Jordyn F. Alvidrez, MFA
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Visual Arts
Jordyn Alvidrez is from Sacramento, California. She graduated with her B.A. in English Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, where she discovered her love for literary and visual narratives. Her interest is in dystopian works that identify the story of the “other.”
Alvidrez received her MFA in graphic design from the Rhode Island School of Design. She works in various media, including layout design, book binding, digital embroidery and typography. With her private studio practice, Otra Vez, she continues to investigate and research collections of pictorial and typographic symbols, ranks and hierarchal systems.
She currently lives in New York City.
Mehrnoosh Asadi, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Culture and Economy
Mehrnoosh Asadi earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in economics and her M.S. in environmental policy and management, with a specialization in environmental economics, from Florida International University.
She is an applied microeconomist, and her current research focuses on:
- topics in environmental and health economics, with emphasis on the impact of natural disasters on public health,
- public environmental risk perception and its consequences on housing values in the real estate market, and
- public preferences for improvement in the resilience of critical infrastructures in response to hurricanes.
In Asadi’s research, she applies preference elicitation and modeling techniques for the valuation of non-market environmental goods and services, and analysis of public preferences for natural resources management. She uses both revealed and stated preference approaches for research. In this regard she designed a survey to collect data, as well as collecting secondary data (such as real estate market transactions and recreational fishing market data), to understand public preferences for diverse natural resources and environmental management issues.
Emily Barth, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
English Department
Emily Barth earned both a Ph.D. and an M.A. from Washington University in St. Louis. She holds a master’s degree in library and information science from the Pratt Institute and earned her B.A. in English literature and creative writing from Bard College. She has completed fellowships with the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Humanities Digital Workshop at Washington University in St. Louis.
With expertise in both digital humanities and early modern literature, Barth’s research often focuses more specifically on gendered sites of conflict, the expression of marginalized voices and the treatment of trauma in poetry and drama. She has published work on distant reading for close analysis for Early Print, a collaborative project that seeks to transform the early English print record into an annotated and searchable text archive. She also has publications forthcoming in two journals, Spenser Studies: A Renaissance Poetry Annual and Electric Literature.
Penny Brandt, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Performing Arts
Penny Brandt previously taught courses in arts administration and musicology at the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Fine Arts, and she served as managing director for the Austin-based arts nonprofit Golden Hornet. Brandt has presented her research on activism and equity in music programming and curation at: the AHRC Research Network “Representing ‘Classical Music’ in the Twenty-First Century” Symposium; the national meeting of the Society for Music Theory; the Women XXI conference in Portugal; as a guest blogger for the Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy, and in other academic settings. In 2021-22, Brandt’s research will be published in Bloomsbury’s “Cultural History of Music in the Modern Age,” and in Oxford’s “Voices for Change in the Classical Music Profession.”
Penny Brandt served as the artistic director of the Women Composers Festival of Hartford from 2013 to 2018 and taught courses in music history and gender studies at the University of Connecticut while earning her Ph.D. in music theory and history, with an outside concentration in women’s, gender and sexuality studies. She earned her M.A. from the University of Connecticut, her B.A. summa cum laude from the University of New Haven and a graduate certificate in nonprofit management from Harvard University Extension School.
Susanne Farrell, PA-C
Clinical Coordinator
Physician Assistant Program
Susanne Farrell has worked as a surgical physician assistant at NYU Langone–Brooklyn since her graduation from the Bayley Seton Hospital PA program in 1988. In 2006, she earned her M.A. in physician assistant studies from the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
Farrell is both a certified preceptor and a distinguished fellow of the American Academy of Physician Assistants. For the past several years, she has been a member of the Wagner College PA Program advisory committee. During her career at NYU Langone, she worked in all clinical areas of surgery and was manager of the PAs in the Department of Surgery, where she had a lead role in PA education. She is a dedicated physician assistant with over 25 years of experience who is eager to bring her clinical-care and leadership experience to PA student education. Farrell is a lifelong Staten Islander, and in her free time she has volunteered abroad and in the local Staten Island community.
Iman Feghhi, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
Iman Feghhi is a cognitive psychologist who has done innovative, laboratory-based behavioral experiments that offer insight into a person’s subjective mental state for assessing the subjective difficulty of tasks. He has recently completed his Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of California, Riverside.
Feghhi has published several articles on such topics as how people make decisions about the effort required for physical and cognitive tasks, contextual effects on physical performance, and how people perceive their available mental resources for tasks.
In addition to his training in cognitive psychology, Feghhi has a background in physical education, with a B.S. and M.S. from Shahid Beheshti University in Iran. His interest in physical activity has informed both his research and teaching in psychology.
He has taught classes in research methods, perception, cognitive neuroscience and sports psychology at the University of California, Riverside. At Wagner College, he will be teaching courses in cognitive psychology, statistics and sports psychology in addition to a special topics class this fall on the psychology of action.
Clifford Frasier, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Government and Politics
Clifford Frasier recently received his Ph.D. from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. His research focuses on third-sector political activity and, particularly, how nonprofits collaborate in policy advocacy at the state and local levels. As a scholar using both quantitative and qualitative methods, he has assembled original national datasets on nonprofit advocacy associations and has trained research teams to investigate social innovation in distressed neighborhoods of New York City. His articles are published in two journals, the Public Administration Review and the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. At NYU, Frasier taught courses in interest-group politics, American politics and public policy.
Clifford Frasier’s academic projects are influenced by experience as a coalition organizer and manager for networks of faith-based organizations, the LGBT movement, get-out-the-vote campaigns, healthcare reform and public employees. Partners in research — such as the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the American Society of Association Executives Foundation — have collaborated with him in collecting data for scholarly publications.
In addition to his doctorate, Frasier also holds an M.P.A. from the National Urban Fellowship/Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College, a master of divinity degree from Harvard University, and a B.A. in Russian language and literature from the University of Washington.
Aarti Ivanic, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Dean
Nicolais School of Business
Aarti Ivanic received her B.S. and M.S. at Purdue University and her Ph.D. in marketing at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. She was the academic director of M.B.A. programs at the University of San Diego School of Business, where she oversaw curriculum, academic program review and accreditation. She also provided support for the student recruiting and program admissions team. Ivanic was a tenured associate professor of marketing at USD from 2017 to 2021 and an assistant professor from 2010 to 2017.
At the University of San Diego, Aarti Ivanic chaired the University Senate (2018-20) and was faculty director of the Ashoka Changemaker Faculty Fellows Program (2017-19). She participated in two strategic planning groups for the USD School of Business (2016-17), championing the inclusion of business analytics as a key strategic priority and identifying faculty performance metrics. She has also been a partner in multiple university initiatives in the area of community engagement.
Katherine Moccia, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Biological Sciences
Katherine Moccia received her B.A. in biology from Bard College and her Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Tennessee. She has worked in a variety of research laboratories over the last 10 years, delving into topics from the human microbiome to marine virology.
After graduating from the University of Tennessee, Katherine Moccia moved to New York City and experienced life in the private sector, consulting with and working for start-ups, small companies and core facilities.
Moccia’s research focuses on beneficial plant-microbe interactions, specifically focusing on microbes that can colonize seeds. Combining both traditional microbiological techniques and newer sequencing approaches, she plans to elucidate how microbes that can colonize seeds can impact the plant microbial community and overall plant health. Crucial to her research is the ability to engage undergraduate students in ongoing research projects. At Wagner, she plans to continue to pursue these research goals and engage undergraduate and graduate students in plant-microbe science, both in and outside the classroom.
