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Meet your AMP Advisor
We are here to help put you on a path to success.
Fall AMP Advisors

Joe Bookman
I am an Assistant Professor of Media Studies and I teach film, media production, and media theory. My courses often explore topics relating to art and technology, and as someone who is passionate about writing, filmmaking and podcasting, I enjoy helping students to pursue their creative visions, whatever they may be. Beloit is a great place for students who are creative, intellectually curious, and who want to make the world a better place. Every year I am inspired by what our students are able to accomplish, both inside and outside the classroom.
I grew up on the East Coast, but have lived in the Midwest for most of my adult life, and I love it here in Wisconsin. In my free time, I enjoy spending time with family and friends, reading, and watching movies and sports. I feel lucky to have a job that allows me to work alongside talented young people year after year, and I look forward to working with you during your time at Beloit.
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Gregory Buchanan
I am a professor in the Psychology Department and I also teach in the Health and Society Program. I am trained as a clinical psychologist and have specialties in college mental health, the treatment of domestic violence offenders, and psychological testing. Much of my teaching at the college is in the area of abnormal psychology, including courses in psychological disorders and psychotherapy. I am especially interested in the biological and cognitive models of psychopathology, though my training was in psychodynamic psychotherapy and I have a huge soft-spot for Melanie Klein and her theory of object relations.
I grew up in a country town in Australia so when I started at Beloit College in 1999, it felt like a homecoming of sorts, except the country-side here is cows and corn instead of the sheep and wheat of home. I really like the feel of the city, small though it may be, and especially how our beautiful campus is located next to the city’s ever more vibrant downtown area. The feeling of closeness extends to relationships of course, and that is Beloit College’s specialty. With small class sizes and open-door offices across from classrooms my days are full of interactions with students – teaching, advising, and yes, a lot of just chatting. As your AMP advisor, I am really looking forward to starting a conversation with you and doing whatever I can to mentor you on this awesome journey you’re about to begin.
When not working I like to grow tulips, cook ridiculous amounts of food, often experimenting with new recipes, watching cat videos, and solving crosswords.
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Gabriela Cerghedean
I am a professor of Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, where I teach a variety of Spanish language, culture, and literature of the Spanish Middle Ages courses. My research focuses on the Medieval Mediterranean, specifically on al-Andalus.
Even though I was born in Romania, in Transylvania, I call Madison my home. As often as possible, I like to share my interest in travel and learning about other cultures with my students. As a result, in the summer of 2022, I will be co-directing the Spain Global Experience Seminar, one of the many great opportunities for study abroad that we offer at Beloit College.
Teaching at Beloit College is an amazing experience! What I cherish most is building strong relationships, supporting, and encouraging my students and advisees in their present endeavors as well as their future plans and dreams. I am looking forward to meeting you and learning more about your academic and extracurricular interests. My main goal is to make sure that each of you will have a wonderful, successful, and unforgettable experience at Beloit College and beyond. Welcome to Beloit! ¡Bienvenidos a Beloit!

Scott Espeseth
I am a professor of Art, and I teach foundations, drawing, and printmaking, which includes media like etching, relief printing, and screen printing. I am also a practicing artist, and I exhibit my work regularly in national and international venues. I make drawings and works on paper that evoke the eeriness of everyday experiences.
I love teaching at Beloit because of the students. Beloit tends to attract students with a love of learning and an openness to new experiences and challenging ideas. The small community means it’s possible for me to collaborate across campus to support our students, and make sure nobody falls through the cracks. I love the campus, and watching it transform as we cycle through four distinct seasons. That’s right, I even like the weather!
In my free time, I enjoy gardening, cooking, film, and spending time with my family. I’m always down for a road trip or to take in an art exhibition. I’m looking forward to getting to know you as your first academic advisor!
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Susan Furukawa
I’m a literature scholar who focuses on historical narratives and popular culture in Japan. My research interests include Japanese history, national identity in 20th-century Japan, modern literature, gender, popular culture, and media studies. I teach in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, but my courses are often cross-listed with Critical Identity Studies, Media Studies, and Environmental Studies. In my classes, we look at how the narratives people create are subject to cultural, historical, and sociopolitical influences and examine the ways in which language and stories are often used to curate our understanding of the environment and the world.
