war captives: Imprisonment, escape, and brainwashing. [Review of the book Cold war captives: Imprisonment, escape, and brainwashing]. The Journal of American Culture.
Dr. Anita Specht, Associate Professor of History, Dept. of History
Dr. Anita Specht received her undergraduate degrees from Kansas State University and a Ph.D. in History at the University of Notre Dame. She has taught at Kansas Wesleyan since 1999. She has served as the president of the Kansas Association of Historians, has chaired Salina's Heritage Commission, and is currently on the collections committee at the Smoky Hill Museum.
Civil religion and American Christianity by
Specht, Anita. “Instructions for German Catholic Immigrants, 1869,” (Translation) in Keeping Faith: European and Asian Catholic Immigrants, Jeffrey M. Burns, et. al., eds. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), 48-53.
Specht, Anita. “The Power of Ethnicity in a Community of Women Religious: The Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, 1868-1930,” The U.S. Catholic Historian 19 (Winter 2001), 53-64.
Specht, Anita. Review of Bleeding Borders: Race, Gender, and Violence in Pre-Civil War Kansas by Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel, in Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000, vol. 14, no. 2 (September 2010), http://womhist.alexanderstreet.com/issueV14N2SE.htm
Specht, Anita. Review of Gilded Suffragists and Women Will Vote in The Journal of American History (September 2018).
Specht, Anita. Review of The Great American Fraud by Samuel Adam [sic], revised by Jennifer Christine Gadarowski, MPH in Teaching History: A Journal of Methods, Spring 2015.
Specht, Anita. Review of Suffragists in an Imperial Age: U.S. Expansion and the Woman Question, 1870-1929, by Allison L. Sneider, in Western Historical Quarterly (Summer 2009): 229-230.
Specht, Anita. “Standing Shoulder to Shoulder: Protestant and Catholic Relations in Olpe, Kansas, 1875-1914,” Mid-America, an Historical Review 79 (Summer 1997), 177-198.
Dr,. Kevin D. Wright, Assistant Professor of Biology, Dept. of Biology
Dr. Kevin Wright joined the Department of Biology at KWU in the Fall of 2018. Dr. Wright received his PhD in Cell Biology, Neurobiology and Anatomy at the Medical College of Wisconsin, with a dissertation titled: Cooperative and independent functions of FGF and Wnt signaling during early inner ear development. Dr. Wright also did Post-doctoral research analyzing the role of Shc proteins in diseases such as breast cancer, hypertension, and diabetes. Since coming to KWU, Dr. Wright has been establishing a research program examining antibiotic resistant enteric bacteria found in the Smoky Hill River.
Houweling AC, Beaman GM, Postma AV, Gainous TB, Lichtenbelt KD, Brancati F, Lopes FM, van der Made I, Polstra AM, Robinson ML, Wright KD, Ellingford JM, Jackson AR, Overwater E, Genesio R, Romano S, Camerota L, D'Angelo E, Meijers-Heijboer EJ, Christoffels VM, McHugh KM, Black BL, Newman WG, Woolf AS, Creemers EE. Loss-of-function variants in myocardin cause congenital megabladder in humans and mice. Journal of Clinical Investigation. 2019 Dec 2;129(12):5374-5380. doi: 10.1172/JCI128545. PubMed PMID: 31513549; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6877301.
Miller BS, Blumenthal SR, Shalygin A, Wright KD, Staruschenko A, Imig JD, Sorokin A. Inactivation of p66Shc Decreases Afferent Arteriolar KATP Channel Activity and Decreases Renal Damage in Diabetic Dahl SS Rats. Diabetes. 2018 Nov;67(11):2206-2212. doi: 10.2337/db18-0308. Epub 2018 Aug 21. PubMed PMID: 30131395; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6198347.
Wright, K.D., Mahoney Rogers AA, Zhang J, Shim K. Cooperative and independent functions of FGF and Wnt signaling during early inner ear development. BMC Developmental Biology. 2015 Oct 6;15:33. doi: 10.1186/s12861-015-0083-8. PubMed PMID: 26443994; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4594887.
Wright, K.D., Miller, B. S., El-Meanawy, S., Tsaih, S.W.,, Banerjee, A., Geurts, A. N.,, Sheinin, Y., Sun, Y., Kalyanaraman, B., Rui, H., Flister, M. J., & Sorokin, A. (2019) The p52 isoform of SHC1 is a key driver of breat cancer initiation. Breast Cancer Research, 21:74. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13058-019-1155-7
Wright, K.D., Staruschenko A, Sorokin A. Role of adaptor protein p66Shc in renal pathologies. American Journal of Physiology Renal Physiology. 2018 Feb 1;314(2):F143-F153. doi: 10.1152/ajprenal.00414.2017. Epub 2017 Oct 4. Review. PubMed PMID: 28978535; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5866456.
Zhang Q, Wei T, Shim K, Wright K, Xu K, Palka-Hamblin HL, Jurkevich A, Khare S. Atypical role of sprouty in colorectal cancer: sprouty repression inhibits epithelial-mesenchymal transition. Oncogene. 2016 Jun 16;35(24):3151-62. doi: 10.1038/onc.2015.365. Epub 2015 Oct 5. PubMed PMID: 26434583; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4850112.
Zhang Q, Shim K, Wright K, Jurkevich A, Khare S. Atypical role of sprouty in p21 dependent inhibition of cell proliferation in colorectal cancer. Molecular Carcinogenesis. 2016 Sep;55(9):1355-68. doi: 10.1002/mc.22379. Epub 2015 Aug 21. PubMed PMID: 26293890; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4873464.