Kevin Wagner, Ph.D., is the chair of the political science department at FAU and was awarded the LLS distinguished professorship in current affairs twice. His research area is technology and politics, both in the United States and abroad. He has co-authored two books and many research articles in this area. His latest book, “Tweeting to Power: The Social Media Revolution in American Politics”, was published by Oxford University Press. Wagner has lectured extensively on technology and politics. He has completed a TEDx talk on the topic and has been cited in many leading newspapers, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, New York Newsday, Dallas Morning News, and Miami Herald. He has been featured on national television shows, including MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” and NBC’s “The Today Show”. Currently, he writes the weekly syndicated “Civics Project” column for Gannet Newspapers.

Dr. Robert P. Watson is a professor of American Studies at Lynn University and Senior Fellow at the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship. He has published 36 books and hundreds of articles, chapters, and essays on topics in politics and history, co-convened a half-dozen national conferences on the presidency, and serves on the boards of several scholarly journals, presidential foundations, and community and professional associations. A frequent media commentator, he has given media interviews to local, national, and international print, radio, and television outlets, including CNN, BBC, USA Today, and others. He was for many years a Sunday columnist for the Sun-Sentinel newspaper and is the political analyst for WPTV 5 (NBC).

Dr. Wiese‘s work concerns empowering rural older adults to age in place through increased awareness of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Dr. Wiese’s journey is an example of “it’s never too late to learn.” Dr. Wiese earned her MSN from the University of Virginia in 1985, and in 2013, received her doctoral degree at Florida Atlantic University’s C.E. Lynn College of Nursing, followed by a post-graduate certificate in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from Drexel University. She is board certified in gerontological and public health nursing. She is the recipient of funding from the National Institute on Aging/National Institutes of Health, and Florida Department of Health. She is currently testing wearable technology to detect patterns of cognitive risk in rural settings with funding from Washington State University, and conducting an FAU I-Health Pillar-funded online chair yoga study with FAU’s Dr. JuYoung Park. Dr Wiese serves on several state and national Alzheimer’s Association committees.

Eric J. Williams, Ph.D. is a Professor of Criminal Justice at Radford University. He teaches courses about constitutional law, the Supreme Court and punishment and corrections. He received his B.A. in Government and American Studies from Lehigh University and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Rutgers University. His writings on prisons and rural communities have appeared in academic journals and newspapers nation-wide, including the L.A. Times and his book The Big House in a Small Town was published in 2011. He is currently working on his next book on Critical Thinking and Ethical Decision-Making for Criminal Justice Professionals that will be published by the University of California Press. Dr. Williams has given guest lectures on various topics relating to prisons and prison management across the country for groups such as the American Corrections Association (ACA) and the North American Association of Wardens and Superintendents (NAAWS), the Association for Women Executives in Corrections (AWEC) and facilitates a training program he developed for the Correctional Management Institute of Texas (CMIT), the National Institute of Corrections (NIC), the Virginia and Maine Department of Corrections, the LA County Sherriff’s Department as well as several county probation departments that teaches critical thinking to senior level criminal justice leaders.

Andrew R. Wilson, Ph.D. is Professor of Strategy and Policy at the United States Naval War College in Newport, RI, the world’s oldest and most prestigious center for senior military education. An old “China Hand,” Andrew received his Bachelor of Arts in East Asian Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and earned a Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University with a specialization in the history of Pre-Modern and Modern China. His dissertation dealt with the Chinese merchant community in the Colonial Philippines. Professor Wilson has published numerous articles and books on Chinese maritime history, the Chinese diaspora, Chinese military history and the history of maritime Asia. Professor Wilson’s research interests are not limited to history. He has also written on Chinese strategic culture, contemporary Asian security, Chinese politics and Chinese military modernization. In addition, he is an expert on strategic thought and formerly served as the Naval War College’s Philip A. Crowl Professor of Comparative Strategy. Before joining the Naval War College faculty in 1998, Professor Wilson taught introductory and advanced courses in Chinese history and the history of the Chinese diaspora at Harvard and at Wellesley College. He has also taught at Salve Regina University and at the University of Rhode Island’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI). His courses at OLLI include Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, In the Footsteps of Genghis Khan, The Treasure Fleets of the Great Ming and A History of Modern China. An award-winning educator and dynamic lecturer, Professor Wilson has spoken at numerous military colleges and civilian universities across the United States and around the world, has been featured on the History Channel and National Public Radio, and has been a guest lecturer for One Day University, Scientific American, The New York Times Journeys and National Geographic. Professor Wilson is also an inveterate traveler and fanatical foodie. He has lived in China, Taiwan and the Philippines and makes annual trips to Asia, frequently accompanied by students and faculty from the Naval War College. Professor Wilson’s books include Ambition and Identity: Chinese Merchant-Elites in Colonial Manila, 1885-1916; The Chinese in the Caribbean; China's Future Nuclear Submarine Force; and the forthcoming The Acme of Skill: Strategic Theory from Antiquity to the Information Age. He has also taught for the Great Courses: with lecture series on The Art of War; Masters of War: History’s Greatest Strategic Thinkers; and Understanding Imperial China: Dynasties, Lives and Cultures.

Howard R. Wolf is Emeritus Professor and Senior Fellow in the Department of English at SUNY-Buffalo. A graduate of Horace Mann School, Amherst College (BA), Columbia University (MA), and The University of Michigan (Ph.D.) where he wrote a doctoral dissertation on the theme of “abandonment” in Henry James and was a Hopwood winner for fiction. He has been a Fulbright scholar in Turkey, 1983-84, and South Africa, 1998. He is a Life Member of Wolfson College, Cambridge University and PEN America. His academic fields are American Literature, Autobiography, Short Fiction, Literary Journalism, and the Essay. His published creative work has been in the areas of memoir and the personal essay, short fiction, novel, literary and social criticism, letters, humor, travel, education, and drama. His major book publications are: Forgive the Father: A Memoir of Changing Generations (1978); The Education of a Teacher (1987); Broadway Serenade (novel, 1996); The Education of Ludwig Fried (Jewish American stories, 2006), Far-Away Places: Lessons in Exile (travel, 2007); Second Time Around and other stories (2019); Of Two Lives on The Lower Golan (2020); and now Distant Love (2022). His essays have appeared in: Midstream, The Nation; Christian Science Monitor, The New Republic; The American Scholar; The Virginia Quarterly, The Sewanee Review, and Cithara: Essays in The Judeo-Christian Tradition. His short stories have appeared in Commonwealth Review, Evening Street Review, Nimrod, Mediterranean Review, Cimmaron Review, Trajectory, and Pleiades.