Faculty & Staff

College Preparatory Programs

Liaison Office for Townsend Harris High School at Queens College

Faculty & Staff

The following list includes the Office of College Preparatory Programs at Queens College as well as the Faculty for the Freshman Humanities Colloquium (both college adjuncts and high school teachers).

Joseph Merino, Assistant to the Director

As an alumnus of the THHS Class of ‘88 and graduate of Queens College in February 1993 with a BA (English & Honors in the Humanities), Joseph has been involved continually with the Collaboration since its inception, becoming Assistant to the Director in 1992. With this experience in mind, in 2000, the Queens College Provost’s Office tapped Joseph to be an advisor to CUNY’s College Now program at QC. He continues to advise, counsel and administrate in both programs.

Aside from his administrative and counseling duties for CPP and CN, Joseph co-taught in the Humanities Seminar as a Student Teacher three semesters during his undergraduate years and has led various workshops with students on methods of integrating into college. He has also, on occasion, acted as “substitute teacher” in the Humanities Colloquium and in a College Now History Foundations course.

E-mail: joseph.merino@qc.cuny.edu

Edie Balogh, Administrative Assistant

While an undergraduate student in the Honors in the Western Tradition at Queens College, Edie became familiar with the THHS / QC Collaboration, including a semester as a Student Teacher in the Humanities Colloquium and a semester of Observation at THHS for a Secondary Education Foundations course. She worked part-time in the QC Admissions office for over a year and then joined the staff of CPP in the Summer of 1995.

In February 1996, she received a BA in English with a Certificate for Honors in the Western Tradition and a Minor in Irish Studies, and has worked Full-Time with CPP ever since. She also spent a few semesters as a part-time advisor to the College Now administration and as a counselor to CN students.

E-mail: edith.balogh@qc.cuny.edu

Freshman Humanities Colloquium (HTH 101/102) QC Faculty

Helen Gaudette, History:

BA Economics (Boston College),

MA History (Hunter College),

PhD History (CUNY Graduate Center)

Timothy Scott Johnson, History:

BA History (Denison University, 2007)

PhD Modern European History with focus on Intellectual History

(CUNY Graduate Center, in progress)

Lucia Lermond, Philosophy:

BA (Queens College),

PhD (Columbia University)

Teresa O’Neill, Linguistics:

BA European Studies, French, and Spanish (Gonzaga University)

PhD Linguistics (CUNY Graduate Center, in progress)

Paul Schweigert, History:

BS History (North Carolina State University, 2005)

PhD Modern European History (CUNY Graduate Center, in progress)

Kelly Seufert, English:

BA English (, )

Ph.D. Candidate, English/Medieval Studies (CUNY Graduate Center)

Arthur Shippee, Philosophy:

BA Mathematics (Brown University, 1979),

MDiv (Union Theological Seminary, 1982),

MA Philosophy (Yale University, 1985)

Kristina Varade, European Languages and Literatures:

BA English / Italian (Mount Holyoke College, 2002)

MA Italian and English Literatures (New York University -

Draper Program for Humanities and Social Thought, 2004)

PhD Candidate: Comparative Literature - Italian Specialization

with focus on contemporary Irish and Italian fiction (CUNY)

Helen A. Gaudette, PhD

Helen is an adjunct assistant professor of medieval and early modern European history and, since 2004, the Director of College Preparatory Programs at Queens College, CUNY. As Director, she serves as the Liaison between THHS & QC and coordinates CPP’s Collaboration projects. She also teaches a wide range of European history courses for the History Department, the Freshman Year Initiative Program, the College Now Program, the QC Honors Experience Program, and Study Abroad. In addition, she co-teaches the Humanities Colloquium for the Bridge Year program each semester.

In 2007, she won the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching by Adjunct Faculty at Queens College.

At the beginning of 2010, her article, “The Spending Power of a Medieval Queen: Melisende of Jerusalem,” was published in Women, Wealth, and Power in Medieval Europe (Theresa Ehrenfight and Bonnie Wheeler, eds. for Palgrave MacMillan). She is also the author of The Second Crusade: The War Council of Acre, 1148, a work-in-progress for the “Reacting to the Past” Teaching Series.