I’m from a small town in southeastern Indiana where there were no real stores, very few restaurants, and even fewer people who weren’t just like me. I am grateful for the connection to place and people that comes from growing up in a small town, but I am even more grateful that my life there compelled me to seek out a world that was much different than what I knew. That is what led me to Japan and the study of Japanese. Since leaving my hometown, I’ve lived in and/or traveled all over the world, but I feel the most content in the mountains of rural Japan.
What I love about teaching at Beloit is that faculty are free to create innovative courses that help students develop incredible skills they can carry with them well beyond their time here. Beloit students are interested and interesting learners in every sense of the word, so they bring a lot to the classroom. When I am not working, I love watching and playing sports, hiking, and camping. I also really love playing board games and hanging out with my kids who have somehow inherited a quirky combination of their parents’ senses of humor, making for hilarious game nights at our house.
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Sonya Johnson
I’m a sociocultural anthropologist, and my specialty is African descendants’ religious lifeways, (the everyday practices people use to connect with their understanding of the sacred) throughout the Americas, with a focus on eastern Cuba. Anthropologists study the lifeways of humans in various ways, and I research how people make meaning out of their everyday lives by using their history and understandings about sacred lifeways to inform their identity. I teach in the Department of Critical Identity Studies and include content from religious studies, history, anthropology, and African diasporal studies, (the scattering of African descendants throughout the globe), and ethnic studies in my courses.
I was born and raised in Colorado and moved to Michigan for graduate school before landing in Beloit. Home for me is Beloit and where my family members live, mainly in Colorado and Georgia. From all my moving about, I’ve learned that the key to transplanting well is knowing what brings you joy and growing that for yourself wherever you are. Four of the many things that bring me joy are learning about humans over space and time, cooking, studying and teaching yoga, and plants, especially trees!
I love teaching at Beloit because the students are compassionate and fearless in trying new ways of thinking and approaching hard things, like crafting more humane ways to engage around social differences. Beloit students are a joy to teach and mentor because they have an artful way of partnering deep care for others with the courage to put their knowledge into action. By relying on their academic content, professional development through Channels and internships, study abroad along with social curricular activities like sports, clubs, or other student organizations, Beloit students and alumni embody what it means to be lifelong learners. I value working with other staff and faculty colleagues to continually craft innovative ways to make this experience happen for every student. I now look forward to making this a reality for you! Welcome to Beloit, and let’s do this together.
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Robert LaFleur
I am an anthropologist and historian, and I teach a wide variety of courses dealing with East Asia, from studying texts and discussing translations with students to living and studying on China’s sacred mountains. I have always been fascinated by how old books are alive for those of us who take them seriously, and I try to bring that excitement into the classroom every day.
When I am not hiking up a Chinese mountain or sitting with my nose buried in a text, I love to play chess, sample sushi and dimsum (not usually at the same time), and listen to country music and opera (more similar than one might think). Above all, I am passionate about cycling, and spend long hours on my road and mountain bikes, not to mention watching the professional cycling season with ardent enthusiasm.
I enjoy teaching at Beloit College, because it gives me the opportunity to convey not only the content of my courses to students, but, much more importantly, to try to broaden the discussion toward what all education must be about in the end—how we live our lives among others in a complex world. I enjoy advising for this very reason. Part of the challenge is, of course, to choose courses and fulfill requirements. In a much larger sense, though, a liberal arts education is about crafting a life, and I seek to help students begin to do just that.
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Kate Linnenberg
I am a professor in the Department of Sociology, and I teach classes that also count for majors in the Health & Society and Critical Identity Studies Programs as well. My current research focuses on understanding what students gain from experiential and community-based learning. The work looks both at how students develop at the time of the course and at how they frame the experience years later. Did the experience affect their career path? Do they continue to use the skills that they learned as undergraduates once they are in the work world? Does this vary across demographic characteristics?
What I love most about Beloit College students is their genuine love for learning. I enjoy mentoring students as they work on independent studies and conduct internships. Some of my favorite experiences at Beloit involve getting to know students both in and out of the classroom. This can happen during office hours, but it also occurs when classes come to my house for dinner, or when I see a student dance in a recital or play soccer or give a presentation at Beloit and Beyond Day, or when a student helps me code interview data for a research project I’m working on.
