Project Team
PROJECT LEADERS
Casey Kayser (PhD, Louisiana State University)
Director and founder of the University of Arkansas Medical Humanities program. She has published on medical humanities, folklore, oral history, and service-learning pedagogy. She has guided students through oral history service- learning projects, most recently in her Medical Humanities Colloquium class, where students wrote oral histories of healthcare practitioners and donated these to the Documenting COVID-19 project. She earned the University of Arkansas Outstanding Faculty Contributions to Service- Learning Award and the 2019 University of Arkansas Department of English Research and Creative Faculty Teaching Award. She also mentors and supports premedical and pre-health students as a member of the Premedical Advisory Committee.
Tricia Starks (PhD, Ohio State University)
Professor of history and University of Arkansas Humanities Center director. She is author of multiple books on the history of public health, and has been recognized as an Honors College Dean’s Fellow, Fulbright College Master Teacher and Master Researcher, and Student Alumni Board Teacher of the Year. She served as associate chair and director of graduate studies in history and has chaired numerous searches, conferences, and committees at the departmental, college, and university level.
CORE TEAM
Susan Kendrick-Perry
Operations administrator and transcription supervisor for the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History. She is a former schoolteacher and has partnered with local schools for oral history orientations and projects.
William F. McComas
Inaugural holder of the Parks Family Endowed Professorship in Science Education at Arkansas where he directs the Project to Advance Science Education. He is the author of numerous books, has given more than 100 keynote speeches, workshops, and presentations, and has served as a Fulbright fellow. He is an experienced secondary educator and a leader in organizations devoted to improving science education.
Coty Nichols
Fayetteville High School teacher and sponsor of the Project Graduation Initiative. For seven years has taught sophomores, juniors and seniors in world history, African American History, and United States history. He also provides courses through the Fayetteville Virtual Academy in psychology and marine science.
Consulting Experts
Amy L. Allen
Associate librarian with tenure and the University Archivist at the University of Arkansas, has published on digitization, digital repositories, and metadata as well as the history of the University of Arkansas. She is a Certified Archivist (Academy of Certified Archivists) and holds the Digital Archives Specialist Certificate (Society of American Archivists). She will introduce materials in the Libraries’ Special Collections and the Documenting-COVID project.
Todd Cleveland (Ph.D. University of Minnesota)
An expert in African history. His research interests are broadly concentrated around the interactions between Europeans and sub-Saharan Africans during the colonial period and, in particular, labor and social relations between the Portuguese and the indigenous populations in the former’s assortment of African territories. He will provide background for discussion of the African experience of the 1918 epidemic and its aftermath.
Dr. Micah Hester
Chair of the Department of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. He has published nine books and numerous articles addressing everything from ethics of patient- professional relationships to end of life issues. He will provide perspectives on how history of pandemics is taught at the medical school and how he sees COVID-19 in the curriculum.
Virginia Siegel
A professional folklorist and coordinator of Arkansas Folk and Traditional Arts, housed in University of Arkansas Libraries. Previously she worked as Folklife Specialist for the Kentucky Folklife Program at Western Kentucky University. She has published on the intersections of folklore and historic preservation as well as folklore and education. She will discuss ways to negotiate traumatic subjects when doing oral interviews.
Dr. Angela Scott
A developmental pediatrician and leader of the literature and medicine curriculum at UAMS. She is a specialist in showing the connectivity of the arts and medicine and will discuss how the arts and pandemic have come together in her classrooms and practice.