Colby-Sawyer Welcomes Seven New Full-time Members to the Faculty Roster

Colby-Sawyer College welcomes seven new full-time faculty members this fall, including three to the School of Nursing & Health Sciences, one to the School of Arts & Sciences and three to the School of Business & Social Sciences.

School of Nursing & Health Sciences

The School of Nursing & Health Sciences adds three full-time faculty this fall to support its distinctive undergraduate program, recognized for quality, integrity and high standards by state and national accreditation agencies. Faculty instruct clinical courses at the world-class Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) and teach hands-on courses on campus in state-of-the-art classrooms and laboratories.

Kell da Costa joins the faculty after four years as a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Applied Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. He holds a Ph.D. from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN-Brazil) in health sciences, an M.S. from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP-Brazil) in molecular biology and a B.S. from UNICAMP in physical education. His professional interests include exercise, cognitive science, neuroscience, health promotion in pediatrics and individuals with substance use disorders.

Having joined the faculty as an adjunct instructor in 2019, Casey Shaffer now joins the faculty as a full time. Prior to teaching, she worked as a registered nurse for eight years and as a nurse practitioner for four years. She received her B.S.N. in 2011 from Missouri Western State University and her M.S.N. from Walden University in 2019. She has a broad knowledge base through her work as an RN, including experience with solid organ transplant, a variety of medical-surgical units, progressive care units and intensive care units. Her NP experience has been in urgent sick visits and, most recently, neurosurgical-focused practice. She will be teaching for the Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing program, focusing on Medical-Surgical Nursing I and II.

Maureen Sroczynski joins Colby-Sawyer as an assistant professor and coordinator of scholarly projects in the Doctor of Nursing Practice program in School of Nursing & Health Sciences. Her position is fully remote. After more than 30 years’ experience in nursing and senior health care organizational leadership across Rhode Island, Vermont and Massachusetts, in 2000, Dr. Sroczynski opened a management consulting company focusing on leadership effectiveness, organizational communication, organization effectiveness and education redesign. In this role, she served as chief nursing consultant for the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education and facilitated the development of a set of competencies for all nurses of the future that serves as a framework for a competency-based curriculum and transition into practice models nationwide. She also worked as a nurse expert for the Center to Champion Nursing in America to design models to advance seamless progression in nursing education programs and convene multi-stakeholder groups for successful grant development and approaches to community health issues.

School of Arts & Sciences

The School of Arts & Sciences adds one new full-time instructor in environmental science to its award-winning faculty roster. Colby-Sawyer’s environmental science program offers students unique opportunities to study in the field through experiential learning trips to the Colorado River Basin and the White Mountains. Environmental science students at Colby-Sawyer routinely present important research at prestigious conferences and go on to enter competitive graduate programs in their chosen fields.

David Lutz joins the faculty after six years as a research assistant professor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. He holds a B.S. in biology from Wake Forest University and an M.S. and Ph.D. in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia. Dr. Lutz has focused his research on the use of satellite imagery, computer models and sensor networks to understand forest ecosystems and environmental change. He has led numerous grants investigating regions throughout temperate, tropical and boreal forests around the world. Dr. Lutz teaches courses in environmental science, GIS and remote sensing and environmental chemistry. His research has been funded by NASA, the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, the National Science Foundation and several other foundations. Dr. Lutz has served as a peer reviewer for over 20 scientific journals and has been an institutional award panelist for NASA’s Terrestrial Ecology, Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry, and Land-Cover and Land-Use Change program. He has published over 30 peer-reviewed manuscripts including in the journals Nature and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Lutz enjoys going on walks and hikes with his wife, Kate, and their two dogs, Waffle and Tugboat. He is an avid gardener and basketball official and has seen more than 50 Phish concerts.

School of Business & Social Sciences

With the addition of three new faculty members, the School of Business & Social Sciences increases its faculty to 21 full-time instructors. Colby-Sawyer’s business administration program is approved by the Accreditation Council for Business School and Programs, and faculty are required to meet rigorous educational standards held by the association.

Paul Buta joins the faculty after more than 30 years as an entrepreneur. He holds a B.S. in electrical engineering and an M.S. in artificial intelligence from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Paul has extensive experience in starting, growing and selling small businesses. Companies have included Optas, JogNog, SoundFest, Semantx, WEGO Health and Energy Bazaar. He has also taught at Boston University since 2008. As a Certified Privacy Professional, he has written and spoken about how to balance corporate needs with personal privacy. In his personal life, Paul enjoys travel, hiking, snowboarding and cross-country skiing with his wife.

After three years as an assistant professor at Union Institute and University, five years as an assistant professor at Keuka College and 13 years of clinical social work practice, Alexis Speck Glennon joins the Colby-Sawyer faculty as an instructor for the online Master of Social Work program. She holds a B.A. in journalism from St. John Fisher College, an M.S.W. from Arizona State University and a D.S.W. from the University at Buffalo. Dr. Glennon has a private practice specializing in treating trauma through somatic approaches and increasing digital literacy skills in the ever-changing digital landscape. Her research and training programs focus on empowering social workers and mental health practitioners through improving digital literacy skills and digital literacy assessment of clients.

Kyle Soldano brings a diverse set of experiences between sales and marketing, investing and higher education. His fascination with all things business, finance and economics-related started early in life. During the late 1990s dotcom bubble, he competed in Yahoo’s stock market challenge when he was in the eighth grade. The experience sparked a lifelong interest in evaluating and investing in different financial assets. Professor Soldano also brings eight years of sales and marketing experience with much of that time spent in New England’s extremely competitive craft beer industry. His experience includes collaborating as part of a cross-functional team to develop new products, overseeing distribution partners, organizing promotional events, analyzing market trends and working with large corporate buyers as well as small business owners to grow sales. After earning an MBA, Professor Soldano started teaching while he pursued his doctoral degree. He has taught a wide range of higher education courses, including marketing, managerial finance, investment management, international economics, strategic management and business communications. His doctoral research focused on student success and the role of information and communication technology (ICT) in student-faculty interactions, post-pandemic.