PROSE Awards Judges - Bios

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Joseph S. Alpert, MD is Professor of Medicine, Director of Coronary Care, Sarver Heart Center, University of Arizona (UA) College of Medicine, Tucson, AZ. He came to the UA from the University of Massachusetts in Worcester where he was professor of medicine, director of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, and vice chairman of medicine. He was chairman of the Department of Medicine at the UA College of Medicine from 1992 – 2006.

Dr. Alpert earned his undergraduate degree from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, and his medical degree from Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. He completed his residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in cardiovascular disease at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (now Brigham and Women’s Hospital) in Boston. After his fellowship, Dr. Alpert served as staff cardiologist and director of the coronary care unit at the Naval Regional Medical Center in San Diego, California, where he was also an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego. Following his military service, Dr. Alpert returned to the Harvard Medical School and the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital where he was director of the Samuel A. Levine Cardiac Unit. In 1978, he joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Board-certified in internal medicine and cardiovascular disease, Dr. Alpert has received many awards for excellence in teaching from, among others, the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, the United States Navy, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Arizona. In 2004, he received the Gifted Teacher Award from the American College of Cardiology (ACC). Dr. Alpert is a past chairman of the Council on Clinical Cardiology of theAmerican Heart Association from which he received the Distinguished Achievement Award in 2001.

He is a master of the American College of Physicians and a fellow of the Council on Clinical Cardiology of the American Heart Association, the American College of Cardiology, the American College of Chest Physicians, and the European Society of Cardiology. He is an honorary member of the Danish Cardiovascular Society, the Israeli Heart Society, and the Argentina Cardiology Association. He has served on many national committees of professional organizations and is a former member of the Board of Trustees of the ACC and the Board of Directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine. He is a current member of the Board of Trustees of the Association of Professors of Medicine.

Dr. Alpert is the former editor of the journals Cardiology, Current Cardiology Reports, and Cardiology in Review. He is the current editor-in-chief of The American Journal of Medicine (“the Green Journal”), a member of the editorial boards of 10 cardiovascular journals, and an editorial reviewer for 15 internal medicine and cardiovascular disease journals. He has authored more than 40 books and monographs, and more than 500 publications including original articles, book chapters, reviews, and editorials, as well as many abstracts.

Ed Barnas has over thirty-five years of full-time experience with scholarly journal publishing, and has developed expertise over a broad gamut of publishing activities, from the submission and peer review process through to publication and distribution in print and electronic forms. Over his career, Ed has managed the design and launch of new titles (both Press-owned and on behalf of scholarly associations and groups), the evaluation and acquisition of existing titles, the transition of print-only titles to an online edition, the specification, review, and recommendation of back-end publishing systems, and, when warranted, the de-accession or termination of a title

Ed Barnas has worked within both the non-profit and for-profit sectors, publishing titles in both the sciences and the humanities at Cambridge University Press (1995-2008), Raven Press (1985-1995), John Wiley & Sons (1976-1985) and the American Institute of Physics (1972-1976). 

Ed has played an active role in a number of industry groups, serving on various committees and task forces as well as speaking to publishing topics at various professional meetings. He was elected to the Board of Directors of the Society for Scholarly Publishing and subsequently served a term as President of that group. Ed has worked on the AAP/PSP Short Course in Journals Management (aka Journals Boot Camp) either on the planning committee or as a faculty member and/or speaker in a number of years. He is co-author with Sally Morris, Douglas LaFenier, and Margaret Reich ofThe Handbook of Journal Publishing (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

Ed is currently semi-retired, keeping abreast of industry issues, penning the occasional book review, and is available for consultation.  He continues to actively participate on the AAP/PSP Journals Committee.

Steve Chapman is Publisher of McGraw-Hill Professional’s Technical Group, the home of some of the world’s most renowned reference works in engineering, computing, and science, as well as AccessEngineering. He has served in a variety of editorial positions at McGraw-Hill and other publishers in the fields of engineering, computing, and telecommunications. He holds degrees in Electrical Engineering and English from the University of Delaware. He is based in New York.

