News release Public Information Office  SLU 10880   Hammond, LA 70402   phone: 985-549-2341   fax: 985-549-2061 publicinfo@selu.edu Spring 2004 news releases Public Information home News archive Contact: Christina Chapple Date: 8/27/04   SOUTHEASTERN WELCOMES THREE NEW DEPARTMENT HEADS       HAMMOND – Three department heads are among the new faculty and staff welcomed to Southeastern Louisiana University this fall. Joining the university administration are Jeanne Dubino, English; and Marc Riedel, sociology and criminal justice, David Michael Sever, biological sciences.        The three departments are part of Southeastern’s College of Arts and Sciences.       “We are very happy to have Drs. Dubino, Riedel, and Severs with us,” said Dean Tammy Bourg. “They are accomplished experts in their respective fields, with much academic and administrative experience. We are looking forward to working with them to continue the momentum of their departments, strengthen existing programs, and chart new directions.”        Dubino comes to Southeastern from Plymouth State University, where she served as a department chair and faculty member since 1993 and was the university’s 2003-2004 Diversity Scholar. She received her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from Boston College, the University of Delaware, and the University of Massachussetts-Amherst, respectively. She has also taught as a visiting professor at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, and as an adjunct instructor at Westfield State College in Westfield, Mass.       As a Fulbright Scholar, Dubino spent the 2002-2003 academic year conducting research and teaching American literature and women’s studies at Egerton University in Njoro, Kenya. She also received a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute grant, and a Whiting Fellowship. She has published articles on novelist Virginia Woolf, popular culture, postcolonial fiction, and travel literature.       Riedel was a professor with Southern Illinois University’s Center for the Study of Crime, Delinquency, and Corrections since 1978. He served as the center’s director from 1979-1981. Previously, he was project director for the Center for Studies in Criminology and Criminal Law at the University of Pennsylvania and an assistant professor at the university’s School of Social Work.       He is the author of three books and his research interests focus on prescribed and proscribed forms of violence, including the death penalty, stranger homicides, intimate partner homicide, and arrest clearances.       Sever earned his doctoral degree in biology from Tulane University and bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Ohio University. He comes to Southeastern from Saint Mary’s College where he taught since 1974 and was chair of the biology department from 1980-1989.        Interested in herpetology in general, Sever is well known for more than 30 years of work on salamanders. He discovered and named the species “Eurycea junaluska,” a salamander restricted to the southern Appalachian Mountains.        He is a fellow of the Indiana Academy of Science; received the Outstanding Alumnus Award from the Ohio University Department of Biological Sciences; and served as associate editor of the “Journal of Herpetology.”  Sever has given more than 100 presentations at professional meetings and is a member of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, Herpetologists League, Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, International Society of Vertebrate Morphologists, Indiana Academy of Science, and Sigma Xi.