Dr. Mark Carson has been a Visiting Assistant Professor and Adjunct Professor in History at Tulane. He also has been a staff songwriter for two music publishing companies in Nashville and has had over 50 of his songs recorded by artists in Nashville and New Orleans. He has also produced and recorded three albums of his original songs with various bands in the New Orleans area, and has played music professionally for 30 years.
Dr. Colombo received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Tulane in 2001, and taught at Loyola University from 2001-2008. She then served as Professor in Residence at Tulane, living in the faculty apartment with her husband and their young daughter at Wall Residential College from 2009-2011 and at Weatherhead Hall from 2011-2014. She has served on the TIDES faculty since 2015. Dr. Colombo's main areas of interest are Philosophies of Nature, Technology, and Archaeology. She did her dissertation research at the Free University in Berlin in 1995-96 and 1999-2000, and has worked on several archaeological excavations in Louisiana. Courses she has taught include Environmental Philosophy, Minds and Machines, Philosophy and Literature, Postmodernism and Feminism, and Heidegger's Being and Time.
Marilyn Feldmeier is an Adjunct Assistant Professor for Tulane University and has lived in Uptown New Orleans since 2003. Her focus is the connection of economic and social structures to the physical composition of cities with a particular interest in applying the writings of Jane Jacobs to the contemporary urban environment. In her non-academic life, Marilyn Feldmeier is a principal of Bkind Development and lead designer of TAG Studio. Marilyn, a Registered Architect, leads and oversees the design team including architecture, engineering, interior design, and landscape design from concept through construction administration. Marilyn studied at The Architectural Association (London) and Tulane University where she received her Masters in Architecture. In addition, she received a Masters in Science in City Design and Social Science from the London School of Economics.
Adjunct Assistant Professor Heather Knight is an architectural conservator specializing in traditional building materials and technology. She has worked on Mary Plantation, the Doc Ezidore House, the Freedman's Bureau and many cemeteries in New Orleans and the Gulf South. She was the recipient of Gambit's "40 Under 40" award and co-recipient of the James Marston Fitch Mid-Career Grant. She served on the board of Save Our Cemeteries and Louisiana Landmarks Society.
Todd Shaffer has worked with Young Audiences of Louisiana since 1995 as a teaching artist, site administrator, summer program director, visual arts supervisor and recently took on the position of Arts in Education Specialist with a focus on curriculum. Todd earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The Atlanta College of Art. For 10 years, he was director of the Modern Primitive Art Gallery in Atlanta, GA, one of the nation’s leading galleries for outsider art in the south. Todd was responsible for gallery operations as well as corporate sales to the House of Blues Collection, the largest public art collection.
After moving to New Orleans, he began to focus solely on education, working for New Orleans Museum of Art, Orleans Parish Schools, New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans Recreation Department and the Association for Retarded Citizens. In addition to his work in the visual arts, Todd has been contracted to act in a number of theater productions. He recently played the role of Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside in a theater production of Auntie Mame, the running of which was extended due to the show’s popularity and abundant sold out shows. Todd also runs his own game show, “Let’s Make a Wheel of Bingo!”.
Through his hands on teaching and attending residency professional development with the Kennedy Center, Wolf Trap, and National Young Audiences, Todd has furthered his teaching abilities in arts integration for students, teachers and teaching artists in the metro New Orleans area.
Jerome White worked as a mechanical design engineer in Silicon Valley for nine years before plunging into an education career in New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina contributed to a rough few years of transition into the new profession, but he remained committed to teaching high school Math up through present day. While teaching full-time, Mr. White earned his M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction at University of New Orleans in 2008. Mr. White still teaches PreCalculus Honors and AP Calculus AB/BC at Lusher High School, just down the street from Tulane.
