Freshman Seminar
Professor Biographies

Fall 2008

Steven Baugh
Section 017 - School: Do We Have To Go Or Do We Need To Go?
Dr. Steven Baugh knows and understands education. He has served as a high school math teacher, principal of a junior high and a high school, a district superintendent for 12 years and currently a faculty member of the Department of Educational Leadership and Foundations. He is the Director of the Center for the Improvement of Teacher Education and Schooling (CITES) and Executive Director of the BYU-Public School Partnership.

Richard E. Bennett
Section 008 - In the Year of Our Lord, 1820: An examination of world history in the year of the First Vision

Richard E. Bennett, Professor of Church History and Doctrine, was born and raised in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. He served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Texas from 1967-1969. He married Patricia Dyer on 11 September 1970 and he and his wife are the parents of 5 children and 13 grandchildren. After graduating with a B.A. in English Literature at BYU in 1972 and in American History at BYU in 1975, he earned his doctorate at Wayne State University in American Intellectual History in 1984. He was Head of the Dept. of Archives and Special Collections at the University of Manitoba Canada from 1978 to 1997. While in Winniepg, he was stake president of the Winnipeg Manitoba Stake. He accepted an invitation from Brigham Young University to return to teach and research in Religious Education beginning in 1997. He has authored several books and scores of articles in Church History, especially concerning the Mormon Exodus and the Prophet Joseph Smith. On the lighter side, his favorite hobby is model railroading.


Rodney J. Brown
Section 003 - A Testimony of God: Science and the Wonders of Creation

Rodney Brown is currently the Dean of the College of Biology and Agriculture. He graduated from BYU in 1972. Before coming to BYU in 2005, he was Deputy Under Secretary of Agriculture in Washington, DC. Before that, he taught at Utah State University and before that he had an appointment at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.


Jeff Buell
Section 001: Adjusting to College & Culture (For International Students)

Jeff Buell is an Academic and Career Advisor within the University Advisement Center. He focuses student strengths in overcoming obstacles while attending college. He enjoys helping students regarding advising, enhancing study skills, and choosing a major. His professional interests include: overall student development, undecided students, career development, study skills development, and solution focused advising.

Craig Earnshaw
Section 002 -- Mighty Missionaries: Using Your Freshman Year to Prepare to Preach My Gospel

Brother Earnshaw is a lifelong missionary having served as a missionary in Brasil, ward missionary, ward mission leader, stake mission president, and President of the Brasil Porto Alegre South Mission from 2003-2006. He was a successful business man, having started and built LifeLink Corporation, an industry leader in insurance software, which he sold in 2004. He has enjoyed working with students in the Center for Entrepreneurship of the Marriott Business School since 1998.

Tim Leishman
Section 016 -- How to Design, Build, and Test Your Own Loudspeakers

Tim Leishman has been involved professionally in audio and acoustics and for over twenty-five years. He began studying, designing, building, and installing loudspeakers and audio systems in his teens. He received a bachelor's degree in physics (emphasizing audio and acoustics ) from Brigham Young University in 1990 and a Ph.D. in acoustics from Penn State University in 2000. His research at Penn State focused on active control of sound transmission through partitions. Before, during, and after his formal education, he worked in industry as a sound system operator, installer, designer, and researcher. Between 1992 and 1996 he worked as an independent acoustical consultant. From 1997 to 2000 he worked as a senior acoustical researcher for Crown International (now the Crown Audio division of Harman International). From 2000 to the present, he has been employed as a professor and researcher in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Brigham Young University. He enjoys sharing his experience and passion for audio and acoustics with his students. His former students have been employed as loudspeaker designers, acoustical consultants, acoustical systems engineers, noise and vibration control engineers, researchers, and university professors.

Scott Miller
Section 007 - Movies that Move Us: The International Cinema Experience

Scott Miller is a professor of Japanese and comparative literature. A former Director of the BYU Honors Program, he currently co-directs the International Cinema program. He admits to crying--out loud, in the theater--the first time he saw "Bambi."

Jenny Pulsipher
Section 018 - The Art of Writing History: A Writers’ Workshop
Jenny Hale Pulsipher has taught at BYU since 1998. An associate professor of History, she specializes in early American and Native American history. She has published in such journals as The William and Mary Quarterly, the New England Quarterly, and Early American Studies. Her book, Subjects unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest of Authority in Colonial New England, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2005 (paperback, 2007). Dr. Pulsipher majored in English as an undergraduate and is an avid reader of all kinds of prose, poetry and drama. This lifelong obsession has made her a strong proponent for historical writing that is artistic as well as historically sound. Hence, this workshop, which she has also taught to upper division history majors and graduate students.

Carl Sederholm
Section 014 - Reading and Enjoying Horror Stories Without Losing Sleep

Carl H. Sederholm is Assistant Professor of Humanities at Brigham Young University. He teaches courses on American Romanticism and American Gothic Literature. His publications include articles on Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, Lydia Maria Child, Stephen King, and H. P. Lovecraft. He is currently co-authoring a book concerning Poe’s influence on the modern Gothic tale. Outside of academic work, Carl enjoys playing the banjo and reading spy novels.

Kim Smith
Section 005 - The Hands that Rock the Markets Roil the World: Booms, Bubbles and Innovations in Global Financial Markets
After graduating from BYU in Economics in 1977 and receiving his MBA with an emphasis in finance from BYU in 1979, Kim joined Goldman Sachs in NYC. Goldman is the world’s pre-eminent investment bank.

Kim started at Goldman Sachs as an associate in its newly formed Futures Department. As futures markets broadened into derivatives markets, Kim received sales and research leadership assignments in the U.S. and internationally. One of the most memorable was a three-year stint in Tokyo from 1989 to 1992. From 1995 to 2000, Kim headed campus recruiting for Goldman’s Fixed Income, Currency & Commodities Division. And, from 2001 to 2007, Kim co-headed global financial markets training for Goldman’s professionals and key clients as part of Goldman Sachs University.

Last year, Kim retired from Goldman Sachs to join the Marriott School of Management as an Associate Professor and Managing Director of the H. Taylor Peery Institute of Financial Services. He was recently named the Undergraduate Professor of the Year by the BYU Finance Society.

In addition to serving as a member of the Marriott School’s National Advisory Council, Kim was also a founding member and former president of the NYC LDS Professional Association. He received its “Visionary Leadership Award” in October 2006 and is committed to the NYC LDSPA’s scholarship fund for urban youth.

Since leaving BYU in 1979, Kim has served in Church callings ranging from early morning Seminary teacher and Scoutmaster to president of the Scotch Plains NJ Stake and Area Authority Seventy.

Kim and his wife, Julie, met at BYU and are the parents of four children. Two have graduated from BYU and two are currently attending BYU. All four are NY Yankee fanatics like their parents.


Paul Wangemann
Section 017 - School: Do We Have To Go Or Do We Need To Go?
Dr. Wangemann has had experience with educational institutions in the public sector, the corporate world, and with museums. He has developed and implemented innovative learning programs in classroom and web-based formats throughout the world.