Outside of the classroom, I relax by spending time reading books for pleasure, cooking, and going for walks. I also love to watch movies/TV with my husband and our orange tabby, Thomas.
Know that I am on your team, and that means I will work to help you figure out your path and achieve your dreams at Beloit College and beyond!
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Olga Ogurtsova
Exchange AMP Advisor
I am a professor in the department of Modern Languages and Literatures. I love teaching Russian language, culture and literature. One of my favorite things about Beloit is that I work with the most exciting students who are intelligent, curious, and never boring. Daily I look forward to being challenged by our students with their numerous insightful questions. I hope that you too will enjoy your time at Beloit College with these amazing people.
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Donna Oliver
I am a professor of Russian literature and culture in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, and I also teach courses in the college’s Writing Program. My teaching and research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian literature, but I’m also interested in both visual and material culture (I collect pre-revolutionary Russian postcards and love to talk about collecting in general!). As the Director of Community-Based Learning at Beloit, I’m also especially interested in getting students to embrace the larger community and take advantage of the rich opportunities for learning that it provides.
I’m originally from southeast Pennsylvania, but I have been living in the Midwest since I began my graduate studies at Northwestern University. I’ve been at Beloit College for over three decades (hard to believe sometimes!), and I love it here–the community is close-knit, and the students constantly inspire me. It’s really rewarding to work with students who bring such diverse talents, perspectives, and life experiences to the table; I learn something new from them every day.
As for interests outside of work, I love the arts in all forms, good food, and traveling. I love to explore new places, both near and far, and I look forward to resuming my travels once the pandemic has passed!
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Disha Shende
I am a professor in Economics and Business at Beloit College. I teach several courses including Principles of Economics, Intermediate Microeconomics, Economics of Race and Inequality, Business Analytics and Analytics with SQL in the economics department. My research interests are in Public (Health) Economics and International Development. Specifically, I am interested in looking at the health issues of different communities with a focus on disadvantaged social groups (including castes in India) and gender. I am also interested in studying the changing dynamics of health plans in health insurance markets in the United States. I also mentor students for their independent research projects in the economics department.
Additionally, I contribute to the Data Science and Data Analytics (DSDA) major at Beloit College. As part of this major, I teach Introduction to Data Science and Data Analytics course. In the DSDA major, I recently joined a new initiative called Data Clinic where I would be mentoring students for their projects where they partner with local communities to find answers the real-world issues by collecting and analyzing their data.
I like to think of myself as a friendly and approachable faculty with whom students can share their academic as well as personal concerns. I enjoy being in an academic environment where I get to interact with students to exchange knowledge and different ideas. As a former international student, I understand the struggles of students coming from abroad to our college. Hence, I like to share my experiences with them which can help them feel more comfortable in the new environment. I am looking forward to meeting you and getting to know you more as you join our campus community!
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Ben Stucky
My name is Ben Stucky, and I’m a professor of math and computer science at Beloit College. My gender pronouns are he/him/his. My last name rhymes with “cookie,” and you can call me Ben. I was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Both my parents’ families are Swiss-German Mennonites who settled in the midwest in the late 19th century. I attended college at a Mennonite liberal arts college in central Kansas called Bethel College, where I studied math and computer science. After that, I lived with a host family in Kenya for a year where I learned Swahili and volunteered with an organization that placed computers in primary and secondary schools. I completed my PhD at the University of Oklahoma, where I studied theoretical math and became interested in teaching. Lately, I have been interested in branching out and working on some projects which cross over into computer science, including creating a ranking system and alignment classifier for social deduction games such as Among Us.
My partner, Madeleine, and I live in Loves Park, Illinois, with our son (Jonah), cat (Shirley), and dog (Buzzy). In addition to teaching and research, my hobbies include home improvement, running, skateboarding, playing piano (poorly), live music (I miss this one since the pandemic started…), playing mafia and hanabi online, and the mathematics and computer science of video game speedrunning.