Barbara Chen is Director of Bibliographic Information Services and Editor of the MLA International Bibliography at the Modern Language Association. With a focus on literature, language, linguistics, film, pedagogy and folklore, the Bibliography is the most comprehensive research tool available to humanities scholars today . Prior to her tenure at the MLA beginning in early 2001, Barbara was Associate Director of Indexing Services at the H. W. Wilson Company, responsible for databases such as Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, Business Periodicals Index and Index to Legal Periodicals. She is a past president of the American Society for Indexing New York Chapter and has been a member of the PSP Electronic Information Committee since 2004.

F. Michael Connelly is Professor Emeritus at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of University of Toronto (OISE/UT). He has written extensively on education and has made teaching a priority, with many former students winning dissertation, research and teaching awards. He was Director of the Canada Project, Second International Science Study, and Director of the Hong Kong Institute of Education/OISE/UT doctoral program. He has worked with schools, school boards, and teacher organizations; and has written policy papers for the Science Teachers Association of Ontario, the Ontario Teachers Federation, the Ontario Ministry of Education, the Government of Egypt, the League of Arab States, the Government of Australia, UNICEF and the World Bank. He received the American Educational Research Association Division B Lifetime Achievement Award, the Canadian Society for the Study of Education Outstanding Canadian Curriculum Scholar Award, the Canadian Education Association Whitworth award, the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Association award for excellence in teaching, and other scholarly awards. He has worked internationally in human resource development, curriculum, science education, teacher education, and community schools. His long-term, ongoing, urban education research program is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He is currently studying the narrative histories of immigrant Chinese family knowledge structures and ways of knowing as families interact with the Canadian school system. With colleagues, he is establishing a community schools sister-school research and development network among Toronto, Beijing and Shanghai. He recently completed a pan Arab development and evaluation policy paper for Centers of Educational Excellence focused on teacher quality.

Jeff Dean is Executive Editor for Social Sciences and Humanities at Wiley, working in the Boston office. He acquires text, reference, and academic books in philosophy and related fields, and manages the philosophy list and several other acquisitions editors. He studied German and philosophy as an undergraduate at Oberlin College, and went on to receive an MA and PhD in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin—Madison. He has taught courses both at the college and high school level in ethical theory, contemporary moral issues, aesthetics and the philosophy of art, and environmental philosophy.

Michael Fisher began his career in book publishing at Temple University Press in September 1978, when he was hired as a manuscript and production editor. He was at Temple for 3 years and then took a job as a project editor for a college textbook publisher. After six months in that job he was hired as an acquisitions editor in science and medicine by Praeger Publishers. Following four years at Praeger, Michael moved to ISI Press and then to W.B. Saunders in Philadelphia. In 1988 he was hired as Senior Medical Editor at Williams & Wilkins in Baltimore. He was Editor-in-Chief for Clinical Medicine when, in April 1992, he moved to Harvard University Press as Executive Editor for Science and Medicine. In November 2004 Michael was appointed Editor-in-Chief at HUP. In July 2009 Michael took on a new role at HUP as Assistant Director for University Relations and Executive Editor for Science and Medicine. He is also a member of the Advisory Committee of Harvard University's Office of Scholarly Communication and works with Harvard's Academic Computing Committee.

Nigel Fletcher-Jones is Director of The American University in Cairo Press. Since the early 1990s, Nigel has held executive level positions with national and international publishing companies including the continuing medical education provider Pri-Med Inc., Blackwell Publishing Inc., Nature Publishing Group (where he was the Publisher of the highly-influential Nature research journals), Elsevier and Cell Press. He has also acted as the Communications Director for the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Throughout his career, he has advised CEOs on strategic issues influencing the global publishing industry and has successfully developed many research products and services for both the biomedical and clinical medicine markets. Nigel was one of the pioneers of online journal publishing and continues to be deeply committed to the development of community-targeted web services. He is a former member of the AAP/PSP Executive Counciland holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Durham.

