(No. 4)

Balancing Life and Work: Three Perspectives from Tenured Faculty at the University of Virginia

About the Authors

Cristina Della Coletta

As the NEH Horace W. Goldsmith Teaching Professor (2002-2005), Associate Professor of Italian Cristina Della Coletta explored different team-teaching models and created a new course: Fiction Into Film Across Cultural Boundaries. Open to graduate as well as undergraduate students, Fiction Into Film allows all graduate students in Italian to teamteach a section of the course, thus expanding their instructional opportunities beyond the beginning and intermediate language classes typically assigned to them. Having recently completed a book on the culture of World’s Fairs in Italy, World’s Fairs, Italian-Style: The Great Expositions in Turin and Their Narratives, 1850-1915 (forthcoming from the U. of Toronto Press), Cristina Della Coletta is currently working on a new volume tentatively entitled Across Cultural Boundaries: Translating Fiction into Film, inspired by the team-taught course on fiction and film. Her interests also include modern and contemporary Italian literature, particularly historical fiction and women’s studies, and the use of technology in the humanities. She has received a University of Virginia/Terza Università di Roma Research Grant (2001), a U.Va. Teaching & Technology Fellowship (2000), and a University Teaching Fellowship (1998-1999).

Kirk Martini

Kirk Martini teaches structural design as well as digital media in the School of Architecture. He began teaching at U.Va. in 1992, following a post-doctoral fellowship at Tokyo University. At U.Va., he has been a Lilly Teaching Fellow, a Teaching & Technology Fellow, and a resident fellow at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities. He regularly gives TRC-sponsored talks and workshops on pedagogically-effective applications of information technology. He holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Architecture, a Master of Architecture, a Master of Science in Structural Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Structural Engineering, all from U.C. Berkeley. He is a licensed Civil Engineer in California. His current research project involves developing a computer program which uses computation methods developed in computer games to teach engineering and physics behavior from elementary to advanced topics with new teaching methods.

Angeline Lillard

Angeline Lillard teaches the large Child Development lecture class as well as graduate and undergraduate seminars in psychology on such topics as Cognitive Development, Psychology Research and Schooling Today, and Ethnopsychologies (with Anthropology professor Eve Danziger). Her research is currently focused on two areas: young children’s pretend play, including how it interacts with their social understanding or “theory of mind,” and using psychology research to improve schooling. Her book Montessori: The science behind the genius was published in March by Oxford University Press and is now in its 6th printing. In 1999 she was awarded the American Psychological Association’s Boyd McCandless Award for early career contributions, and this year is a recipient of a James McKeen Cattell Sabbatical Fellowship. Her department recently voted that she be promoted to full professor.