Msu Honors College

Scott Becker is a mental health advisor in Residence Education and Housing Services. Becker is also a licensed psychologist in private practice in Okemos, Michigan. Over the past 24 years, he has worked at several universities as a staff psychologist, faculty member, director of training, and most recently as the Director of the MSU Counseling Center. He is currently writing a book on the combined impact of globalization, climate change, digital technology, and political propaganda, entitled “Facing Monsters.” Becker earned his doctorate from Miami University.

Clare Luz is an assistant professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine. Luz is a gerontologist who has conducted research on health services delivery for older adults, optimal functional ability and quality of life, and the intersection of the arts and health. She us founding Director of AgeAlive, a program to foster age-related networking, information exchange and partnerships across MSU. Prior to MSU, she worked for 20 years as a geriatric social worker and consultant in long-term care settings. Luz earned her doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

William J. Chopik is an assistant professor in the Michigan State University Department of Psychology. Chopik is a social-personality psychologist interested in how relationships and the people in them change over time. His research focuses on how factors both inside (such as biological and hormonal) and outside (such as social roles and geography) of people influence their approach to social relationships. His work examines phenomena as broad as how relationships and social institutions shape development and as focused as the hormonal mechanisms that underlie love and intimacy. Chopik earned his doctorate from the University of Michigan.   

Mary A. Bedikian is professor of law in residence and director of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Program in the Michigan State University College of Law. Bedikian is the former district vice president for the Detroit Region of the American Arbitration Association, where she worked for 28 years. Her extensive experience in alternative dispute resolution spans many sectors, including labor, commercial, construction, international, and employment. In 1987, Bedikian created one of the first interactive alternative dispute resolution courses in Michigan and was instrumental in ADR Section of the State Bar of Michigan. Bedikian earned her juris doctorate from Michigan State University.

Heather Howard is an associate professor in the Michigan State University Department of Anthropology with affiliation to the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program, and Native American Institute. Howard’s research interests are the politics of knowledge production in cultural, heritage, health, and social service delivery organizations; community-driven methodologies; medical anthropology; indigenous peoples’ health and technologies of chronic illness management. Indigenous people and urbanization is a central focus of her research, in which she examines the evolution of urban indigenous epistemologies of community, including authority-making structures, and the production of knowledge itself as a dynamic process which intervenes in the production of politics, ethical practice, and the social order. Howard earned her doctorate from the University of Toronto.

Noah Kaye is an assistant professor in the Department of History at Michigan State University. Noah is an ancient historian and archaeologist focused on the eastern Mediterranean in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, with an interest in the relationship between economic and cultural change. His first book will be a study of the political economy of the Attalid kingdom of Pergamon. In Spring 2020, Noah will be teaching HST 481: The Holy Land in the Graeco-Roman Period. He earned his doctorate from UC-Berkeley.

Sharon Leon is an associate professor in the Department of History at Michigan State University. Sharon is an historian of American religion with a concentration on U.S. Catholicism. She also specializes in digital methods with a focus on public history. With support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, she is analyzing experiences of the cohort of people enslaved and sold by the Maryland Province Jesuits in the 18th and 19th Sharon’s first book was, “An Image of God: the Catholic Struggle with Eugenics.” She earned her doctorate from the University of Minnesota.

Stacey Camp is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Michigan State University and director of the Campus Archaeology Program. Stacey researches how social inequality manifests through material culture and environment. Her current research project involves archaeological and archival research on a World War II internment camp in Idaho, where first-generation Japanese migrants were imprisoned as enemy aliens by the United States government. Stacey’s first book, “The Archaeology of Citizenship,” examined how different marginalized groups, especially migrants, in the United States made claims to nationality and citizenship via material culture. She earned her doctorate from Stanford University.

Siddharth Chandra is a professor in James Madison College at Michigan State University and director of the Asian Studies Center. Siddharth’s research interests include behavior and policy relating to addictive substances, the intersection of economics, health, and history in Asia, and applications of portfolio theory to fields outside finance. He has received funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for his research, which has been published in a variety of journals. At James Madison College, he teaches a senior seminar titled “Drug policy from Asia to America,” in which students learn about different approaches to drug policy in Asia and the USA. Siddharth earned his doctorate from Cornell University.