Faculty Profiles
The Pacific Humanities Scholars Program draws from distinguished faculty members across the liberal arts disciplines. Students in the program will be learning from professors who are highly regarded specialists in their fields and who have a flare for inspiring the best in their students. Highlighted here are faculty members who play an especially integral role in the Pacific Humanities Scholars Program.
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Courtney Lehmann, Ph.D.
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From her involvement as the director of the Humanities Center to her role as a faculty advisor for Calliope -- the University's award-winning student literary magazine -- Dr. Lehmann uses her spirit and passion to motivate students to new levels of thinking. Having received her Ph.D. in English at Indiana University and taught at Pacific since 1998, she understands the importance of scholarship in the humanities and of stretching one's mind to new horizons. An aficionado of soccer and Shakespeare, Dr. Lehmann draws on her past experience as a member of four NCAA Division One National Championship teams at North Carolina, to bring enthusiasm, energy, and spunk to students in her Shakespeare classes and bring life to the characters, conflicts, and ideas that arise in the reading they explore. Full profile |
 Ray Rennard, Ph.D. Associate Professor and Chair, Philosophy Department |
Philosophy professor Ray Rennard continually has a dedicated following of students whom he inspires through "thought experiments" -- hypothetical and sometimes strange scenarios that help to elicit intuitions about abstract and complex issues. His students also are given the opportunity to enrich their minds through the pursuit of questions about the nature of truth, language, and science, and to explore new ways of thinking through meaningful and animated discussions. Since receiving his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Rennard has continued to work on issues in the philosophy of mind and language. In recent years, he has studied the ways we think and talk about the mental states of others when we predict and explain their behavior. This work often finds its way into his courses. For example, his Philosophy of Mind course focuses on our natural capacity to understand others, and his Theory of Knowledge and Metaphysics courses address the nature of the self and self-knowledge. He has presented his work at meetings of the American Philosophical Association and to special interdisciplinary conferences in the cognitive sciences. |
