Dr. Rosina Chia, Administrator

Rosina Chia was born and raised in China, came over to the US for graduate training and obtained her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan.  Currently she serves as Professor of Psychology and Assistant Vice Chancellor for Global Academic Initiatives.  In addition to her teaching responsibilities she has served in various administrative positions at ECU, as well as visiting professor in other countries.  Her research interest is in the area of cross-cultural comparison in values and attitudes. In 2003 she and Dr. Elmer Poe co-developed the Global Understanding Project.  Using the same technology she is developing the International Lecture Exchange Project that encompasses exchange lectures and jointly taught courses in discipline specific areas. 

Dr. Jami Leibowitz, Lead Teacher

Jami Leibowitz has been teaching in the Department of Anthropology at East Carolina University since the fall of 2002. She joined the Global Understanding program in the fall of 2005 and is currently the lead teacher of ECU’s Global Understanding Teaching Team. She is also the 2007 recipient of the Max Ray Joyner Award for Faculty Service through Continuing Education. Dr. Leibowitz received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Connecticut in 2003. She is a cultural anthropologist with a focus on cultural variation and ethnographic methods. Her primary research interest is how socialism continues to shape thought and behavior in post-socialist Eastern Europe. As a Fulbright Scholar, she lived in Romania for one year as she studied the use of abortion and contraception there. She has done similar research in Russia. She has also conducted research in the US on America’s abortion debate. More recently, Dr. Leibowitz’s research interests have shifted from reproductive health to cultural exchange and national identity. Back in Romania she is working on a project involving tourism development and the negotiation of national identity. Since joining the Global Understanding team she has also been doing research among her students to identify American National Culture. In the near future, she hopes to expand this research to include ideas about national identity among our global understanding partners.

Debbie O'Neal, Lead Teacher

Debbie O'Neal is currently an instructor in the College of Education. Having taught at ECU from 1993-1998, she has now returned to continue her work in the composition, linguistics and ESL programs. In the past she has presented teacher workshops to include some at the local, regional and national TESOL level. While at ECU she has taught ESL methodology courses as well as those pertaining to language acquisition. Debbie has a BS in French and Russian Secondary Education from Penn State University, University Park, PA. She also holds a MS. Ed from the University of Pennsylvania, Phila, PA. While at U of Pa, she had the honor of studying under some of the most prominent professors in ESL research. Upon her return to ECU in 2003, she has once again become involved in the preparation of ESL professionals for the public schools and continues to work with non-native speakers in the English classes.

Dr. Heidi Luchsinger, Lead Teacher

Heidi Luchsinger is a prehistoric archaeologist who received her MA and PhD in Anthropology from Texas A&M University.  She has lived abroad on several occasions including as an exchange student in Chile during high school, study abroad at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome during a semester in college, she taught English to children in Greece after college, and in 2004, spent 6 months in Argentina on a Fulbright conducting her archaeological research for her dissertation.   Due to her archaeological fieldwork, Dr. Luchsinger has had opportunities to travel to Greece, Turkey, England, Argentina, Texas, North Carolina, and Virginia.  Her research interests in archaeology include the initial human colonization of South America, landscape archaeology, geoarchaeology, reconstructing landscape history and paleoenvironmental history to assess the impact of landscape and climate change on prehistoric humans, settlement patterns of prehistoric foragers, assessing how site formation processes affect preservation of archaeological sites, evaluating the representation of the archaeological record within a landscape based on geological preservation, and use of sediment micromorphology in solving research questions at archaeological sites.  In short, she is most interested in the “context” of the archaeological record and how it affects our understanding of past human behavior.  Currently, Dr. Luchsinger is conducting an archaeological project focused on reconstructing the landscape history and prehistoric settlement patterns of a 150 km segment of the middle Río Negro Valley in Northern Patagonia, Argentina.  In Argentina, she works closely with Argentina archaeologists by collaborating on joint projects and sharing research at conferences in Argentina and the U.S. 

John Southworth, Technical Manager

John Southworth currently works as an Instructional Technology Consultant for Academic Outreach at ECU providing support for learning platforms and     teleconferencing. He obtained his undergraduate degree from East Carolina University in Electronics/Computer Networking and a master’s degree from East Carolina University in Computer Network Management.  He has been employed at East Carolina for 3 years where for the first 2 and ½ years he developed ways of using Video Conferencing Technology to link Universities together all over the world. Experience includes teleconferencing, network design and implementation, network security, server support, Blackboard administrator, Centra administrator, computer technician, computer programming, electronics engineering, A/V media specialist and web page development. ECU is one of the most wired campuses in the UNC system and the lead institution in distance learning.

David Clark, Global Classroom Manager/Video Producer

Nathan Lean, Technical Assistant

Nathan Lean is a graduate student in International Studies at East Carolina University and currently serves as a technical assistant in the Global Understanding Program. He obtained his undergraduate degree in music from East Carolina University. Having taken the Global Understanding course as a student he became interested in the program and received the program's first scholarship to study in a partner country. During the summer of 2006, Nathan lived and worked in Morocco, developing a program that used music as a vehicle for cultural exchange. That experience led to his current educational path and work with the program. Nathan works with faculty members on technical issues related to the program.