Faculty and Staff

Sherrill J. Begres, Ph.D., Department Chair <sjbegres@iup.edu>

Sherrill Begres received her Ph.D. in Philosophy at Wayne State University in 1986. She has been teaching both upper and lower-level philosophy courses at IUP since 1989. Among the courses Dr. Begres teaches are: Ethics and Public Policy; Biomedical Ethics; Journalistic Ethics; Advanced Ethics; Critical Thinking; Introduction to Ethics; Introduction to Philosophy; Symbolic Logic; and Philosophy of Art. Dr. Begres is active within the university; she is a member of the Robert E. Cook Honors College (RECHC) faculty, the RECHC Curriculum Committee, and the RECHC Scholarship Committee.  She was instrumental in developing the RECHC program and curriculum and has been a constant presence there in offering courses and participating in the life of the Honors College.  She is a member of the local chapter of the Phi Kappa Phi.  She has also been a faculty representative to the State Faculty Professional Development Council for the State System of Higher Education, and is a past member of the IUP HIV Intervention and Prevention Team. She was also a member of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Consortium Ethics Program. Dr. Begres has served on the Residence Hall Judicial Board, and is the advisor to Philosophy majors and Philosophy RECHC minors.   Dr. Begres won the Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching, 1997-1998.

Dr. Begres states "It was my research on AIDS for the University of Michigan-Flint and the resulting interest in and contact with persons with AIDS that ultimately directed my attention to Biomedical Ethics and my subsequent work on ethics-related committees (with a particular interest in biomedical ethics)."

Carol Caraway, Ph.D. <caraway@iup.edu>

Carol Caraway received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Oklahoma in 1982 and has been teaching at IUP since 1987. Her areas of specialization are theory of knowledge, later Wittgenstein, and philosophy of personal relations.   Since 1992 she has been the president of the Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love, an international association devoted to the philosophical study of sex, love, friendship, and other aspects of personal relationships.  In the summer of 2000, Dr. Caraway spent six weeks at the University of Arizona participating in the NEH Summer Seminar “Philosophical Foundations of Social Epistemology,” directed by Professor Alvin Goldman.  During 2001, which was the fiftieth anniversary of Wittgenstein’s death, Dr. Caraway attended international conferences on Wittgenstein in Austria and Norway.  In August 2002 and August 2003, Dr. Caraway presented papers at the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society Conference in Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria.  These papers were also published in the ALWS proceedings.  In the spring of 2002 and 2003, she presented earlier versions of these papers at the SSHE Interdisciplinary Association for Philosophy and Religious Studies conference.  The 2002 paper "Community, Context, and Criticism: Connections between Wittgenstein's On Certainty and Feminist Epistemology" has been translated into Croatian and published in the Croatian journal Prolegomena.  Both the 2002 paper and the 2003 paper, “Wittgenstein on the Structure of Justification:  Breaking New Epistemological Ground,” deal with epistemological issues in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty.  Dr. Caraway regularly teaches Introduction to Philosophy; Philosophy of Love, Marriage and Divorce; Theory of Knowledge; and Philosophy of Language.  VITAE

Mary MacLeod, Ph.D. <mmacleod@iup.edu>

Mary MacLeod received her Ph.D. from The University of North Carolina in 2000 for work on Kant's philosophy.  She joined the department in 2002, having taught at Howard University, Rice University and Dartmouth College. Her current research concerns relations between mathematics and ethics in philosophy of the Modern era.  Among the courses she teaches are: 
Modern Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Symbolic Logic, Symbolic Logic II, and Introduction to Philosophy.  VITAE

Bradley Rives, Ph.D. <rives@iup.edu>

Brad Rives is primarily interested in philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology, with strong secondary interests in metaphysics and epistemology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 2005, where he wrote a dissertation on the nature of concepts. After teaching a year at Union College in Schenectady NY, Brad joined the department in the fall of 2006. He is currently working on a number of papers on the nature of concepts and psychological explanation, and his work has appeared in such journals as Noûs and American Philosophical Quarterly. Courses he teaches include Methods of Critical Thinking, Introduction to Philosophy, Ethics, and Philosophy of Mind. He has also taught courses in the Robert E. Cook Honors College. Visit his website.

