The RHC Faculty Mentor Program helps us to grow as a community by broadening and strengthening relationships among students and their faculty. Faculty Mentors sponsor cultural and intellectual events, including New York City trips to the theater, museums, opera, sports events, and historical sights. We also lead students in a variety of outdoor activities, such as ocean kayaking, fossil collecting, hiking, and seal watching. In addition, our Faculty Mentors are liaisons and co-leaders in a variety of civic engagement and social service programs from sponsoring an art project to raising funds. Other opportunities include rebuilding a junior high school in Sierra Leone, tutoring in local schools, or working with a nearby food bank and shelter. In these ways, RHC students often discover new things about themselves, connect with their peers and faculty members, and assist those in the local and global community.
RHC Faculty Mentors also hold events, talks, and conferences on campus and in the lounge in Vander Poel, our residence hall. At Vander Poel, we host our annual Deans' Cup contests and a monthly Open Mic Night, in addition to holiday parties, study breaks, poetry readings, and an unconventional, noncredit course entitled "Living Deliberately." We hope to foster informal contact with faculty because we know that students learn better when they see their faculty as partners. By expanding RHC student access to professors outside the classroom, we wish to extend and deepen the learning process in exciting, new ways.
Dr. Jase E. Bernhardt
Jase Bernhardt is an assistant professor in the Department of Geology, Environment and Sustainability and Director of Sustainability Studies. He received a BS in Atmospheric Science from Cornell University, and an MS and PhD in Geography from Penn State. Jase teaches courses in climate change, meteorology, and sustainability at Hofstra. His current research involves the use of novel technologies such as virtual reality simulations to improve weather risk communication and has been funded by organizations including the National Science Foundation, National Weather Service, and New York Sea Grant. That work was recognized with the Hofstra University Lawrence A. Stessin Prize and has been covered in local and national media outlets including Newsday, The Weather Channel, and The Washington Post. Jase greatly enjoys serving as a faculty mentor and leading off campus excursions, particularly hikes and New York Mets games!
Dr. Lauren Burignat-Kozol
Lauren Burignat-Kozol is the assistant dean of Honors College, an associate adjunct professor of Writing Studies, and the dramaturg for the Hofstra Opera and Float Opera Company. She is also on the advisory board for the Hofstra Center for Civic Engagement and part of a team working with the Kettering Foundation on a publication about the inception of the United Nations. Dr. Burignat-Kozol received her BA from Columbia University and her PhD in English from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she also did her qualifying studies and exams in music, and won the Robert Adams Day Award for "the best dissertation involving interdisciplinary work." In addition, Dr. Burignat-Kozol holds a professional certificate in music composition from Berkeley College of Music, and furthered her musical training at Mannes School of Music and the Juilliard School. In addition, she participated in a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminar on Literature and the Visual Arts. Her primary area of scholarly research is avant-garde collaborations among poets, artists, and composers in the 20th and 21st centuries. Before coming to Hofstra, Dr. Burignat-Kozol was the director of academic writing at Manhattanville College and a research assistant professor at Polytechnic University, where she won prizes for "outstanding and dedicated service" and as "Faculty Advisor of the Year" for her work with the Performing Arts Club. She thoroughly enjoys collaborating with students academically, socially, and creatively on and off campus. Her most ambitious excursion to date involved co-leading a semester abroad program at Polytechnic, in which she took 23 students to seven countries in Asia – China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. Outside the university, her favorite activities include writing poetry, composing music, and playing the piano in chamber groups.
Dr. Kari Jensen
Dr. Jensen received her PhD in Geography from the Pennsylvania State University in 2007. She has an MPhil degree and a bachelor's degree in human geography from the University of Oslo (Norway). Before she started her doctoral studies at Penn State, she worked for the immigration authorities in Norway and for a non-governmental organization helping orphan children in Bangladesh get an education. She has conducted research in Bangladesh intermittently the last 20 years, increasingly focusing on the experiences of children from low-income households, including their work and access to education. Her doctoral research targeted children who are domestic workers for wealthier families in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In particular, she focused on the cultural context of the children's relationship with employers and the prospects for increasing their quality of life through access to public and semi-public spaces, where they can develop their social network and seek help in case of neglect and abuse. Dr. Jensen also explored the work that governmental and non-governmental organizations do to help working children in general, and child domestic workers in particular. She uses different qualitative methodologies in her research, such as discourse analysis, participant observation, and critical ethnography.