Graduate Council

The UNC Asheville Graduate Council is responsible for advising and assisting the MLA Program Director in the overall administration and functioning of the Master of Liberal Arts Program. These responsibilities include advising and assisting the Director in overall planning for the academic curriculum of the program including: course development; faculty recruitment; and revision and development of program design. Council members will also assist the Director in interviewing and making admissions decisions on all applicants for the MLA program. The council will advise and assist the Director in maintaining the academic excellence of the program and in effectively administering it. Faculty terms will be for three years, with one faculty member rotating off each year. The faculty members will be elected by the Senate, and one will serve as Chair of the Graduate Council.

2011-2012 Graduate Council:

Randy Booker, Department of Physics

Randy Booker has been teaching at UNC Asheville since 1986 and has been teaching in the MLA Program since 1991. He teaches the popular MLA 560 Astronomy and Cosmology class. He has served on the MLA Graduate Council off and on since 1991. He is currently serving as Chair of the Graduate Council during 2010-2011, and he has served as Chair of the Graduate Council many times over the past years. He is a member of the UNC Asheville Physics Department, where he served as Chair from 2000-2010. He teaches UNC Asheville undergraduate courses in introductory Astronomy, Modern Physics, Thermal Physics and upper-level courses in Astronomy for the Astronomy Minor. He received the UNC Asheville Distinguished Teaching Award in 1992. His research interests are in radio astronomy, the study of the interstellar medium, the microwave spectra of molecules and new energy sources based on hydrogen technology.

Grant Hardy, Department of History

Grant Hardy is Professor of History and Religious Studies. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Ancient Greek from Brigham Young University and a doctorate from Yale in Chinese Language and Literature. He has written or edited six books, including: "Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo: Sima Qian’s Conquest of History," published with Columbia University Press; "The Establishment of the Han Empire and Imperial China," co-authored with Anne Kinney of the University of Virginia; and "Understanding the Book of Mormon," with Oxford University Press. His most recent book is the first volume of the "Oxford History of Historical Writing," co-edited with Andrew Feldherr of Princeton University. He recently finished taping 36 lectures of a DVD/CD course for The Teaching Company entitled "Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition," which will be released next summer.

Tommy Hays, Core MLA Faculty, Interim Member of the Graduate Council

Tommy Hays’ latest novel, "The Pleasure Was Mine," was chosen for the 2008 One City, One Book community-read in Greensboro, NC and was also chosen for the Amazing Read – Greenville, SC’s first community-wide reading of a single book. "The Pleasure Was Mine" was read on National Public Radio’s “Radio Reader” hosted by Dick Estell and South Carolina ETV-Radio’s “Southern Read.” It was also a Finalist for the SIBA (Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance) 2006 Fiction Award. Tommy has written two other novels – "Sam’s Crossing" and "In the Family Way," a selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and winner of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award. He is Executive Director of the Great Smokies Writing Program and a Lecturer in the Master of Liberal Arts Program at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, he received his Bachelor of Arts in English from Furman University and graduated from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife and two children.

Holly Iglesias, Core MLA Faculty, Interim Member of the Graduate Council

Holly Iglesias earned a doctorate in Interdisciplinary Humanities from Florida State University and an Master of Arts in History from the University of Miami. She is the author of "Souvenirs of a Shrunken World" (Kore Press, fall, 2008), a poetry collection, and "Boxing Inside the Box: Women’s Prose Poetry" (Quale Press, 2004), a critical study. "Angles of Approach," another poetry collection, will be published by White Pine Press in the fall of 2010. She is a 2011 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry and has been the recipient of fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Edward F. Albee Foundation. Her teaching interests include American studies, documentary studies and a creative/scholarly approach to history through poetry and to poetry through archival photographs and ephemera.

Mike Neelon, Chair of the Graduate Council, Department of Psychology

Michael Neelon received his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin in experimental psychology where he studied dynamic auditory perception and multimodal selective attention. He then completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Wisconsin Hospital investigating the effects of selective attention on neural responses recorded directly from human auditory cortex. Since arriving at UNC Asheville, his teaching has focused on the relationship between brain and behavior.

Teddy Uldricks, Department of History

Teddy Uldricks is a Professor of History whose research focuses on 20th century Russia and World War II. He is currently writing a history of the Second World War entitled "Global Conflict." He earned his A.B. at the University of California, Berkeley, and his doctorate at Indiana University. He was the founding director of the MLA program in 1989. He is currently teaching an MLA 540 seminar on Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. Dr. Uldricks is also the book review editor for the Internet discussion board H-Russia. His most recent publication is "Icebreaker Redux: The Debate on Stalin's Role in World War II Continues," Kritika, vol. 11, no. 3 (Summer, 2010): 649-60.

Gerard Voos, Director of the Office of Graduate Studies, Continuing Education, and Sponsored Programs

Dr. Gerard Voos is the Director of the Office of Graduate Studies, Continuing Education, and Sponsored Programs.  He received his doctorate in soil ecology from the University of Rhode Island, a Master of Science degree in soil science from Colorado State University, and his Bachelor of Science in agronomy from the University of Kentucky. He also received a post-doctoral fellowship in biogeochemistry at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory in Aiken, South Carolina. At UNC Asheville, he has taught Climate and Culture, A Sustainable Culture, and Environmental Literature & Media in the MLA program; and Environmental Literature, and Energy and Society to undergraduates in the Environmental Studies Department. Dr. Voos is professionally and personally interested in sustainability issues. In addition to publishing and presenting research findings, he also has published general interest articles in web, trade and regional publications on subjects ranging from wine, fox hunting, golf and the Vietnam War.