I love working at Beloit College because of the opportunities it gives me to get to know my students personally. I am happiest when I am with students in the math lounge, either talking about homework, working on robots with the robotics club, learning about another project they are working on, or just talking about anything else that interests them! I also love working on independent research projects with students, where I am frequently surprised by, and learning new things from, my students. I recognize my many privileges and am passionate about making everyone feel like they belong in math/CS at Beloit College regardless of gender, race, sexuality, and other identities. I’m always working to be a more approachable and informed adviser to my students, and I encourage you to come say hi any time!
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Matthew Tedesco
I teach in the Philosophy Department here at Beloit College, with a particular focus on ethics through courses such as Biomedical Ethics, Environmental Ethics, and Theories of Law and Justice. Through these courses, I’m affiliated with several interdisciplinary programs at Beloit: Environmental Studies, Heath & Society, and Law & Justice. I see the central questions in ethics–about the choices we make, the lives we live, the world we’re always a part of creating–as the kinds of questions that matter to everyone, and I’m glad that my teaching allows me to have conversations with students from a wide variety of backgrounds and areas of study. I also teach Logic at Beloit, and I believe deeply in the connection between clear, careful reasoning and our ability to communicate well and live together in a flourishing, sustainable community. Generally, I see pretty much everything I do at Beloit as about two things: conversations and connections. I love the conversations I get to have at Beloit–in the classroom, in one-on-one conversations with students, and with my faculty and staff colleagues. And I love the connections I get to make, and also help students to make, along the way. It’s a privilege to have a job where I can help Beloit students find and pursue the futures they want for themselves.
Outside of my work at Beloit College, I’ve been an active, gigging musician in local bands in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois for a number of years, and that keeps me busy some nights and weekends. I also enjoy bowling (and finally bowled a 300 not long ago, after having to grit my teeth and tell people for too long, “no, but I’ve bowled a 299”), and I’m an avid runner. My family and I love to travel, and if you catch me staring into space, chances are I’m imagining possibilities for our next trip.
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Gina T’ai
I teach primarily in the department of Theatre and Dance, but also in Critical Identity Studies, Media Studies, and Health & Society. I am a dancer, choreographer, and lover of all things Drag related. I teach Drag in TV and Film as well as Drag Performance, multiple styles of dance, and courses related to dance studies and body conditioning.
I moved around a lot as a child and learned to adapt to wherever I found myself. I consider Wisconsin home and am raising a family of humans, felines, and poultry here. I went to a performing arts high school and a conservatory for college before transferring to a liberal arts school to complete my degree. I am passionate about the liberal arts, especially for artists, because artists are the translators and reflectors of society. We need to learn about the world as a means of informing the art we put out into the world.
Collaborating with students - be it making dances, writing articles, or doing research together - is thrilling for me. We all have much to teach each other and create together. Lately I have been working a lot with student athletes on conditioning and have been inspired by their enthusiasm to connect their sport(s) with the study of the body and how to help grow as both athletes and students.
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Lisl Walsh
Transfer AMP Advisor
I am a Classicist, and I teach in the Greek, Latin, and ancient Mediterranean Studies (GLAM) department. As someone who studies and teaches the languages, literatures, and cultures of people who lived around the Mediterranean sea 2000-3000 years ago (including, but not limited to, the ancient Greeks and Romans), I really appreciate how this ancient material helps me to see our present moment from a different perspective and to ask different questions about how present and future humans “can” or “should” exist in the world. Also as a Classicist, I see it as part of my professional and personal responsibility both to acknowledge and to work against the racism, colonialism, ableism, and toxic masculinity that has been justified by the historical (mis)use and biased interpretation of these cultures.
I thrive in my teaching and mentoring at Beloit because I appreciate getting to know my students as “whole people,” and I feel privileged when I can help my students figure out what kind of future they want for themselves and their communities, what their values are, and how to start building that future in a relatively low-stress way while they are at Beloit. In and out of class, I love learning from and with my students, and it is a credit to Beloit students that I’ve never gone home without having thought or learned something new during the day.
I currently live in Madison, WI with my partner and three cats. At home, I love to read/listen to thriller novels (in Italian, to keep up my language skills), build stuff with power tools, craft, sew, babysit monarch butterfly caterpillars (in summertime), binge-watch good tv shows, and putter around my garden. Whether it’s because of covid stress or not, I don’t know, but these days I am often doing more than one of the above at the same time.
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