Tiger C. Roholt, Ph.D. <tiger.roholt@iup.edu>

Tiger Roholt’s main areas of research are philosophy of art, phenomenology, and philosophy of mind. Other areas of interest include ancient philosophy and existentialism. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2007—his dissertation is entitled Groove: The Phenomenology of Musical Nuance. Tiger taught Contemporary Civilization, the flagship course of the Columbia College Core Curriculum (2004-2006); he taught at Rowan University (2006/2007); and in the fall of 2007 he joined IUP’s philosophy department. While at Columbia, Tiger co-organized an interdisciplinary conference called The Mind & Music Roundtable. His recent writing includes an article, “Musical Experience,” which is forthcoming in The Oxford Companion to Consciousness. Visit his website.

Eric M. Rubenstein, Ph.D. <erubenst@iup.edu>

Prof. Rubenstein received his Ph.D from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1996, and began teaching at IUP in Aug. 2000. His upper-level courses include Metaphysics, Ancient Philosophy, and Contemporary Analytic Philosophy. His research interests are in metaphysics and the history of philosophy; he has published on a variety of topics in a variety of journals. Recent publications explore the nature of simples in the metaphysics and epistemology of Plato and Aristotle. When he's not doing philosophy, he pretends he's a race car driver. Visit his website.

Departmental Staff

Linda Askins

Linda Askins received her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Business from IUP in 2003. Prior to working here, Linda worked as Inside Sales Coordinator for a local distribution company for 30 years. She has been a member of the local Business and Professional Women's Club (BPW) since 1987.

Professor Emeriti

Robert M. Hermann retired from the university in June 1987.

Albert E. Bouffard <bouffard@aux.iup.edu>
Albert Bouffard received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Duquesne University in 1970. He began teaching at IUP in 1976 and served as department chair from 1993 to 2002. His areas of specialization include phenomenology and existentialism and the history of philosophy. Dr. Bouffard's areas of competence are post-structuralism and deconstruction.  Dr. Bouffard retired from IUP in May of 2003 and currently resides in Indiana, PA.

Daniel N. Boone <danboone@iup.edu>

Daniel N. Boone received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Claremont Graduate School in 1971. He has been teaching at IUP since 1969, where he teaches both upper and lower level courses. Among the courses taught by Dr. Boone are Introduction to Philosophy; Contemporary Analytic Philosophy; Philosophy of Science; Theory of Knowledge; Symbolic Logic I and II; Informal Logic; the Philosophy of Consciousness; and a course team-taught with a neuroscientist, Mind and Brain. Dr. Boone is the advisor to the Pre-Law  Philosophy majors and became the department chair in 2002.  He is the author of Critical Thinking: An Applied Approach (Kendall-Hunt, 2nd edition 2001).  Currently, he is serving as the Program Chair for the Eastern Division of the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking.  Dr. Boone retired from the University in June of 2005.   THE REASONING ANALYSIS TEST

Recently Retired Faculty

Vincent Ferrara

Vincent Ferrara received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Fordham University in 1968. He began teaching at IUP in 1969, where he taught a variety of both philosophy and religion courses. Dr. Ferrara taught Introduction to Religion; General Logic; Introduction to Philosophy; History of Philosophy I and II; American Philosophical Thought; Contemporary Western Thought; Metaphysics; Philosophy of Law; Philosophy of the Women's Movement; Karl Marx; and Studies in Religious Thought.  Dr. Ferrara retired from IUP in May of 2002. 

Sharon Montgomery

Sharon Montgomery attended the University of Pennsylvania on a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship and received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Penn in 1972. She began teaching at IUP in 1971 and chaired the department from 1985 to 1990.

In her Ethics classes, Sharon used a method she developed and called CompSoc (i.e. Computer Socrates) which involved pairs of students dialoguing together on a computer. She also taught Symbolic Logic.  Dr. Montgomery retired from IUP in May of 2002.