James M. Jasper has worked as a writer, consultant, magazine editor, professor and – briefly – standup comedian. His books include Nuclear Politics, about energy policy in France, Sweden, and the United States; The Animal Rights Crusade, an examination of the moral dimensions of protest coauthored with Dorothy Nelkin; The Art of Moral Protest, a cultural and emotional approach to social movements; Restless Nation, which looks at the negative and positive effects of Americans’ propensity to move so often; and Getting Your Way, which develops a sociological language for talking about strategic action that avoids the determinism of game theory. He has taught at Berkeley, Columbia, Princeton, NYU, the New School for Social Research, and now teaches in the sociology Ph.D. program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Myer Kutz has headed his own firm, Myer Kutz Associates, Inc., since 1990. For the past several years, he has focused on developing engineering handbooks and encyclopedias on a wide range of technical topics, such as mechanical, materials, biomedical, transportation, and environmentally conscious engineering, for a number of publishers, including Wiley, McGraw-Hill, and Elsevier. Earlier, his firm supplied consulting services to a large client roster, including Fortune 500 companies, scientific societies, and large and small publishers. The firm published two major multi-client studies, “The Changing Landscape for College Publishing” and “The Developing Worlds of Personalized Information.” Before starting his independent consultancy, Kutz held a number of positions at Wiley, including acquisitions editor, director of electronic publishing, and vice president for scientific and technical publishing. He holds engineering degrees from MIT and RPI and worked in the aerospace industry. In addition to his edited reference works, he is the author of eight books, including, most recently, "In the Grip", a psychological mystery, and earlier“Temperature Control”, published by Wiley, “Rockefeller Power”, published by Simon and Schuster, and "Midtown North", published under the name Mike Curtis.

George Lobell is presently the Economics/Finance/Public Policy/Quantitative Methods Acquisitions Editor at ME Sharpe. Previously, he was Executive Editor for Economics/Quantitative Methods at Wiley Blackwell’s HSS division, an Advanced Mathematics/Statistics acquisitions editor at Prentice Hall and before that an economics/finance editor at Scott, Foresman and DC Heath for nearly 15 years. A double major in Math and English at Carnegie Mellon, he also audited the Film Studies program at NYU many years ago. Ardent film goer at MOMA and Film Forum, with an outside passion for reading history books, he dabbles in travel, having spent weeks in countries like Iran, Burma, Paraguay, Uruguay, Kyrgyzstan, Syria, Macedonia, Albania, and all the usual countries of Europe and S. America. He does look forward to traveling in sub-Saharan Africa. (Oh lord, so little time, so many books to read and countries to visit!)

Daniel C. Mack is Deputy Director for Collection Management and Special Collections at the University of Maryland Libraries in College Park, where he provides leadership in policy creation and implementation, strategic planning, program development, and assessment for library collections.  His previous positions include Tombros Librarian for Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and Head of the Arts and Humanities Library at Penn State, and Library Director at the Dauphin County (PA) Prison.  Mack has advanced degrees in library science and ancient history and has taught college courses in ancient history, Roman archaeology, classical literature and Latin grammar.  Recent publications include work as co-editor of the Association of College and Research Libraries’ monograph Interdisciplinarity and Academic Libraries, as consulting editor for Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World and as author of the “Language, Linguistics and Philology” section of the American Library Association’s Guide to Reference Sources.  Mack’s current research interests include interdisciplinarity in the twenty-first century academy, assessment of library collections and services, and Roman civilization in the age of Caesar Augustus. Mack is serving as a subject specialist on the PROSE judging panel on behalf of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA).

Beatrice Rehl is Publishing Director, Humanities and Social Sciences, Editorial Director, and member of the Board of Managers in the New York office of Cambridge University Press.  A graduate of Princeton University, she earned her MA and Ph.D. degrees in the history of art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Since completing her education, she has worked in publishing, starting at George Braziller, a distinguished independent publisher of illustrated and literary books. At Cambridge University Press, she has worked in a variety of subjects, notably religious studies, classics, philosophy, art history, archaeology, and film studies. She has acquired and commissioned books in a range of genres, including scholarly reference works, textbooks, and monographs.

John Ryden was director of Yale University Press from 1979 until he retired early in 2003.  He began his publishing career as a sales rep in the college division of McGraw-Hill in 1965.  After moving to Harper & Row in 1968 he was appointed editor and later editor-in-chief. From 1974 to 1979 he was editor-in-chief and associate director of the University of Chicago Press.  He is a past president of the Association of American University Presses and was a member of the board of directors of the Association of American Publishers. Now an FM radio "DJ," he is host of Monday Afternoon Classics on station WMNR in Connecticut.